ever dreaming of making men proselytes, she won their hearts towards all that was lovely and honest and of good report, and her very presence seemed to carry healing and virtue to the sick and wounded.

Said one soldier to Mr. Sidney Herbert, a noble worker in the cause of philanthropy, "She would speak to one and another, and nod and smile to many more; but she could not do it to all, you know-we lay there in hundreds; but we could kiss her shadow as it fell, and lay our heads on the pillow again, content."

Said another, "Before she came here there was such cussin' and swearin', and after that it was as holy as a church."

Said the Times correspondent, "Wherever there is disease in its most dangerous form, and the hand of the spoiler distressingly nigh, there is that incomparable woman sure to be seen; her benignant presence is an influence for good comfort even amid the struggles of expiring nature. She is without any exaggeration a ministering angel in these hospitals; and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her."

Miss Nightingale, as we have said, had an utter disregard of contagion, and she had not the least fear in spending hours at a time over men dying of cholera or fever. Wherever the cases were most awful, and especially if the men were dying, she would take up her post there, and administer everything that human skill and loving kindness could suggest, remaining, if possible, with the sufferer till death released him. It is told of her that sometimes in the agony of pain a soldier would refuse to submit to a needful operation, but "a few calm sentences of hers seemed at once to allay the storm, and the man would submit willingly to the painful ordeal he had to undergo."

Miss Nightingale, with her staff of forty-two nurses, some of whom were ladies of rank and fortune, arrived in Scutari in the early part of November, 1854, a few days before the battle of Inkerman. In a single day there were admitted to the hospital no fewer than 600 men, and the sickness in camp was so great that in the course of two months (October and November) the number of patients rose from a few hundreds to 3,000, and "on the 10th January, 1855, nearly 10,000 sick men were scattered over the hospitals on the Bosphorus."

The story of how she laboured, and how nobly her efforts were backed up by the efforts of the brave ladies who accompanied or went out to join her, and how instantaneously the whole nation responded to her appeals for aid, is so well known as not to need telling in further detail.

For nearly two years she remained in the East, and only once during that time had she to relinquish her labours. In May, of 1855, she suffered from an attack of hospital fever, but the instant she was able to do so she resumed her work with all cheerful assiduity, and laboured on nor paused until the war was over, and the last of the great army had turned their faces homewards.

Queen and peasant, rich and poor, all the people of the land have given her services the warmest and most grateful recognition, but the memorial by which her name will be carried down through the generations will not be so much the magnificent Fund for the Training of Nurses in St. Thomas's and King's College Hospitals, raised by

WHAT FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE HAS DONE FOR "NURSING."

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the country as the most appropriate testimonial to her services, as the story of her loving actions, and gracious words, and unceasing self-sacrifice told by sire to son.

Miss Nightingale, during the years that have passed since the terrible times of the Crimean War, has been rendering the most important services to the cause which has ever been nearest her heart. Her name will be perpetuated in the Training Institution, her life and character and influence will reappear through the ages in those who have based their lives upon the model of hers.

There are not many who know much of the inside of a hospital; those who visit them are just the few who are brought there by accident, and pay a brief visit to those who have been admitted through their instrumentality, or to see friends or relatives, when their minds are centred on the one particular case; or to pass through, inspecting such things as are pointed out, and then to pass away and forget.

But in our hospitals there is a noble army of brave women who are devoting themselves to the care of the sick; women, who not finding a sphere for labour in their home circles, and feeling the burden of humanity claiming their sympathy, have gone as heroically, and in some instances more so, to labour among the sick in the hospitals of crowded cities as others have gone to tend the wounded and the dying on the battle-field; for in the one case there has been the excitement, and the publicity, and the strong love of adventure, while in the other there has only been the plain, uphill, unobserved, and unattractive pathway of duty.

