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CHARLES KINGSLEY 
 
 HIS LETTERS 
 
 MEMORIES OF HIS LIFE. 
 
 EDITED BY HIS WIFE. 
 
 
 
 ABRIDGED FROM THE LONDON EDITION. 
 
 " Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, 
 Eiise after warre, death after life, does greatly please." 
 
 Spenser's " Faerie Queen," Book I., Canto ix. 
 
 
 N0..0. : 
 
 ''>. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & COMPANY. 
 
 1877. 
 
I \ 
 
 T'^ 
 
 ./\5 
 
 Copyright by 
 
 SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO., 
 
 1877- 
 
 John t. Trow & Son, 
 
 Printers and Bookbinders, 
 
 205-213 East tith St., 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
§n\xmM 
 
 TO THE BELOVED MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 A RIGHTEOUS MAN 
 
 WHO LOVED GOD AND TRUTH ABOVE ALL THINGS. 
 A MAN OF UNTARNISHED HONOUR- 
 LOYAL AND CHIVALROUS — GENTLE AND STRONG — 
 
 MODEST AND HUMBLE — TENDER AND TRUE 
 
 PITIFUL TO THE WEAK — YEARNING AFTER THE ERRING — 
 
 STERN TO ALL FOKMS OF WRONG AND OPPRESSION, 
 
 YET MOST STERN TOWARDS HIMSELF — 
 
 WHO BEING ANGRY, YET SINNED NOT. 
 
 WHOSE HIGHEST VIRTUES WERE KNOWN ONLY 
 
 TO HIS WIFE, HIS CHILDREN, HIS SERVANTS, AND THE POOR. 
 
 WHO LIVED IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD HERE, 
 
 AND PASSING THROUGH THE GRAVE AND GATE OF DEATH 
 
 NOW LIVETH UNTO GOD FOR EVERMORE. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO THE 
 ABRIDGMENT. 
 
 As published in London, these Memoirs of Charles 
 KiNGSLEY extended to two octavo volumes of five hundred 
 pages each. These volumes are here abridged in the hope 
 that to the American reader the interest of the Memoirs 
 may be increased. In the English edition, long and fre- 
 quent extracts were made from Mr. Kingsley's published 
 works. These have been dropped from this volume, while 
 the references to them have been retained. The Mem- 
 ories of Mr. Ktngsley supphed by intimate friends, at 
 the request of his widow, have been reduced where the 
 different writers dwelt upon the same characteristics ; 
 others which lacked point and partook more of the nature 
 of personal panegyric, have been omitted altogether. Last 
 of all, the abridgment has necessarily fallen upon Mr. 
 Kingsley's letters, but pains have been taken to preserve 
 his own record of the conclusions at which he arrived upon 
 the many important problems that occupied his incessantly 
 active mind, although it has been impossible, as indeed it 
 has seemed unnecessary, to reproduce his record of all the 
 phases through which he passed in arriving at these conclu- 
 sions. The narrative in which Mrs. KiNGSLEY has supplied 
 
viii Intro due to 7y Note to the Abridg7nent. 
 
 the biographical details necessary to connect these letters 
 has been left intact, and an advantage may justly be 
 claimed for the abridgment in the fact that the modesty, 
 the excellent taste, and the intense affection and sincere 
 reverence for her lamented husband which mark this part 
 of these Memoirs are here brought into greater promi- 
 nence than it was possible for them to have in the original 
 work. 
 
 Editor of the Abridgment. 
 
PREFACE TO THE LONDON EDITION. 
 
 In bringing out these Volumes, thanks are due and 
 gratefully offered to all who have generously given their 
 help to the work; — to the many known and unknown 
 Correspondents who have treasured and lent the letters 
 now first made public; — to the Publishers, who have 
 allowed quotations to be made from Mr. Kingsley's 
 pubhshed works ; — to the Artists, especially Sheldon 
 WilHams, Esq., and Francis Goode, Esq., of Hartley 
 Wintney, &c., whose sketches and photographs have been 
 kindly given for the Illustrations of the book ; but above 
 all to the friends who have so eloquently borne witness 
 to his character and genius. These written testimonies to 
 their father's worth are a rich inheritance to his children, 
 and God only knows the countless unwritten ones, of 
 souls rescued from doubt, darkness, error, and sin, of work 
 done, the worth of which can never be calculated upon 
 earth, of seed sown which has borne, and will still bear 
 fruit for years, perhaps for generations to come, when 
 the name of Charles Kingsley is forgotten, while his 
 unconscious influence will endure treasured up in the 
 eternal world, where nothing really good or great can be 
 
X Preface. 
 
 lost or pass away, to be revealed at that Day when 
 God's Book shall be opened and the thoughts of all 
 hearts be made known. 
 
 For the feeble thread, imperfect and unworthy of its 
 great subject, with which these precious records are tied 
 together, the Editor can only ask a merciful judgment 
 from the public. 
 
 F. E. K. 
 
 Byfleet, October, 1876. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Birth and Parentage— Inherited Talents — Removal from Devonshire to Bur- 
 ton-on-Trent —Clifton — Barnack and its Traditions — First Sermon and 
 Poems — Childish Character — Effect of Fen Scenery on his Mind 21 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 1830—1838. 
 Aged 11-19. 
 
 Life at Clovelly — School Life at Clifton — Bristol Riots — Their Effect on his 
 Mind — Helston — Early Friendships — Letters from Rev. Derwent Cole- 
 ridge and Rev. R. C. Powles — Move to Chelsea — Enters King's College, 
 London 30 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 1838— 1842. 
 Aged 19-23. 
 
 Life at Cambridge — Visit to Oxfordshire — Undergraduate Days — Decides to 
 take Orders — Takes his Degree — Correspondence — Letters from Cam- 
 bridge Friends 41 
 
 CHAPTER IV, 
 1842 — 1843, 
 Aged 23-24. 
 
 Reads for Holy Orders — Correspondence — Ordained Deacon — Settles at 
 Eversley — Parish Work — Letters 54 
 
1 2 Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 1842 — 1843. 
 Aged 23-24. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Curate Life — Letter from Colonel W. — Brighter Prospects — Correspondence 
 
 Renewed — Promise of Preferment — Leaves Eversley 67 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 1844 — 1847. 
 Aged 25-28. 
 
 Marriage — Curacy of Pimperne — Rectory of Eversley — Correspondence .... 74 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 1848. 
 Aged 29. 
 
 Publication of " Saint's Tragedy" — Chartist Riots — Tenth of April — Politics 
 for the People — Professorship at Queen's College — " Yeast " — Illness 93 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 1849. 
 
 Aged 30. 
 
 Winter in Devonshire — Ilfracombe — Decides on taking Pupils — Correspon- 
 dence — Visit to London — Social Questions — Fever at Eversley — Renewed 
 Illness — Returns -to Devonshire — Cholera in England — Sanitary Work — 
 Bermondsey— Letter from Mr. C. K. Paul ill 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 1850— 1851. 
 Aged 31-32. 
 
 Resigns the Office of Clerk in Orders at Chelsea — Pupil Life at Eversley— 
 Publication of "Alton Locke" — Letters from Mr. Carlyle — ^Writes for 
 "Christian Socialist" — Troubled State of the Country — Burglaries — 
 The Rectory Attacked 127 
 
Contents. 13 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 1851. 
 Aged 32. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Opening of the Great Exhibition — Attack on " Yeast " in the " Guardian " and 
 Reply — Occurrence in a London Church — Goes to Germany — Letter from 
 Mr. John Martineau 135 
 
 CHAPTER Xr. 
 
 1852. 
 Aged zZ- 
 
 Strike in the Iron-Trade — Correspondence on Social and Metaphysical Ques- 
 tions — Mr. Erskine comes to Fir Grove — Parson Lot's last Words — Birth 
 of his youngest Daughter — Letter from Frederika Bremer 160 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 1853- 
 Aged 34. 
 
 The Rector in his Church — " Hypatia" Letters from Chevalier Bunsen— Mr. 
 
 Maurice's Theological Essays — Correspondence with Thomas Cooper... 174 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 1854. 
 
