woman.  They would recognise as akin to themselves the calumny, scandal, ridicule, and malignity with which their natural predecessors pursued her from the moment that she took up her heroic task to the time when her glory stilled their filthy breath.  She went under Government direction; the Queen mentioned her with interest in a letter; even the Times supported her, for in those days the Times frequently stood as champion for some noble cause, and its own correspondent, William Russell, had himself first made the suggestion that led to her departure.  But neither the Queen, the Government, nor the Times could silence the born backbiters of greatness.  Cowards, startled at the sight of courage, were alert with jealousy.  Pleasure-seekers, stung in the midst of comfort, sniffed with depreciation.  Culture, in pursuit of prettiness, passed by with artistic indifference.  The narrow mind attributed motives and designs.  The snake of disguised concupiscence sounded its rattle.  That refined and respectable women should go on such an errand—­how could propriety endure it?  No lady could thus expose herself without the loss of feminine bloom.  If decent women took to this kind of service, where would the charm of womanhood be fled?  “They are impelled by vanity, and seek the notoriety of scandal,” said the envious.  “None of them will stand the mere labour of it for a month, if we know anything,” said the physiologists.  “They will run at the first rat,” said masculine wit.  “Let them stay at home and nurse babies,” cried the suburbs.  “These Nightingales will in due time become ringdoves,” sneered Punch.

With all that sort of thing we are familiar, and every age has known it.  The shifts to which the Times was driven in defence show the nature of the assaults: 

“Young,” it wrote of Florence Nightingale, “young (about the age of our Queen), graceful, feminine, rich, popular, she holds a singularly gentle and persuasive influence over all with whom she comes in contact.  Her friends and acquaintance are of all classes and persuasions, but her happiest place is at home, in the centre of a very large band of accomplished relatives, and in simplest obedience to her admiring parents.”

“About the age of our Queen,” “rich,” “feminine,” “happiest at home,” “with accomplished relatives,” and “simply obedient to her parents,” she being then thirty-five—­those were the points that the Times knew would weigh most in answer to her accusers.  With all that sort of thing, as I said, we are familiar still; but there was one additional line of abuse that has at last become obsolete.  For weeks after her arrival at Scutari, the papers rang with controversy over her religious beliefs.  She had taken Romish Sisters with her; she had been partly trained in a convent.  She was a Papist in disguise, they cried; her purpose was to clutch the dying soldier’s spirit and send it to a non-existent Purgatory, instead of to