FAMILY AFFECTION 157 



wherever he and you all live, should circumstances favour 

 my living at home on my return, there I shall be happy to 

 find you, though now no spot is dearer to me than Invereck ; 

 two sketches of it hang in my cabin. 



The best anodyne, however, was hard work and busy occu- 

 pation : so that he writes to his father on September 7th: 



Still I have been very happy here, and never before could 

 I have so deeply felt how much the study of our mutual 

 pursuit tends to alleviate our distress. 



The uncertainty made him ' afraid to mention names of 

 those so far off and in such precarious health.' But warned 

 of Mary's decline, and eagerly following the successive hopes 

 and fears for so dear a life, he schooled himself to meet the 

 inevitable, and the pathetic accounts of the child's last 

 months found him prepared as much as might be to accept 

 his own irremediable loss with the resignation to the will of 

 an inscrutable Providence that was an integral part of his 

 parents' faith. Still, resignation involved a sharp struggle 

 with feeling, and as he drew near the Falklands after the second 

 voyage to the ice, he wrote to his father (April 5, 1842 ; the 

 words are quoted from a copy only) : 



Much as I long for tidings of you all, I cannot but feel 

 sure that they must be woeful ; and to own the truth, one 

 of my reasons for beginning this letter before we cast anchor 

 is that I may be able to communicate to you some of the 

 cheerfulness I now feel, and that my letter shall not be 

 tinged with that sorrow and moroseness which I fear may 

 have characterised some of my former epistles : these were 

 written on the spur of the moment, when to my shame 

 present griefs obliterated the recollection of past mercies, 

 and whilst pining over what had occurred, I had forgotten 

 how much I of all others had to be thankful for, and how 

 little it was my duty to trouble you with such complaints. 

 Whatever the tidings may prove to be, I have too long 

 suffered from hope delayed and been kindly by you all too 

 well prepared, ever to feel again the poignant anguish with 

 which I received the first letters that awaited me at Van 

 Diemen's Land. 