 Aged 35, 
 
 Torquay — Seaside Studies— Lectures in Edinburgh — Deutsche Theologie-— 
 Letter from Baron Bunsen — Crimean War — Settles in North Devon — 
 Writes " Wonders of the Shore " and " Westward Ho." 201 
 
14 Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 1855- 
 Aged 2)^. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Bideford — Crimean War — Death of his friend Charles Blachford Mansfield — 
 "Westward Ho" — Letters from Mr. Henry Drummond and Rajah 
 Brooke — Drawing Class for Mechanics at Bideford — Leaves Devonshire 
 — Lectures to Ladies in London — Correspondence — Winter at Farley 
 Court — The " Heroes " Written 215 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 1856. 
 
 Aged 37. 
 
 Winter at Farley Court — Letter from a Sailor at Hong Kong— Union Strikes 
 — Fishing Poem and Fishing Flies — The Sabbath Question — Invitation 
 to Snowdonia — Visit to North Wales — American Visitors — Preface to 
 Tauler's Sermons 233 
 
 ^ CHAPTER XVT 
 
 The Father in his Home — x'^.n Atmosphere of Joy — The Out-door Nursery — 
 Life on the Mount — Fear and Falsehood — The Training of Love — Favor- 
 ites and Friends in the House, in the Stable, and on the Lawn 257 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 1857. 
 Aged 38. 
 
 ' Two Yeafs Ago "—The Crowded Church— Unquiet Sundays— Letters to 
 Mr. Bullar— Dr. Rigg— Mr. Tom Hughes' Piecists and Su^uos- Letter from 
 a Naval Chaplain— Indian Mutiny— The Romance of Real Life 265 
 
Contents. 15 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 1858. 
 
 Aged 39. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Eversley Work — Diphtheria — Lectures and Sermons at Aldershot — Blessing 
 the Colors of the 22nd Regiment— Staff College— Advanced Thinkers — 
 Poems and Santa Maura — Letter from Dr. Monsell — Letters to Dr. Mon- 
 sell, Dean Stanley, &c. — Letter from Captain Congreve — Birth of his Son 
 Grenville — Second Visit to Yorkshire 278 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 1859. 
 
 Aged 40. 
 
 Sanitary Work — First Sermon at Buckingham Palace — Queen's Chaplaincy 
 — First Visit to Windsor — Letter to an Atheist — Correspondence with 
 Artists — Charles Bennett — Ladies' Sanitary Association — Letter from 
 John Stuart Mill 286 
 
 CHAPTER XX, 
 
 1S60, 
 Aged 41. 
 
 Professorship of Modern History — Death of his Father and of Mrs. Anthony 
 Froude — Planting the Churchyard — -Visit to Ireland — First Salmon killed 
 — Wet Summer — Sermon on Weather — Letter from Sir Charles Lyell — 
 Correspondence — Residence in Cambridge — Inaugural Lecture in the 
 Senate House — Visits to Barton Hall — Letter from Sir Charles Bunbury. 303 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 1861— 1S62. 
 
 Aged 42-43. 
 
 Cambridge — Lectures to the Prince of Wales — Essays and Reviews — Letters 
 to Dr. Stanley — Bishop of Winchester-^Tracts for Priests and People — 
 Death of the Prince Consort — Letter to Sir C. Bunbury — The Water- 
 babies — Installation Ode at Cambridge — Visit to Scotland — British Asso- 
 ciation — Lord Dundreary 314 
 
1 6 Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 1863. 
 Aged 44. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Fellow of the Geological Society — Work at Cambridge — Prince of Wales's 
 Wedding — Wellington College Chapel and Museum — Letter from Dr. 
 Benson — Lecture at Wellington — Letters to Sir Charles Lyell, Prof. 
 Huxley, Charles Darwin, James A. Froude, &c. — Whitchurch Still-life 
 — Toads in Holes — D.C.L. Degree at Oxford— Bishop Colenso — Sermons 
 on the Pentateuch — The Water-babies — Failing Health 326 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 1864 — 1865. 
 Aged 45-46. 
 
 Illness — Controversy with Dr. Newman — Apologia— Journey to the South of 
 France — Biarritz — Pau — An Earthquake — Narbonne — Sermons in London 
 and at Windsor — Enclosure of Eversley Common — University Sermons 
 at Cambridge — Mr. John Stuart Mill's London Committee — Letter on ■ 
 the Trinity— Letter on Subscription — Luther and Demonology — Visit of 
 Queen Emma of the Sandwich Islands to Eversley Rectory and Welling- 
 ton College — The Mammoth on Ivory — Death of King Leopold — Lines 
 written at Windsor Castle 346 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 1866— 1867. 
 Aged 47-48. 
 
 Cambridge— Death of Dr. Whewell— The American Professorship — Monoto- 
 nous Life of the Country Laboring Class — Penny Readings — Strange 
 Correspondents — Life of Bewick— Letters to Max Miiller— The Jews in 
 Cornwall — The Meteor Shower — Letter to Professor Adams — The House 
 of Lords — A Father's Education of his Son — " Eraser's Magazine" — Bird 
 Life, Wood Wrens — Names and Places — Darwinism— Beauty of Color, 
 its Influence and Attractions— Flat-Fish — Ice Problems — St. Andrews 
 and British Association — Abergeldie Castle — Rules for Stammerers 363 
 
Co7ttents. 1 7 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 1868. 
 
 Aged 49. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Attacks of the Press — Lectures on Sixteenth Century — Mr. Longfellow — Sir 
 Henry Taylor on Crime and its Punishment — Letter from Mr. Dunn — 
 Letter from Rev. William Harrison 386 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 1869 — 1870. 
 Aged 50-51. 
 
 Resignation of Professorship — Women's Suffrage Question — Letters to Mr. 
 Maurice, John Stuart Mill — Canonry of Chester — Social Science Meeting 
 at Bristol — Letter from Dr. E. Blackwell — Medical Education for Women 
 — West Indian Voyage — Letters from Trinidad — Return Home — Eversley 
 a Changed Place — Flying Columns — Heath Fires — First Residence at 
 Chester — Botanical Class — Field Lectures — Women's Suffrage — Franco- 
 Prussian War — Wallace on Natural Selection — Matthew Arnold and 
 Hellenism 398 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 1871. 
 Aged 52. 
 
 Lecture on " The Theology of the Future " at Sion College — Expeditions of 
 the Chester Natural Scie.nce Society — Lectures on Town Geology — Race 
 Week at Chester — Letters on Betting — Camp at Bramshill — The Prince 
 of Wales in Eversley — Prince of Wales's Illness — Lecture to Royal Artil 
 lery Officers at Woolwich 421 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 1872. 
 
 Aged 53. 
 
 Opening of Chester Cathedral Nave — Deaths of Mr. Maurice and Norman 
 McLeod— Letters to Max Muller — Mrs. Luard — Lecture at Birmingham 
 and its Results— Lecture on Heroism at Chester — A Poem — The Athana- 
 
 sian Creed 434 
 
 2 
 
1 8 Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 1873— 1874. 
 Aged 54-55- 
 
 PACE 
 
 Harrow-on-the-Hill — Canonry of Westminster — His Son's Return — His 
 Mother's Death — Parting from Chester — Congratulations — Sermon and 
 Letters on Temperance — Preaching in Westminster Abbey — Voyage to 
 America — Eastern Cities and Western Plains — Canada— Niagara — The 
 Prairie — Salt Lake City — Yo Semite Valley and Big Trees — San Fran- 
 cisco — Illness — Rocky iVEountains and Colorado Springs — Last Poem — 
 Return Home — Letter from John G. Whittier 441 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 1874-5. 
 Aged 55. ^ 
 
 RetiTrn from America — Work at Eversley — Illness at Westminster— New 
 Anxiety— Last Sermons in the Abbey — Leaves the Cloisters for ever — 
 ■ Last Return to Eversley — The Valley of the Shadow of Death — Last 
 Illness and Departure — The Victory of Life over Death and Time 474 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Portrait of Charles Kingsley Frontispiece. 
 
 Fac-similb of the Original Manuscript of the Three Fishers... 156 
 
 EvERSLEY Church i7i> 
 
 The Great Fir-Trees on the Rectory Lawn at Eversley 256 
 
 The Rectory at Eversley 263 
 
 The Study Window, Eversley Rectory 39^ 
 
 Charles Kingsley's Grave, Eversley Churchyard 488 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY: 
 
 HIS LETTERS AND MEMORIES OF HIS LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Birth and Parentage— Inherited Talents — Removal from Devonshire to Burton- 
 on-Trent — Clifton — Barnack and its Traditions — First Sermon and Poems — 
 Childish Character — Effect of Fen Scenery on his Mind. 
 
