ot to mention
our army and navy, which in years past have swallowed up so many.
Surely, ministering women would be a blessing to the widows and orphans
of our gallant soldiers and sailors. There are numbers of daughters in
large families kept in conventual bondage by a father or brother or
their own timidity. Daughters, sisters, widows, we appeal to you! Are
there not some few among you with courage to lead where multitudes would
follow--some to whom a kind Providence has given liberty of action? It
is far from our intention to excite rebellion in families, or tempt away
from the manifest calls of duty; but can not some one begin what others
will continue? And we must not be indefinite: begin what? continue what?
A system which, in this Protestant land, would give to the poor outcast,
the little criminal, the child of the State, a mother as well as a
father; that would give to the wretched of all ages a sister as well as
a brother.

Alluding to Florence Nightingale, Mrs. Jameson says: "No doubt but it
will be through the patience, faith, and wisdom of men and women working
together. In an undertaking so wholly new to our English customs, so
much at variance with the usual education given to women in this
country, we shall meet with perplexities, difficulties--even failures.
All the ladies who have gone to Scutari may not turn out heroines. There
may be vain babblings and scribblings and indiscretions, such as may put
weapons into adverse hands. The inferior and paid nurses may, some of
them, have carried to Scutari bad habits, arising from imperfect
training. Still, let us trust that a principle will be recognized in the
country which will not be again lost sight of. It will be the true, the
lasting glory of Florence Nightingale and her band of devoted assistants
that they have broken through what Goethe calls a Chinese wall of
prejudices--prejudices religious, social, professional--and established
a precedent which will, indeed, multiply the good to all time. No doubt
there are hundreds of women who would now gladly seize the privileges
held out to them by such an example, and crowd to offer their services;
but would they pay the price of such dear and high privileges? Would
they fit themselves duly for the performance of such services, and earn
by distasteful, and even painful studies, the necessary certificates for
skill and capacity? Would they, like Miss Nightingale, go through a
seven years' probation, to try at o