there is no hope of its being completed. He has just resigned his professorship, and is about to start with his young wife on an almost hopeless voyage. This morning I said good-bye to them—I fear for the last time. It is difficult not to despair, and ask what good there is in living when this is all. When death comes and all is over, every other sorrow seems nothing in comparison.'

1

But 'Is this all?' was the thought born of the great yearning tenderness, the unutterable longing. While yet the first struggle had but just begun in her mind, again the question is brought home to her in solemn warning. Another life, full of promise, like that of her Master' engaged in scientific research, personally known to her, young, eager, busy, is in an instant cut short, and again Ellen finds herself confronted with the problem which she appeals in vain to reason to solve. For months the struggle continued, and then one Sunday morning, when she was walking by the sea-shore, some faint glimmering of the true light dawned upon her mind. It is best to describe this in her own words, for they are aptly chosen :

'Such thoughts as I have of God I have gained only of late, and they would look very thin and bare if I tried to write them down. On Sunday morning my father and I walked a long way by the shore, and part of the time I was alone. Is there not something appalling in the lonely expanse of sea, and its deep sound, which seems to wrap one round and shut off everything else? Human affairs seem far off; our thoughts become vague, and all we think of unreal as in a dream. I wonder if you have felt this, and if the sense of loneliness and solemnity of being apart from the world-has the effect on you too of making you question the aim and good of your life? To me, under this influence, anything short of the highest effort and the greatest results, or else the most enduring and strong affection, seems poor and unsatisfying; and since these fall to the lot of the very few I begin to despair; unless after all there may be a secret which would make life worth having, and that is the close presence of a Divine Teacher and Friend, who listens to our silent prayers and fills us with all the strength and love we need.' 2

There was no hypocrisy in the character of Ellen Watson. She never feigned to be other than she was, or concealed the very gradual process of her mind towards the truth. Only sometimes I hope and believe,' she writes later (p. 81) to the same correspondent; she adds, 'my creed is only "I believe in the love of God" and even this I apprehend but dimly (ibid.); and again, 'The faith of which I told you is such a faint gleam that I am not sure whether you would think it 2 Ibid. p. 75.

1 Ibid. p. 58.

deserved the name. Now that you have taught me to pray, it has seemed to become a part of life itself.' (P. 87.) Meanwhile her physical health was giving her family and friends the gravest cause for anxiety. Bournemouth, where she had again been ordered in the hope of arresting the progress of the disease in her lungs, had failed. It was essential that she should leave England before the winter began-the choice lay between the South of France and South Africa. She chose the latter, on the ground that in a rising colony there must be a field for good and useful work in the education and training of the children of the colonists. It was not likely that a mind such as hers would be content with individual success. She longed to apply its well-trained powers to some more definite, some more lasting result than the fading laurels procured by her triumphs in competitive examination. Such a sphere as she desired was opened to her through the good offices of a friend, Mr. Cecil Buckland, of Uitenhage. By his means she was appointed on the staff of teachers in the Diocesan School, Graham's Town, under the direction of Canon and Mrs. Espin, who presided over the school. The school professed to provide what is called the higher instruction for the daughters of colonists, and upon Ellen Watson would devolve the task of teaching mathematics and natural science. Her new course of life being thus distinctly marked out, it was decided that she should leave England for South Africa in October 1879. Her elder brother, William, whose health was in a measure affected like her own, accompanied her.

'It is decided,' Ellen writes, 'for my brother Willie and myself to go to Cape Colony this autumn. He will settle there probably. How long I shall stay is quite uncertain. Two years is the longest time I think of at present. They are sending me in the hope of curing me permanently. If I hope at all about it, I think I should wish to get quite strong and full of life, or else not to live any longer. It is not that life is burdensome on account of my ill health; on the contrary, I am busy from morning till night, and have not as yet been checked in anything I care to do. But now I want to do much more; no longer, as in the old days, any purely intellectual work, but some great work for men in which, while I sacrifice everything else, I may be face to face with others who are toiling and suffering, and to whom I may give sympathy.'

2

1 In July 1879 Ellen Watson added one more to the brilliant successes already achieved. After only two months' special preparation she passed the first B.Sc. Examination, at London University, in the First Division.

2 Record of Ellen Watson, p. 80.

Her last months in England she spent at her beloved home at Caversham. To distract her mind from the impending separation from those she loved, and to whom she had consistently endeared herself by her life of pure unselfishness, she occupied herself in preparing a series of papers on the lives of great men, which she thought might be afterwards of use to her in her school lectures at Graham's Town. Thus sustained by the high sense of work for others, consoled by the prospect of regaining health and strength, with many a fond wish, many an earnest prayer and blessing to speed her on her way, she thought she had nerved herself to endure the anguish of parting; but alas! she had not realized how bitter that moment would be. For the sake of others she bore up heroically till she found herself alone on board the ship. I was strong until-until we had embarked, and then, O God! the suffering was terrible.'1

Yes! in her agony she had learnt to call upon God. The severing of those earthly ties which had hitherto filled her heart, the fears for the safety of those she loved, which would arise in her own anxious heart, the sense of her own utter loneliness-by these sharp bitter lessons she was taught to pray. The unselfishness of her nature led her to pray first for others. You will be surprised, I know, to hear,' she writes to every one of her intimate friends, 'that I pray for you daily' (p. 93), and then at last she prayed for herself. From this time there is no longer any doubt as to her faith in God, which is declared with heartfelt conviction: 'I believe in God because I have felt the Divine Presence.' (P. 96.)

