[18] William Adams Smith, an unmarried brother of Mrs. Nightingale.
The Nightingales had as many friends without as within the family circle. Their two homes brought them in touch with county society alike in Derbyshire and in Hampshire, and acquaintanceships made in London were often ripened in the country, or _vice versa_. In Derbyshire their friends included the Strutts, and Richard Monckton Milnes, who afterwards took a cordial interest in the Nightingale Fund. In London, Florence and her sister went out a great deal, and saw all that was interesting to well-educated young persons. A letter from Florence to one of her aunts shows her occupied in politics, in literature, in astronomy, with something, perhaps, of the note of a blue; yet with her mind already set on a purpose in life:--
(_Miss F. Nightingale to Miss Julia Smith._) _June_ 20 [1843]. A cold east wind, _forty_-one days of rain in the last month! as our newspaper informs us to prove that '43 is worse than any preceding year. _Du reste_, the world very pleasant--people looking up in the prospect of Peel's giving them free trade and all radical measures in the course of one or two years. Carlyle's new _Past and Present_, a beautiful book. There are bits about "Work," which how I should like to read with you! "Blessed is he who has found his work: let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose: he has found it and will follow it...." Sir J. Graham is going to be obliged to give up his Factories Education Bill for this year; O ye bigoted Dissenters! but I am going to hold my tongue and not "meddle with politics" or "talk about things which I don't understand," for I tremble already in anticipation, and proceed at once to facts.... The two things we have done in London this year--the most striking things--are seeing Bouffé in Clermont, the blind painter (you have seen him, so I need not descant on his entire difference from anybody else); and going under Mr. Bethune to Sir James South's at Kensington,[19] where we were from ten o'clock till three the next morning. Mr. Bethune is certainly the most good-natured man in ancient or modern history. You will fancy the first going out upon the lawn on that most beautiful of nights, with the immense fellow slung in his frame like a great steam-engine, and working as easily; and the mountains of the moon striking out like bright points in the sky, and the little stars resolving themselves into double and even quadruple stars.... Those dialogues of Galileo are so beautiful. Mr. Bethune lent them us to read in the real old _first_ edition.