It is not known, perhaps she could not herself tell, exactly at what period the light of the Gospel first dawned upon her heart, but a subsequent time at which her spiritual life was much deepened and intensified was very marked.  In 1849 the health of her brother broke down, and he was ordered by the physicians to spend the winter on the Continent.  Mary accompanied him.  They went first to Nice, but the climate disagreeing with them, they passed on to Florence and Pisa, and subsequently spent some time among the Waldensian valleys.  This tour was in many ways a preparation for Mary’s future life.  She took lessons in painting, which was to be the chief recreation of her later years; she attained some proficiency in Italian, which led her a few years afterwards to engage in mission work among the poor Italians in Dublin; and her visit to the Waldensian valleys gave her her first insight into evangelical work abroad.  But most important of all, she became acquainted with M. Meille, a young Waldensian pastor, and his wife, through her intercourse with whom her religious convictions became intensified and her spiritual horizon widened.  When she returned to Dublin the great Irish famine was still continuing.  The distribution of food and other efforts to relieve the distress were occupying the attention of all philanthropic persons.  Mrs. Whately had become actively engaged in this work, and she and her daughters henceforward took a more prominent part in aggressive Christian work than they had hitherto done.  Famine relief paved the way for greatly extended effort to spread Gospel knowledge among the Roman Catholic population.  Industrial and Bible schools, refuges, and other Christian institutions sprang up in various parts of the country.  Protestant missions to Roman Catholics were greatly extended.  In this work Mary Whately found opportunity for the expression of her deepened spiritual experience.  She taught in the adult classes at the Townsend Street Mission Hall joined her sisters and other ladies in founding a ragged school for boys—­the first in Ireland—­and afterwards in instituting a work among destitute girls, which issued in the Luke Street Girls’ Home where hundreds of poor girls were taught to live respectable and Christian lives.  These various forms of Christian service gave her tact and experience in dealing with the poor, which proved invaluable in her subsequent work in Egypt.  As her sister says, “The Irish Church Mission work was the preparatory training to which she always especially looked back with thankfulness.  The admirable manner of teaching and explaining Scripture employed in their schools she felt to have been the most valuable education for her subsequent life-work.” [l]

[Footnote 1:  Life of Mary L. Whately, by E.J.  Whately, p. 15.]