To this low orb is lost a shining light. Useful, resplendent, and tho' transient, bright! For scarce has soaring genius reach'd the blaze Of fleeting life's meridian hour, Than Death around the naming meteor plays, And spreads its cypress o'er the short liv'd flower. The great projector of that grand design,6 In time's remotest annals, long will shine; While sons of toil aloud proclaim his name, And life preserv'd perpetuate his fame.

SODA WATER

(To the Editor of the Mirror.)

The following extract from a medical periodical on Soda Water, will not perhaps be deemed mal-apropos at the present period of the year, and by being inserted in your widely circulated work may be of some service to those who are not aware of the evil effects produced by a too free use of that beverage.

M.M.M.

On this fashionable article, the editor remarks, Dr. Paris makes the following observations:—"The modern custom of drinking this inviting beverage during, or immediately after dinner, has been a pregnant source of indigestion. By inflating the stomach at such a period, we inevitably counteract those muscular contractions of its coats which are essential to chymification, whilst the quantity of soda thus introduced scarcely deserves notice; with the exception of the carbonic acid gas, it may be regarded as water; more mischievous only in consequence of the exhilarating quality, inducing us to take it at a period at which we would not require the more simple fluid."

In all the waters we have obtained from fountains in London and other places, under the names of "Soda Water" and "double Soda Water," we have not been able to discover any soda. It is common water mechanically super-saturated with fixed air, which on being disengaged and rarified in the stomach, may, as Dr. Paris observes, so over distend the organ as to interrupt digestion, or diminish the powers of the digestive organs. When acid prevails in the stomach, which is generally the case the day after too free an indulgence in wine, true soda water, taken two or three hours before dinner, or an hour before breakfast, not only neutralizes the acid, but the fixed air, which is disengaged, allays the irritation, and even by distending the organ, invigorates the muscular coat and nerves. As the quantity of soda, in the true soda water, is much too small to neutralize the acid, it is a good practice to add fifteen or twenty grains of the carbonate of soda, finely powdered, to each bottle, which may be done by pouring the contents of a bottle on it in a large glass.

Of all the soda water we have examined, we have found that made by Mr. Johnson, to contain the greatest quantity of soda. For the purpose of cooling the body during warm weather, and quieting the stomach, which is generally in a state of increased irritation when the temperature of the air is equal or within a few degrees of that of the body, it is preferable to any of the vegetable or mineral acids.

THE COSMOPOLITE

SISTERS OF CHARITY 7

All the world, that is, one out of the two millions of people in this great town, know, that the above is the title of a somewhat romantic drama, in which Miss Kelly is fast monopolizing the tears and sympathies of the public by her impersonation of a Sister of Charity. To witness it will do every heart good; and this is the highest aim of a dramatic representation. The performance has had the effect of drawing our attention to the original of the character, which is intensely interesting, though at the same time overtinged with romance.

Every six weeks' tourist has seen or heard of the Sisters of Charity on the Continent. They are nurses in the hospitals there, but on a system very different from the hireling attendants in similar institutions in England. Indeed, they may be said to have quitted the world to devote themselves to the relief of those unfortunate persons, who people the abodes of misery and distress. They form, it appears, a numerous body, consisting of several thousand members, who are said to perform or superintend the administration of 300 hospitals in France. They are united under several denominations, as nuns of those monastic communities which escaped the storms of the revolution. Many of them are in the prime of life, and though not bound by absolute vows, devote the whole of their time, and even die in the act of doing good. In spiritual matters, they are under the jurisdiction of the bishop of the district in which the hospital is situated; in temporal concerns they are subject to the authority of the heads of the establishment to which they belong; but they are chiefly under the guidance of the superior of their order. They are fed and lodged at the expense of the hospital, and receive in addition, a certain stipend for the purchase of clothes. In the hospital at Lyons, (which forty or fifty years ago, was the only hospital in France which was not in a barbarous state), there are about 150 of these Sisters, wearing a uniform dress of dark worsted, and remarkably clean. They receive the trifling sum of forty francs a year for pocket-money, and sit up one night in each week; the following is a day of relaxation, and the only one they have. During the siege of Lyons, when cannon-balls passed through the windows, and struck the walls every moment, not one abandoned her post near the sick.

Every one will rejoice at the existence of such offices as the Sisters of Charity—benign, nay almost divine; and until this moment, we thought that such had been their real character. Our belief has, however, been somewhat staggered by an article in the last number of the London Review; in which the services of the Sisters are represented in a much less amiable light than we have been accustomed to view them. This notice occurs in a paper on a work by Dr. David Johnston, of Edinburgh, on the Public Charities of France. The Doctor, whose book abounds with evidence of considerable research, thus speaks of the Sisters of Charity:—

"The inmate of an hospital is alone qualified to speak with justice of the blessings which such attendance affords. Possessed of superior education, and from their religious profession placed above many of the worldly considerations which affect nurses in general, the Sisters of Charity act at once as temporal and spiritual comforters, watch over the sick bed, soothe the prisoner in his confinement, and penetrate into the worst abodes of misery, to comfort the distress, and instruct the ignorant."

Such we also thought had been their portraiture, although we could not so far speak from personal evidence. But the reviewer gainsays all this, and even does more. After drawing a comparison, and not altogether a just one, between the "Sisters of Charity in France," and ladies of fortune who unostentatiously visit the sick poor in England, he says—

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The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 14, No. 383, August 1, 1829

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TO THE MEMORY OF SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, BART

(For the Mirror.)

SODA WATER

(To the Editor of the Mirror.)

THE COSMOPOLITE

SISTERS OF CHARITY 7

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