 Charles Ktngsley, son of Charles Kingsley, of Battramsley in 
 the New Forest, was born on the 12th of June, 1819, at Hohie 
 Vicarage, under the brow of Dartmoor, Devonshire. His family- 
 claimed descent from the Kingsleys of Kingsley or Vale Royal, in 
 Delamere Forest, and from Rannulph de Kingsley, whose name in 
 an old family pedigree stands as " Grantee of the Forest of Mara 
 and Mondrem from Randall Meschines, ante 1128." Charles's 
 father was a man of cultivation and refinement, a good linguist, an 
 artist, a keen sportsman and natural historian. He was educated 
 at Harrow and Oxford, and brought up with good expectations as 
 a country gentleman, but having been early in life left an orphan, 
 and his fortune squandered for him during his minority, he soon 
 spent what was left, and at the age of thirty found himself almost 
 penniless, and obliged; for the first time, to think of a profession. 
 Being too old for the army, and having many friends who were 
 owners of Church property, he decided on the Church, sold his 
 hunters and land, and with a young wife, went for a second time 
 to college, entering his name at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to read 
 for Holy Orders. While there he became acquainted with Dr. 
 Herbert Marsh, then Margaret Professor of Divinity, afterwards 
 Bishop of Peterborough, a fine classic and first-rate German 
 scholar. This last taste, combined with their mutual love of 
 
2 2 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 literature, attracted the two men to each other, and when Dr. 
 Marsh was raised to a bishopric he took an early opportunity of 
 getting Mr. Kingsley into his diocese, and making him his Examin- 
 ing Chaplain. His first cure was in the Fens, from which he 
 removed to Holne, in Devonshire. 
 
 Charles's mother, a remarkable woman, full of poetry and 
 enthusiasm, was born in the West Indies, being the daughter of 
 Nathan Lucas, of Farley Hall, Barbadoes, and Rushford Lodge, 
 Norfolk. Keenly alive to the charms of scenery, and highly 
 imaginative in her younger days, as she was eminently practical in 
 maturer life, she believed that impressions made on her own mind^ 
 before the birth of this child for whose coming she longed, by the 
 romantic surroundings of her Devonshire home, would be mysteri- 
 ously transmitted to him ; and in this faith, and for his sake as 
 well as for her own, she luxuriated in the exquisite scenery of 
 Holne and Dartmoor, the Chase, the hills, and the lovely Dart, 
 which flowed below the grounds of the little parsonage, and gave 
 herself up to the enjoyment of every sight and sound which she 
 hoped would be dear to her child in after life. These hopes were 
 realized, and though her little son left Holne when he was six 
 weeks old, and never saw his birthplace till he was a man of thirty, 
 it and every Devonshire scene and association had a mysterious 
 charm for him through life. " I am," he was proud to say, " a 
 West Country man born and bred." 
 
 " We know, through the admirable labors of Mr. Galton," says 
 Mr. Darwin in his " Descent of Man," " that genius which implies 
 a wonderfully complex combination of high faculties tends to be 
 inherited," and to prove this in the case of Charles Kingsley may 
 not be altogether unimportant. " We are," he said himself, in 
 1865, when writing to Mr. Galton on his book on Hereditary 
 Talent, where the Kingsley family are referred to, 
 
 "We are but the disjecta membra of a most remarkable pair of 
 parents. Our talent, such as it is, is altogether hereditary. My 
 father was a magnificent man in body and mind, and was said to 
 possess every talent except that of using his talents. My mother, 
 on the contrary, had a quite extraordinary practical and adminis- 
 trative power ; and she combines with it, even at her advanced 
 age (79), my father's passion for knowledge, and the sentiment and 
 fancy of a young girl." .... 
 
Inherited Tastes. 23 
 
 From his father's side he inherited his love of art, his sporting 
 tastes, his fighting blood — the men of his family having been 
 soldiers for generations, some of them having led troops to battle 
 at Naseby, Minden, and elsewhere. And from the mother's side 
 came, not only his love of travel, science and iitei^ature, and the 
 romance of his nature, but his keen sense of humor, and a 
 force and originality which characterized the women of her 
 family of a still older generation. 
 
 His maternal grandfather, sometime a Judge in Barbadoes, was 
 a man of books and science, the intimate frieiid of Sir Joseph 
 Banks and the distinguished John Hunter. He was also a great 
 traveller, and had often crossed the Atlantic, in those days a 
 more difficult work than it is now. He knew the West Indies 
 intimately, and Demerara, where also he had estates, and had 
 been with his friend Lord Rodney, on board H.M.S. " Formi- 
 dable," in his great naval engagement off St. Lucia in 1782, "on 
 the glorious 12th of April, when he broke Count de Grasse's line, 
 destroying seven French ships of war and taking their com- 
 mander prisoner." — ("At Last," Vol. I. p, 69). In 1812, at the 
 great eruption of the Souffriere of St. Vincent, when resident on 
 his estate in Barbadoes, eighty miles distant. Judge Lucas gave 
 proof of his powers of observation and of scientific induction, by 
 at once detecting the cause of the great earthquake wave which 
 struck the island, and of the sudden darkness which spread terror 
 among its inhabitants. " I have a letter," says his grandson, " writ- 
 ten by one long since dead, who had powers of description of no 
 common order," detailing the events of that awful day and night, 
 and who, while the negroes were shrieking in the streets, and 
 even the white folks caught the panic, and were praying at home 
 and in the churches as they had never prayed before, thinking the 
 last day had come, was above the dismay and superstitious panic 
 which prevailed ; " he opened his window, found it stick, and felt 
 upon the sill a coat of soft powder. 'The volcano at St, Vin- 
 cent has broken out at last,' said the wise man, ' and this is the 
 dust of it.' So he quieted his household and his negroes, lighted 
 his candles, and went to his scientific books in that delight, mingled 
 with awe not the less deep because it is rational and self-possessed, 
 with which he, like other men of science, looked at the wonders 
 of this wondrous world. "^ — ("At Last," Vol. I. p. 89). 
 
24 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 His grandfather's reminiscences of the old war times, and stories 
 of tropical scenes, were the delight of Charles's boyhood, and gave 
 a coloring to his hfe. They woke up in him that longing to see the 
 West Indies, which was at last accomplished ; and as he sailed the 
 same seas under more peaceful circumstances, his enjoyment was 
 enhanced by family associations and memories of the Past. 
 
 But to return, Mr. Kingsley's next curacy on leaving Holne was 
 at Burton-on-Trent, from whence he moved to Clifton, in Notting- 
 hamshire, where he and his wife formed the acquaintance of the 
 Penrose family. To this fact Miss Martineau alludes in her cor- 
 respondence with his son 35 years later. 
 
 " This evening I have heard of you in your infancy ! Is that 
 not odd? The Arnolds have just returned after a two months' 
 absence, and I went to Fox How to welcome them home. They 
 have been into Lincolnshire, at the Penroses'. They say your 
 parents were friends of the last generation of the Penroses, and 
 they have been looking over some old letters, in one of which 
 there is an account of a stormy passage of a river (the Trent in 
 flood), when your mother's chief anxiety was about her ' little deli- 
 cate Charles,' whom she wrapped in her shawl, going without it 
 herself. So now, perhaps we know something about you that you 
 did not know yourself." 
 
 While curate of Clifton, the Bishop of Peterborough offered his 
 friend the living of Barnack, one of the best in the diocese, to 
 hold for his own son Herbert, then only 17. Such transactions 
 were common in the church in those days, and Mr. Kingsley, 
 thankfully, accepted the offer, and held the living for 6 years. 
 Barnack Rectory was a fine old house, built in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, and thither the family removed. It contained a celebrated 
 haunted room called Button Cap's, into which little Charles on 
 one occasion was moved when ill of brain fever, which he had 
 more than once, as a child. This naturally excited his imagina- 
 tion, which was haunted years afterwards with the weird sights and 
 sounds connected with that time in his memory. To this he traced 
 his own strong disbelief in the existence of ghosts. For, as he 
 used to say to his children in later years, he had heard too many 
 ghosts in old Button Cap's room at Barnack, to have much respect 
 for them, when he had once satisfied himself as to what they really 
 were. On being questioned about having been born there by 
 
Barnack ajzd its Ghost Chamber. 25 
 
 Mrs. Francis Pelham, he gave her his matured opinion of Button 
 Cap in the following letter : 
 
 EvERSLEY Rectory, 
 " Mv DEAR Alice, — y««^ 2, 1864. 
 
