and among them are enormous hickories, acacias, and tulip-trees; while horse-chestnuts without number make a very blaze of floral illumination through the leafy month of June.  Richmond-hill, with its unrivalled views, rises from Sudbrook Park; and that eerie-looking Ham House, the very ideal of the old English manor-house, with its noble avenues which make twilight walks all the summer day, is within a quarter of a mile.  As for the house itself, it is situated at the foot of the slope on whose summit Lord John Russell’s house stands; it is of great extent, and can accommodate a host of patients, though when we were there, the number of inmates was less than twenty.  It is very imposing externally; but the only striking feature of its interior is the dining-room, a noble hall of forty feet in length, breadth, and height.  It is wainscoted with black oak, which some vile wretch of a water doctor painted white, on the ground that it darkened the room.  As for the remainder of the house, it is divided into commonplace bed-rooms and sitting-rooms, and provided with bathing appliances of every conceivable kind.  On arriving at a water establishment, the patient is carefully examined, chiefly to discover if anything be wrong about the heart, as certain baths would have a most injurious effect should that be so.  The doctor gives his directions to the bath attendant as to the treatment to be followed, which, however, is much the same with almost all patients.  The newcomer finds a long table in the dining-hall, covered with bread and milk, between six and seven in the evening; and here he makes his evening meal with some wry faces.  At half-past nine p. m. he is conducted to his chamber, a bare little apartment, very plainly furnished.  The bed is a narrow little thing, with no curtains of any kind.  One sleeps on a mattress, which feels pretty hard at first.  The jolly and contented looks of the patients had tended somewhat to reassure us; still, we had a nervous feeling that we were fairly in for it, and could not divest ourselves of some alarm as to the ordeal before us; so we heard the nightingale sing for many hours before we closed our eyes on that first night at Sudbrook Park.

It did not seem a minute since we had fallen asleep, when we were awakened by some one entering our room, and by a voice which said, ‘I hef come tu pack yew.’  It was the bath-man, William, to whose charge we had been given, and whom we soon came to like exceedingly; a most good-tempered, active, and attentive little German.  We were very sleepy, and inquired as to the hour; it was five a.m.  There was no help for it, so we scrambled out of bed and sat on a chair, wrapped in the bed-clothes, watching William with sleepy eyes.  He spread upon our little bed a very thick and coarse double blanket; he then produced from a tub what looked like a thick twisted cable, which he proceeded to unroll.  It was a sheet of coarse linen, wrung out of the coldest water.  And so here was the terrible wet sheet