NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14492, 5 October 1910, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

AN EXAMPLE TO LIVE UP. TO. Florence- Nightingale's portrait (says a London contemporary) ought to hang in every girls' school, and the story of her life should be as well known as the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Above all, it ought to be pointed out in what sense and in what measure she possessed the priceless asset that is called character. For there we have the root of all she was and of all she did. Like Jeanne d'Arc, like every splendid human spirit since the world began, she heard the voices. She felt compelled to live for something above self. She wa6 conscious of a call. But she was no ineffectual sentimentalist moved by languid aspirations. She sought out her missiprtin life, found it, and was inflexibly devoted to it thereafter. The Crimean war did not make her. Not a bit of it. .It only showed what she already was. There had been no thought in her of shining in a crisis. She was not attracted, by the limelight. She had been devoted for years to the ideal of nursing, because it was her own ideal. She had pursued it not as a fad, but as a life work. She was practical mistress of her sphere long before the war. She was a heroine of ordinary life years before Fame could sounds its trumpets. No one can command opportunity. Yet it comes to most, and' then the whole result of life will depend upon whether quiet devotion to that which lay nearest to us has made us ready for opportunity if it comes. In the same way a country can be no better in war than it has been on the whole in peace; and for individuals and nations a crisis can only show what has been the worth of their lives in ordinary times. "Thank God I have done my duty," said Nelson, with the last breath of his short life. At the end of a long one, we have reason to thank God that Florence Nightingale did hers. And she was able to do it in the memorable hour because she had been always doing it. Well for us if our generation live up to that example. Above it we cannot rice. CARLYLE LETTERS FROM NEW ZEALAND. "One would hardly expect to unearth a new series of Carlyle letters in far New Zealand," writes the New York Times. "The recent and very important publication of a long-withheld Carlyle correspondence, revealing much of the strange and unhappy union existing between Thomas Carlyle and his wife, seemed to leave little further to expect in the way of original letters from these two interesting figures in 19th century literature. It appears, however, that a Mr. Henry Larkin once acted as Carlyle's 'literary assistant,' and then emigrated, with his family, some 30 years ago, to New Zealand. With him he took the letters he had received while in Great Britain from the Carlyles, and it is these letters that have now been sent by his son, for disposal to to a literary agent in New York, Mr. Harold Paget. None of these letters have been published, and their value is enhanced' from the fact that they are all holographs. There are 68 letters and notes among them from Thomas Carlyle, 13 from Jane Welch Carlyle, and 14 from John Ruskin. Most of them were written by the Carlyles while they were travelling, and although they do not add anything of a special or novel interest to what is known of their authors, some of them are not without a certain charm." ».