When the great moment came, there was one wise virgin whose lamp had long been trimmed and daily refilled with ever finer quality of flame. She was not alone. There were others, and she was always among the first to do them honour. But she stood easily first, and first, too, in the modesty of all true greatness. All her life had been a training for the work which was now given to her hand. Among the many women who longed to nurse and tend our soldiers, many were fast bound by duties to those dependent on them, many were tied hand and foot by the pettifogging prejudices of the school in which they had been brought up. Many, whose ardour would have burned up all prejudice and all secondary claim, were yet ignorant, weak, incapable. Florence Nightingale, on the contrary, was highly trained, not only in intellect, but in the details of what she rightly regarded as an art, “a craft,” the careful art of nursing—highly disciplined in body and in soul, every muscle and nerve obedient to her will, an international linguist, a woman in whom organizing power had been developed to its utmost capacity by a severely masculine education, and whose experience had been deepened by practical service both at home and abroad. Her decision was a foregone conclusion, and a very striking seal was set upon it. For the letter, in which she offered to go out to the Crimea as the servant of her country, was crossed by a letter from Mr. Sidney Herbert, that country’s representative at the War Office, asking her to go. Promptitude on both sides had its own reward; for each would have missed the honour of spontaneous initiative had there been a day’s delay. Here is a part of Mr. Herbert’s letter:— “_October 15, 1854._ “DEAR MISS NIGHTINGALE,—You will have seen in the papers that there is a great deficiency of nurses at the hospital of Scutari. The other alleged deficiencies, namely, of medical men, lint, sheets, etc., must, if they ever existed, have been remedied ere this, as the number of medical officers with the army amounted to one to every ninety-five men in the whole force, being nearly double what we have ever had before; and thirty more surgeons went out there three weeks ago, and must at this time, therefore, be at Constantinople. A further supply went on Monday, and a fresh batch sail next week. As to medical stores, they have been sent out in profusion, by the ton weight—15,000 pair of sheets, medicine, wine, arrowroot in the same proportion; and the only way of accounting for the deficiency at Scutari, if it exists, is that the mass of the stores went to Varna, and had not been sent back when the army left for the Crimea, but four days would have remedied that.