“Mr. Martin’s note is perfect, for it does not look like an afterthought, nor as prompted by others, but as the flow of a generous and able man’s own reflection, and careful search into authentic documents. Thank you again and again for sending it to me. It is the greatest consolation I could have had. Will you remember me gratefully to Mr. Paget, also to Dr. Balfour? _I look back upon these twenty years as if they were yesterday, but also as if they were a thousand years._ Success be with us and the noble dead—and it has been success.—Yours ever, “FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.” We see from this letter how warmly the old memories dwelt with her, even while her hands were full of good work for the future. The death of Lord Herbert in 1868 had been a blow that struck very deeply at her health and spirits. In all her work of army reform she had looked up to him as her “Chief,” hardly realizing, perhaps, how much of the initiating had been her own. Their friendship, too, had been almost lifelong, and in every way ideal. The whole nation mourned his loss, but only the little intimate group which centred in his wife and children and those dearest friends, of whom Miss Nightingale was one, knew fully all that the country had lost in him. It may be worth while for a double reason to quote here from Mr. Gladstone’s tribute at a meeting held to decide on a memorial. “To him,” said Gladstone, “we owe the commission for inquiry into barracks and hospitals; to him we are indebted for the reorganization of the medical department of the army. To him we owe the commission of inquiry into, and remodelling the medical education of, the army. And, lastly, we owe him the commission for presenting to the public the vital statistics of the army in such a form, from time to time, that the great and living facts of the subject are brought to view.” Lord Herbert had toiled with ever-deepening zeal to reform the unhealthy conditions to which, even in times of peace, our soldiers had been exposed—so unhealthy that, while the mortality lists showed a death of eight in every thousand for civilians, for soldiers the number of deaths was seventeen per thousand. And of every two deaths in the army it was asserted that one was preventable. Lord Herbert was the heart and soul of the Royal Commission to inquire into these preventable causes, and through his working ardour the work branched forth into four supplementary commissions concerning hospitals and barracks. When he died, Miss Nightingale not only felt the pang of parting from one of her oldest and most valued friends, but she also felt that in this cause, so specially dear to her heart, she had lost a helper who could never be replaced, though she dauntlessly stood to her task and helped to carry on his work. CHAPTER XXI.