ay hope it will
continue so to multiply it "to all time." The horrors of war have
been mitigated to an incalculable extent by the exertions of the
noble men and women who, following in the path first trodden by the
Crimean heroines, formed the Geneva Convention, and have borne the
Red Cross, its most sacred badge, on many a bloody field, in many a
scene of terrible suffering--suffering touched with gleams of human
pity and human gratitude; for the courageous tenderness of many a
soft-handed and lion-hearted nursing sister, since the days of
Florence Nightingale, has aroused the same half-adoring thankfulness
which made helpless soldiers turn to kiss that lady's shadow, thrown
by her lamp on the hospital wall.

The horrors thus mitigated have become more than ever repugnant to
the educated perception of Christendom, because of the merciful
devotion which, ever toiling to lessen them, keeps them before the
world's eye. In every great war that has shaken the civilised world
since the strife in the Crimea broke out, the ambulance, its
patients, its attendants, have always been in the foreground of the
picture. Never have the inseparable miseries of warfare been so well
understood and so widely realised, thanks in part to that new
literary force of the Victorian age, the _war correspondent_, and
chiefly, perhaps, to the new position henceforth assumed by the
military medical and hospital service. To the same source we may
fairly attribute the great improvements wrought in the whole conduct
of that distinctively Christian charity, unknown to heathenism, the
hospital system: the opening of a new field of usefulness to educated
and devoted women of good position, as nurses in hospitals and out;
and the vast increase of public interest in and public support of
such agencies. Even the Female Medical Mission, now rising into such
importance in the jealous lands of the East, may be traced not very
indirectly to the same cause.

The Queen, whose enthusiasm for her beloved army and navy was very
earnest, and frankly shown, who had suffered with their sufferings
and exulted in their exploits, followed with a keen, personal,
unfaltering interest the efforts made for their relief. "Tell these
poor, noble wounded and sick men that _no one_ takes a warmer
interest, or feels more for their sufferings, or admires their
courage and heroism more than their Queen. So does the Prince," was
the impulsive, heart-warm message which Her Majest