When statesmen assume only an unimportant influence on the helm, the need is the greater for independent workers to guide public opinion in a definite direction. In 1879 Miss Nightingale thought that her work as an Indian Reformer had failed; but she is entitled to an honourable place among the company of clear thinkers who prepared public opinion for the era of Indian reform which was inaugurated during Lord Ripon's Viceroyalty, and whose persistent advocacy helped to produce at last "the requisite convergence" of opinion in favour of Irrigation as the best, if not the only or all-sufficient, preventive of famine. The "fanaticism," which she shared with Sir Arthur Cotton, is not now so "visionary" as it once seemed. "Lord Napier," she wrote,[181] "calls Sir Arthur Cotton a splendid madman. And so he is. But all these must be splendid madmen who initiate any great thing, any great work, which does not recommend itself to the present knowledge, or ignorance, of minds which do not see so far as the splendid madmen of this age, who will be sensible men to the next age and perhaps a little in arrear to the age after that." [181] Letter to Sir Bartle Frere, February 16, 1869. The Lord Napier of this letter was Lord Napier and Ettrick. CHAPTER V HOME LIFE IN SOUTH STREET AND THE COUNTRY Life made strait On purpose to make sweet the life at large. BROWNING.