conviction, her grand faith in humanity, and a calm confidence in the ultimate good, which kept her as humble when crowned with honour as it kept her strong to bear the sights and sounds of human misery which she was so frequently called upon to witness.
Inevitably associated with Mrs Fry, since they attained to an equal glory of achievement, is Miss Florence Nightingale, the idol of so many British homes. She had the good fortune to possess a father who had no half-savage notion about the inferiority of women, and who gave to his daughter the best education at his command. He wisely left her free to adopt the life she liked, and did not compel her against her wish to live the useless, foolish life of the average early-Victorian maiden of means, stitching samplers or knitting woollen antimacassars. When Mr Nightingale returned from Italy to live on his Derbyshire estates, it became the daily delight of his daughter to minister to the sick and suffering who came within her circle of influence. She had a perfect passion for nursing, and, unhampered by parental disapproval, she gave herself during those years of young womanhood to studying, at home and abroad, the art and science of her chosen profession. It was whilst she pursued this study that she made the acquaintance of Mr Sydney Herbert, a friendship afterwards fraught with deepest
