She had worked very hard, and was seldom seen outside the walls of the house in Harley Street. Though she was not there very long, the effect of her presence was great and lasting, and the Home, which has now moved to Lisson Grove, has increased steadily in usefulness, though it has of necessity changed its lines a little, because the High Schools and the higher education of women have opened new careers and lessened the number of governesses, especially helpless governesses. It gives aid far and wide to the daughters and other kindred of hard-worked professional men, men who are serving the world with their brains, and nobly seeking to give work and service of as good a kind as lies within their power, rather than to snatch at its exact value in coin, even if that were possible—and in such toil as theirs, whether they be teachers, artists, parsons, or themselves doctors, it is _not_ possible; for such work cannot be weighed in money. Queen Alexandra is President, and last year 301 patients were treated, besides the 16 who were already within its walls when the new year began. CHAPTER VIII. _The beginning of the war—A sketch of Sidney Herbert._ It was on April 11, 1854, that war was declared by Russia, and four days later the invasion of the Ottoman Empire began. England and France were the sworn allies of Turkey, and though the war had begun with a quarrel about “a key and a trinket,” the key and the trinket were, after all, symbols, just as truly as the flags for which men lay down their lives. England had entrusted the cause of peace to those faithful lovers of peace, Lord Aberdeen, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Cobden, and Mr. Bright; but no single man in our “constitutional” Government is in reality a free agent, and the peace-loving members of the Cabinet had been skilfully handled by the potent Lord Palmerston, and did not perceive soon enough that the understanding with Turkey and with France, into which they had drifted, must endanger the peace of Europe because the other Powers were ignored. If the English people had been secretly longing for war—and it is said that they had—then the terrible cup they had desired was to be drunk to the lees: the war on which they were entering was a war of agony and shame, a war in which men died by hundreds of neglect and mismanagement, before a woman’s hand could reach the helm and reform the hospital ordinances in the ship of State. Meanwhile, before we plunge into the horrors of the Crimean War we may rest our minds with a few pages about Miss Nightingale’s friend, Mr. Sidney Herbert, who became an active and self-sacrificing power in the War Office. When Florence Nightingale was born, Sidney Herbert—afterwards Lord Herbert of Lea—was already a boy of ten.