qualities of the latter were fully exercised. Besides the ordinary range of feminine accomplishments, she attained, we are told, "under the guidance of her father, proficiency in classics and mathematics, and a general acquaintance with science, literature, and art. She is a good musician, and can boast of some knowledge of nearly all the modern languages; speaking those of France, Italy, and Germany, with scarcely less facility than her native tongue." She has travelled much, having visited mast of the continental cities, and gone far into the sacred land of the Nile; and wherever she has g(me, by her affability and evident kindliness of disposition, no less than by the sound sense and earnestness of purpose, exciting the love and admiration of those with whom she has come in contact. "From a very early age," we are told, "she evinced a strong sympathy and affection for her kind. As a child she was accustomed to minister to the necessities of the poor and needy around her father's estates, purchasing the privilege by frequent acts of self-denial; and in her youth she became still further their teacher, consoler, and friend."
These manifestations of a desire to do good to her fellow-creatures grew stronger as she increased in years, until it became evidently a settled purpose of her life to devote herself to acts of usefulness and philanthropy. In the year 1851, when our Great Exhibition was attracting the eyes of all Europe, and inviting the people to a general holiday, she was away at an establishment at Kaiserworth, on the Rhine, where Protestant Sisters of Mercy were trained for the duties of nursing the sick and performing other offices of charity. There she remained three months, performing daily and nightly duties of the most arduous and distressing nature, and gathering large stores of practical experience, which was afterwards to be turned to good account. She next took upon herself the great work of the re-organization of a valuable institution which had gone greatly to decay, the Sanatorium for Governesses, in Harley-street, London, taking up her abode within its walls, and devoting her time, her energies, and much of her means to render it a fit and comfortable home in sickness for the ill-paid class of females for whom it was intended. All these labours were fitting and preparing her for the still greater work which was to come, and to which, after a short sojourn in. the country for refreshment and recruiting her health, she was called by that sad and harrowing cry from the East, where thousands were perishing by pestilence and war, with none, or very few, to aid and succour them in their grievous state of suffering.
A proposition, it is said originating with Lady Maria Forester, was made for the institution of a body of female nurses to proceed to the seat of war, and Florence Nightingale, on being requested to do so, at once consented to become the director of this band of true Sisters of Charity. The arrangements were soon made, and on the 5th. November, 1854, the party, consisting of thirty-seven experienced nurses, many of them volunteers from the upper ranks of life, reached Constantinople, and were quickly engaged in their benevolent ministrations at the barrack hospital at Scutari. On the great changes which were wrought by the tact and management, energy and perseverance of Miss Nightingale, in this, as well as the Balaclava and other hospitals in the East, we cannot here dwell; suffice it that wherever she went, she seemed to the poor wounded
