I cannot at all realise the idea of our return. We have been leading such a semi-savage life for years past, such a wandering nomadic existence, that any other seems in a manner unnatural to me. Time was when I should have looked upon our return with unmixed joy; but so many new and strong ties have arisen to unite me with Sydney, that now when the anchor is getting up for England, I scarcely know whether to rejoice or to grieve. You must not be angry, my dear Mother; I have none the less affection for you or any other of those whom I love in England--only a very great deal for a certain little lassie whom I must leave behind me without clearly seeing when we are to meet again. You must remember the Scripture as my excuse, "A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his" (I wish I could add) wife. Our long cruises are fine times for reflection, and during the last I determined that we would be terribly prudent and get married about 1870, or the Greek Kalends, or, what is about the same thing, whenever I am afflicted with the malheur de richesses. People talk about the satisfaction of an approving conscience. Mine approves me intensely; but I'll be hanged if I see the satisfaction of it. I feel much more inclined to swear "worse than our armies in Flanders."...So far as my private doings are concerned, I hear very satisfactory news of them. I heard from an old messmate of mine at Haslar the other day that Dr. MacWilliam, F.R.S., one of our deputy-inspectors, had been talking about one of my papers, and gave him to understand that it was to be printed. Furthermore, he is a great advocate for the claims of assistant surgeons to ward-room rank, and all that sort of stuff, and, I am told, quoted me as an example! Henceforward I look upon the learned doctor as a man of sound sense and discrimination! Without joking, however, I am glad to have come under his notice, as he may be of essential use to me. I find myself getting horribly selfish, looking at everything with regard to the influence it may have on my grand objects. [Further descriptions of the voyage are to be drawn from an article in the "Westminster Review" for January 1854 (volume 5), in which, under the title of "Science at Sea," Huxley reviewed the "Voyage of the 'Rattlesnake'" by Macgillivray, the naturalist to the expedition, which had recently appeared. This book gave very few descriptions of the incidents and life on board, and so drew in many ways a colourless picture of the expedition. This defect the reviewer sought to remedy by giving extracts from the so-called "unpublished correspondence" of one of the officers--sketches apparently written for the occasion--as well as from an equally unpublished but more real journal kept by the same hand.