On November 2 she landed at Cape Town. Her reputation had preceded her, and already it was a question of choice as to her life and future work. It lay between the head-teachership of S. Cyprian's at Cape Town, and the appointment already offered her in the Diocesan School at Graham's Town, the best school in the Eastern Province. The climate decided her in favour of Graham's Town. Pending her decision she resided with Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Buckland at Uitenhage.

'Here we had the warmest welcome,' she writes, 'and are very happy. The Bucklands are all delightful, and it is the prettiest place I have ever lived at, in its own way. . . . Uitenhage lies in a valley, and there are hills all round-some of them mountains. The days are spent in this way. Every one rises early, because Mr. Buckland has often to take the quarter to eight train to Port Elizabeth; but we breakfast at different times in batches, which is a charm

Ibid. p. 92.

ing plan, I think. Then the children all go to the Public High School here, except Anna (the eldest), Beatrice, and baby (the two youngest). Mrs. Buckland is busy in the house all the morning, and baby requires nursing, so I can help her in both these ways, which I like doing very much.' 1

This bright little picture of Ellen's first Christmas (1879) at Uitenhage is given in all its details, because here she spent all her vacations, and it will be no surprise to the reader to learn that she became as great a favourite in the land of her adoption as she had been in her own home. Here as there, she consistently put aside all thought of herself, she never suffered her intellectual acquirements to stand in the way of her love of active household duties, while they gave a value to these lesser offices, and made her impatient of anything like imperfection in their fulfilment.

Meanwhile, her work in Graham's Town fills her with deep and increasing interest. Eighty scholars afforded a full and wide field for her energies. Not content with the regular work during school hours, she plans evening classes for those who have left school, so as to form a kind of literary society where there might be opportunities for discussions and for papers to be read on social topics 'so as to awaken their intelligence, and create higher interests.' Under such promising auspices the New Year (1880) opened for her, and saw her fairly embarked in the regular work she so thoroughly understood, and which was to her a source of inexhaustible interest. Towards the end of February a Confirmation was announced for the Holy Week, and Ellen gave proof of the sincerity of her newly-awakened conviction by sending in her name as a candidate. It was on her part a purely voluntary act, for having been baptized and educated among Nonconformists, she had never been brought up to consider it as either a duty or a privilege to be Confirmed. It was, moreover, a step that required some courage on her part. By her friends at home, on the one hand, it was almost certain to meet with disapproval; while her pupils at the school, on the other hand, would wonder why she had not been confirmed at an earlier age; but her motives were too strong to be turned aside by either of these considerations. She wished to give proof of her faith, by becoming a member of the outward and visible Church. The Church of England, by her services, her general teaching, her system of government, seemed to her to fulfil in every point the idea she had formed, since her arrival at

1 Record of Ellen Watson, p. III.

the Cape, of what that Church should be; and besides this there was yet a stronger reason: she knew that Confirmation gave her admission to Holy Communion. I know I lose a great deal,' she writes, 'by being shut out from the Sacraments of the Church. I am sure the Holy Communion would help me very much' (p. 125). Whatever doubts and perplexities still remained in her mind, she felt no longer any doubt or uncertainty as to the necessity of the spiritual relation between Christ and the soul: I am convinced,' she writes, 'that the one thing to be sought after most earnestly is a holy life, growing more and more in union with God, through utter submission and continual reliance' (p. 130). After her Confirmation she never failed to avail herself of the divinely appointed means for maintaining this union by diligent attendance at the celebrations in the Chapel of S. Andrew's College. Many fragments of letters and writings testify to the deepening and strengthening of her spiritual conviction at this period of her life, while she steadily and conscientiously fulfilled the duties of her self-chosen calling. Her work at the school was supposed to fill three hours in the day, but she was always ready to add to these labours by taking classes for Canon and Mrs. Espin if, by so doing, she could serve them and make some return for their great kindness to her.

It was during the second term (July 1880) of her work in the Diocesan School that the idea of literary occupation presented itself to her active mind, and she thought of employing her leisure hours in preparing papers, either for magazine articles or for a volume of essays.

For this class of writing her style was unpractised and wanting in finish. She was therefore advised to begin by writing down her thoughts on different subjects, just as they occurred to her, with a view of arranging them afterwards in essays. There was to be no afterwards' for her in this life, and therefore the fragments of her work which remain to us are not to be looked upon as specimens of literary skill, but merely as the reflection of thoughts of no common originality and power, crude as to their arrangement, but fruitful in suggestion, rich in the future promise of a combination in which her literary talent would rise to the level of her scientific acquirements.

Among her fragmentary papers the most remarkable appear to be: (1) Reflections on Socialism, in which she to some extent anticipates, by four years, the opinions contained in the exhaustive treatise Di un Socialismo Cristiano,