(_Miss Nightingale to Sir John Lawrence._) 32 SOUTH STREET, _Sept._ 26 [1864]. MY DEAR SIR JOHN LAWRENCE--I always feel it a kind of presumption in me to write to you--and a kind of wonder at your permitting it. I always feel that you are the greatest figure in history, and yours the greatest work in history, in modern times. But that is my very reason. We have but one Sir John Lawrence. Your Bengal Sanitary Commission is doing its work, like men--like martyrs, in fact,--and what a work it is! All we have in Europe is mere child's play to it. Health is the product of civilization, _i.e._ of real civilization. In Europe we have a kind of civilization to proceed upon. In India your work represents, not only diminished Mortality as with us, but increase of energy, increase of power of the populations. I always feel, as if God had said: mankind is to create mankind. In this sense you are the greatest creator of mankind in modern history.... Would there be any impropriety in your Sanitary Commissions sending copies of their printed Minutes to the Barrack and Hospital Improvement Commission here, through the India Office--merely for information? As far as your Bengal Commission goes: these men don't want urging: they have not now to be taught. Anything which might even appear to interfere with the responsibilities of your Commissions, unless at their own request, is not only undesirable: but, as far as the Bengal Comm^n. is concerned, useless. But, if you saw no objection to sending the Minutes for information to the War Office Commission here, I am sure they would very much like it. Or, if that would be too formal and official (as regards the India Office here), if they, the Minutes, might be sent to me, with permission to shew them to one or two, such as Lord Stanley (our late Chairman of the Royal Commission), Dr. Sutherland, and Capt. Galton, of the War Office, &c., it would answer the same purpose. The India Office here does not shew _now_ the least jealousy of the Barrack and Hosp^l. (War Office) Commission. On the contrary, one can scarcely help smiling at the small things it is glad to throw off its responsibility for upon said Commission.