Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

Her family and those around her thought her very foolish to read so hard at subjects they thought so useless. When, some years later, she was going to marry Dr. Somerville, his sister wrote to say she did hope the "foolish manner of life and studies" might be given up, so that she might make a "respectable and useful wife to her brother."

Her husband, however, encouraged her in her study of science; he saw nothing "foolish" in it at all, and he helped her to collect minerals and curious stones.

They travelled abroad a good deal, and then settled in London, where Mary Somerville gave up a good deal of her time to teaching her little children. Here she published a book on Physical Geography, which is very well known and used still. It was a great undertaking for a woman, and made a stir in the world of science.

But she was not entirely given up to science. We find her making with her own hands a quantity of orange marmalade for a friend, who had brought her back minerals from a foreign land, to take on his next voyage, and she enjoyed an evening at the play as much as anyone.

The long illness and death of their eldest child fell very heavily on Mrs. Somerville, and for a time she could not even work. Then they moved to Chelsea. Here she was asked to write an account of a French book which she had read on astronomy, a book which only some twenty people in England knew, and _she_ was chosen above all the learned men to write on this difficult subject. It was a vast undertaking; the more so as she still saw and entertained friends, not wishing to drop society altogether.

Moreover, it was not known what she was writing, as, if it turned out a failure, it was not to be printed. In the middle of some difficult problem a friend would call and say, "I have come to spend a few hours with you, Mrs. Somerville," and papers and problems had to be hidden as quickly as possible.

When it was finished, the manuscript was sent to the great astronomer Herschel, who was delighted with it.

"Go on thus," he wrote, "and you will leave a memorial of no common kind to posterity."

Mrs. Somerville never wrote for fame, but it was very pleasant to have such praise from one of the greatest men of science living. The success of her book proved its value, and astonished her. Seven hundred and fifty copies were sold at once, and her name and her work were talked of everywhere. Her bust was placed in the Great Hall of the Royal Society; she was elected a member of the Royal Academy in Dublin, and of the Natural History Society at Geneva. A bust of her was made the figurehead of a large vessel in the Royal Navy, which was called "Mary Somerville," and lastly, she received a letter from Sir Robert Peel, saying he had asked the king, George IV., to grant her a pension of L200 a year, so that she might work with less anxiety.

Here was success for the self-taught woman, raised by her own efforts higher than any woman before her in any branch of science, and it is pleasant to find her the same modest character after it as she was before.

Her health being broken, she went to Paris. Here she still went on writing; but being very weak and ill, she was obliged to write in bed till one o'clock. The afternoons she gave up to going about Paris and seeing her friends.

Some years after, her husband being ill, they went abroad to Rome, where they made many friends. One friend is mentioned as having won Mrs. Somerville's heart by his love for birds. The Italians eat nightingales, robins, and other singing birds, and when the friend heard this, he cried:

"What! robins! our household birds! I would as soon eat a child!"

In 1860 her husband died in Florence. To occupy her mind, Mrs. Somerville began to write another book. She was now over eighty, and her hand was not so steady as it used to be, but she had her eyesight and all her faculties, and with her pet mountain-sparrow sitting on her arm, she wrote daily from eight in the morning till twelve.

Five years later she had the energy to go all over an ironclad ship, which she was very curious to see.

"I was not even hoisted on board," she wrote to her son, but mounted the ladder bravely, and examined everything in detail "except the stoke-hole!"

At the age of ninety she still studied in bed all the morning, but "I am left solitary," she says, with pathos, "for I have lost my little bird, who was my constant companion for eight years."

One morning her daughter came into the room, and being surprised that the little bird did not fly to greet her as usual, she searched for it, and found the poor little creature drowned in the jug!

In 1870 an eclipse of the sun interested Mrs. Somerville very much; it came after a huge thunder-storm, and was only visible now and then between dense masses of clouds. The following year there was a brilliant Aurora lighting up the whole sky; many ignorant people were very frightened, because it had been said the world was coming to an end, and they thought that a bright piece of the Aurora was a slice of the moon that had "already tumbled down!"

