Miss Nightingale did not do as she had planned, and go in her own person to St. Thomas's Hospital, but in another sense the year 1872 was the year of her descent upon it. Not, indeed, as we saw in the preceding Part, that she had ever abandoned a personal interest in the Training School, but there were now new conditions which called for additional care, and Miss Nightingale, being out of office, was more free to give it. Henceforth she became, in a yet more direct manner than heretofore, the head of the Nightingale School, and the Chief of the Nightingale Nurses. The year 1871 had seen the removal of St. Thomas's Hospital from its temporary quarters in the old Surrey Gardens to the present building opposite the Houses of Parliament. The foundation-stone had been laid by Queen Victoria in 1868. Miss Nightingale had been requested to ask the Queen to do this, and she had preferred the petition through Sir James Clark. "I never pressed Her Majesty so hard upon anything before," said he, in announcing the Royal pleasure. The Queen had again shown her interest in the Hospital by opening the new building in June 1871. The number of beds was now greatly increased, and with it the number of nurses and probationers. The control of the nurses was likely to be relaxed as it was spread over a larger number, and Miss Nightingale resolved to hold a Visitation. First, she sent Dr. Sutherland with the consent of the hospital authorities to inspect the new buildings and to consider all the arrangements from the point of view of an expert sanitarian. She examined and cross-examined Sisters and Nurses on the same points, and put into print a list of the defects which needed remedy.[148] Then Miss Nightingale took in hand the education, technical and moral, of her own Nightingale School. She had already observed that the Lady Probationers, appointed to responsible posts, were not always adequate to their duties: the overworked Matron had perhaps sometimes recommended unsuitable persons. She found on questioning the Nurses that their technical education did not reach the high standard which she desired to maintain. She feared that the moral standard similarly fell short of her ideal; nursing was coming to be regarded too much as a business profession, and too little as a sacred calling. Miss Nightingale determined to throw herself into a sustained effort for the better realization of her ideal. Directly or indirectly, she instituted sweeping reforms. The result of them was, as she wrote to Mr. Bonham Carter (Aug. 1875), that the Training School became "a Home--a place of moral, religious and practical training--a place of training of character, habits, intelligence, as well as of acquiring knowledge." Those who saw the Nightingale nurses in these years were struck by the bright, kindly and pleasant spirit which seemed to pervade the company of them, and could well understand that the Institution was really, as its foundress intended, a home as well as a school.