In

her own church blind her to the excellences of others. her travels upon the continent of Europe, she had often met the Sisters of Charity, and members of other Catholic Orders, serving in the hospitals and asylums, and serving, too, with a fidelity, constancy, and skill, which excited in her the highest admiration and the profoundest respect. It was a favorite dream of her youth, that, perhaps, there might one day be among Protestants some kind of Order of Nurses,a band of women devoted, for a time, or for life, to the holy and arduous work of alleviating the anguish of the sick-bed. About the year 1848, she heard that there was something of the kind in Germany, under the charge of a benevolent lady and a venerable Lutheran pastor. She hastened to enter this school of nurses, and spent six months there, acquiring valuable details of her art. In the hospital attached to it sho served as one of the regular corps of nurses, among whom she was greatly distinguished for her skill and thoroughness. Upon her return to England, an opportunity was speedily furnished her for exercising her improved skill.

A very numerous class in England are family governesses. English people are not so well aware, as we are, how much better it is for children to go to a good school than to pursue their education at home, even under the most skilful private teacher. Consequently, almost every family in liberal circumstances has a resident governess, an unhappy being, who suffers many of the inconveniences attached to the lot of a servant, without enjoying the solid advantages which ought to accompany servitude. Upon salaries of twenty or thirty pounds a year, many of these ladies are required to make a presentable appearance, and associate, upon a sort of equality, with persons possessing a hundred times their revenue. Unable to save anything for their declining years, nothing can be conceived more pitiable than the situation of a friendless English governess whom age or infirmities have deprived

of employment and of home. For the benefit of such, an asylum was established in London several years ago, which, however, had but a feeble life and limited means. Miss Nightingale, on her return from Germany, was informed that the institution was on the point of being given up, owing to its improper management and the slenderness of its endowment. Her aid was sought by the friends of the asylum. She accepted the laborious post of its superintendent, and she left her beautiful abode in the country, and took up her residence in the establishment in London, to which she gave both her services and a large part of her income. For many months she was seldom seen at the entertainments, public and private, which she was formerly in the habit of enjoying; for she was in her place by the bedside of sick, infirm, or dying inmates of the governesses' hospital. She restored order to its finances; she increased the number of its friends; she improved the arrangements of the interior; and when her health gave way under the excessive labors of her position, and she was compelled to retire to the country, she had the satisfaction of leaving the institution firmly established and well regulated.

But the time was at hand when her talents were to be employed upon a grander scale, and when her country was to reap the full result of her study and observation. The war with Russia occurred. In February and March, 1854, shiploads of troops were leaving England for the seat of war, and the heart of England went with them.

In all the melancholy history of warlike expeditions, there is no record of one which was managed with such cruel inefficiency as this. Everything like foresight, the adaptation of means to ends, knowledge of the climate, knowledge of the human constitution, seemed utterly wanting in those who had charge of sending these twenty-five thousand British troops to the shores of the Black Sea. The first rendezvous

was at Malta, an island within easy reach of many of the most productive parts of two continents; but even there privation and trouble began. One regiment would find itself destitute of fuel, but overwhelmed with candles. In one part of the island there was a superfluity of meat, and no biscuit; while, elsewhere, there was an abundant supply of food for men, but none for horses. It afterwards appeared that no one had received anything like exact or timely information, either as to the number of troops expected to land upon the island, or as to the time when they would arrive. A curious example of the iron rigidity of routine in the British service was this: In the old wars it took eight weeks for a transport to sail from England to Malta; but although these troops were all conveyed in steamers, every steamer carried the old allowance of eight weeks' supply of medicines and wines. The chief physician of the force had been forty years in service, and the whole machinery of war worked stiffly from long inaction.

When the troops reached Gallipoli, on the coast of the Sea of Marmora, their sufferings really began. No one had thought to provide interpreters; there were neither carts nor draught animals; so that it frequently happened that a regiment would be on shore several days without having any meat. It does not appear to have occurred to any one that men could ever suffer from cold in a latitude so much more southern than that of England. The climate of that region is, in fact, very similar to that of New York or Philadelphia. There are the same intense heats in summer, the same occasional deep snows, excessive cold, and fierce, freezing rains of winter;-one of those climates which possess many of the inconveniences both of the torrid and the frigid zones, and demand a systematic provision against both. In the middle of April, at Gallipoli, the men began to suffer much from cold. Many of them had no beds, and not a soldier in the army

had more than the one regulation blanket. Instead of undressing to go to bed, they put on all the clothes they had, and wrapped themselves in anything they could find. There was a small supply of blankets, but there was no one at hand who was authorized to serve them out, and it was thought a wonderful degree of courage in a senior staff-surgeon when he actually took the responsibility of appropriating some of these blankets for the use of the sick in the temporary hospital. The very honesty of the English stood in their way.

"These French Zouaves," wrote Dr. Russell, the celebrated correspondent of the London Times, "are first-rate foragers. You may see them in all directions laden with eggs, meat, fish, vegetables (onions), and other good things, while our fellows can get nothing. Sometimes, our servant is sent out to cater for breakfast or dinner; he returns with the usual Me and the Colonel's servant has been all over the town, and can get nothing but eggs and onions, sir;' and lo! round the corner appears a red-breeched Zouave or Chasseur, a bottle of wine under his left arm, half a lamb under the other, and poultry, fish, and other luxuries dangling round him. 'I'm sure, I don't know how these French manages it, sir,' says the crestfallen Mercury, and retires to cook the eggs."

Some of the general officers, instead of directing their energies to remedying this state of things, appear to have been chiefly concerned in compelling men to shave every day, and to wear their leathern stocks on parade. One of the generals, it is said, hated hair on the heads and faces of soldiers with a kind of mania. "Where there is much hair," said he, "there is dirt, and where there is dirt there will be disease;" forgetting that hair was placed upon the human head and face to protect it against winds and weather such as these soldiers were experiencing. It was not until the army had been ten weeks in the field, and were exposed to the blazing heat of summer, that the Queen's own guards

were permitted to leave off those terrible stocks, and they celebrated the joyful event by three as thundering cheers as ever issued from the emancipated throats of men. After six months' service, the great boon was granted of permitting the men to wear a mustache, but not a beard. It was not until almost all order was lost and stamped out of sight in the mire and snow of the following winter, that the general in command allowed his troops to enjoy the protection of the full beard. Nor were the private habits of the men conducive to the preservation of their health. Twenty soldiers of one regiment were in the guard-house on the same day for drunkenness, at Gallipoli. As late as the middle of April there was still a lamentable scarcity of everything required for the hospital. "There were no blankets for the sick," wrote Dr. Russell, "no beds, no mattresses, no medical comforts of any kind; and the invalid soldiers had to lie for several days on the bare boards, in a wooden house, with nothing but a single blanket as bed and covering."

Every time the army moved it seemed to get into worse quarters, and to be more wanting in necessary supplies. The camp at Aladyn, where the army was posted at the end of June, was a melancholy example of this truth. The camp was ten miles from the sea, in the midst of a country utterly deserted, and the only communication between the camp and the post was furnished by heavy carts, drawn by buffaloes, at the rate of a mile and a half an hour; and by this kind of transportation an army of twenty-five thousand men, and thirteen thousand horses, had to be fed. The scene can be imagined, as well as the results upon the comfort and health of the troops. In July the cholera broke out, and carried off officers and men of both armies in considerable numbers. July the 24th, it suddenly appeared in the camp of the light division, and twenty men died in twenty-four hours. A sergeant attacked at seren, A. M., was dead at noon. What was, at once,