For Britain was very proud of the daughter who had become so mighty a power for good in the State. The Sister of Mercy whom Miss Nightingale used laughingly to call “her Cardinal” had responded on one occasion by addressing her with equal affection as “Your Holiness,” and the nickname was not altogether inappropriate, for her advice in civic and hygienic matters had an authority which might well be compared with that which the Pope himself wielded on theological questions. Among the doctors at Scutari was a friend of General Evatt, from whom he had many facts at first-hand, and it was therefore not without knowledge that, in his conversation with me on the subject, the latter confirmed and strengthened all that has already been written of Miss Nightingale’s mental grasp and supreme capacity. To him, knowing her well, and knowing well also the facts, she was the highest embodiment of womanhood and of citizenship. Yet, while he talked, my heart ached for her, thinking of the womanly joys of home and motherhood which were not for her, and all the pure and tender romance which woman bears in her inmost soul, even when, as in this noble instance, it is transmuted by the will of God and the woman’s own obedient will into service of other homes and other lives. Perhaps I may here be allowed to quote a sentence from Mrs. Tooley’s admirable life of our heroine; for it could not have been better expressed: “No one would wish to exempt from due praise even the humblest of that ‘Angel Band’ who worked with Florence Nightingale, and still less would she, but in every great cause there is the initiating genius who stands in solitary grandeur above the rank and file of followers.” Nor was official recognition of the country’s debt to Miss Nightingale in any wise lacking. When the Treaty of Peace was under discussion in the House of Lords, Lord Ellesmere made it an opportunity for the following tribute:— “My Lords, the agony of that time has become a matter of history. The vegetation of two successive springs has obscured the vestiges of Balaclava and of Inkermann. Strong voices now answer to the roll-call, and sturdy forms now cluster round the colours. The ranks are full, the hospitals are empty. The Angel of Mercy still lingers to the last on the scene of her labours; but her mission is all but accomplished. Those long arcades of Scutari, in which dying men sat up to catch the sound of her footstep or the flutter of her dress, and fell back on the pillow content to have seen her shadow as it passed, are now comparatively deserted. She may probably be thinking how to escape, as best she may, on her return, the demonstrations of a nation’s appreciation of the deeds and motives of Florence Nightingale.”