(_Miss Nightingale to Harriet Martineau._) 35 SOUTH STREET, _May_ 2 [1866].... We have been rather in a fever lately because Ministers were hovering between in and out. Mr. Villiers promised us a Bill quite early in the year for a London uniform Poor Rate for the _sick_ and consolidated hospitals under a central management. (This was before we got our Earls and Archbishops and M.P.'s together to storm him in his den.) We shall not get our Bill this session, for Mr. Villiers is afraid of losing the Government one vote. But we shall certainly get it in time. "In 1860 the consolations of the future never failed me for a moment. And I find them now an equally secure resource." Can you guess who wrote those words? They are in a note from Mr. Gladstone written the morning of his speech on the Franchise Bill. Could you have believed he was so much in earnest? I could not. And yet I knew him once very well. His speech (he was ill) impressed the House very much. "And e'en the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear to cheer." ... (_Miss Nightingale to Julius Mohl._) 35 SOUTH STREET, _July_ 12 [1866]. I have been in the thick of all these changes of Government. I should like, if you had been in England, to have shown you the notes I have had from those going out, and those coming in--especially from my own peculiar masters, Lord de Grey and Lord Stanley. They are so much more serious and anxious than the world gives them credit for. I used to think public opinion was higher than private opinion. I now think just the reverse. As for the _Times_ and about all these German affairs--I believe the _Times_ to be a faithful reflection of the public opinion of our upper classes: see what it is. Last week Prussia and Bismarck were the greatest criminals in Europe. This week the needle-gun (I mean Prussia and Bismarck--no, I mean the needle-gun) is a constitutional Protestant--or a Protestant constitution, I am not sure which.... But I was going to tell you: Lord Stanley has taken the Foreign Office (how he or anybody could take willingly the Foreign Office, England having now so little weight in European councils, in preference to the India Office which Lord Stanley created[67] and where we _create_ the future of 150 millions of men, one can't understand). Lord Stanley accepted the Foreign Office solely because he could not help it--Lord Clarendon (which I saw under his own hand) having "unhesitatingly declined" it, although Lord Derby made the most vehement love to him, even to offering to him the nomination of half the places in the Cabinet. This I heard from Lord Clarendon himself.... Like you, I can't sleep or eat for thinking of this War. I can't distract my thoughts from it--because, you know, it is my business. I am consulted on