Though at the age of ninety-two her memory for names and people failed, she could still read mathematics, solve problems, and enjoy reading about new discoveries and theories in the world of science.

Some months before her death, she was awakened one night at Naples to behold Mount Vesuvius in splendid eruption. It was a wonderful sight.

A fiery stream of lava was flowing down in all directions; a column of dense black smoke rose to more than four times the height of the mountain, while bursts of fiery matter shot high up into the smoke, and the roaring and thundering never ceased for one single moment.

Three days later extreme darkness surprised everyone; Mrs. Somerville saw men walking along the streets with umbrellas up, and found that Vesuvius was sending out an immense quantity of ashes like fine sand, and neither land, sea, nor sky were visible.

In the summer Mrs. Somerville and her daughters went out of Naples, and took a pleasant little house near the sea.

She still took a keen interest in passing events; she knew she could not live much longer, and she worked on to the actual day of her death, which took place in the autumn of 1872.

Mrs. Somerville stands alone as the greatest woman in the world of science; she was entirely self-taught, and it was by her own efforts she rose to be what she was--a woman of untiring energy, with wonderful power of thought and clearness of mind, a woman in advance of her times.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1809-1861).

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is the greatest "woman poet" England has ever had. Though some of her poetry is difficult to understand, owing to her depth of thought and great reading, yet many of her prettiest and most touching poems have been written about little children; she with her pitiful heart felt for the sorrows they could not express, and has told us about them; she has told us about little Lily, who died when she was "no taller than the flowers," of the little factory children, who only cried in their playtime, and only cared for the fields and meadows just to "drop down in them and sleep," of little Ellie sitting alone by the stream dipping her feet into the clear cool water and dreaming the hours away.

Elizabeth Barrett always looked on Malvern as her native place, though she was not actually born there, but in Durham, in 1809.

The early years of her life seem to have been very happy; we hear of her as a little girl with clusters of golden curls, large tender eyes, and a sweet smile. She herself has not told us much about her early years, but the glimpses she has given us are very bright. Her father had a country house near Malvern, and over the Malvern Hills the child loved to roam. She liked to be out all day with the flowers and the bees and the sun.

"If the rain fell, there was sorrow," she says, and she laid her curly head against the window, while her little finger followed the "long, trailing drops" down the pane, and, like other children, she would gently sing, "Rain, rain, come to-morrow," to try and drive it away. When she went out, it was not along the sheep paths over the hills that she cared to go, but to wander into the little woods, where the sheep could not stray. Now and then, she tells us, one of them would venture in, but its wool caught in the thickets, and with a "silly thorn-pricked nose" it would bleat back into the sun, while the little poet-girl went on, tearing aside the prickly branches with her struggling fingers, and tripping up over the brambles which lay across her way.

At eight years old and earlier she began to write little verses, and at eleven she wrote a long "epic" poem in four books called the "Battle of Marathon," of which fifty copies were printed, because, she tells us, her father was bent on spoiling her. She spent most of her time reading Greek, either alone or with her brother; she so loved the old Greek heroes, and would dream about them at night; she loved the old Greek stories, she "ate and drank Greek," and her poetry is mixed with Greek ideas and thoughts and names, even from a child.

She had one favourite brother; with him she read, with him she talked; they understood one another, and entered into one another's thoughts and fancies. He called her by a pet name, when they were little children together, because the name Elizabeth seemed so "hard to utter," and "he calls me by it still," she adds pathetically in later life, when that life was no longer all sunshine and laughter, and when the brother had been taken from her. But these were happy days, these days of childhood, never forgotten by Elizabeth Barrett, who looked back to them afterwards, and remembered how she sat at her father's knee, and how lovingly he would look down at the little poet and reward her with kisses.

