the holds of vessels in Balaklava Bay, which were needed for the wounded at Scutari. The medical officers were able and zealous men; the stores were provided and paid for, so far as our Government was concerned; but the stores were not brought to the medical men. These had their hands all but idle, their eyes and souls tortured by the sight of sufferings which they were unable to relieve for want of the commonest appliances of the hospital. The most extraordinary instances of blunder and confusion were constantly coming to light. Great consignments of boots ar rived, and were found to be all for the left foot. Mules for the conveyance of stores were contracted for and delivered, but delivered so that they came into the hands of the Russians, and not of us. Shameful frauds were perpetrated in the instance of some of the contracts for preserved meat. "One man's preserved meat," exclaimed Punch, with bitter humor, "is another man's poison." The evils of the hos pital disorganization were happily made a means of bringing about a new system of attending to the sick and wounded in war, which has already created something like a revolution in the manner of treating the victims of battle. Mr. Sidney Herbert, horrified at the way in which things were managed in Scutari and the Crimea, applied to a distinguished woman, who had long taken a deep interest in hospital reform, to superintend personally the nursing of the soldiers. Miss Florence Nightingale was the daughter of a wealthy English country gentleman. She had chosen not to pass her life in fashionable or æsthetic inactivity, and had from a very early period turned her attention to sanatory questions. She had studied nursing as a science and a system; and had made herself acquainted with the working of various Continental institutions; and about the time when the war broke out she was actually engaged in reorganizing the Sick Governesses' Institution in Harley Street, London. To her Mr. Sidney Herbert turned. He offered her, if she would accept the task he proposed, plenary authority over all the nurses, and an unlimited power of drawing on the Government for whatever she might think necessary to the success of the undertaking. Miss Nightingale accepted the task, and went out to Scutari, accompanied by some women of rank like her own, and a trained staff of

nurses. They speedily reduced chaos into order; and from the time of their landing in Scutari there was at least one department of the business of war which was never again a subject of complaint. The spirit of the chivalric days had been restored under better auspices for its abiding influence. Ladies of rank once more devoted themselves to the service of the wounded, and the end was come of the Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Prig type of nurse. Sidney Herbert, in his letter to Miss Nightingale, had said that her example, if she accepted the task he had proposed, would "multiply the good to all time." These words proved to have no exaggeration in them. We have never seen a war since in which women of education and of genuine devotion have not given themselves up to the task of caring for the wounded. The Geneva Convention and the bearing of the Red Cross are among the results of Florence Nightingale's work in the Crimea.

But the siege of Sebastopol was meanwhile dragging heavily along; and sometimes it was not quite certain which ought to be called the besieged-the Russians in the city or the allies encamped in sight of it. During some months the allied armies did little or nothing. The commissariat system and the land transport system had broken down. The armies were miserably weakened by sickness. Cholera was ever and anon raging anew among our men. Horses and mules were dying of cold and starvation. The roads were only deep irregular ruts filled with mud; the camp was a marsh; the tents stood often in pools of water; the men had sometimes no beds but straw dripping with wet, and hardly any bed coverings. Our unfortunate Turkish allies were in a far more wretched plight than even we ourselves. The authorities, who ought to have looked after them, were impervious to the criticisms of special correspondents, and unassailable by Parliamentary votes of censure. A condemnation of the latter kind was hanging over our Government. Lord John Russell became impressed with the conviction that the Duke of Newcastle was not strong enough for the post of War Minister, and he wrote to Lord Aberdeen urging that the War Department should be given to Lord Palmerston. Lord Aberdeen replied that although another person might have been a better choice when the appointments were made in the first instance, yet in the absence of any

proved defect or alleged incapacity there was no sufficient ground for making a kind of speculative change. Parliament was called together before Christmas; and after the Christmas recess Mr. Roebuck gave notice that he would move for a select committee to inquire into the condition of the army before Sebastopol, and into the conduct of those departments of the Government whose duty it had been to minister to the wants of the army. Lord John Russell did not believe for himself that the motion could be conscientiously resisted; but as it necessarily involved a censure upon some of his colleagues, he did not think he ought to remain longer in the ministry, and he therefore resigned his office. The sudden resignation of the leader of the House of Commons was a death-blow to any plans of resistance by which the Government might otherwise have thought of encountering Mr. Roebuck's motion. Lord Palmerston, although Lord John Russell's course was a marked tribute to his own capacity, had remonstrated warmly with Russell by letter as to his determination to resign. "You will have the appearance," he said, " of having remained in office aiding in carrying on a system of which you disapprove until driven out by Roebuck's announced notice; and the Government will have the appearance of self-condemnation by flying from a discussion which they dare not face; while, as regards the country, the action of the executive will be paralyzed for a time in a critical moment of a great war, with an impending negotiation, and we shall exhibit to the world a melancholy spectacle of disorganization among our political men at home similar to that which has prevailed among our military men abroad." The remonstrance, however, came too late, even if it could have had any effect at any time. Mr. Roebuck's motion came on, and was resisted with vigor by Lord Palmerston and Mr. Gladstone. Lord Palm