 " Of Button Cap — he lived in the Great North Room at Bar- 
 nack (where I was not born). I knew him well. He used to 
 walk across the room in flopping slippers, and turn over the leaves 
 of books to find the missing deed, whereof he had defrauded the 
 orphan and the widow. He was an old Rector of Barnack. 
 Everybody heard him who chose. Nobody ever saw him ; but in 
 spite of that, he wore a flowered dressing-gown, and a cap with a 
 button on it. I never heard of any skeleton being found ; and 
 Button Cap's history had nothing to do with murder, only with 
 avarice and chea.tmg. 
 
 " Sometimes he turned cross and played Polter-geist, as the 
 Germans say, rolling the barrels in the cellar about with surprising 
 noise, which was undigniired. So he was always ashamed of him- 
 self, and put them all back in their places before morning. 
 
 "I suppose he is gone now. Ghosts hate mortally a certificated 
 National Schoolmaster, and (being a vain and peevish generation) 
 as soon as people give up believing in them, go away in a huff — or 
 perhaps some one had been laying phosphoric paste about, and he 
 ate thereof and ran down to the pond ; and drank till he burst. 
 He was rats. " Your affect. Uncle, 
 
 "C. KiNGSLEY." 
 
 Charles was a precocious child, and his poems and sermons date 
 from four years old. His delight was to make a little pulpit in his 
 nursery, arranging the chairs for an imaginary congregation, and 
 putting on his pinafore as a surplice, gave little addresses of a 
 rather severe tone of theology. His mother, unknown to him, 
 took them down at the time, and showed them to the Bishop of 
 Peterborough, who thought them so remarkable for such a young 
 child, that he begged they might be preserved : predicting that the 
 boy would grow up to be no common man. I'hese are among the 
 specimens his mother kept. 
 
 FIRST SERMON. 
 
 [Four years old.] 
 
 " It is not right to fight. Honesty has no chance against steal- 
 ing. Christ has shown us true religion. We must follow God, 
 and not follow the Devil, for if we follow the Devil we shall go 
 into that everlasting fire, and if we follow God, we shall go to 
 Heaven. When the tempter came to Christ in the Wilderness, 
 
26 " Charles Kings ley. 
 
 and told him to make the stones into bread, he said, Get thee 
 behind me, Satan. He has given us a sign and an example how 
 we should overcome the Devil. It is written in the Bible that we 
 should love our neighbor, and not covet his house, nor his ox, nor 
 his ass, nor his wife, nor anything that is his. It is to a certainty 
 that we cannot describe how thousands and ten thousands have 
 been wicked ; and nobody can tell how the Devil can be chained 
 in Hell. Nor can we describe how many men and women and 
 children have been good. And if we go to Heaven we shall find 
 them all singing to God in the highest. And if we go to hell, we 
 shall find all the wicked ones gnashing and wailing their teeth, as 
 God describes in the Bible. If humanity, honesty, and good 
 religion fade, we can to a certainty get them back, by being good 
 again. Religion is reading good books, doing good actions, and 
 not teUing lies and speaking evil, and not calling their brother Fool 
 and Raca. And if we rebel against God, He will to a certainty 
 cast us into hell. And one day, when a great generation of people 
 came to Christ in the Wilderness, he said, Yea ye generation of 
 vipers ! " 
 
 FIRST POEMS. 
 [Four years and eight months old.] 
 
 MORNING. 
 When morning's beam first lights us, 
 And the cock's shrill voice is undone. 
 The owl flies from her retreat, 
 And the bat does fly away, 
 And morning's beam lightens every spray, 
 The sun shows forth his splendid train. 
 Evei"ybody is rising ; 
 Boys and girls go to school ; 
 Everybody is at work ; 
 Everybody is busy. 
 - The bee wakes from her sleep to gather honey. 
 But the drone and the queen bee lie still 
 In the hive, 
 And a bee guards them. 
 Be busy when thou canst ! 
 
 NIGHT. 
 
 When the dark forest glides along, 
 When midnight's gloom makes everybody still, 
 The owl flies out, 
 And the bat stretches his wjng ; 
 
 The lion roars ; 
 The wolf and the tiger prowl about. 
 And the hyena cries. 
 
Early Letters. 27 
 
 Little can be gleaned of the nursery life at Barnack, except 
 from an old nurse who lived in his father's family, and who remem- 
 bers Charles as a very delicate child between six and seven years 
 old, subject to dangerous attacks of croup, and remarkable for his 
 thirst for knowledge and conscientiousness of feeling. 
 
 " I have never forgotten one day," she says, " when he and his 
 little brothers were playing together, and had a difference, which 
 seldom happened. His mother, coming into the room, took the 
 brothers' part, which he resented, and he said he wished she was 
 not his mother. His grief afterwards was great, and he came cry- 
 ing bitterly to the kitchen door to ask me to take him up to his 
 room. The housemaid enquired what was the matter, and said 
 his mamma would be sure to forgive him. ' She has forgiven me, 
 but don't cant, Elizabeth (I saw you blush). It isn't mamma's for- 
 giveness I want, but God's.' Poor little fellow, he was soon upon 
 his knees when he got into his mother's room where he slept." 
 
 a 
 
 A boy friend, now a clergyman in Essex, recalls him about 
 this time, repeating his Eatin lesson to his father in the study at 
 Barnack, with his eyes fixed all the time on th- fl'-^ in the grate. 
 'At last he could stand it no longer ; there was ^ _ . jc in the Latin, 
 and Charles cried out, "I do declare, papa, there is pyrites in the 
 coal." 
 
 Among the few rehcs of the Barnack days is a little love letter 
 written when he was five or six years old, which has lately come to 
 light, having been carefully treasured for fifty years by a lady who 
 was often staying with his parents at that time, and who captivated 
 the child by her kindness and great beauty. 
 
 Barnack. 
 " My dear Miss Dade, — 
 
 " I hope you are well is fanny well ? The house is com- 
 pletly changed since you went. I think it is nearly 3 months 
 since you went. Mamma sends her love to you and sally browne 
 Herbert and geraled (his brothers) but I must stop here, because I 
 have more letters of consequence to write & here I must pause. 
 
 " Believe me always, 
 
 " Your sincere friend, 
 To Miss Dade. "Charles Kingsley." 
 
 The subject of his childish affection recalled herself to him thirty 
 years later, and the answer contains the only other mention of Bar- 
 nack in his own hand. 
 
2 8 Charles Kiiigsley. 
 
 Farley Court, 
 
 Novembe?- 25, 1855. 
 
 " My dear Madam, — 
 
 " Many thanks for your most kind letter, which awoke in my 
 mind a hundred sleeping recollections. Those old Barnack years 
 seem now like a dream — perhaps because having lost the two 
 brothers who were there with me, anecdotes of the place have not 
 been kept up. Yet I remember every stone and brick of it, and 
 you, too, as one of the first persons of whom I have a clear remem- 
 brance, though your face has faded, I am ashamed to say, from 
 mv memory. 
 
 " But I am delighted to hear that my books have pleased, and 
 still more that they have comforted you. They have been written 
 from my heart in the hope of doing good ; and now and then I 
 have (as I have now from you) testimony that my life as yet has 
 not been altogether useless 
 
 " I am just bringing out a Christmas book for my children with 
 illustrations of my own. Will you a'ccept a cop)^, and allow me 
 to renew our old friendship ? . . . . You speak of sorrows, 
 and I have heard you have past through many. God grant that a 
 quiet evening may succeed, for you, a stormy day. I am shocked 
 at the amount of misery in a world which has, as yet, treated me 
 so kindly. Yet it is but a sign that others are nearer to God than 
 I, and therefore more chastened. 
 
 "Yours ever truly, 
 
 " C. KiNGSLEY." 
 
 In 1830, when Charles was eleven years old, his father had to 
 give up Barnack to his successor, Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley's parish 
 work is still remembered there with aflfectionate respect, and they 
 and their parishioners parted with mutual regret. In after years 
 Professor Hall speaks of "Charles's excellent father as a type of 
 the old English clergyman where the country gentleman forms the 
 basis of the character which the minister of the gospel completes. 
 Of such a class," he says, " were the Bishop (Otter) of Chiches- 
 ter, Mr. Penrose, and Mr. Kingsley." Having caught ague in the 
 Fens, Mr. Kingsley was advised to try the climate of Devonshire, 
 and moved his family to Ilfracombe. But the Fen scenery \yas 
 never obliterated from Charles's mind. It was connected, too, with 
 his earliest sporting recollections, for his father, while an excellent 
 parish priest, was a keen sportsman, and as soon as the boy was 
 old enough, he was mounted on his father's horse in front of the 
 keeper on shooting days to bring back the game bag. 
 