When she was older the family moved to London, and there Elizabeth Barrett became very ill. She had always been fragile and delicate, and now she was obliged to lie all day in one room in the London house. When she grew a little stronger, and the cold weather was coming on, the doctor ordered a milder climate, and she was moved to Torquay, her favourite brother going with her. She had been there a year, and the mild sea-breezes of Devonshire had done her good, when fresh trouble came to her.

One fine summer morning her brother with a few friends started in a little sailing-vessel for a few hours' trip. They were all good sailors, and knowing the coast well, they sent back the boatmen, and undertook the management of the boat themselves. The idea of danger never seems to have occurred to them. They had not got far out, when suddenly, just as they were crossing the bar, in sight of the very windows, the boat went down, and the little crew perished--among them Elizabeth Barrett's favourite brother. He was drowned before her very eyes, and, already ill and weak, she nearly sank under the weight of the blow.

The house she lived in at Torquay was at the bottom of the cliffs close to the sea, but now the sound of the waves no longer soothed her; they sounded like moanings from the sea. She struggled back to life, but all was changed for her. Still she clung to Greek and literature, and she would pore over her books till the doctor would remonstrate, and urge some lighter reading. He did not know that her books were no hard study to her; reading was no exertion, but a delight and comfort to her, changing the current of her thoughts from the sad past, and helping her to wile away the long hours of sickness. However, to make others happy about her, she had her little edition of Plato bound so that it looked like a novel, and then she could read it without being disturbed or interfered with at all.

She tried to forget her ill health and weariness, and some of her letters at this time were so bright and amusing, that we see how well she succeeded in throwing herself into the lives of those around her. At last she was well enough to be moved in an invalid carriage with "a thousand springs" to London, in short journeys of twenty miles a day. There for seven long years she lived in one large, but partly darkened room, seeing only her own family and a few special friends.

Her poems were sad, beautiful, and very tender; never once does she allude in words to the terrible blow which had swept so much sunshine and happiness from her young life, but her writings are full now of wild utterances and passionate cries, now calming down into sleepy lullabies for the little children she had such sympathy with. She did not put her name to many of her works, but readers were startled from time to time by the wonderful new poems, until at last they were traced to the sick room of Elizabeth Barrett. In her sick room lived "Flush," a little dog given her by a friend; he was dark brown with long silken ears and hazel eyes, but, better than these, such a faithful heart, and

"... of _thee_ it shall be said,
This dog watched beside a bed
Day and night unweary;
Watched within a curtained room,
Where no sunbeam brake the gloom
Round the sick and dreary."

He would push his nose into her pale, thin hand, and lie content for hours, till the quick tears of his mistress would sometimes drop on to his glossy head, and he would spring up eagerly, as if to share the trouble if he only could.

Here is a story about Flush which shows his devotion. The little terrier was stolen, and his mistress shed many tears for her lost favourite. She was accused of being "childish," but she could not help it.

"Flushie is my friend, my companion, and loves me better than he loves the sunshine without," she cried.

At last the thief was found, and he gave up the dog for some money, saying, "You had better give your dog something to eat, for he has tasted nothing for three days!"

But Flush was too happy to eat; he shrank away from the plate of food which was given him, and laid down his head on his mistress's shoulder.

"He is worth loving, is he not?" asked Elizabeth Barrett, when she had told this story to a friend.

One of her best-known poems is "The Cry of the Children." For the little overworked children in the large factories her human heart was stirred. She knew what a life they led from early morning till late at night, amid the rushing of the great iron wheels, or working underground in the damp and dark, and she could not be silent.

"Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
And _that_ cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,
The young birds are chirping in the nest,
The young fawns are playing with the shadows,
The young flowers are blowing towards the west--
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free."

They seem to look up with their "pale and sunken faces," and to cry that the world is _very_ dreary; they take but a few steps, and get so tired, that they long for rest. It is true, they say, sometimes they die very young. There was one--little Alice--died lately; they go and listen by her grave and _she_ never cries; no one calls _her_ up early, saying, "Get up, little Alice; it is day!" time to go off to the droning, droning wheels in the factories, and--"It is good when it happens," say the children, "that we die before our time." It is no good to call them to the fields to play, to gather big bunches of cowslips, to sing out, as the little thrushes do:--

"For oh!" say the children, "we are weary,
And we cannot run and leap;
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them and sleep."

