But our interest centres in the Nightingale wing. The dining hall is a pleasant apartment which contains several mementoes of the lady whose name it bears. One is a unique piece of statuary enclosed in a glass case and standing on a pedestal. To the uninitiated, it might stand for a representation of a vestal virgin, but we know it to have a nobler prototype than the ideal of womanly perfection sacred to the Romans. That statuette is not the blameless priestess of Vesta, “the world forgetting, by the world forgot,” but our heroine, whom the sculptor has modelled in the character of “The Lady with the Lamp.” She stands, a tall, slim figure, in simple nurse’s dress, holding in one hand a small lamp--such as she used when going her nightly rounds at Scutari hospital--which she is shading with the other hand. There is also a bust of Miss Nightingale in the hall, a portrait of her brother-in-law, the late Sir Harry Verney, for many years the Chairman of the Council of the Nightingale Fund, and a portrait of Mrs. Wardroper, the first head of the Nightingale Home when originally founded. There is also a clock presented by the Grand Duchess of Baden, sister of the late Emperor Frederick of Germany, who was a great admirer of Miss Nightingale’s work and herself an active organiser of relief for the sick soldiers during the Franco-German War. The dining-hall leads into the nurses’ sitting-room. Each nurse has her own private room. The number of probationers slightly varies from year to year, but is usually fifty-two, and there are always more applicants than can be entertained. They are divided into _Special_ probationers, who are gentlewomen by birth and education, daughters of professional men, clergymen, officers, merchants, and others of the upper and middle classes, age from twenty-four to thirty, and _Ordinary_ probationers. The _Special_ probationers are required to be trained to be future heads of hospitals, or of departments of hospitals. They learn every detail of a nurse’s work, and also the duties to fit them for responsible posts as matrons, etc. The _Ordinary_ probationers are trained to be efficient nurses, and after some years’ service may obtain superior appointments. All nurses who have passed through St. Thomas’s are united by a special tie to Miss Nightingale, who rejoices in their successes, and likes to hear from time to time of the progress of their work in the various hospitals and institutions of which they have become heads. Mr. Bonham Carter, her old and valued friend, remains the secretary of the Nightingale Fund, and Miss Hamilton is the matron of the hospital, and has control of the Nightingale Home.