the corps of WET-NURSES. Each had a sort of
shako, a round coronet or turban of red cloth
over pasteboard, high in front, and sloping to
the back of the head. In an open closet at the
side of the door were their state shakos, for
feast days, of the same colour, but with a band
of gold lace round the edge. The rest of the
uniform consisted of a red body and petticoat,
with a white front over the bosom, white long
sleeves, and a white apron. They all wore white
stockings, with grey cloth slippers without heels.

There were twelve hundred of these wet-nurses
in the hospital at that time, and twelve hundred
babies: all of the latter under two months old,
except a very few.

In the services of the Russian Church, a
peculiarity which strikes a stranger is the
mode of bowing during the ceremonies.
During the chanting, which is very beautiful and
unaccompanied, the congregation keep
perpetually bowing: not all at the same time,
but just as it appears to suit the fancy of
individuals; they do not bow the head, nor
the shoulders, but the whole body at an angle
from the legs; some bow more, and some less,
but generally the bow is a very low one, and
the bower springs back again to a more than
usually upright posture. The more devout
—and this is especially the case with the old
beggar women—prostrate themselves and kneel
down and touch the floor with their
foreheads, and they will repeat this several times
in a few minutes. In the streets, wherever there
is a lamp in front of a sacred picture—and these
are perpetually met with in the streets in all
Russian towns—people are seen as they pass, to
take their hats off, stop, strike the breast, each
shoulder, and the forehead, and make this same
peculiar bow—even at a considerable distance
from the object of devotion, perhaps at the
opposite side of a wide street. This same peculiar
bow is the bow which the lower orders also
make when they wish to show a mark of
respect to their superiors or benefactors. As we
passed down the long file of the wet-nurses,
each of them in turn, like an intermitting platoon
firing, made this bow, rising up again from it at
once to an erect and military bearing.

At each end of the long ward was a washing
apparatus for the babies—four copper baths, half
a foot deep, smoothly rounded at bottom, set
in a fixed stand, and supplied with warm or cold
water from a brass pipe in the centre. In front
of these, were four tables for dressing the babies.
Instead of the nurse sitting down as in England,
and dressing or washing the baby on her lap, in
Russia, and in Germany also, the baby is dressed
on a table, the nurse standing. The military
precision with which it is all done here, is very
impressive. There are to each ward on the
average, eight or nine nurse attendants, with a head
one, who is a lady in appearance and manner,
and dressed in plain black silk, and who only
superintends the rest. The rest are young,
active, well taught and well trained women or
girls, dressed uniformly, who do all the real
work, and attend to the babies, in all that
the wet-nurses do not perform. With her bath
ready filled with water at the proper
temperature, one waits with her arms bare, a
wet-nurse from a long file of them walks up
with her ticket in her hand taken from the head
of the bed, and, in her turn, hands her baby
to one of these nurses—by whom the baby is
quickly undressed on one of the tables and
handed to the nurse already at the bath. The
baby is then rapidly but gently and carefully
washed, and at once handed to a third nurse at
another of the tables which is covered with an
oil-silk large flat pillow, and there the baby is
rapidly dried with a warm soft towel. It is then
handed to the fourth table, and there another
nurse as quickly dresses it, rolling it up in
the absurd and objectionable swaddling-clothes
which are in use all over the Continent. This
division of labour makes the whole process a very
complete and very rapid one, only occupying
a few minutes, and the baby is then handed
to the wet-nurse and taken back to its cot.
Some of the babies brought to the institution
are very prematurely born, poor feeble little
animals, scarcely alive, and not able to maintain
their own warmth, even with all the adjuncts of
eider-down pillows and coverlids. For these,
there are special cots made of copper, with a
double wall, between which circulates a perpetual
supply of hot water, so that the proper
degree of warmth is constantly surrounding the
feeble infant. We saw some dozen of these
very premature infants, looking most deplorable
objects, with weazen monkey faces, enveloped in
hoods of wadding. At another part of the same
ward we were shown several which were now
strong and healthy, and had gradually been
inured to less delicate treatment.

After visiting the main large wards, all of the
same character, and all scrupulously clean, well
ventilated, well warmed, and with painted
boarded floors, which are easily washed and
swept, we came to the smaller wards for
exceptional cases. One was for deformities, natural
defects—many irremediable and sooner or later
to be fatal—others to be relieved or removed,
at a later age, by operations—others which,
without compromising life, would remain as
permanent blemishes and disfigurements. Of course
there must be a proportion of such unfortunates
in so large a number of infants; but there was
nothing better nor worse in the plans pursued
for their treatment, than in other hospitals.
One of these wards was solely for skin
complaints: not the slight and quite innocent
eruptions which are common to young infants,
but those of a more permanent and mischievous
character, requiring careful medical treatment.
In Russia, among the lower classes, there are
two skin diseases: one, the consequence of vice;
the other, the consequence of dirt, and of a
highly contagious nature. Though Scotland has
been taunted with the prevalence of this
complaint, as a nearly national characteristic. Russia
far more deserves the stigma, and it is dreadfully
abundant among the children admitted into this
institution. Fortunately it is curable, when the