For the great wheels never stop; the little heads may burn, the little hearts may ache, till the children long to moan out:--

"O ye wheels--stop--be silent for to-day!"

Here were the children in their misery, life-like, only too true and real; and then the poet pleads for them, pleads that they may be taught there _is_ something in life as well as the great grinding wheels; pleads that the lives of the little factory children may be made happier and brighter.

And England heard the cry of the children. The following year fresh laws were made about the employment of children in factories; they were not to be allowed to work under the age of eight, and not then unless they were strong and healthy; they were not to work more than six hours and a half a day, and to attend school for three hours.

Three years after this poem was written Elizabeth Barrett married Robert Browning, the poet, and together they went off to Italy, where the softer air and mild climate brought back her health for a time.

"She is getting better every day," wrote her husband; "stronger, better wonderfully, and beyond all our hopes."

One of Mrs. Browning's happiest poems is the story of little Ellie and the swan's nest.

"Little Ellie sits alone," she begins, "'mid the beeches of a meadow." Then she goes on to tell us of her shining hair and face; how she has thrown aside her bonnet, and is dipping her feet into the shallow stream by which she sits. As she rocks herself to and fro she thinks about a swan's nest she has found among the reeds, with two precious eggs in it; then the vision of a knight, who is to be her lover, rises before her. He is to be a noble man, riding on a red-roan steed shod with silver; he is to kneel at her feet, and she will tell him to rise and go, "put away all wrong," so that the world may love and fear him. Off he goes; three times he is to send a little foot page to Ellie for words of comfort; the first time she will send him a white rosebud, the second time a glove, and the third time leave to come and claim her love. Then she will show him and him only the swan's nest among the reeds. Little Ellie gets up, ties on her bonnet, puts on her shoes, and goes home round by the swan's nest, as she does every day, just to see if there are any more eggs; on she goes, "pushing through the elm-tree copse, winding up the stream, light-hearted." Then, when she reaches the place, she stops, stoops down, and what does she find? The wild swan had deserted her nest, a rat had gnawed the reeds, and "Ellie went home sad and slow." If she ever found the lover on the "red-roan steed"--

"Sooth I know not: but I know
She could never show him--never
That swan's nest among the reeds!"

It was at Florence that Mrs. Browning's little son was born, "her little Florentine" as she loves to call him; she has drawn us many a picture of him with his blue eyes and amber curls, lit up to golden by the Italian sun.

"My little son, my Florentine,
Sit down beside my knee,"

she begins in one poem, and then she tells him in verse a tale about Florence, and the war in Italy, and when it was over the child had grown very grave. For Mrs. Browning loved Italy with all her heart, and she watched the great struggle for Italian unity, which was going on, very anxiously. From time to time she wrote patriotic poems to encourage the oppressed, and to express her delight at their victories.

At the same time England was not forgotten.

"I am listening here in Rome," she wrote, when pleading for the ragged schools of London. Still, though under the clear Italian skies, she can see the ragged, bare-footed, hungry-eyed children begging in the London streets. It is a disgrace to England, she cries; she knows they cannot all be fed and clothed, but--

"Put a thought beneath the rags
To ennoble the heart's struggle,"

so that by gentle words the children may learn "just the uses of their sorrow." And again Mrs. Browning's appeal was not in vain.

One of her last poems was a very sad one, called "Little Mattie."

Mrs. Browning had, even in Italy, suffered very much from bad health, and in 1861 she died. She was buried beside a grassy wall in the English burial-ground just outside Florence, the city she loved so well, in Italy, "my Italy" as she has called it, the land where Keats and Shelley lie.

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (born 1820).

