But returning to the Crimean War and the Mutiny, there were not wanting even then men and women in foremost places to voice the awakening which these created, and to give it right and wise direction.

=The Queen’s Care of her Men.=

The care of the Queen for her soldiers and sailors in those early days, which she has continued with wonderful tact and tenderness throughout her long and glorious reign, was of untold advantage.  Her sympathy showed the nation where its heart should go and where its hand should help.

The send-off from the courtyard of Buckingham Palace; the review of the battle-worn heroes in the Palace itself, when she decorated them with their well-earned honours; her constant visits to the hospitals, were incidents which the nation could not forget.  In them, as in so many other ways, she awakened her people from their apathy, and by her example led them to a higher and more Christian patriotism.

=The Netley and Herbert Hospitals.=

There was also the noble man whose monument adorns the Quadrangle of the War Office, who was War Minister at the time.  But perhaps foremost of all, save the Queen herself, was the ‘Lady of the Lamp,’ who, surrendering the comfort of a refined and beautiful home, went out to the hospitals at Scutari to minister to the wounded and the fever-stricken, and found in doing so a higher comfort, a comfort which is of the soul itself.  These two—­Florence Nightingale and Sydney Herbert—­the one in guiding the Administration, the other inspiring the nation, did imperishable good.

The Herbert and the Netley Hospitals were the first embodiment of the nation’s sympathy expressed in terms of official administration—­palaces of healing, which have been rest-houses for multitudes of sick and wounded men pending their return to duty, their discharge on pension, or their passing to an early grave.

The Royal Patriotic Fund was the expression of the nation’s desire to succour the widows and orphans of the breadwinners who had fallen in the war.

=The Awakened National Conscience.=

But these efforts, noble though they were, by no means met the full necessity.  For solicitude on behalf of our soldiers and our sailors being once aroused, their daily life on board ship and in barracks soon compelled attention.  Its homelessness and monotony, its utter lack of quiet and rest, its necessary isolation from all the comforts and amenities of social life, the consequent eagerness with which the men—­wearied well-nigh to death, yet full of lusty vigorous life—­went anywhere for change, society, and excitement—­all these things broke like a revelation on the awakened conscience of the nation.  The terrible fact, to which reference has already been made, that hitherto almost the only sections of the civil community which had catered for them was the publican, the harlot, and the crimp, that they had indeed been left to the tender mercies of the wicked, still further deepened the impression.