and intensity of purpose. Is not this a thing to thank God about? I was reading in Grote an account of an attempted Spartan revolution in the times of Agesilaus. One of the great objects of the Ephori was to keep the Spartan youth from getting under the influence of a woman (name unknown) who was stirring the rebellion. Do you not think that woman may have been you in some former state of existence?" Miss Nightingale, perhaps in some justification for her eagerness in action, opened her heart fully to Mr. Jowett about her sense of loss in Sidney Herbert's death; explaining her loneliness in work, and yet her overmastering desire to complete, while strength was still granted to her, the "joint work" of her friend and herself. "I have often felt," he replied (Aug. 7, 1865), "what a wreck and ruin Lord Herbert's death must have been to you. You had done so much for him and he had grown so rapidly in himself and in public estimation that there seemed no limits to what he might have effected. He might have been one of the most popular and powerful Prime Ministers in this country--the man to carry us through the social and ecclesiastical questions that are springing up. And you would have had a great part in his work and filled him with every noble and useful ambition. Do not suppose that I don't feel and understand all this. (And you might have made me Dean of Christ Church: the only preferment that I would like to have, and I would have reformed the University and bullied the Canons.) But it has pleased God that all this should not be, and it must please us too, and we must carry on the struggle under greater difficulties, with more of hard and painful labour and less of success, still never flinching while life lasts." Never flinching, but never fretting or fuming: that was the burden of Mr. Jowett's exhortations. "I sometimes think," he had written (July 9, 1865), "that you ought seriously to consider how your work may be carried on, not with less energy, but in a calmer spirit. Think that the work of God neither hastes nor rests, and that we should go about it in the spirit of order which prevails in the world. I am not blaming the past (who would blame you who devote your life to the good of others?). But I want the peace of God to settle on the future. Perhaps you will feel that in urging this I really can form no notion of your sufferings. Alas, dear friend, I am afraid that this is true. Still I must beg you to keep your mind above them. Is that motive vain of being made perfect through suffering?" It is an idle speculation to wonder whether persons who have done great things in the world would have done as much or more or better if they had been other than they were. Calm is well; but it is not always the spring of action. If Miss Nightingale had been less eager and impetuous, she might, after her return from the Crimea, have done nothing at all. But perhaps already, in moments of weariness during the