Of the early and private life of Florence Nightingale there is no need to speak, but you should know what good work she has done for her country, how she left her English home to go and nurse the poor soldiers who were wounded in battle in the Crimea, and how well she did the work that she undertook to do. Not only did she work out of England, but in England she has improved some of our hospitals, taught some of our English nurses how to work better, and has made nursing into the happier labour it is now, instead of the drudgery it was too often before.

She was born in Florence in 1820, and therefore named after that town, but her home was always in Derbyshire. She was always fond of nursing, and her early ambition was to improve the system of nursing, and to get many things done that she saw would make pain and suffering more bearable in our English hospitals.

Now in Germany, in a little village[1] on the great Rhine, is a large building where women are trained as nurses for sick people. They all wear full black skirts and very white aprons, deep white collars and caps, and all the sick people come from the village and villages round to be nursed by them. There was no training-school for women in England, so it was to this kind of hospital home that Florence Nightingale went in 1851, and there she worked for three months. They were three happy months, and she learnt the best German rules of nursing, and saw how a large hospital ought to be managed; and so she got some of the training which fitted her for the great work which she undertook some years later. On her return to England, she became head of a London hospital for women.

[1] Kaiserswerth.

But before you hear about her work, and how she nursed our soldiers, you must know about the war in the Crimea, how our soldiers were wounded, and why they wanted good nursing.

For several years a dispute had been going on between Russia and Turkey, and at last Russia pushed her troops into Turkey, and Turkey declared war. England and France had promised some time before to help Turkey if she needed help, and now they found themselves at war. English and French steamers kept hurrying backwards and forwards from the Black Sea to try and make peace;--but it was impossible; so armies were sent, and Lord Raglan, who had lost one arm at Waterloo, fighting under the great Duke of Wellington, was given the command of the English army. Now at the south of Russia is a peninsula called the Crimea, and the allied armies of England, France, and Turkey knew that if they could take a large town in the Crimea called Sebastopol, the Russian fleet in the Black Sea would be rendered powerless for a long time. So they chose this town for their attack. But they were divided from it by the river Alma, and here the Russian army was posted in great strength on a line of steep rocky hills on the other side of the river. They thought that the English and French would never dare to cross the river in the face of their fire. But the allied armies were very brave. The order was given to cross the river; the men waded the stream, and, under a deadly fire from the Russians, they scaled the heights bravely. The Russians were brave, but badly commanded, and before long they fled, leaving the allied armies victorious. The English had fought their first battle, gained their first victory in the Crimea, and a loud British cheer rose from the troops as they stood on the well-won heights, and struck terror into the hearts of the retreating Russians. Our soldiers had fought nobly, but three thousand lay dead or wounded on the field of battle.

Great were the rejoicings in England when news of the victory arrived, but the joy was mixed with sorrow at the terrible accounts of the English soldiers who were wounded so badly on the field. All night the doctors worked, trying to dress their wounds, and relieve their pain, and have them carried to hospitals and tents. But the work was enormous, and there were not enough doctors to perform it, and no proper nurses to take charge of the hospitals. The cry for doctors and nurses reached England, and England responded readily to the call. Many Englishwomen offered themselves to go out and nurse the sick soldiers, and their offer was accepted by the Government.

One of the first to volunteer was Miss Nightingale, and owing to her great experience she was entrusted with choice of nurses, and the leadership of them. It was a difficult matter to choose the fittest nurses out of the many who offered themselves, but at last the work was done, and one October day Miss Nightingale and thirty-seven nurses left Folkestone by steamer for the East. They were received by a crowd at Boulogne to wish them "God speed" on their mission, and then some of the chief citizens entertained them at dinner. The fisherwomen of Boulogne in their plain bright skirts and coloured shawls, carried all the luggage themselves up from the steamer, amid the cheers of the people.

All through France the nurses were received with sympathy and respect; for France and England were joined in a common cause, and France had already sent out nurses for their sick soldiers.

Then Miss Nightingale and her little band sailed from Marseilles to Constantinople. They had a very stormy passage, but arrived at Constantinople on November 4th, 1854, on the eve of another great battle.

