He was religious, deeply religious. 'I
am more and more convinced every day,' he wrote, when he had been
for some years a Cabinet Minister, 'that in politics, as in
everything else, nothing can be right which is not in accordance
with the spirit of the Gospel.' No one was more unselfish; he was
charitable and benevolent to a remarkable degree; and he devoted
the whole of his life, with an unwavering conscientiousness, to
the public service. With such a character, with such
opportunities, what high hopes must have danced before him, what
radiant visions of accomplished duties, of ever-increasing
usefulness, of beneficent power, of the consciousness of
disinterested success! Some of those hopes and visions were,
indeed, realised; but, in the end, the career of Sidney Herbert
seemed to show that, with all their generosity, there was some
gift or other-- what was it?--some essential gift--which the good
fairies had withheld, and that even the qualities of a perfect
English gentleman may be no safeguard against anguish,
humiliation, and defeat.
That career would certainly have been very different if he had
never known Miss Nightingale. The alliance between them which had
begun with her appointment to Scutari, which had grown closer and
closer while the war lasted, developed, after her return, into
one of the most extraordinary friendships.
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