CLEVELAND ROW, _Ap._ 15 [2.30]. From Hampstead I returned to South Street, and found your letter. Thence to Cambridge House. Lord Palmerston was so good as to admit me. I said that I had seen you this morning, and that by your desire I requested him to allow me to read a letter to him from you. He said, "Certainly"; and I read it to him rather slowly. Having read it, I said that you had mentioned this morning that within a fortnight of Lord Herbert's death, he had said to you more than once that he hoped Lord de Grey might be his successor. I then added, "I have not to request any reply or observations on Miss Nightingale's letter. I have only to thank you for your kindness in allowing me to read it." He took the letter and put it in his pocket. He then asked how you are, and where, and I told him. There is a Cabinet at 5.30 this afternoon. I think that if Gladstone has your note before going to it, it might be well. She had anticipated Sir Harry's suggestion, as we have seen. The Prime Minister put her letter into his pocket, but it did not stay there. He took it with him to Windsor and read it to the Queen. On April 22 it was announced that Her Majesty had been pleased to approve the appointment of Lord de Grey as Secretary of State for War. V Miss Nightingale thus felt assured that when the Indian Report came out she would have a sympathetic chief at the War Office, and she turned with the greater zest to the next stage in her labours; namely, the preparation of the Report by the Commissioners. The manuscript of the first page or two (explaining the delay in issuing the Report and the procedure of the Commission) is in Lord Stanley's handwriting (preserved among Miss Nightingale's papers). He entrusted the preparation of the first draft of the rest of the Report, for statistics to Dr. Farr, and for the rest to Miss Nightingale and Dr. Sutherland. She had written a first draft of the greater part of her sections of the Report as early as April 1862. By August it was in type and corrected by Lord Stanley, who "pledged himself to carry it through the Commission next month."[17] But Dr. Farr's section was not so far advanced, and there were other delays at which Miss Nightingale chafed not a little. In May 1863 the last stage was reached. "I have done and shall do all in my power," Lord Stanley wrote to her (July 10), "to make it public that to Dr. Sutherland and you we mainly owe it that the Report has assumed its present shape." Among her papers is a collection of proofs of the Report in various stages; some corrected by Dr. Farr and Dr. Sutherland, others corrected and re-corrected by her. The descriptive portion of the Report is in substance a repetition of her "Observations," in the colder language which is held to add weight and dignity to such documents; though here and there Miss Nightingale's touch may be felt. The