“My honest view of the matter is this: I found but too great evidence of the staff and means being unequal to the emergency; the requirements have almost doubled through the last two unhappy actions at Balaclava. Still, day by day I see manifest improvement; no government, no nation could have provided, on a sudden, staff and appliances for accident wards miles in length, and for such sickness as that horrid Varna dysentery. To manage more than three thousand casualties of the worst nature is indeed a task to be met in an entirely satisfactory way by nothing short of a miraculous energy with the means it would require. The men are landed necessarily in a most pitiable state, and have to be carried up steep ground for considerable distance, either by those beasts of Turks, who are as stupid as callous, or by our invalids, who are not equal to the task. Still, it is done, and as this is war, not peace, and Scutari is really a battlefield, I am more disposed to lament than to blame. “There seems now, so far as I can see, no lack of lint and plaister; there is a lack of linen,—we have sent home for it. The surgeons are working their utmost, and serious cases seem treated with great humanity and skill. There was and is an awful want of shirts for the men, and socks, and such matters; we have already let Miss Nightingale have all she applies for, and this morning I, with Macdonald’s sanction, or, rather, in concert with him, have sent to the Crimea a large stock of shirts of warm serge, socks, flannel, tea, etc., etc. I spend the best part of every day there acting, at one time as priest to the dying, at another helping the surgeons or the men to dress their wounds; again, I go to the landing-place and try to work them into method for an hour or two, etc., etc. One and all are now most kind and civil to me, meet my wishes in every way they can. Alas! I fear, with every possible effort of the existing establishment, the crisis is still too great; there are wanting hundreds of beds—that is, many hundreds have only matting between the beds and the stone floor. I slept here Sunday night, and walked the wards late and early in the morning; I fear the cold weather in these passages will produce on men so crippled and so maimed much supplementary evil in the way of coughs and chest diseases. The wounded do better than the sick. I scarce pray with one of the latter one day but I hear he is dead on the morrow.... I am glad to say the authorities have left off swearing they had everything and wanted nothing; they are now grateful for the help which, with the fund at command, we liberally meet. The wounds are, many of them, of the most fearful character, and yet I have not heard a murmur, even from those who, from the pressing