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ISS Nightingale, whose opinion upon those subjects which she has rendered known is always to be mentioned with the highest respect, complains that one of the great wants in nursing (or rather of nurses) is "observation." That is to say, that those very useful and excellent persons who tend our sick-beds, and wait upon our birth and our death, do not sufficiently know how to use their eyes; that Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Harris, who have spent their lives in hospitals, and who ought to know the meaning of every groan, the expression of each sigh, the intention of every small breath which issues from the suffering, are hard-hearted and incapable, nay, often useless, or worse than useless, because they do not know "how to observe." This would very likely be news to Mrs. Gamp, and she would be quite "rampagious" at it. "Not know my bizness!" she would say. "Have not I been years and years at it? Don't I know the ins and outs of all the patients, drat 'em? Ain't I acquaintaged with all their little ways? Here have I been, gal and woman, a matter o' forty year in a hospital, and am I to be told by a mere chit of a gal to

Sairey Gamp as I don't know how to hobserve? A likely thing, indeed! a stuck-up minx! I'll take a night case, or a day case, or a fever case, or a consumptive case, or a monthly, with any nurse in the three kingdoms, and St. Thomas's parish, which is well beknown to all the medical gentlemen at Bartlemy's!"

Mrs. Gamp's vindication of herself would be founded on precisely the same basis as that of any one else. She and most people argue that experience makes fools wise; to which we answer, Not always. It all depends upon one thing—upon knowing how to observe. Experience, for instance, does not make a naturally vicious man wise; nor did it make our Charles I. wise, or he would not have lost his head and the three kingdoms. It did not make the Bourbons wise, or they would be reigning still. They had learnt one cuckoo lesson -"that liberty was fatal to the Bourbons"-and they therefore repressed liberty. It was said of them that they never learnt nor ever forgot anything; and it seems to have been Experience did not make the Israelites wise: they learnt little or nothing in forty years. And so, in common life, we shall see people going through their existence from boy to man, from girl to woman, just as silly as ever: indeed, most people are better when young than when old. It is a hard task to grow old gracefully, to scatter our follies away as a child lays by his toys; to relinquish our tastes, and take up new ones; to act consistently and wisely; to melt imperceptibly, like a fine summer's day, from morning to noon, from noon to evening, and so on to sunset, quietly, calmly,

true.

beautifully, and thankfully, too, for all the mercies which we have. No; experience gives not always wisdom, any more than knowledge does. It is a wrong thing to suppose that age is always wiser than youth. Napoleon, when First Consul, could beat all the old generals of Austria; Wolfe, who fell almost a boy in years, but covered with glory, was wiser than the old generals of his time, who threw away their armies; Pitt, the boy Prime Minister, knew how to answer the sneer that he was "too young-but a boy;" and Ferguson, measuring the apparent distances of the fixed stars from each other with a piece of thread, and growing wise in his observations about the weather, knew considerably more than the wisest shepherd of the hills, who had talked about the same till he was ninety years of age. It is not by the calendar of years that we must note true time or true wisdom. We must pay reverence where reverence is due, and always to age. But a man of twenty-one may have thought out his life more than one of sixty, and may know more too. "An old fool is the worst of fools," says the proverb; ay, and a very bad fool, too, he is, when we meet him.

Following the pious old actor who founded Alleyn's College at Dulwich, we may speak of wisdom as "God's gift." But that, like other gifts, comes when sought for, and the faculty through which it comes is observation. This faculty may be cultivated, and that with great success. "A celebrated man," writes Miss Nightingale, “though he was celebrated for foolish things" (she alludes to the conjurer Robert Houdin), "had one way of instructing his son, that of cultivating his

observation, which was very wise." He would, with the boy, pass quickly by a shop, telling the lad to notice what was in the window, and then both father and son would write down what they had observed. The boy by this means grew so quick and proficient, that he would sometimes, after a momentary glance, make a list of, and accurately describe, forty, fifty, or sixty articles. Indeed, in a short time he excelled his father in it. Houdin put this faculty to use merely to make money. The boy practised as a clairvoyant, and could, upon entering a room and immediately being blindfolded, give an accurate list of all the furniture, persons, pictures, &c., sufficient to cheat people into the belief that he saw through the back of his head, or through his nerves.

It will not be necessary for any of our readers to practise this trick, it being a mere achievement of memory; but they may be assured that if they once get into the practice of accurate observation, they will do themselves and all around them good. It will be useful in all matters. The common, too common, want of it has ruined thousands. One cannot engage a servant, employ a nurse or a doctor, sit as a juryman, or be subpoenaed as a witness, without finding the most egregious errors committed merely from its want. “La!" say the delinquents, "we never thought of that." "Did you notice?" said the lawyer. "No," cries the stolid witness, and the thief escapes. Many a murder would undoubtedly have been unravelled before this if the surrounding people had but had common observation. But we must here add that even in regard to crime itself the same rule applies.

The criminal is often discovered merely by the want of this quality. He exhibits his plunder, wears the clothes of his victim, or does some equally stupid thing, and he is found out. Let us instance murderers, who generally convict themselves. The police ferret out very, very few. It is through some foolish little point being committed, or omitted, that crime is detected, battles lost or won, fortunes made, and thrones occupied.

Looking over biography and general history, we are quite puzzled with a superflux of examples to prove to us the immense advantage of observation. Taking a common instance, and glancing upwards to see how long it will take us before we finish reading or writing this article, we find a clock, the chief portion of which is not the spring, nor the wheels, nor the face, but the pendulum, the most universal and the best of all time-measurers, the regular beat of which reminds us of that solemn pulsation of our own hearts, every additional stroke of which brings us nearer to the grave. It was simply observation which discovered that useful instrument. Galileo was one who knew how to observe; and standing in the cathedral of Pisa towards the evening, he saw a verger, who was lighting the lamps, set one of the chandeliers a-swinging. Watching the regular motion to and fro, Galileo instantly thought that time might be measured by it; and hence the invention. So, also, by seeing boys playing with soap-bubbles, Newton discovered the prismatic colours, and by noticing an apple fall upon the ground, the great principle of gravitation. It is not to be supposed but that many hundreds of