Those dialogues of Galileo are so beautiful. Mr. Bethune lent them us to read in the real old _first_ edition. [19] Sir James South, astronomer (1785-1867), had a famous observatory on Campden Hill. At Embley the Nightingales saw something of the Palmerstons and the Ashburtons. With Miss Louisa Stewart Mackenzie, who afterwards became the second wife of the second Lord Ashburton, Florence formed a friendship which was one of the solaces and supports of her life at this time. Other friends who played a yet larger part in her life were Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge[20] of Atherstone, near Coventry. Florence sketches the character of some of her friends in a letter to her cousin Hilary (April 1846):-- Mrs. Keith, Miss Dutton, and Louisa Mackenzie, may be shortly described as the respective representatives of the Soul, the Mind, and the Heart. The first has one's whole _worship_, the second one's greatest _admiration_, and the third one's most lively _interest_. Mrs. Bracebridge may be described as all three; the Human Trinity in one; and never do I see her, without feeling that she is eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. Many a plan, which disappointment has thinned off into a phantom in my mind, takes form and shape and fair reality when touched by her Ithuriel's spear (for there is an Ithuriel's spear for good as well as for evil). [20] _Née_ Mills, cousin of Mr. Arthur Mills, M.P. Dr. Richard Dawes, Dean of Hereford, who was an educational reformer, and Dr. Fowler of Salisbury, who anticipated the open-air treatment, and was otherwise a man of marked originality, were among those whose friendship she valued. If Florence Nightingale was to find her home life empty and unprofitable, it was not for lack of congenial friends. She saw much, too, of general society, and Embley was often the scene of entertaining. We get a glimpse of its parties from an invitation which Mr. Nightingale sent to Miss Clarke (Oct. 1843) to bring her friend Leopold von Ranke with her on a visit:-- Pray send him a sly line to the effect that he will find _Notabilities_ here on the 24th--to wit, the Speaker (Shaw Lefevre), the ex-Foreign Secretary (Palmerston), the Catholic Weld (future owner of Lulworth and nephew of the Cardinal of that ilk), and mayhap a Queen's Equerry or two, a Baron of the Exchequer (Rolfe), an Inspector, or rather Engineering Architect, of the new prisons,[21] and a couple of Baronets. He should think well on this. Yours, quizzically, but faithfully, W. E. N. [21] Sir Joshua Jebb, surveyor-general of prisons, designed the "model prison" at Pentonville. Miss Nightingale valued his friendship greatly, and appointed him a member of the Council of the Nightingale Fund.