OSA BONHEUR has achieved world-wide fame and pecuniary independence as one of the most skilful painters of animals; the boldness and independence of her own character inspiring her pencil, and her faithfulness to nature giving great force to her work. The whole civilized world does homage to her genius; and, during the siege of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War, the Crown Prince of Prussia gave orders that her studio and residence at Fontainebleau should be spared and respected.
Florence Nightingale, well born, highly educated, and brilliantly accomplished, gave herself to the study of hospitals, and of institutions for the diseased, helpless, and infirm. Appreciating the work of the Sisters of Charity in the Catholic Church, she felt the need of an institution which should be its counterpart in the Protestant Communion. She visited civil and military hospitals all over Europe, studied with the Sisters of Charity in Paris their system of nursing and hospital management, and went into training as a nurse in the House of the Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserwerth on the Rhine. For ten years she served an apprenticeship, preparing for the great work of her life. Her opportunity came during the war in the Crimea, when through incompetence, and utter disregard of sanitary laws, the rate of mortality in the English hospitals surpassed that of the fiercest battles. Horror and indignation were felt throughout England. Miss Nightingale offered her services to the government with a corps of trained nurses, was accepted, and went to Constantinople.
The disorder, the want—while storehouses were bursting with the needed hospital supplies—the incompetence, the uncleanliness, the suffering and death created general dismay. Unappalled by the shocking chaos, Miss Nightingale ordered the storehouses at Scutari to be broken open, when want gave place to abundance; and soon her executive skill and rare knowledge transformed the hospitals into models of order and comfort. She spared herself no labor, sometimes standing twenty hours in succession giving directions, and refusing to leave her post, even when she broke down with hospital-fever. Sadly overworked, her patience and cheerfulness were unfailing, winning the love of the roughest soldiers; and, as she walked the wards, men too weak to speak plucked her gown with feeble fingers, or kissed her shadow as it fell athwart their pillow. She expended her own vitality in this work, and returned to England an invalid for life. But not an idle invalid, for from her sick-room there have gone plans for the improvement of hospitals and the training of nurses wrought out by her busy brain and pen.
Caroline Herschel, sister of the great astronomer, was his constant helper and faithful assistant, in this character receiving a salary from the king. In addition she found time to make her own independent observations, discovering comets, remarkable nebulæ, and clusters of stars, and receiving from the Royal Society a gold medal in recognition of her work.
Charlotte Bronté’s portion in life was pain and toil and sorrow. Her experience was a long struggle with every unkindness of fate, and she lacked every advantage supposed necessary to literary work. Her force of character and undismayed persistence triumphed over all hindrances. She put heart and conscience into books that held the literary world in fascination. In them she rent the shams of society by her keen analyses. She depicted life as she had known it, shorn of every illusion, and then beautified it by unflinching loyalty to duty, and unwavering fidelity to conscience. The publication of “Jane Eyre” marked an era in the literary world not soon to be forgotten.
