My dearest James,--Little Ethel has just brought me the enclosed letter to send to you. She had written it as far as the up and down lines go, and said it was to tell you how much she loved you, and how sorry she was that she should not see you when she goes to Geanies. She then asked me to tell her how to write kiss. I told her that in letters they write kiss by a cross, and then she made the crosses. She also made me promise to send you the letter at once, without any delay; and as the idea of writing you a letter was entirely her own, I do as I was told. You may take it as a definite expression of the emotions, even though it be not a very intelligible expression of ideas. She wants to know why you are going away, and whether you will write to her when you are away, and a heap of other questions of the same kind. We are all well now, and I am just going with the two Ethels to a children's service, which they both enjoy. It is very pretty to hear the little one singing with the other children, which she does perfectly in tune. They are waiting for me now, so with best love from all, Yours ever the same, GEORGE. In 1885 came the first warnings of ill-health. Mr. Romanes had a short but very sharp illness, and after that year he suffered frequently from gout, which necessitated visits to various foreign 'cures.' He was a perfect travelling companion, he liked to have arrangements made for him, and was never discomposed if anything went wrong, never put out by any of the ordinary mischances of travel. Although he always professed indifference to architecture and art, he would grow quite boyishly enthusiastic over some cathedral, as his sonnets to Amiens, and Christ Church, Oxford,[46] testify, and for sculpture he had a real love. In May 1885 came the first marked public utterance which showed that Mr. Romanes was now in a very different mental attitude to that in which he wrote his 'Candid Examination of Theism.' He delivered the Rede Lecture at Cambridge, and in it he criticises the materialistic position. (It must be remembered that his anti-Theistic book was published anonymously, and at that time he had no intention of ever referring to it.) The reaction set in very soon after the 'Candid Examination' was published. He was severe, as it seemed often to those who knew him best, unduly severe with himself, and often described himself as utterly agnostic when possibly 'bewildered' would have better described him. Through these years, underneath all the outward happiness, the intense love for scientific work, there was the same longing and craving for the old belief, and before his eyes was always the question, 'Is Christian faith possible or intellectually justifiable in the face of scientific discovery?'