It is at first puzzling to compare Kinglake’s picture of the confusion and suffering, even while he is defending Lord Raglan, with some of the letters in Lord Stanmore’s “Life of Lord Herbert,” especially one from General Estcourt, in which he says “never was an army better fed.” But even in this letter—dated, be it noted, a fortnight after Miss Nightingale’s arrival—the next sentence, which refers, of course, to the army in general and not to the hospitals under her management, shows the same muddling that had pursued the hospitals until she came to their aid with Mr. Herbert and the War Office at her back; for after saying that the ration is ample and most liberal, it adds—and the italics are mine—“_but the men cannot cook for want of camp-kettles and for want of fuel_.” Yet even with regard to the hospitals, it is startling to find Mr. Bracebridge, in his first letter to Mr. Herbert, speaking of the Barrack Hospital as clean and airy. But people have such odd ideas of what is “clean and airy,” and it would seem that he thought it “clean and airy” for the patients to have no proper arrangements for washing, for the drains to be in such a noisome state as to need engineering, and for six dead dogs to be rotting under the windows! I suppose he liked the look of the walls and the height of the ceilings, and wanted, moreover, to comfort Mr. Herbert’s sad heart at a time when all England was up in arms at the mistakes made in transport and other arrangements. The letters of the chaplain to Mr. Herbert are full of interest, and in reading the following we have to put ourselves back into the mind of a time that looked anxiously to see whether Miss Nightingale was really equal to her task—an idea which to us of to-day seems foolish and timorous, but which was, after all, quite natural, seeing that she was new and untried in this particular venture of army nursing, and that half the onlookers had no idea of the long and varied training she had had. “MY DEAR HERBERT,—I have now had near a week’s opportunity of closely observing the details of the hospitals at Scutari. First, as to Miss Nightingale and her company, nothing can be said too strong in their praise; she works them wonderfully, and they are so useful that I have no hesitation in saying some twenty more of the same sort would be a very great blessing to the establishment. Her nerve is equal to her good sense; she, with one of her nurses and myself, gave efficient aid at an amputation of the thigh yesterday. She was just as cool as if she had had to do it herself. We are close allies, and through Macdonald and the funds at my own command, I get her everything for which she asks, and this is saying a great deal.