I go to prove my soul! I see my way as birds their trackless way. I shall arrive--what time, what circuit first, I ask not; but unless God send his hail Or blinding fire-balls, sleet, or stifling snow, In some time, his good time, I shall arrive: He guides me and the bird. In his good time. BROWNING: _Paracelsus_.
I found her in her chamber reading _Phaedon Platonis_ in Greek, and that with as much pleasure as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in Bocace.--ROGER ASCHAM.
To the tender sentiment and popular adoration that gathered around the subject of this Memoir, something perhaps was added by the beauty of a name which linked together the City of the Flowers and the music of the birds. Her surname suggested to Longfellow the title of the poem which has carried home to the hearts of thousands in two continents a lesson of her life. The popularity of "Florence"--in the Middle Ages a masculine name--as a Christian name for English girls is noted by the historian of that subject as due to association with the heroine of the Crimea.
Both of her names were the result of circumstance. Her father came of the old Derbyshire family of Shore of Tapton, and changed his name in 1815 from William Edward Shore to William Edward Nightingale on succeeding to the property of his mother's uncle, Peter Nightingale of Lea, in the same county. Mr. William Nightingale was fond of travel, and the close of the French war, shortly before his marriage (1818), had thrown the Continent open to the grand tour. Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale's only children, two daughters, were born during a sojourn in Italy. The elder was born at Naples in 1819, and was named, firstly, Frances, after her mother, and, secondly, after the old Greek settlement on the site of her birthplace, Parthenope. She afterwards became the second wife of Sir Harry Verney.[4] The younger daughter, the subject of this Memoir, was also named after her birthplace. She was born at Florence on May 12, 1820, in the Villa Colombaia, near the Porta Romana, as a memorial-tablet now affixed to the house records; and there on the 4th of July she was baptized by Dr. Trevor, Prebendary of Chester. The place-names became in familiar intercourse "Parthe" or "Pop," and "Flo."