_Sept._ 10. We are grateful to you for the memorial of my dear Master which you have raised to him in the hearts of the nation.[1] Indeed it is in the hearts of the nation that he will live--not in the hearts of Ministers. There he is dead already, if indeed they have any. And before he was cold in his grave, Gladstone attends his funeral and then writes to me that he cannot pledge himself to give any assistance in carrying out his friend's reforms. The reign of intelligence at the War Office is over. The reign of muffs has begun. The only rule of conduct in the bureaucracy there and in the Horse Guards is to reverse _his_ decision, _his_ judgment, and (if they can do nothing more) _his_ words. [1] An eloquent address delivered to the British Association at Manchester (_Times_, Sept. 9, 1861). _October_ 2.... My poor Master has been dead two months to-day, too long a time for him not to be forgotten.... The dogs have trampled on his dead body. Alas! seven years this month I have fought the good fight with the War Office _and lost it_! _November_ 2. My dear Master has been dead three months to-day. Poor Lady Herbert goes abroad this next week with the children and shuts up Wilton, the eldest boy going to school. It is as if the earth had opened and swallowed up even the Name which filled my whole life these five years. But there were things to be done in her friend's name, and she turned to do them. The power of the bureaucracy to resist was strong, because the new Secretary of State was a novice at his task, and Lord Herbert, by failing to carry through any radical reorganization of the War Office, had as she said, failed to put in "the mainspring to his works." "The Commander-in-Chief rides over the learned Secretary of State as if he were straw." But there was one hopeful and helpful factor in the case. Now that the Secretary for War was in the Commons, Lord de Grey was reappointed Under-Secretary. He was a genuine reformer. He knew the mind of his former Chief. He was most sympathetic to Lady Herbert. He was acquainted with Miss Nightingale. The power of an Under-Secretary is very small, but what he could do, he would. A letter which she received from a friend, both of Lord de Grey and of herself, gave her encouragement:--