 Wild duck, and even bittern and bustard, were to be found in 
 
Hereward the Wake. 29 
 
 those days before the draining of the Fen, and butterflies of species 
 now extinct, were not uncommon, and us^d to dehght the eyes of 
 the young naturalist. The sunsets of the Great Fen, all the more 
 striking from the wide sweep of horizon, were never forgotten, and 
 the low flat scenery had always a charm for him in after life from 
 the memory of those days. 
 
 Thus the seeds were sown of the story of Hereward the Wake, 
 written in after years, produced by the scenes and traditions of 
 this period of boyhood. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 1830-1838. 
 
 Aged 11-19. 
 
 Life at Clovelly— School Life at Clifton— Bristol Riots— Their Effect on his Mind 
 — Helston — Early Friendships — Letters from Rev. Derwent Coleridge and 
 Rev. R. C. Powles — Move to Chelsea — Enters King's College, London. 
 
 While the late rector of Barnack was staying at Ilfracombe, Sir 
 James Hanilyn Williams, of Clovelly Court, presented him to the 
 living of Clovelly, which he held till he removed to the rectory of 
 St. Luke's, Chelsea, in 1836. 
 
 Here a fresh life opened for Charles, whose impressions of nature 
 had hitherto been gathered from the Eastern Counties and the 
 scenery of the Fens. A new education began for him, a new world 
 was revealed to him. The contrast between the sturdy Fen men 
 and the sailors and fishermen of Clovelly — ^between the flat Eastern 
 Counties and the rocky Devonshire coast, with its rich vegetation, 
 its new fauna and flora, and the blue sea with its long Atlantic 
 swell, filled him with delight and wonder. The boys had their boat 
 and their ponies, and Charles at once plunged into the study of 
 conchology, under the kind and scientific teaching of Dr. Turton, 
 who lived in the neighborhood. 
 
 His parents, both people of excitable natures and poetic feeling, 
 shared in the boy's enthusiasm. The new elements of their life at 
 iClovelly, the unique scenery, the impressionable character of the 
 people and their singular beauty, the courage of the men and boys, 
 and the passionate sympathy of the women in the wild life of their 
 husbands and sons, threw the new charm of romance over their 
 parish work. The people sprang to touch the more readily under 
 the influence of a man, who, physically their equal, feared no danger ; 
 and could steer a boat, hoist and lower a sail, ' shoot ' a herring net, 
 and haifl a seine as one of themselves. 
 
 His ministrations in church and in the cottages were acceptable 
 
Studying at Home. 3 1 
 
 to dissenters as well as church people. And when the herring fleet 
 put to sea, whatever the weather might be, the Rector, accom- 
 panied by his wife and boys, would start off " down street," for 
 the Quay, to give a short parting service, at which "men who 
 worked," and "women who wept," would join in singing out of 
 the old Prayer Book version the 121st Psalm as those only can, 
 who have death and danger staring them in the face ; and who, 
 "though storms be sudden, and waters deep," can say, 
 
 " Then thou, my soul, in safety i-est, 
 Thy Guardian will not sleep ; 
 ****** 
 
 Shelter'd beneath th' Almighty wings 
 Thou shalt securely rest." * 
 
 Such were the scenes which colored his boyhood, were reflected 
 in his after life, and produced "The Song of the Three Fishers," a 
 song not the mere creation of his imagination, but the literal 
 transcript of what he had seen again and again in Devonshire. 
 "Now that you have seen Clovelly," he said to his wife, in 
 T854, " you know what was the inspiration of my life before I met 
 you." 
 
 The boys had a private tutor at home, till, in 1831, Charles and 
 his brother Herbert were sent to Clifton to a preparatory school 
 under the Rev. John Knight, who describes him as "affectionate, 
 gentle, and fond of quiet," which often made him leave the boys' 
 school-room and take refuge with his tutor's daughters and their 
 governess ; capable of making remarkable translations of Latin 
 verse into English ; a passionate lover of natural history ; and 
 only excited to vehement anger when the housemaid swept away 
 as rubbish some of the treasures collected in his walks on the 
 Downs. 
 
 The Bristol Riots, which took place in the autumn of 1831, were 
 the marked event in his life at Chfton. He had been a timid boy 
 previous to this time, but the horror of the scenes which he wit- 
 nessed seemed to wake up a new courage in him. When giving a 
 
 * Brady and Tate's Version of the Psalms. 
 
32 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 lecture at Bristol in 1858, he described the effect of all this on his 
 mind.* 
 
 While Charles was at Clifton^ his parents were still undecided 
 whether to send him to a pubhc school. There was some talk of 
 both Eton and Rugby. Dr. Hawtrey, who had heard through 
 mutual friends of the boy's talent, wished to have him at Eton, 
 where doubtless he would have distinguished himself. Dr. 
 Arnold was at that time head-master of Rugby, but the strong Tory 
 principles and evangelical views of his parents (in the former, 
 Charles at that time sympathized) decided them against Rugby — a 
 decision which their son deeply regretted for many reasons, when 
 he grew up. It was his own conviction that nothing but a public 
 school education would have overcome his constitutional shyness, 
 a shyness which he never lost, and which was naturally increased by 
 the hesitation in his speech. This hesitation was so sore a trial to 
 him that he seldom entered a room, or spoke in private or public 
 without a feeling, at moments amounting to terror, when he said he 
 could have wished the earth would open and swallow him up there 
 and then. 
 
 At that time the Grammar School at Helston was under the 
 head-mastership of the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, son of Samuel 
 Taylor Coleridge ; and Mr. Kingsley decided to send his son there. 
 There Charles formed the dearest and most lasting friendship of his 
 life, with Richard Cowley Powles, afterwards Fellow and Tutor of 
 Exeter College, Oxford, and who in 1869, to the great joy and com- 
 fort of his old schoolfellow, became one of his parishioners at 
 Wixenford, in Eversley. At Helston, too, he found as second- 
 master the Rev. Charles A. Johns, afterwards himself head-master, 
 who made himself the companion of his young pupil, encouraging 
 his taste, or rather passion for botany, going long rambles with him 
 on the neighboring moors and on the sea coast, in search of wild 
 flowers, and helping him in the stud}- which each loved so well. In 
 later years, when both were living in Hampshire, Mr. Johns labored 
 successfully for the cause of physical science in the diocese of Win- 
 chester, where his name will long be remembered in conjunction 
 once more with his former pupil and distinguished friend. 
 
 * Miscellanies, Vol. II., p. 319, Great Cities, and their influence for good 
 and evil. 
 
School Life at Helston. -^^i 
 
 Of Charles's school life both Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Powles have 
 contributed their recollections, which shall be given in their own 
 words. 
 
 REV. D. COLERIDGE TO MRS. KINGSLEY. 
 
 Hanwell Rectory, 
 
 October 7, 1875. 
 
 " . . . . Charles and Herbert Kingsley were brought to 
 Helston Grammar School, in Cornwall, in the year 1832, by their 
 father the Rev. Charles Kingsley, then Rector of Clovelly, in Devon. 
 Herbert died of heart-disease, brought on by a severe attack of 
 
 rheumatism in 1834 Charles was a tall, slight boy, of 
 
 keen visage, and of great bodily activity, high-spirited, earnest, and 
 energetic, giving full promise of the intellectual powers, and moral 
 qualities, by which he was afterwards distinguished. Though not 
 a close student, he was an eager reader and enquirer, sometimes in 
 very out of the way quarters, I once found him busily engaged 
 with an old copy of ' Porphyry and lamblichus,' which he had fer- 
 reted out of my library. 
 
 " Truly a remarkable boy, original to the verge of eccentricity, 
 and yet a thorough boy, fond of sport, and up to any enterprise — 
 a genuine out-of-doors English boy. 
 
 " His account of a walk or run would often display considerable 
 eloquence — the impediment in his speech, already noticeable, 
 though not, I think, so marked as it afterwards became, rather 
 adding to the effect. We well remember his description of a hunt 
 after some pigs, from which he returned (not an uncommon occur- 
 rence) with his head torn with brambles, and his face beaming with 
 fun and frolic. In manner he was strikingly courteous, and thus, 
 with his wide and ready sympathies, and bright intelligence, was 
 popular alike with tutor, schoolfellows, and servants. 
 
