things than a beautiful chapel at present, when in fact I barely pay my way at all.  And yet a really noble church is a wonderful instrument of education, if we think only of the lower way of regarding it.  Well, you have a grand church, and it is pleasant to think of dear dear Father having laid the stone, and of Cousin George.  What would he say now to Convocation and Synods, and the rapid progress of the organisation of the Church?

’I think that what you say, Fan, about my overvaluing the world’s opinion is very true.  Self-consciousness and a very foolish sinful vanity always have been and are great sources of trial to me.  How often I have longed for that simplicity and truthfulness of character that we saw so beautifully exemplified in our dear Father!  How often I think that it is very good for me that I am so wanting in all personal gifts!  I should be intolerable!  I tell you this, not to foster such feelings by talking of them, but because we wish to know and be known to each other as we are.  It is a very easy thing to be a popular preacher here, perhaps anywhere.  You know that I never write a really good sermon, but I carry off platitudes with a sort of earnest delivery, tolerably clear voice, and with all the prestige of being a self-devoted Missionary Bishop.  Bless their hearts! if they could see me sipping a delicious cup of coffee, with some delightful book by my side, and some of my lads sitting with me, all of them really loving one, and glad to do anything for one!

’A less self-conscious person could do what I can hardly do without danger.  I see my name in a book or paper, and then comes at once a struggle against some craving after praise.  I think I know the fault, but I don’t say I struggle against it as I ought to do.  It is very hard, therefore, for me to write naturally about work in which I am myself engaged.  But I feel that a truthful account of what we see and hear ought to be given, and yet I never speak about the Mission without feeling that I have somehow conveyed a false impression.’

Again there was a time of sickness.  The weather alternated between keen cutting winds and stifling heat; and there was much illness among the colonists, as well as a recurrence of the dreadful disease of the former year among the scholars of St. Andrew’s, though less severe, and one boy died after fourteen days’ sickness, while two pulled through with difficulty.  In the midst came the Ember Week, when Mr. Palmer was ordained Deacon; and then the Bishop collapsed under ague, and spent the morning of Christmas Day in bed, but was able to get up and move into chapel for the celebration, and afterwards to go into hall and see the scholars eat their Christmas dinner.

In the letter he wrote in the latter part of the day, he confessed that ‘he felt older and less springy;’ though, as he added, there was good reason for it in the heavy strain that there had been upon him throughout the year, though his native, scholars were all that he could desire.