Lavish Gifts for the Soldiers--_The Times_ Fund--_The Times_ Commissioner Visits Scutari--His Description of Miss Nightingale--Arrival of M. Soyer, the Famous _Chef_--He Describes Miss Nightingale. This is true philanthropy, that buries not its gold in ostentatious charity, but builds its hospital in the human heart.--G. D. HARLEY. Miss Nightingale’s personal efforts for the sick and wounded soldiery were nobly and most generously seconded by sympathisers at home. Ladies were continually arriving at the Admiralty Office in carriages piled with huge boxes and chests labelled “Miss Nightingale,” and such large cargoes reached Scutari that it was said at the time the officials might fancy that the Indian mail had been landed by mistake. The Queen in her palace, assisted by the young princesses, in common with women of all degrees throughout the land, were making lint and bandages, sewing shirts and knitting socks, for the poor soldiers. Nothing indeed was deemed too good for the suffering heroes. Sister Mary Aloysius relates that when she first began to sort the stores in the sheds at Scutari, she thought that the “English nobility must have emptied their wardrobes and linen stores to send out bandages for the wounded. There was the most beautiful underclothing, and the finest cambric sheets, with merely a scissors run here and there through them, to ensure their being used for no other purpose, some from the Queen’s palace, with the Royal monogram beautifully worked.” Amongst these delicate things the rats had a fine time, and on the woollen goods they feasted sumptuously ere the sisters could get them sorted and distributed from their temporary resting-place in the sheds outside the hospitals. While private charity was sending its promiscuous bales of goods, _The Times_, to which belonged the honour of having first aroused public interest in the suffering soldiery, had organised a fund for the relief of the wounded which met with the most generous support. The great journal undertook to distribute the fund, and for this purpose appointed Mr. Macdonald, a man of high character and endowed with good sense and discrimination, to proceed to the East and ascertain on the spot the manner in which the money could be best applied for the relief of the distressed army. Before setting forth Mr. Macdonald called on the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State for War, also on Dr. Andrew Smith, the Inspector-General, and was assured by both that such ample measures had been taken by Government that _The Times_ fund was really scarcely needed for the relief of the sick and wounded. However, Mr. Macdonald proceeded on his way, for there was at least one man connected with the War Office--Sidney Herbert--who knew from Florence Nightingale’s letters what the true state of affairs was.