A Record of Ellen Watson. Arranged and edited by Anna
Buck-
fitness for future work, must be a picture rather than a story ; and as she
also says that material is wanting for rendering that picture artistic, we are not sere that she was wise in trying to paint it at all. Still,
the book has a moral of its own as the story of one who, having a quick insight and power of understanding at an age when most children are mere babies, showed, even then, a keen sense of the duty that devolved upon her as elder sister, while later in life she never suffered it to merge into care for her own intellectual advance- ment. When just twenty, Ellen found that it was no longer possible for her to continue the study of physics without guidanoe ; and having obtained the kindest possible response from Professor Carey- Foster, of University College, to whom she applied for assistance, she, after having followed for some months the home course prescribed by him, went up to London to work in the physical laboratory at University College, being the first woman who obtained per. mission to attend the senior classes of physics and mathematics in that institution. Professor Clifford, who was at that time con- ducting the latter, formed a high opinion of her mathematical ability, and consequently took a deep interest in her pro- gress; and, although in the examination of June, 1877, when she came out as the first mathematical student of the year, gaining the Mayer de Rothschild Exhibition, he took especial pains to give her no advantage whatever, he was obliged to admit that her proficiency would have been very rare in a man, and that he had been totally unprepared to find so high a degree of it in a woman. To Professor Clifford Ellen Watson looked up with affectionate reverence, and was in the habit of speaking of him as "the dear master." It is not, then, to be wondered at that when death brought his brilliant career to a premature close, she should start back from the idea of this being really the end of existence; for up to this period she had been an unbeliever. "I do not need religion," she used to say ; "science thoroughly satisfies me." Now, however, when she saw the lives of one after another of her scientific friends cut off, she began at least to wish for faith, but thought it an impossibility—a poetic dream. Yet a few months later she began to awake from what her biographer truly calls a sleep of the intellect, and had at first thoughts of God, which she says in one of her letters "would look very thin and bare if I tried to write them down." Again, she speaks of her faith as "such a faint gleam, that I am not sure whether you would think it deserved the name." Once accepted, Christianity was to her no dead-letter ; she wanted to carry it out in all its bearings ; she declares with Savonarola that renunciation is the only perfect way ; and the desire seems to have been strong within her to show that Christianity was no worn-out creed born of past ignorance, but a truth that could bear all the light that could be cast upon it by the most ex- tended knowledge. Her time, however, was too short to do more than show to her friends in South Africa the value and the beauty of a character such as hers. She threw herself heartily into the work at Graham's Town ; and after remaining there little more than a year, was about, for the sake of her health, to remove to Bloemfontein, when she was attacked with violent hascaorrhage, and rapidly sank. Thus ended her short life of twenty-four years.
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