Before her departure Lord Raglan visited Miss Nightingale on board the _New London_, but little did she think that in a few short weeks the brave commander would have passed to the great majority. He had shown himself most sympathetic to her mission to the East, and had received her letters in regard to reforms in the hospitals with attention, while in his dispatches to the Government he had paid the highest tribute to the value of her work amongst the sick soldiers. During the period of Miss Nightingale’s convalescence, he sent frequent inquiries after her health. Meantime, Lord Raglan’s difficulties as Commander-in-Chief of the British forces were daily increasing. On June 18th, 1855, the allied armies were to make the general assault on Sebastopol. Lord Raglan had proposed to preface the assault by a two hours’ cannonade to silence the guns remounted by the enemy during the night, but Pélissier, the French commander, pressed for an immediate attack at daybreak, and Lord Raglan yielded rather than imperil the alliance. The result was disastrous, ending in the terrible assault and repulse of the British troops at the Redan. The Commander-in-Chief felt the failure deeply, and it was to announce this defeat that he wrote his last dispatch to the Government, June 26th. On the 28th he breathed his last, worn out and disheartened by the gigantic task with which he had been called to grapple. Miss Nightingale, in her own weakened condition, was deeply affected by Lord Raglan’s death. He was a man of charming and benevolent disposition, and thoroughly straightforward in all his dealings. Wellington described him as “a man who wouldn’t tell a lie to save his life.” He had served under that great commander during half his career, and was proud to the last, when he had to contend with much adverse criticism, that he had enjoyed the confidence of Wellington. Lord Raglan was blamed for not visiting the camps during the earlier stages of the Crimean war and ascertaining the condition of his soldiers, whereby much of the sickness and misery might have been obviated, but his biographers say that this charge, though not groundless, was exaggerated. Lord Raglan was a rough and ready soldier, who disliked ostentation, and in this way many of his visits to the camp passed almost unnoticed. The impromptu call which he made at Miss Nightingale’s hut, already related, was thoroughly characteristic of Lord Raglan’s methods. Miss Nightingale returned to Scutari a little more than a month after she had left for the Crimea, and was received on landing by Lord William Paulet, Commandant, Dr. Cumming, Inspector-General, and Dr. Macgregor, Deputy-Inspector. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the Ambassador, offered her the use of the British Palace at Pera, but Miss Nightingale preferred to use the house of the chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Sabin, and there she made a good recovery under the care of solicitous friends.