 " His health was generally very good, but in the summer of 1834 
 he had a violent attack of English cholera, which occasioned the 
 more alarm as the Asiatic form of that malady had reached Helston. 
 He bore it bravely, and recovered from it, but I beheve that the 
 apprehension this occasioned led to his removal earlier than was 
 intended, the distance from London to the extreme west of Corn- 
 wall being felt by his parents to be too great. 
 
 " After he left Cambridge he sent me the manuscript of his 
 tragedy of ' Elizabeth of Hungary' for my criticism and approval. 
 This was the last occasion in which I stood to him in any degree in 
 the relation of a tutor or adviser. From this time I saw him only 
 at intervals ; but when I paid him, as Canon of Westminster, my 
 first, and, as it proved, alas ! my last visit, on the 17th of November, 
 1874, he dung his arms about my neck, exclaiming, * Oh ! my dear 
 3 
 
34 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 old master ! my dear old master ! ' nor was he less affected at the 
 
 sight of Mrs. Coleridge — Valeat in ceter?ium 
 
 " Derwent Coleridge." 
 
 REV. R. C. POWLES TO MRS. KINGSLEY. 
 
 WlXENFORD, Oct. 30, 1875. 
 
 " It was at Helston, in January, 1833, when we were each in our 
 fourteenth year, that Charles and I trrst became acquainted. He 
 and his brother Herbert had been spending the Christmas hohdays 
 at school, and I was introduced to them, on my arrival from Lon- 
 don, before any of our schoolfellows had returned. I remember 
 the long, low room, dimly lighted by a candle on a table at the 
 further end, where the brothers were sitting, engaged at the mo- 
 ment of my entrance in a course of (not uncharacteristic) experi- 
 ments with gunpowder. 
 
 " Almost from the time of our first introduction Charles and I 
 became friends, and subsequently we shared a study, so that we 
 were a good deal together. Looking back on those schoolboy days, 
 one can trace without difficulty the elements of character that made 
 his maturer life remarkable. Of him more than of most men who 
 have become famous it may be said, ' the boy was father of the man.' 
 The vehement spirit, the adventurous courage, the love of truth, 
 the impatience of injustice, the quick and tender sympathy, that 
 distinguished the man's entrance on public hfe, were all in the boy, 
 as any of those who knew him then and are still living will remem- 
 ber ; and there was, besides, the same eagerness in the pursuit of 
 physical knowledge, the same keen observation of the world around 
 Jiim, and the same thoughtful temper of tracing facts to principles, 
 which all who are familiar with his writings recognize as among his 
 most notable characteristics. 
 
 " For all his good qualities, Charles was not popular as a school- 
 boy. He knew too much, and his mind was generally on a higher 
 level than ours. He did not consciously snub those who knew less, 
 but a good deal of unconscious snubbing went on ; all the moie 
 resented, perhaps, because it was unconscious. Then, too, though 
 strong and active, Charles was not expert at games. He never 
 made " a score " at cricket. In mere feats of agility and adven- 
 ture he was among the foremost ; and on one of the very last times 
 I ever saw him he was recalling an old exploit in which he had 
 only two competitors. Our play-ground was separated by a lane, 
 not very narrow, and very deep, from a field on the opposite side. 
 To jump from the play-ground wall to the wall opposite, and to 
 jump back, was a considerable trial of nerve and muscle. The 
 walls, which were not quite on a level, were rounded at the top, 
 and a fall into the deep lane must have involved broken bones. 
 This jump was one of Chai'les's favorite performances. Again, I 
 
School Life at Helston. 35 
 
 remember his climbing a tall tree to take an egg from a hawk's 
 nest. For three or four days he had done this with impunity. There 
 came an afternoon, however, when the hawk was on her nest, and 
 on the intruder's putting in his hand as usual the results were disas- 
 trous. To most boys the surprise of the hawk's attack, apart from 
 the pain inflicted by her claws, would have been fatal. They 
 would have loosed their hold of the tree, and tumbled down. But 
 Charles did not flinch. He came down as steadily as if nothing 
 had happened, though his wounded hand was streaming with blood. 
 It was wonderful how well he bore pain. On one occasion, having 
 a sore finger, he determined to cure it by cautery. He heated the 
 poker red-hot in the school room fire, and calmly appUed it two or 
 three times till he was satisfied that his object was attained. 
 
 "His own endurance of pain did not, however, make him care- 
 less of suffering in others. He was very tender-hearted — often more 
 so than his schoolfellows could understand ; and what they did not 
 understand they were apt to ridicule. And this leads me to notice 
 what, after all, I should fix on as the moral quality that pre- 
 eminently distinguished him as a boy, the generosity with which he 
 forgave offence. He was keenly sensitive to ridicule ; nothing 
 irritated him more ; and he had often excessive provocation from 
 those who could not enter into his feeUngs, or appreciate the work- 
 ings of his mind. But with the moment of off'ence the memory of 
 it passed away. He had no place for vindictiveness in his heart. 
 Again and again I have seen him chafed to the intensest exaspera- 
 tion by boys with whom half an hour afterwards he has mixed with 
 tlie frankest good humor. 
 
 •' How keen his feelings were none of his surviving schoolfellows 
 will forget, who were with us at the time his brother Herbert died. 
 Herbert had had an attack of rheumatic fever, but was supposed to 
 be recovering and nearly convalescent, when one afternoon he 
 suddenly passed away. Charles was summoned from the room 
 where we were all sitting in ignorance of what had just taken place. 
 All at once a cry of anguish burst upon us, such as, after more than 
 forty years, I remember as if it were yesterday. There was no need 
 to tell the awe-struck listeners what had happened. 
 
 " Thus far I. have spoken rather of Charles's moral tlian of his 
 intellectual qualities. I must add something of these latter. His chief 
 taste was, as I have hinted, for physical science. He w as fond of 
 studying all objects of the natural world, but for botany and geology 
 he had an absolute enthusiasm. Whatever time he could spare 
 from less congenial studies, and from ordinary play-ground games, 
 which never specially attracted him, he gave to these. He liked 
 nothing better than to sally out, hammer in hand and his botanical 
 tin slung round his neck, on some long expedition in quest of new 
 plants, and to investigate the cliffs within a few miles of Helston, 
 dear to every geologist. 
 
2,6 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 " For the study of language he had no great Hking. Later on, 
 C/icek and Latin interested him, because of their subject-matter; 
 Init for classics, in the school-boy sense of the term, he had no turn. 
 He would work hard at thezii by fits and starts — on the eve of an 
 examination, for instance ; but his industry was intermittent and 
 against the grain. Nor do I think he had any such turn for mathe- 
 matics as led hiiii to make the most of the opportunities we had for 
 that branch of study. His passion was for natural science, and for 
 art. With regard to the former I think his zeal was led by a strong 
 religious feeling — a sense of the nearness of God in His works. 
 
 " R. Cowley Powles." 
 
 To his mother he writes during the early days of his school- 
 life :— 
 
 " I am now quite settled and very happy. I read my Bible 
 every night, and try to profit by what I read, and I am sure I do. 
 I am more happy now than I have been for a long time ; but I do 
 not like to talk about it, but to prove it by my conduct. 
 
 " I am keeping a journal of my actions and thoughts, and I hope 
 it will be useful to me." 
 
 His poetical compositions, which were many at this time, were 
 all given to his friend Mr. Powles, who has carefully preserved 
 them. Charles kept no note of them himself, and would not have 
 thought them worth keeping. But one more must be added, as it 
 shows the working of the boy's mind at fifteen. He called it him- 
 self 
 
 HYPOTHESES HYPOCHONDRIACS. 
 
 And should she die, her grave should be 
 
 Upon the bare top of a sunny hill, 
 
 Among the moorlands of her own fair land, 
 
 Amid a ring of old and moss-grown stones 
 
 In gorse and heather all embosomed. 
 
 There should be no tall stone, no marbled tomb 
 
 Above her gentle corse ; — the ponderous pile 
 
 Would press too rudely on those fairy limbs. 
 
 The turf should lightly lie, that marked her home, 
 
 A sacred spot it would be — -every bird 
 
 That came to watch her lone grave should be holy. 
 