erston insisted that the responsibility ought to fall not on the Duke of Newcastle but on the whole cabinet; and with a generosity which his keenest opponents might have admitted to be characteristic of him, he accepted the task of defending an Administration whose chief blame was in the eyes of most persons that they had not given the control of the war into his hands. Mr. Gladstone declared that the inquiry sought for by the resolution could lead to nothing but

"confusion and disturbance, increased disasters, shame at home and weakness abroad; it would convey no consolation to those whom you seek to aid, but it would carry malignant joy to the hearts of the enemies of England." The House of Commons was not to be moved by any such argument or appeal. The one pervading idea was that England had been endangered and shamed by the breakdown of her army organization. When the division took place, 305 members voted for Mr. Roebuck's motion, and only 148 against. The majority against ministers was therefore 157. Every one knows what a scene usually takes place when a ministry is defeated in the House of Commons-cheering again and again renewed, counter-cheers of defiance, wild exultation, vehement indignation, a whole whirlpool of various emotions seething in that little hall in St. Stephen's. But this time there was no such outburst. The House could hardly realize the fact that the ministry of all the talents had been thus completely and ignominiously defeated. A dead silence followed the announcement of the numbers. Then there was a half-breathless murmur of amazement and incredulity. The Speaker repeated the numbers, and doubt was over. It was still uncertain how the House would express its feelings. Suddenly some one laughed. The sound gave a direction and a relief to perplexed, pent-up emotion. Shouts of laughter followed. Not merely the pledged opponents of the Government laughed; many of those who had voted with ministers found themselves laughing too. It seemed so absurd, so incongruous, this way of disposing of the great Coalition Government. Many must have thought of the night of fierce debate, little more than two years before, when Mr. Disraeli, then on the verge of his fall from power, and realizing fully the strength of the combination against him, consoled his party and himself for the imminent fatality awaiting them by the defiant words, "I know that I have to face a Coalition; the combination may be successful. A combination has before this been successful; but coalitions, though they may be successful, have always found that their triumphs have been brief. This I know, that England does not love coalitions." Only two years had passed and the great Coalition had fallen, overwhelmed with reproach and popular indignation, and amidst sudden shouts of laughter.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE CLOSE OF THE WAR.

ON February 15th, 1855, Lord Palmerston wrote to his brother: "A month ago, if any man had asked me to say what was one of the most improbable events, I should have said my being Prime-minister. Aberdeen was there; Derby was head of one great party, John Russell of the other, and yet in about ten days' time they all gave way like straws before the wind; and so here am I, writing to you from Downing Street, as First Lord of the Treasury."

No doubt Lord Palmerston was sincere in the expression of surprise which we have quoted; but there were not many other men in the country who felt in the least astonished at the turn of events by which he had become Prime-minister. Indeed, it had long become apparent to almost every one. that his assuming that place was only a question of time. The country was in that mood that it would absolutely have somebody at the head of affairs who knew his own mind and saw his way clearly before him. When the Coalition Ministry broke down, Lord Derby was invited by the Queen to form a Government. He tried, and failed. He did all in his power to accomplish the task with which the Queen had in. trusted him. He invited Lord Palmerston to join him, and it was intimated that if Palmerston consented Mr. Disraeli would waive all claim to the leadership of the House of Commons, in order that Palmerston should have that place. Lord Derby also offered, through Lord Palmerston, places in his Administration to Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Sidney Herbert. Palmerston did not see his way to join a Derby Administration, and without him Lord Derby could not go on. Queen then sent for Lord John Russell; but Russell's late and precipitate retreat from his office had discredited him with most of his former colleagues, and he found that he could not get a Government together. Lord Palmerston There was not

was then, to use his own phrase, l'inévitable.

The