So, then, Miss Nightingale never finished her book on the Mystics; but she did something which, if we take her view of literary work, we may account far better; she lived it. No words of Florence Nightingale's that have been quoted in the course of this Memoir are more intensely autobiographical, none express more truly the spirit in which she lived and moved and had her being, than those which I have put together on a preceding page from her Notes on the Mystics. Her creed may seem cold to some minds, but she invested it with a spiritual fervour which none of the Mystics has surpassed. This woman, so practical, so business-like, and in her outward dealings with men and affairs so worldly-wise, was a dreamer, a devotee, a religious enthusiast. The Lady-in-Chief, who was to others a tower of strength, was to herself a weak vessel, praying continually for support, and conscious, with bitter intensity, of short-coming, of faithlessness, of rebellion to the will of God. Self-possessed in the presence of others, she was tortured and agonized, often to the verge of despair, in the solitude of her chamber. "I have done nothing for seven years," she said to a friend, "but write regulations." And that was broadly true of one side of her life. Of another side, she might have said with almost equal truth, "I have done nothing all my life but write spiritual meditations." She lived with a pen or pencil ever at her side; and reams of her paper are covered with confessions, self-examinations, communings with God. She suffered much, and especially during these years, from sleeplessness, and in the watches of the night she would turn to read the Mystics for comfort, or to write on her tablets for spiritual exercise. Though she liked best the books of the Catholic saints, her Catholicism was wider than theirs, and she could find spiritual kinship also, as in the lines prefixed to the present Part, with the hymns of American evangelists. At one and the same time mystic and practical administrator, Miss Nightingale had two soul-sides; but each was a reflection of the other. Her religion was her work; and her work was her religion. She read the Mystics, not to lull her active faculties into contemplative ecstasy, but to consecrate them to more perfect service. In one place she makes these notes from St. Catherine of Siena:--"It is not the occupation but the spirit which makes the difference. The election of a bishop may be a most secular thing. The election of a representative may be a religious thing. It is not the preluding such an election with public prayer that would make it a religious act. It is religious so far as each man discharges his part as a duty and a solemn responsibility. The question is not whether a thing is done for the State or the Church, but whether it is done with God or without God." Miss Nightingale's heading to this passage was "Drains." She applied her religion to every aspect of her life; and in