 The deer should browse around her undisturbed ; 
 
 The whin bird by, her lonely nest should build 
 
 All fearless ; for in life she loved to see 
 
Hypotheses Hypochondriaccs. 2>7 
 
 Happiness in all things — 
 
 And we would come on summer days 
 
 When all around was bright, and set us down 
 
 And think of all that lay beneath that turf 
 
 On which the heedless moor-bird sits, and whistles 
 
 His long, shrill, painful song, as though he plained 
 
 For her that loved him and his pleasant hills, 
 
 And we would dream again of bygone days 
 
 Until our eyes should swell with natural tears 
 
 For brilliant hopes — all faded into air ! 
 
 As, on the sands of Irak, near approach 
 
 Destroys the traveller's vision of still lakes, 
 
 And goodly streams reed-clad, and meadows green ; 
 
 And leaves behind the drear reality 
 
 Of shadeless, same, yet everchanging sand ! 
 
 And when the sullen clouds rose thick on high 
 
 Mountains on mountains rolling — and dark mist 
 
 Wrapped itself round the hill- tops like a shroud. 
 
 When on her grave swept by the moaning wind 
 
 Bending the heather-bells — then would I come 
 
 And watch by her, in silent loneliness, 
 
 And smile upon the storm — as knowing well 
 
 The lightning's ilash would surely turn aside, 
 
 Nor mar the lowly mound, where peaceful sleeps 
 
 All that gave life and love to one fond heart ! 
 
 I talk of things that are not ; and if prayers 
 
 By night and day availeth from my weak lips, 
 
 Then should they never be ! till I was gone, 
 
 Before the friends I loved, to my long home. 
 
 O pardon me, if aught I say too much ; my mind 
 
 Too often strangely turns to ribald mirth. 
 
 As though I had no doubt nor hope beyond — 
 
 Or brooding melancholy cloys my soul 
 
 With thoughts of days misspent, of wasted time 
 
 And bitter feelings swallowed up in jests. 
 
 Then strange and fearful thoughts flit o'er my brain 
 
 By indistinctness made more terrible. 
 
 And incubi mock at me with fierce eyes 
 
 Upon my couch : and visions, crude and dire, 
 
 Of planets, suns, millions of miles, infinity, 
 
 Space, time, thought, being, blank nonentity, 
 
 Things incorporeal, fancies of the brain, 
 
 Seen, heard, as though they were material, 
 
 All mixed in sickening mazes, trouble me. 
 
 And lead my soul away from earth and heaven 
 
 Until I doubt whether I be or not ! 
 
38 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 And then I see all frightful shapes — lank ghosts, 
 
 Hydras, chimeras, krakens, wastes of sand, 
 
 Herbless and void of living voice — tall mountains 
 
 Cleaving the skies with height immeasurable. 
 
 On which perchance I climb for infinite years, broad seas, 
 
 Studded with islands numberless, that stretch 
 
 Beyond the regions of the sun, and fade 
 
 Away in distance vast, or dreary clouds. 
 
 Cold, dark, and watery, where wander I for ever ! 
 
 Or space of ether, where I hang for aye ! 
 
 A speck, an atom — inconsumable — 
 
 Immortal, hopeless, voiceless, powerless ! 
 
 And oft I fancy I am weak and old, 
 
 And all who loved me, one by one, are dead, 
 
 And I am left alone — and cannot die ! 
 
 Surely there is no rest on earth for souls 
 
 Whose dreams are like a madman's ! I am young 
 
 And much is yet before me — after years 
 
 May bring peace with them to my weary heart ! 
 
 C. K. 
 
 In 1836 the happy free country life of Clovelly was exchanged 
 for London work and the rectory of St, Luke's, Chelsea, to which 
 Lord Cadogan had presented Mr. Kingsley. There the family 
 settled, and Charles was entered, as a day student, at King's Col- 
 lege, London, where, says Dr. Barry, the present principal, in a 
 recent letter : — 
 
 " He became a member of the General Literature Department 
 of the College — that is, the department for those who are simply 
 pursuing a liberal education (with a much larger admixture of 
 mathematics, modes, languages, and physical science, than was then 
 usual), after leaving school before settling to a profession or going 
 to the university. ... It was a great pleasure to me, he adds, 
 to have been able to invite one to whose writings I owe so much, 
 to preach for us at the College in 1873, and to allow us to add his 
 name to our list of Honorary fellows. . . ." 
 
 It was a great grief to Charles to leave the West Country and 
 the society of those who were all ready to help him in his botani- 
 cal and geological studies, and in picking up the old traditions 
 of the neighborhood. The parting with his dear friend Cowley 
 Powles, the loss of the intellectual atmosphere of Mr, Coleridge's 
 house and his valuable library, and, above all, of the beautiful nat- 
 
Removal to Chelsea. 39 
 
 ural surroundings of both Helston and Clovelly, was bitterly felt. 
 The change to a London rectory, with its ceaseless parish work, 
 the discussion of which is so wearisome to the young, the middle- 
 class society of a suburban district as Chelsea then was, the polem- 
 ical conversation all seemingly so narrow and conventional in its 
 tone, chafed the boy's spirit, and had anything but a happy effect 
 on his mind. His parents were busy from morning till night, the 
 house full of district visitors and parish committees. In short, 
 Chelsea was a prison from which he thankfully escaped two years 
 later to the freer life of Cambridge. 
 
 To his dear friend and schoolfellow at Helston he thus pours 
 out his heart : — 
 
 Chelsea Rectory. 
 
 " I find a doleful difference in the society here and at Helston, 
 paradoxical as it may appear. . . . We have nothing but cler- 
 gymen (very good and sensible men, but), talking of nothing but 
 parochial schools, and duties, and vestries, and curates, &c., &c., 
 &c. And as for women, there is not a woman in all Chelsea, leav- 
 ing out my own mother, to be compared to Mrs. C, or ; and 
 
 the girls here have got their heads crammed full of schools, and 
 district visiting, and baby linen, and penny clubs. Confound ! ! ! 
 and going about among the most abominable scenes of filth, wretch- 
 edness, and indecency, to visit the poor and read the Bible to them. 
 My own mother says the places they go into are tit for no girl to 
 see, and that they should not know such things exist, 
 
 I regret here, then, as you may suppose, Mrs. D., and ; but, 
 
 alas ! here are nothing but ugly splay-footed beings, three-fourths 
 of whom can't sing, and the other quarter smg miles out of tune, 
 with voices like love-sick parrots. Confound ! ! ! I have got here 
 two or three good male acquaintances who kill the time ; one is 
 Sub Secretar}' to the Geological Society. . . . 
 
 "As you may suppose all this clerical conversation (to which I 
 am obliged to listen) has had a slight effect in settling my opinion 
 on these subjects, and I begin to hate these dapper young-ladies- 
 preachers like the devil, for I am sickened and enraged to see 
 ' silly women blown about by every wind,' falling in love with the 
 preacher instead of his sermon, and with his sermon instead of the 
 Bible. I could say volumes on this subject tiiat should raise both 
 your contempt and indignation. I am sickened with its day-by-day 
 occurrence.* As you may suppose, this hatred is narg6dev, here- 
 
 * These early experiences made him most careful in after life, when in a par- 
 ish of his own, to confine all talk of parish business to its own hours, and never, 
 
40 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 ditary, and the governor is never more rich than when he unbends 
 on these points." 
 
 For the next two years he had what he called hard grinding 
 work at King's College, walking up there every day from Chelsea, 
 reading all the way, and walking home late, to study all the even- 
 ing. In his spare hours, which were few and far between, he com- 
 forted himself for the lack of all amusement by devouring every 
 book he could lay hands on. His parents were absorbed in their 
 parish work, and their religious views precluded all public amuse- 
 ments for their children : so that the only variety in Charles's Hfe 
 was during the summer holidays, when his father took him to Dur- 
 ham to stay at his friend Dr. Wellesley's, or to Clovelly. 
 
 as he called it, '* talk shop " before his children, or lower the tone of conversa- 
 tion, by letting it degenerate into mere parochial and clerical gossip. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 1838—42. 
 
 Aged 19-23. 
 
 Life at Cambridge — Visit to Oxfordshire^Undergraduate Days — Decides to take 
 Orders — Takes his Degree — Correspondence — Letters from Cambridge 
 Friends. 
 