The battle of Balaclava--made famous by the Charge of the Light Brigade, in which so many brave lives were lost through a mistaken order--was over, but November 5th, the day after Miss Nightingale arrived, was to be made famous by another splendid victory over the Russians.

It was a misty winter morning, and the day had hardly dawned, when the Russians advanced, sure of victory, to the plateau of Inkermann, where a scanty British force was collected. So thick was the fog that the English knew nothing till, in overwhelming numbers, the Russians appeared pressing up the hill. At once the fighting began, and the soldiers bravely kept their post, driving back the Russians time after time as they mounted the slopes. All day the battle lasted, and the English were getting exhausted when a French army arrived, and the Russians were soon in full retreat, having been beaten by an army taken unawares and only a fourth part of their own number. This battle is famous because the soldiers, not the generals, won the day.

The wounded soldiers were taken to the hospital at Scutari, where Miss Nightingale had only just arrived.

The hospital was already full; two miles of space were occupied by beds, and there were over two thousand sick and wounded soldiers. Then the wounded from Inkermann were brought across the water, and landed at the pier; those who could, walked to the great barrack hospital; those who were too badly hurt to walk were carried on stretchers up the steep hill leading to the hospital. It was a large square building outside, and inside were large bare wards with rows and rows of closely packed beds. There seemed no room for the heroes of Inkermann, but beds were made up all along the passages as close as possible, and the wounded men were laid in them.

It was a cheering sight to the sick soldiers to see Miss Nightingale and the nurses moving about the wards. They all wore aprons, and bands with "Scutari Hospital" marked on them, plain skirts and white caps. The men had never been nursed by women before, only by men, some of them very rough, some knowing nothing of sickness and unable to dress their wounds. But these nurses moved about from bed to bed, quickly and quietly, attending to each sufferer in turn, and working for hours and hours with no rest. Some of the soldiers were too ill even to know where they were, until they slowly returned to life, and found themselves no longer lying on the battle-field, but in the hospital, being cared for and looked after by Miss Nightingale or one of her band. The nurses had a hard time of it; the Turkish bread was so sour they could hardly eat it; what butter they had was bad, and the meat, one of them said, "was more like moist leather than food."

But they worked on through the day, often through the night as well, carrying out the doctor's orders, giving medicine, supplying lint and bandages, and giving lemonade to the thirsty soldiers. There was barely room to pass between the beds,--so closely were they packed. Here and there a little group of doctors would stand over a bed talking over a bad case, while those soldiers who could walk would go to the bed of a comrade, to help pass some of the long hours away.

The winter was bitterly cold. The men on the bleak heights before Sebastopol were only half fed, their clothes were in rags, they had to sleep on the damp ground, and toil for many hours every day in the trenches ankle deep in water and mud. Many hundreds died, many more sickened, and were taken to the hospital. Besides the large kitchen which supplied all the general food, the nurses had another, where jelly, arrowroot, soup, broth, and chickens were cooked for those who were too ill to eat the usual hospital fare. Here Miss Nightingale would cook herself, if there were some urgent case, and with her own hands feed the sick and dying men. She had a great power of command over the soldiers; many a time _her_ influence helped a wounded man through the dreaded operations. He would sooner die than meet the knife of the surgeon. Then Miss Nightingale would encourage him to be brave, and, while she stood beside him, he, with lips closely set and hands folded, set himself for _her_ sake to endure the necessary pain. And the soldiers would watch her gliding down the wards, and long for their turn to come, when she would stand by their special bed and perhaps speak some special word to them.

Then the men under her, the orderlies who had to obey her in everything, did it without a murmur.

"During all that dreadful period" not one of them failed her in devotion, obedience, ready attention; for her sake they toiled and endured, as they would not have toiled and endured for anyone else.