It is no new thing for well-bred ladies to act as nurses. In this country, as abroad, there have been religious sisterhoods whose members have devoted themselves to hospital work. But the "training as nurses" was neglected, and the ruling passion with the sisters-brave noble women worthy of all honour and respect-was too often to care more for imparting religious instruction or making converts, than for soothing and comforting and allaying bodily suffering. It is to be feared that too often they administered a tract or an exhortation, when beef-tea or a cooling bandage would have been more to the purpose, and talked earnest, faithful words when the sufferer needed absolute repose for mind and body.

To Florence Nightingale is due the introduction of a new system of things. After the Crimean War, the influence of her heroic conduct spread through all classes of society, and there sprang up a "rage" for nursing. Not an ephemeral thing, but literally a rage-an earnest, burning desire on the part of hundreds of ladies, who had never perhaps thought before of the capacities and means at their disposal, to be of benefit to their fellow

creatures.

A nurse must be, like the poet, born, not made. The art of nursing is a gift more than an acquirement. It is not enough that there should be kindness, tender-heartedness, self-sacrificing perseverance-these will not make a good nurse. Unless there is that peculiar faculty which makes attendance by one possessing it almost a luxury to be ill, unless there is the instinctive knowledge when to be present, when to be absent, when to speak, when to be silent, when to adjust the patient's position and when to let him alone, when to be stoical and when to be sympathetic, when to let the will of the invalid have its own way and when to thwart it, the attendant is no nurse.

Miss Nightingale, more than any one before or since, had this faculty to perfection, and she has done her best to impart the secret of this faculty to others. Never was there a more sensible little book written of its kind than her "Notes on Nursing," in which she deals with questions of ventilation, cleanliness, dress, food, the requirements of patients, and the needful qualifications of nurses. Unconsciously she has in many places given more accurate descriptions of herself than are to be gained from any other source, as the two following illustrations show.

"A firm, light, quick step, a steady, quick hand, are the desiderata-not the slow, lingering, shuffling foot, the timid, uncertain hand. Slowness is not gentleness, though it is often mistaken for such. Quickness, lightness, and gentleness are quite compatible." Conciseness and decision in your movements are as necessary in the sick-room as absence of hurry and bustle. To possess yourself entirely will ensure you from either failing, either loitering or lingering."

All honour to the brave and noble woman who fought a battle at Scutari more glorious than any battle fought in the Crimea, and all honour to the brave volunteers who have enrolled themselves under her banner, and are now on active service in the long war against misery and disease and death!

Non-scientific Explorers-China and Japan-The Jesuit Missionaries of China-Mr. Cooper's Search for a Trading Route between China and India-Pigtail and Petticoats-In Peril of Discovery-Household Gods-Passports-Mountain Passes-Reaches Eastern Tibet-Attacked by Brigands-Imprisonment-"The Dauntless Spirit of Resolution"Augustus Raymond Margary-Saves Forty-two Lives-Appointed Guide and Interpreter of British Mission-Passes through China-Fêted at Bhamo-Massacred at Manwyne-The "Land of the Rising Sun"-AssassinationsMr. Rutherford Alcock-His Daring Journey-Attempt to Massacre the British Legation-Marvellous Escape-Scene after the Attack-The Hour and the Man.

E have seen some of our great explorers in the midst of their work in the icy regions of the Polar seas and in the heart of Central Africa, and these have all been avowedly scientific explorers. Let us now cull a few instances of pioneers and pathfinders, who in the particular walk or line of life in which their lot was cast-in commerce, in the civil service, in diplomacy-made their work glorious. And as our illustrations have not yet been drawn in any instance from the comparatively newly-opened countries, China and Japan, we will draw them now from thence, presuming that from almost any quarter of the globe we might find examples not less illustrious.

One of the pluckiest things of modern times was the journey of Mr. Cooper, a pioneer of commerce, in search of a trading route from Shanghai, in China, through Tibet to Calcutta. He was not successful in accomplishing the whole of his programme, but success is not indispensable to heroism. He had all the elements of success in him, and he performed a feat which fairly entitles him to an important place among Heroic Pioneers and Pathfinders.