Miss Nightingale wrote unreservedly about individuals, because she saw, as Mr. Herbert himself saw also, that the _personnel_ was at fault, and that the most admirable instructions from home would be useless unless there were men of some initiative and vigour to carry them out on the spot. She wrote in anger, because she saw, what Mr. Herbert soon came to know, that such men were not forthcoming. "I write all this savagery," she said (March 5, 1855), "because of the non-success of your unwearied efforts for the good of these poor Hospitals." And then something must be allowed to the caustic humour which, when Miss Nightingale had a pen in her hand, could not be denied. "I shall make no further remark about him," she writes of a certain individual, "than that he is a fossil of the pure Old Red Sandstone." "Some newspaper has said of me," she writes on another occasion, "that I am the fourth woman (query, Old Woman) that has had to do with the war. Who are the other three?" And she goes on for Mr. Herbert's amusement to nominate three of his principal subordinates for the distinction. It would argue a lack of humour to take such epistolary diversions with no grain of salt. But I do not propose to follow the example of a previous writer, who has had access to these letters, in recording Miss Nightingale's remarks on individuals. I desire rather to illustrate from the letters, and from other sources, first, the practical contributions to reform which Miss Nightingale made in some matters of detail, and then her firm grasp of the large principles of sound administration. III