id one of the enemy who was near her
after a battle, and he meant it for the most delicate praise. In a few
months she changed the face of her country, revived the hope, inspired
the courage, rekindled the belief, re-established the unity, staggered
the invader with a blow in the heart, and crowned her king as the symbol
of national glory. Within a few months she had set France upon the
assured road to future greatness. Little over twenty years after they
burnt her there was hardly a trace of foreign foot upon French soil.

It was all quite natural, of course. The theologians who condemned her
to death, and those who have now raised her to Beatitude, were concerned
with the authenticity of her miracles, and there is nothing miraculous
in thus raising a nation from the dead. Considering the difficulty of
their task, we may forgive the clergy some apparent inconsistency in
their treatment. But for myself, as a mere layman, I should be content
to call any human being Blessed for the natural magic of such a history;
and compared with that deed of hers, I would not turn my head to witness
the most astonishing miracle ever performed in all the records of the
saints.

XXV

THE HEROINE

It is strange to think that up to August of 1910, a woman was alive who
had won the highest fame many years before most people now living were
born. To remember her is like turning the pages of an illustrated
newspaper half-a-century old. Again we see the men with long and pointed
whiskers, the women with ballooning skirts, bag nets for the hair, and
little bonnets or porkpie hats, a feather raking fore and aft. Those
were the years when Gladstone was still a subordinate statesman, earning
credit for finance, Dickens was writing _Hard Times_, Carlyle was
beginning his _Frederick_, Ruskin was at work on _Modern Painters_,
Browning composing his _Men and Women_, Thackeray publishing _The
Newcomes_, George Eliot wondering whether she was capable of
imagination. It all seems very long ago since that October night when
that woman sailed for Boulogne with her thirty-eight chosen nurses on
the way to Scutari. I suppose that never in the world's history has the
change in thought and manners been so rapid and far-reaching as in the
two generations that have arisen in our country since that night. And it
is certain that Florence Nightingale, when she embarked without fuss in
the packet, was quite unconscious how much she was contributing to so