_Life at Lea Hurst and Embley._ Florence was between five and six years old when the Nightingales moved from Lea Hall into their new home at Lea Hurst, a house commanding a specially beautiful outlook, and built under Mr. Nightingale’s own supervision with much care and taste, about a mile from the old home. It is only fourteen miles out of Derby, though there would seem to be many sleepy inhabitants of that aristocratic old town—like the old lady of Hendon who lived on into the twentieth century without having been into the roaring city of London hard by—who know nothing of the attractions within a few miles of them; for Mrs. Tooley tells an amusing story of a photographer there who supposed Lea Hurst to be a distinguished man and a local celebrity. To some it seemed that there was a certain bleakness in the country surrounding Lea Hall, but, though the two dwellings are so short a distance apart, Lea Hurst is set in a far more perfect landscape. Hills and woodlands, stretching far away to Dovedale, are commanded by the broad terrace of upland on which the house stands, and it looks across to the bold escarpment known as Crich Stand, while deep below, the Derwent makes music on its rocky course. Among the foxglove and the bracken, the gritstone rocks jutting forth are a hovering place for butterflies and a haunt of the wild bee. The house itself—shaped like a cross, gabled and mullioned, and heightened by substantial chimney-stacks—is solid, unpretending, satisfying to the eye. Above the fine oriel window in the drawing-room wing is the balcony pointed out to visitors where, they are told, after the Crimea “Miss Florence used to come out and speak to the people.” The building of the house was completed in 1825, and above the door that date is inscribed, together with the letter N. The drawing-room and library look south, and open on to the garden, and “from the library a flight of stone steps leads down to the lawn.” In the centre of the garden front an old chapel has been built into the mansion, and it may be that the prayers of the unknown dead have been answered in the life of the child who grew up under its shadow, and to whom the busy toiling world has owed so much.