"THE LADY WITH THE LAMP"

"Thus thought I, as by night I read
Of the great army of the dead,

The trenches cold and damp,

The starved and frozen camp

The wounded from the battle plain,
In dreary hospitals of pain,

The cheerless corridors,

The cold and stony floors.

Lo! in that house of misery

A lady with a lamp I see

Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.

And slow, as in a dream of bliss,

The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls

Upon the darkening walls.”

-LONGFELLOW.

'WO figures emerge with a nimbus of glory from the tragedy of the Crimean War. One is that of the great Russian engineer, Todleben, with powerful brow, and face of iron sternness, and eyes that flash as with the keen sparkle of a sword. The other is the slender, modest figure of an English lady, with downcast eyes and pensive brow, and the dress of a nurse. It is Florence Nightingale, whose woman's brain and hand added an element so gracious to the memory of those sad days. And of these two figures, who will

doubt that “the angel of the hospitals," as she was called, won a finer and more enduring fame than the hero of the trenches?

What a passion of mingled wrath and pity was kindled in Great Britain when the story was known of the brave men dying untended in the hospitals at Scutari or Kululi, or perishing of cold and hunger in the trenches about Sebastopol, can be easily imagined. There were over 13,000 sick in the hospitals. The death-rate at Scutari was forty-two per cent., in the Kululi Hospital it rose to fifty-two per cent. Four patients out of every five who underwent amputation died of hospital gangrene. The doctors showed all the devotion the world has learned to expect from them when face to face with human suffering; but they were few in number, were denied the common appliances of the sick-room, and were bound as with iron fetters by a brainless routine. Pen pictures of scenes in the British hospitals might be selected from Russell's "Letters to the Times," which, for their graphic horror, are almost without parallel in literature. They picture scenes which recall the circles of Dante's Inferno. Medicines and medical appliances lay wasted on the beach at Varna, or forgotten in the holds of vessels in Balaclava Harbour, while wounded British soldiers in the great hospital of Scutari were perishing with wounds undressed, and amidst filth which would have disgraced a tribe of savages.

A wave of amazed pity, flavoured with generous wrath, swept over Great Britain when all this was realised. Money was poured into the Patriotic Fund till it rose to more than a million sterling. Medical

stores were sent out by the ton. The medical staff was multiplied till there was one doctor for every ninety-five soldiers in the entire British force. The trouble, however, had never arisen from a deficiency of supplies, but only from a bankruptcy of brains and method in their use. The army was being strangled by a system which was omnipotent for mischief, but well-nigh helpless for any useful service. But the sufferings of the British sick, and the insanitary hell into which the British hospitals had sunk, thrilled the hearts of all women in the three kingdoms with a halffierce pity, and to Mr. Sidney Herbert belongs the distinction of turning the fine element of that pity into a useful force, which wrought in a few brief months one of the most beneficent miracles recorded in the history of army nursing. He saw that what the hospitals needed was woman's quick wit, swift pity, and faculty of patient service. Offers to go out and nurse the dying British soldiers were poured in upon the War Office from tender-hearted women of every rank of life.

Pity, however, had to be organised and wisely led, and Sidney Herbert turned to Florence Nightingale, asking her if she would go to the East, carrying the resources of Great Britain in the palm of her woman's hand, and organise a nursing service in the great hospital at Scutari. A letter from Florence Nightingale offering her services, crossed Mr. Herbert's letter asking if she would give them.

Florence Nightingale was the daughter of a wealthy English household, but born in Florence, and taking her name from that city. In St. Thomas's Hospital, London, stands her statue. She wears the dress of a nurse, and