were not permitted, and a somewhat severe training in the classics was supplemented by the example of Mrs. Nightingale’s excellent housewifery, and by that fine self-control in manners and behaviour which in the old-fashioned days used to be named “deportment.” Sports and outdoor exercises were a part—and a delightful part—of the day’s routine. But let us go back a few years and give a few pages to the place of Florence Nightingale’s birth and the history of her family. Her name, like that of another social reformer among Englishwomen, was linked with Italy, and she took it from the famous old Italian town in whose neighbourhood she was born. I have tried in vain to trace the authorship[1]—was it Ruskin or some less known writer?—who said of that town, “if you wish to see it to perfection, fix upon such a day as Florence owes the sun, and, climbing the hill of Bellosguardo, or past the stages of the Via Crucis to the church of San Miniato, look forth upon the scene before you. You trace the course of the Arno from the distant mountains on the right, through the heart of the city, winding along the fruitful valley toward Pisa. The city is beneath you, like a pearl set in emerald. All colours are in the landscape, and all sounds are in the air. The hills look almost heathery. The sombre olive and funereal cypress blend with the graceful acacia and the clasping vine. The hum of the insect and the carol of bird chime with the blithe voices of men; while dome, tower, mountains, the yellow river, the quaint bridges, spires, palaces, gardens, and the cloudless heavens overhanging, make up a panorama on which to gaze in trance of rapture until the spirit wearies from the exceeding beauty of the vision.” When on May 12, 1820, Florence Nightingale was born, her parents were staying at the Villa Colombaia, near to this beautiful City of Flowers; and when the question of a name for her arose, they were of one mind about it—she must be called after the city itself. They had no sons, and this child’s elder sister, their only other daughter, having been born at Naples, had taken its ancient and classical name of Parthenope.[2]