To-morrow is the first London "Hospital Sunday," the day on
which the London Churches are to make that great collective effort for the London Hospitals which our contemporary the Lancet has for years back so persistently urged and so earnestly hoped for. We have made some calculation elsewhere, based on the example of the greater provincial towns, of what it ought to yield ; but it speaks ill for the success of the day that the two Societies of the Temple, or at least one of them, has put a veto on any collection in the Temple Church, in spite of the Master of the Temple's (Dr. Vaughan's) avowed intention to preach in aid of the fund. The Benchers of these learned bodies are not to be congratulated on their "enthusiasm of humanity." For a long time they held dinner-eating to be the beat qualification for legal practice, resisted all efficient schemes of legal education while they increased their bank balances and stocked their wine-cellars, and were only compelled by the competition of the Legislature to propose an even tolerable scheme for the dispensing of their great incomes ; and now they set an ostentatious example of indiffer- ence to the physical suffering of London. No one ever suppose& that the Benchers cared much for any but Benchers' souls, sup- posing them to own to one ; but if they don't care either for
barristers' intellects or the people's bodies, they will almost deserve to be called what their Volunteer regiment has already been called, "The Devil's Own."
