Among the tokens of regard which the late Duke of Devonshire brought to his old friend on her return, when he drove over from Chatsworth to Lea Hurst to see her after her long, eventful absence, was a little silver owl, a sort of souvenir, I suppose, of her beloved little “Athena,” whose death she had felt so keenly when leaving for the Crimea. Queen Victoria and the young princesses were eager to welcome Miss Nightingale to Balmoral; and in looking back on her little visit there, which seems to have been a happiness on both sides, it is interesting to see how her influence told upon the Crown Princess and Princess Alice in their later organization of hospital work, and to be reminded by Mrs. Tooley, whose words we here venture to quote, that the “tiny Princess Helena was to become in after years an accomplished nurse, and an active leader in the nursing movement of this country; and, alas, to yield her soldier son on the fatal field of South Africa.” Meanwhile, before and after this visit, Miss Nightingale was quietly receiving her own friends and neighbours at Lea Hurst, and entertaining little parties of villagers from among the rustics she had so long known and loved. Rich and poor alike were all so eager to do her honour that it is impossible to speak separately of all the many forms which their expressions of gratitude took. They included a gift from the workmen of Sheffield as well as from her own more immediate neighbours, and found their climax in the fund pressed upon her by a grateful nation, and for convenience called the Nightingale Fund, which was still awaiting its final disposal. Meanwhile, imagine the importance of the ex-drummer-boy Thomas, her devoted servant and would-be defender at Balaclava, promoted now to be “Miss Nightingale’s own man” in her home at Lea Hurst—an even more exciting presence to the villagers than the Russian hound which was known through the country-side as “Miss Florence’s Crimean dog.” There were still living, we are told, when Mrs. Tooley wrote her delightful record, a few old people round about Lea Hurst who remembered those great days of “Miss Florence’s return,” and the cannon balls and bullets they had seen as trophies, the dried flowers gathered at Scutari, and Thomas’s thrilling stories, for if he had not himself been present in the famous charge at Balaclava, he did at least know all about it at first-hand.