of Embly Park, Hampshire, she was born
in Florence, in the year 1823, and from this fair city she received her
patronymic. From her earliest youth she was accustomed to visit the
poor, and, as she advanced in years, she studied in the schools,
hospitals, and reformatory institutions of London, Edinburgh, and other
principal cities of England, besides making herself familiar with
similar places on the Continent. In 1851, "when all Europe," says a
recent writer, "seemed to be keeping holiday in honor of the Great
Exhibition, she took up her abode in an institution at Kaiserwerth, on
the Rhine, where Protestant sisters of mercy are trained for the
business of nursing the sick, and other offices of charity. For three
months she remained in daily and nightly attendance, accumulating the
most valuable practical experience, and then returned home to patiently
wait until an occasion should arise for its exercise. This occasion soon
arose; for, after attending various hospitals in London, the cry of
distress which, in 1854, arose from the distressed soldiery in Russia,
enlisted her warmest sympathies. Lady Mary Forester, Mrs. Sidney
Herbert, and other ladies, proposed to send nurses to the seat of war.
The government acceded to their request, and Miss Florence Nightingale,
Mrs. Bracebridge, and thirty-seven others, all experienced nurses, went
out to their assistance, and arrived at Constantinople on the 5th of
November. The whole party were soon established in the hospital at
Scutari, and there pursued their labor of love and benevolence. The good
they did, and the wonders they accomplished, are too well known to need
particular detail. "Every day," says one, writing from the military
hospital, "brought some new combination of misery to be somehow
unraveled by the power ruling in the sisters' town. Each day had its
peculiar trial to one who has taken such a load of responsibility in an
untried field, and with a staff of her own sex, all new to it. She has
frequently been known to stand twenty hours, on the arrival of fresh
detachments of sick, apportioning quarters, distributing stores,
directing the labors of her corps, assisting at the most painful
operations, where her presence might soothe or support, and spending
hours over men dying of cholera or fever. Indeed, the more awful to
every sense any particular case might be, the more certainly might her
slight form be seen bending over him, administering to his case by every
me