The Sun.
London, England, 1855-05-29 00:00:00

quiet and rather reserved; still I am much mistaken if she
is . not gifted with a very lively sense of the ridiculous.
In conversation, she speaks on matters of -business with a
gr Lye earnestness one would not expect from her appearance.
She has evidently a mind disciplined to rest,ain mular
the principles of the action of the moment every feeling
which would interfere with it. She has trained herself to
command, and le ,rued the value of conciliation towards
others, and constraint over herself. I can conceive ber to be
a strict disciplinarian ; she throws herself into a work—as
its head— as such he knows well how much success must de-
pend :upon literal obedience to her every order. She seems
to understand business thoroughly, though to me she had
the failure common to many heads,' a too great love of man-
agement in the small details which had better perhaps have
been left to others. Her nerve is wonderful ; I have
been with her at very severe operations ; she was
more than equal to the trial. She has au utter dis-
regard of contagion ; I have known her spend hours over
men dying of cholera or fever. Tho more awful t:, every
sense any particular case, especially if it was that of a dying
man, her slight form would be seen bending over him, ad-
ministering to his ease in every way in her power, and
seldom qUitting his side till death released him."

Further, Mr. Osborne adds—" Hers was a post
requiring the courage of a Cardigan, the tact and
diplomacy of a Palmerston, the endurance of a
Howard, the cheerful philanthropy of a Mrs. Fry"
.—observing indignantly in reference to the insinua-
tions throwp out as to the religious opinions enter-
tained b'yAss Nightingale—" if there is blame in
looking for ;a. Roman Catholic priest to attend a
dying Romanist, let me share it with her—l did it
again and again." Before quitting this branch of
his subject our writer remarks :

"We all know, at least the most of us alas do, what it is
to watch around the sick bed of friends and relatives.
We know how the exigencies of a sick room break through
all the mere conventionalities of every-day life. Where all
have their every interest for the time absorbed in the
endeavour to minister to the comfort of the sick one
by whom they watch • where friends, relatives, and ser-
vants have this one object in view—real delicacy consists
in being insensible to everything else. When even in distant
passages, they who meet speak in whispers, in the actual
room of apprehended death, the very atmosphere of the
scene makes all things as pure as the motives that call for
sympathy and aid afforded."

Continuing, in allusion to the peculiar trials to
which, in their attendance upon strangers instead
of near and dear relatives, Miss Nightingale and
her sisterhood are subjected—" There is not one of
that devoted band who does not each day pass an
ordeal to her every womanly sense beyond all de-
scription." Well May he exclaim, then—

" England and the English army will ever owe a deep
debt of gratitude to theladies who have devoted themselves to
this first attempt to introduce the zeal and tender care of
well-bred women into the economy of a Military Hospital."
As it would be impossible and at the same time
altogether unnecessary to follow Mr. Osborne in
this review of his book upon " Scutari and its
Hospitals" through the whole series of his elabo-
rate descriptions, some of the more striking amongst
them may be here grouped together in no unwel-
come quotations. It is scarce►y possible to read un•
moved the following example of the rapid fluctua-
tion of—