Until women have gone through a _real_ training, it is vain to hope that four or five weeks in a Hospital can fit them for one of the most difficult works that any one can be called on to undertake. I cannot tell you the details, you can guess many of them; but when I hear estimable people talking as if you could turn 40 women of all ranks, degrees of virtue, and intelligence, into a Military Hospital, with drunken orderlies, unmarried Chaplains, young Surgeons, &c., &c., and expect that they are not more likely to be unwise or tempted astray than the R.C. Sisters of Charity, who are bound by well-considered vows, love of their kind and the fear of Hell fire, then we feel that the "estimable people" have very little knowledge of human nature. F.'s form of Sisterhood is infinitely higher, I believe, than the R.C. and _will be carried out_, I doubt no more than in her own existence, but as it must exist without the checks and safeguards of the other and inferior form, so it requires higher elements in the actors and a more severe training and examination. Instead of which the loosest possible choice takes place by people most excellent but not in the least qualified to choose; goodwill and a "love of nursing" is enough for the Lady class. It is the fact, though it is not popularly known, that Miss Nightingale was at this time strongly opposed to "lady" nurses. She objected to them, not because they were ladies, but because they were unlikely to be well trained. Pious and benevolent ladies were more given, she said, to "spiritual flirtations with the patients," than apt at the proper business of surgical nursing. It was the trained hospital nurses that she preferred. There were among the 125 women who passed through her hands in the East more efficient and less, and in so large a flock there were some black sheep. But amongst the band, in all classes and of all denominations, there were devoted and competent women, whose services deserve to be held in grateful remembrance beside those of their Lady-in-Chief. And as I have had to record Miss Nightingale's criticism upon some of the Roman Catholics among her flock, it should be added that of others she wrote to Mr. Herbert: "They are the truest Christians I ever met with--invaluable in their work--devoted, heart and head, to serve God and mankind--not to intrigue for their Church." To the Reverend Superior, who came out from Bermondsey with the first party of nuns, Miss Nightingale was particularly attached. "She writes," said Cardinal Wiseman, "that great part of her success is due to Rev. Mother of Bermondsey, without whom it would have been a failure."[168] [168] Wilfred Ward's _Life of Wiseman_, vol. ii. p. 191. And see Miss Nightingale's own words given below, p. 299.