DEEP-SEA RESEARCHES. 103 



considerations of another kind arising out of the peculiar 

 risks to his own health, his home, his University duties ; 

 but he felt himself ready to make any sacrifice for his love 

 of knovvledge for its own sake. These thoughts, blended 

 with what may be called his family-consciousness, were in 

 the background of his mind when he wrote from the Shear- 

 water* to his sister, Mary Carpenter, who, earlier in the 

 year, had been contemplating a fourth visit to India. 



To Mary Carpenter. 



Gibraltar, August 25, 187 1. 

 Your going out to India seems now little more than my 

 going out for a vacation cruise ; and it seems as clearly your 

 mission to carry on the work of female education in India, 

 as it is mine to prosecute the science of the deep sea. You 

 have found your work, as Carlyle says, and I have found mine. 

 I have been reading again, on this voyage, Carlyle's " Life of 

 John vSterling." Poor Sterling, from a combination of circum- 

 stances, never found his work, though having all the will to do 

 it. On the other hand, Coleridge had with his vast powers 

 and influence on the thought of the time, no end of work to 

 do, but had no will to do it. When Sterling had made up his 

 mind to leave the Church, Carlyle says, " What is to be done ? 

 Something must be done and soon, under penalties. Whoever 

 has received, on him there is an inexorable behest to give ! 

 Fais ton fait. Do thy little stroke of work ! This is Nature's 

 voice, and the sum of all the commandments to each man." 

 The more I see of human life and experience, the more I see 

 how true this is ; and how all individual considerations should be 

 kept in subservience to great ends, when we have a right to 

 feel assured that they are truly great and good. You, my 

 dear sister, have the happiness of feeling that your ends are 

 in the most eminent degree both great and good, as bearing 



* The Shearwater, under command of Captain (now Sir George) Nares, 

 was on its way to the Red Sea for surveying work. It had been arranged 

 that Dr. Carpenter should carry out some investigations in the Mediterranean 

 oil the way. 



