(_a_) Matters of _universal_ importance, moral and spiritual (_e.g._ the finest parts of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the New Testament); (_b_) matters of _historical_ importance (_e.g._ which embrace the history of great nations, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon. The petty wars of the petty tribes seem to take up a quite disproportionate space); (_c_) matters of _local_ importance, which have acquired a _universal moral_ significance (_e.g._ Jonah is entirely left out: yet Jonah has a moral and spiritual meaning, while Samson, Balaam and Bathsheba have none); (_d_) matters of _merely local_ importance, with no significance but an _immoral_ one (_e.g._ the stories about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, almost all Joshua and Judges, and very much of Samuel and Kings). The story of Achilles and his horses is far more fit for children than that of Balaam and his ass, which is only fit to be told to asses. The stories of Samson and of Jephthah are only fit to be told to bull-dogs; and the story of Bathsheba, to be told to Bathshebas. Yet we give all these stories to children as "Holy Writ." There are some things in Homer we might better call "Holy" Writ--many, many in Sophocles and Aeschylus. The stories about Andromache and Antigone are worth all the women in the Old Testament put together; nay, almost all the women in the Bible. "I have just finished the Children's Bible," wrote Mr. Jowett (Feb. 10, 1872). "I blessed you every time I took the papers up, especially in the Prophets. I have adopted your selection almost entirely, with a slight abridgement, and it is further approved by Mr. Cheyne's authority." These various literary enterprises, undertaken at Mr. Jowett's instance, occupied a great deal of Miss Nightingale's time--more time, as she sometimes said to herself, than could rightly be spared from primary duties; and the time was spent, she added in her self-reproaches, to little purpose. In some respects Mr. Jowett's suggestions to her were not very happy. One cannot elaborate in a consecutive form a Scheme of Theology or a Social Philosophy, even through the medium of essays, in odd hours as a bye-work. So Miss Nightingale soon found, and the failure weighed heavily on her spirits; but Mr. Jowett did not realize how great was the strain upon his friend's faculties involved in her nursing work, nor how much time, effort, and emotion she was devoting, though "out of office," to the complicated problems of Indian administration. We, who have access to her Papers, shall learn the full extent of these preoccupations in later chapters (III. and IV.). But something must first be said of another literary enterprise. To it Miss Nightingale's close study of the Bible and of Plato was entirely relevant. Such studies were, as we shall find in the next chapter, part of the food which sustained her inner life. CHAPTER II