"Never," she said, "never came from any one of them a word or look which a gentleman would not have used," and the tears would come into her eyes as she thought how amid those terrible scenes of suffering, disease, and death, these men, accustomed to use bad language, perhaps to swear, never once used a bad expression which might have distressed her--their "Lady in Chief." But Miss Nightingale had very uphill work; among other things, when she first went to the hospital, she found there was no laundry, and only seven shirts had been washed belonging to the soldiers; so she had a laundry formed as soon as possible, and there was a grand improvement in the cleanliness of the hospital.

One December day great excitement ran through the wards of the great Scutari hospital, when it became known that a letter from the Queen had arrived.

"I wish," wrote the Queen, "Miss Nightingale and the ladies to tell these poor noble wounded and sick men, that no one takes a warmer interest, or feels more for their sufferings, or admires their courage and heroism more than their Queen. Day and night she thinks of her beloved troops." Copies of this letter were made, and read aloud in each ward, and as the last words, followed by "God save the Queen," were uttered, a vigorous "Amen" rose from the sick and dying men. They liked the Queen's sympathy, and they loved to think, in that far-off land, that England was thinking of them.

The rejoicings in the wards over an English newspaper were great; small groups of soldiers would collect round the stove, while one would stand in the middle, perhaps with only one arm, or his head bound up, and read to his eager listeners the news of England and the news of the war, which was still being waged around them, and in which they were keenly interested. For the long siege of Sebastopol, in which many of them had taken part, was still going on. In the spring came the unexpected news of the death of Nicholas, Emperor of Russia. "Nicholas is dead--Nicholas is dead!" was murmured through the wards, and the news travelled quickly from bed to bed.

"How did he die?" cried some. "Well," exclaimed one soldier, "I'd rather have that news than a month's pay!" One man burst into tears, and slowly raising his hands, he clasped them together, and sobbed out "Thank God!"

In the summer Miss Nightingale went to visit the camp hospitals near Balaclava and to take some nurses there. She rode up the heights on a pony, while some men followed with baggage for the hospitals, and she was warmly greeted by the sick soldiers. A little later she was seized with fever, and carried on a litter to one of the hut hospitals, where she lay for some time in high fever. When at last she was well enough to be moved, she was carried down and placed on board a vessel bound for England. But she felt there was more work to be done, and though still weak and ill she returned to her post at the Barrack Hospital.

In the autumn of 1855 the interest among the soldiers became intense, as it was known that Sebastopol could not hold out much longer.

At last in September it was announced that Sebastopol was a heap of ruins. The effect in the wards was electric. "Sebastopol has fallen," was the one absorbing thought. Dying men sat up in their beds, and clasped their hands, unable to utter more than the one word "Sebastopol." "Would that I had been in at the last," murmured one, wounded while the siege was yet going on.

With the fall of Sebastopol the war was at an end, and peace was signed the following spring. But Miss Nightingale still remained at Scutari, till the English had finally left Turkey in the summer of 1856. England had resolved to give her a public welcome, but she shrank from it, and quietly arrived at her home in Derbyshire unrecognized. But England wanted to show her gratitude to her in some way for the good work she had done, and the soldiers wanted to share. So a fund was started, called the "Nightingale Fund." And very heartily did all join in the home movement. The soldiers, both those who were wounded and those who were not, gave all they could, so universal was the feeling of thankfulness and gratitude to Miss Nightingale, who had given up so much for their sakes, and risked her life to ease their sufferings and cheer their long hours of pain.

At Miss Nightingale's special wish the Fund was devoted to the formation of a training-school for nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital in London. For up to this time no woman could be properly trained in England, and there were not many who could afford to go to the training home on the Rhine in Germany.

The Queen presented Miss Nightingale with a beautiful jewel; it was designed by the Prince Consort; the word "Crimea" was engraved on it, and on the back were the words, "To Florence Nightingale, as a mark of esteem and gratitude for her devotion towards the Queen's brave soldiers. From Victoria R., 1855."

In 1858 she wrote a book called "Notes on Nursing," and it soon became very popular; in it she tries to show how much harm is done by _bad_ nursing.

