Mr. Osborne thus describes the interior of one of the corridors in the Barrack Hospital, a week after the battle of Inkermann: —
" Looking from the angle of one of these extensive passages, so as to command a view right and left, there was a narrow path each way as far as the eye could reach, through a double line of low wooden trestles, with planks laid upon them; on these were the beds of the patients. Here and there would be a small group of surgeons in consultation on some serious case; in smaller and more frequent groups, other surgeons with their attendant orderlies dressing wounds; wounded officers would sometimes come out a' little way from their wards and be seen talking to some of the men; small congregations of convalescent officers and others would occasionally pass out of one of the side-wards, the chaplains', where they had been attending one of the frequent daily services.
" Wlien it is remembered that the narrow path between the beds was the one thoroughfare of the place, it may be easily conceived that there were few moments during the day in which there were not many passing and repassing. This was a great inconvenience, but one unavoidable from the nature of the building. The whole surgical and other staff, all the orderlies, every officer from the wards, their servants, every one with business to transact with any of the above — all had to find their way through the double line of patients. There was therefore not the slightest privacy, and until night, over a great extent of the building, little quiet.
" Here, again, it was wonderful how in a few days one's every sense seemed to adapt itself to the scene; the picture of war's work, hateful as it was, was on so large a scale, that in its very magnitude the greater part of the horrors of its details was lost. Had you taken any twenty yards of a ward, and given your undivided attention to all it set before you, there was scarce one sense or feeling which would not have been touched most deeply; but when it came to be each day a walk of miles of such hateful scenes, I am sorry to say one became but too hardened to them; the very abuses of the place, involving such a mass, seemed somehow to be less hateful than when, by any chance, they came before you in the case of some few individuals.
" How strange it is to know that all this vast collection of our emaciated and maimed fellow - creatures had been brought to this condition as it were of deliberate purpose; that possible exposure to pestilence and privation had been a part of a deliberate compact with those so many of whom it was thus to destroy; that these masses of men, on whom the sabre, the rifle, the shell, the bayonet, had worked such mutilation, had been trained to do just that same work on others, and had bravely done it."
This description of a corridor will apply, making proper allowances for differences of detail, to the ward which is the subject of this drawing. One figure which the artist has introduced into it will be recognised with feelings of unutterable admiration and respect by many now in England, who beheld the original engaged in her brave and devoted labour of love.
They will recall her as they saw her in the days gone by, when her presence cheered the bed of pain and sickness, and made its light penetrate even the thick darkness of the valley of the shadow of death; when men, wasted by disease and fevered with wounds, watched for her gentle ministrations and her words of consolation, even as they who watch for the morning; when she walked in the beauty of the holiest charity and love
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through scenes of horror and of anguish which thrilled hearts for which battle had no terrors, and when the rough soldier in his untaught but noble chivalry kissed her shadow on the wall as she passed along. Long may England possess such daughters to tend such sons!