The word of God is all by which He reveals His thought, all by which He makes a manifestation of Himself to men. It is not to be narrowed and confined to one book, or one nation; and no one can have seen the Sistine without feeling that he has been very near to God, that he will understand some of His words better for ever after; and that Michael Angelo, one of the greatest of the sons of men, when one looks at the dome of St. Peter's on the one hand and the prophets and martyrs on the other, has received as much of the breath of God, and has done as much to communicate it to men, as any Seer of old. He has performed that wonderful miracle of giving form to the breath of God, wonderful whether it is done by words, colours, or hard stones.... The thoughts and emotions which have been suggested by the contemplation of the vault of the Sistine Chapel are countless. None are more enthusiastic than those which it inspired in Florence Nightingale, and few have been so discriminating. It is at once the privilege and a mark of consummate works of art to be capable of as many meanings as they may find of competent spectators. Each man brings to the study of them the insight of which he is capable; and each, perchance, finds in them some image of himself or of his own experience. "There are few moments, most probably," Florence Nightingale went on to say, "which we shall carry with us through the gate of Death, few recollections which will stand the Eternal Light." She felt as she came out of the Sistine Chapel that her first sight of Michael Angelo's stupendous work would be one of those few for her. We may surmise that the wistful uncertainty which she found in the face of the Delphic Sibyl had especially appealed to her in its truth to life as she had experienced it; conscious as she was of a call from God, conscious also as she could not but have been of great powers, and yet doubtful whether on this side of the gate of Death it would be given to her to interpret the Divine voice aright. She retained to the end of her life the same reverential feeling for Michael Angelo. She had photographs and engravings of the Sistine ceiling hanging in her rooms, and she sent some framed and inscribed photographs of the symbolical figures on the Medici tombs to hang at Embley on the little private staircase, where her father fell and died. Those at her home were bequeathed specifically in her Will. The afternoon of the day on which the revelation of the Sistine Chapel came to her was spent by Florence and her friend in walking up the Monte Mario, to enjoy the famous view from the Villa Mellini, not then, as now, included within a fort:--