372 WORKMEN AND HEROES rium in Harley Street for gentlewomen of limited means. Into the saving of this valuable institution Miss Nightingale threw all her energy, and for two or three years, hidden away from the outside world, she was working day and night for her poor suffering ladies, until at length she was able to feel that the Sana- torium was not only in good health, but on the high road to permanent success. Florence Nightingale's own health, however, gave way under the long-con- tinued strain of anxiety and fatigue ; she was obliged to leave the invalids foi whom she had done so much, and go home for the rest and change she so sorely needed. Now, while Miss Nightingale had been quietly getting " Harley Street" into working order, the gravest and most terrible changes had taken place in the affairs of the nation, and not only in those of England, but in those of the whole of Eu- rope. In 185 1, when the first Great Exhibition was opened, all was peace the long peace of forty years was still unbroken people said it never was to be broken again, and that wars and rumors of wars had come to an end. So much for human foreknowledge. By the autumn of 1854, the horrors of the Crimean war had reached their climax. The Times was full, day by day, of the most thrilling and appalling descriptions of the hideous sufferings of our brave men sufferings caused quite as much by the utter breakdown of the sanitary adminis- tration as by even the deadly battles and trenchwork ; while every post was bringing agonizing private letters appealing for help. Men were wounded in the Crimea, the hospitals were far off at Scutari, the wide and stormy Black Sea had to be crossed to reach them ; the stores of food, clothing, and medicine that might have saved many a life were at Varna, or lost in the Black Prince ; the state of the great Barrack Hospital at Scutari was inde- scribably horrible ; everybody was frantic to rush to the relief ; no one knew what best to do ; public feeling was at fever-heat. How could it be otherwise when William Howard Russell, the Times correspondent, was constantly writing such true but heartrending letters as this : ' The commonest accessories of a hospital are wanting ; there is not the least attention paid to decency or cleanliness ; the stench is appalling ; the fetid air " can barely struggle out to taint the atmosphere, save through the chinks in the walls and roofs ; and for all I can observe, these men die without the least effort being made to save them. Here they lie, just as they were let gently down on the ground by the poor fellows, their comrades, who brought them on their backs from the camp with the greatest tenderness, but who are not allowed to remain with them. The sick appear to be tended by the sick, and the dying by the dying." Miss Nightingale, who was then recovering from her Harley Street nursing, deeply felt the intensity of the crisis that was moving the whole nation ; but, whereas the panic had driven most of the kind people who were so eager to help the army, nearly " off their heads," it only made hers the cooler and clearer. She wrote, offering her services to Mr. Sidney Herbert, afterward Lord Herbert, the minister for war, who, together with his wife, had long known her, and had rec- ognized her wonderful organizing faculties, and her great practical experience.
