the health of the
people, and it is entirely owing to her influence and example that
speedy reforms were carried out, especially in the army.

Her noble work was celebrated by Longfellow, in his poem "Santa
Filomena," often better known as "The Lady with the Lamp":

Thus thought I, as by night I read
Of the great army of the dead,
The trenches cold and damp,
The starved and frozen camp,

The wounded from the battle-plain,
In dreary hospitals of pain,
The cheerless corridors,
The cold and stony floors.

Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.

And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls
Upon the darkening walls.

The Queen followed the course of the war with painful interest. "This
is a terrible season of mourning and sorrow," she wrote; "how many
mothers, wives, sisters, and children are bereaved at this moment.
Alas! It is that awful accompaniment of war, disease, which is
so much more to be dreaded than the fighting itself." And again, after
a visit to Chatham: "Four hundred and fifty of my dear, brave, noble
heroes I saw, and, thank God, upon the whole, all in a very
satisfactory state of recovery. Such patience and resignation,
courage, and anxiety to return to their service. Such fine men!"

Many acts had been passed in previous reigns to improve the
disgraceful state of the prisons in this country, but it was left
to a band of workers, mostly Quakers, led by Elizabeth Fry, to bring
about any real improvement. Any one who wishes to read what dens of
filth and hotbeds of infection prisons were at this time need only
read the account of the Fleet prison in the _Pickwick Papers_ and
of the Marshalsea in _Little Dorrit_.

Reform proved at first to be a very slow and difficult matter. New
laws passed in 1823 and 1824 insisted upon cleanliness and regular
labour for all prisoners; chaplains and matrons for female prisoners
were appointed. The public, however, got the idea--as in the case
of workhouses--that things were being made too comfortable for the
inmates, and the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline
was bitterly attacked.

Mrs Fry had started work in Newgate Prison, then justly considered
to be the worst of all the bad prisons in the country. The condition
of the w