In December 1869 Miss Nightingale made a new friend. Lord Napier of Magdala[110] was passing through London, and wrote to Sir Bartle Frere saying that it "would make him very happy if he could have the privilege of paying his respects to Miss Nightingale before he left." Sir Bartle begged Miss Nightingale to grant the favour, as Lord Napier was devoted to their cause and was likely to be employed in India again--as quickly came to pass, for in the following month he was appointed Commander-in-Chief.[111] Lord Napier called on December 14, in order (as he wrote to her in making the appointment) "to have an opportunity of saying how much I have felt indebted to you for the assistance that your precepts and example gave to all who have been concerned with the care of soldiers and their families." He spent some hours with her, and she was charmed with him. "I felt sure," wrote Sir Bartle Frere (Dec. 23), "that you would like Lord Napier of Magdala. He always seemed to me one of the few men fit for the Round Table." A long note which she recorded of the conversation shows how congenial it must have been to her, for Lord Napier talked with strong feeling of the importance and the practicability of improving the moral health of the British soldier. The administrators and the men of action always appealed to her more than the politicians, and Lord Napier of Magdala was now added to her list of heroes. "When I look at these three men (tho' strangely different[112])--Lord Lawrence, Lord Napier of Magdala and Sir Bartle Frere--for practical ability, for statesmanlike perception of where the truth lies and what is to be done and who is to do it, for high aim, for noble disinterestedness, I feel that there is not a Minister we have in England fit to tie their shoes--since Sidney Herbert. There is a simplicity, a largeness of view and character about these three men, as about Sidney Herbert, that does not exist in the present Ministers. They are party men; these three are statesmen. S. Herbert made enemies by not being a party man; it gave him such an advantage over them." Lord Napier of Magdala came to see Miss Nightingale again in the following year (March 18, 1870), spending in conversation with her his last hours before leaving London to take up his appointment in India. She and Sir Bartle Frere attached high importance to this interview. Lord Napier was a convinced sanitarian. He was bent upon introducing many reforms in the treatment of the soldiers. He believed in the possibility of improving both their moral and physical condition, by means of rational recreation and suitable employment. Sir Bartle Frere suggested to Miss Nightingale that after seeing the Commander-in-Chief she should write to the Viceroy so as to prepare his mind for what Lord Napier would propose. Lord Napier himself begged her to do so. "Everything in India," he said to her, "depends on what is thought in England, and it was you who raised