"Every woman," she says, "or at least almost every woman in England has at one time or another of her life charge of the personal health of somebody, in other words every woman is a nurse." And then she tells the women of England, what a good nurse ought to be, how quiet and clean, how obedient to the doctor's orders, how careful about food and air. "Windows are made to open, doors are made to shut," she remarks, and if nurses remembered this oftener, it would be better and happier for their patients.

But her life was chiefly lived in those two years at the Scutari hospital; the many difficulties she met with at first, the struggle against dirt and bad food, the enormous amount of extra work to be got through in the day because others would not do their full share, the terribly anxious cases she had to nurse,--all these told on her health.

"I have been a prisoner to my room from illness for years," she tells us, but she did more good, brave, noble work in those two years than many a woman has done in a lifetime.

One of our poets has written about Miss Nightingale. He was reading one night of the "great army of the dead" on the battle-fields of the Crimea,

"The wounded from the battle plain
In dreary hospitals of pain,
The cheerless corridors,
The cold and stony floors,"

and as he pictured this desolate scene, he seemed to see a lady with a little lamp moving through the "glimmering gloom," softly going from bed to bed; he saw the "speechless sufferer" turn to kiss her shadow, as it fell upon the darkened walls. And then he adds:

"A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic Womanhood."

CHISWICK PRESS:--C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COUNT, CHANCERY LANE.

THE YORK READERS

An entirely new series of PRIMERS and READERS, beautifully printed in a specially bold and clear type, and illustrated throughout in colours and in black and white. The volumes are strongly and artistically bound in cloth covers.

The INFANT PRIMERS and READERS comprise the following:

York Primer, No. 1 24 pp. 3_d._
York Primer, No. 2 32 pp. 4_d._
York Infant Reader 64 pp. 6_d._
York Introductory Reader 96 pp. 8_d._
York Reader, Book I (_for Stand. I_) 128 pp. 9_d._
York Reader, Book II (_for Stand. II_) 160 pp. 10_d._
York Reader, Book III (_for Stand. III_) 1_s._
York Reader, Book IV (_for Stand. IV_) 1_s._ 3_d._
York Reader, Book V (_for Standards V, VI, and VII_) 1_s._ 6_d._

The subject matter is well graduated, and includes from the first book simple and entertaining lessons on Nature. The object throughout the series has been to encourage the observing faculties of the children. The conversational style is largely introduced, without being obtrusive. The Word-building Exercises are thoroughly graduated, and simple Outline Drawings (white on black) are introduced. These are all illustrative of the text, and should encourage "Drawing from Memory."

The INTRODUCTORY READER is written to meet a long-felt want in Infant Schools, viz., a book suitable for the more advanced children in the 1st Class, and at the same time preparatory to Standard I.

BELL'S BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

Price SIXPENCE each.

The special feature of these Books is that, even from the most elementary grade, they possess the interest which a connected narrative, however simple in wording, seldom fails to excite; and by this means make the reading-lesson a pleasure instead of a dull piece of routine.

_Suitable for Infants._

AESOP'S FABLES. Chosen and retold in easy words, by A. P. Williams.
With Coloured Frontispiece and other Illustrations.

TOT AND THE CAT, and other Stories.

THE OLD BOAT-HOUSE, and other Stories.

THE CAT AND THE HEN, and other Stories.

THE TWO PARROTS. 9 Illustrations.

_Suitable for Standards I and II._

THE STORY OF THREE MONKEYS. New Edition, with Coloured Frontispiece
and other Illustrations.

THE LOST PIGS.

STORY OF A CAT. Told by Herself. New Edition, with Coloured
Frontispiece and other Illustrations.

QUEEN BEE AND BUSY BEE. (For Girls.)

GULL'S CRAG. New Edition, with Coloured Frontispiece and other
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THE ABBEY HISTORY READERS.

This new series of historical readers has been revised and adapted by the Right Rev. ABBOT GASQUET, D.D. They are fully illustrated and printed in clear, bold type, and strongly bound in cloth.