 In the autumn of 1838 Charles Kingsley left King's College, 
 London, and went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where 
 he soon gained a scholarship, being first in his year in the May 
 Examinations, and in<th.e joy of his heart he writes home : — 
 
 Magdalene College, 
 
 ^ay 31. 1839- 
 
 "You will be delighted to hear that I 2m\ first in classics and 
 mathematics also, at the examinations, which has not happened in 
 the College for several years. I shall bring home prizes, and a 
 decent portion of honor — the King's College men (K.C. London) 
 are all delighted. I am going to stay up here a few days longer if 
 you will let me. Mr. Wand has oifered to help me with my second 
 )'ear's subjects, so I shall read conic sections and the spherical 
 trigonometry very hard while 1 am here. I know you and mamma 
 will be glad to hear of my success, so you must pardon the wild- 
 ness of my letter, for I am so happy I hardly know what to say. 
 You know I am not accustomed to be successful. I am going 
 to-day to a great fishing party at Sir Charles Wale's, at Shelford." 
 
 The prize he refers to was a fine edition of Plato in eleven 
 volumes. " His selection of such a book," says Mr. Mynors 
 Bright, an undergraduate friend, afterwards senior tutor of Mag- 
 dalene, in a recent letter to the Editor, 
 
 " Speaks well for his judgment and taste. I recollect one of the 
 examiners, a Fellow of the College, telling me, that whatever 
 papers Kingsley sent up to any examination always showed marks 
 of talent. As you must know, he was alwa3's of an excitable 
 
42 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 temperament. I recollect his telling me that he first began to 
 smoke at Cambridge, and that it had a wonderful effect on his 
 nervous system, and enabled him to work. He did not get a 
 Fellowship, because there was no vacancy for him, till he obtained 
 one which, no doubt, was more pleasing to him. When he was 
 about to return as Professor to Cambridge, I was very much 
 amused one morning, on saying to the College cook, ' We have a 
 great man coming to us again, Mr. Kingsley ; do you recollect 
 anything of him ? ' He thought a minute, and then answered : 
 ' Mr. Kingsley — Mr. Kingsley. Yes, I recollect him. I used to 
 feed a dog of his, and he used to come and say' (trying to imitate 
 Kingsley' s voice), 'You con — founded beast, why can't you earn 
 your own living, and not oblige me to pay for you ! ' " 
 
 In the summer of 1839 ^'^^ Rector of Chelsea took duty, for the 
 sake of country air and change, near some intimate friends, at the 
 village of Checkenden, in Oxfordshire, and settled in the little 
 parsonage house for two months with his wife and his family, 
 Charles, then an undergraduate of Cambridge, Gerald in the 
 Royal Navy (since dead), a daughter, and two schoolboys. On 
 the 6th of July, Charles and his future wife met for the first time- 
 " That was my real wedding day," he said, some fifteen years after- 
 wards. 
 
 He was then full of religious doubts ; and his face, with its 
 unsatisfied hungering look, bore witness to the state of his mind. 
 It had a sad longing expression, too, as if he had all his life been 
 looking for a sympathy he had never found — a rest which he never 
 would attain in this world. His peculiar character had not been 
 understood hitherto, and his heart had been half asleep. It woke 
 up now, and never slept again. For the first time he could speak 
 with perfect freedom, and be met with answering sympathy. And 
 gradually as the new friendship (which yet seemed old — from the 
 first more of a recognition than an acquaintance) deepened into 
 intimacy, every doubt, every thought, every failing, every sin, as 
 he would call it, was laid bare. Counsel was asked and given, all 
 things in heaven and earth discussed ; and as new hopes dawned, 
 the look of hard defiance gave way to a wonderful humility and 
 tenderness, which were his characteristics, with those who under- 
 stood him, to his dying day. 
 
 He was just hke his own Lancelot in Yeast, in that summer of 
 1839 — a bold thinker, a bold rider, a most chivalrous gentleman — 
 
Visit to Oxfordshire. 43 
 
 sad, shy, and serious habitually; in conversation at one moment 
 brilliant and impassioned ; the next reserved and unapproachable ; 
 by turns attracting and repelling, but pouring forth to the friend 
 whom he could trust, stores of thought and feeling and information 
 on every sort of unexpected subject which seemed boundless. It 
 was a feast to the imagination and intellect to hold communion 
 with Charles Kingsley even at the age of twenty ; the originality 
 with which he treated a subject was startling, and his genius illumi- 
 nated every object it approached, whether he spoke of " the 
 delicious shiver of those aspen leaves," on the nearest tree, or of 
 the deepest laws of humanity and the controversies of the day. 
 Of that intercourse truly might these friends each say with Goethe 
 — " For the first time, I may well say, I carried on a conversation ; 
 for the first time, was the inmost sense of my words returned to 
 me, more rich, more full, more comprehensive from another's 
 mouth. What I had been groping for, was rendered clear to me ; 
 what I had been thinking, I was taught to see. . . ." 
 
 The Oxford Tracts had lately appeared, and, though he dis- 
 cussed them from the merely human and not the religious point of 
 view, he fiercely denounced the ascetic view of sacred human ties 
 which he foresaw would result from them. Even then he detected 
 in them principles which, as he expressed years afterwards in his 
 preface to Hypatia, must, if once adopted, sap the very foundation 
 of the two divine roots of the Church, the ideas of family and 
 national life. 
 
 Two months of such intercourse passed away only too quickly, 
 and though from this time for the next four years and a half, the 
 friends met but seldom, and corresponded at rare intervals, a new 
 life had dawned for both, which neither absence nor sorrow, differ- 
 ence of religious opinions, opposition of friends, or adverse cir- 
 cumstances, could extinguish. Before he left Oxfordshire he was 
 so far shaken in his doubts, that he promised to read his Bible once 
 more — to pra}^ — to open his heart to the Light, if the Light would 
 but come. All, however, was dark for a time, and the conflict 
 between hopes and fears for the future, and between faith and un- 
 belief, was so fierce and bitter, that when he returned to Cam- 
 bridge, he became reckless, and nearly gave up all for lost : he 
 read little, went in for excitement of every kind — boating, hunting, 
 driving, fencing, boxing, duck-shooting in the Fens, — anything to 
 
44 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 deaden the remembrance of the happy past, which just then 
 promised no future. More than once he had nearly resolved to 
 leave Cambridge and go out to the Far West and live as a wild 
 prairie hunter; to this he refers when for the first time he found 
 himself on the prairies of America in 1874. But through all, God 
 kept him in those dark days for a work he little dreamed of. 
 
 He had many friends in the University who took delight in his 
 society, some for his wit and humor, others for his sympathy on art, 
 and deeper matters, but they knew nothing of the real state of his 
 mind. "He was very popular," writes an intimate undergraduate 
 friend, " amongst all classes of his companions, he mixed freely 
 with all, the studious, the idle, the clever, and the reverse, a most 
 agreeable, companion, full of information of all kinds, and abound- 
 ing in conversation. Whatever he engaged in, he threw his whole 
 energy into; he read hard at times, but enjoyed sports of all 
 kinds, fishing, shooting, riding, and cards." A letter from the Rev. 
 E. Pitcairn Campbell, gives a graphic account of their under- 
 graduate life just then. 
 
 Aston Lodge, November, 1875. 
 
 " My first acquaintance with your husband was formed sometime 
 in 1840. 
 
 " We happened to be sitting together one night on the top of 
 one of those coaches which in our time were subscribed for by a 
 number of men 10s. or ^\ each for various expeditions into the 
 Fens — for instance, when Whittlesea lay broadly under water — Sir 
 Colman Rashleigh, the Dykes of Cornwall, or other driving men 
 taking the management, wearing wonderful coats and hats, and 
 providing the horses. I remember the drive very well. The 
 moon was high, and the air was frosty, and we talked about sport 
 and natural history, while the cornopean professor astonished the 
 natives with what he called Mr. Straw's (!) walzes. 
 
 " At last we got upon fishing, and I invited your husband to 
 come to my rooms to view some very superior tackle which had 
 been left me by a relative. He came at once, inviting me to join 
 him in some of his haunts up the Granta and the Cam, where he 
 had friends dwelling, and hospitable houses open to him. 
 
 " I never shall forget our first expedition. I was to call him, 
 and for this purpose I had to cHmb over the wall of Magdalene 
 College. This I did at two a.m., and about three we were both 
 climbing back into the stonemason's yard, and oft" through Trump- 
 ington, in pouring rain all the way, nine miles to Duxford. 
 
 " We reached about 6.30. The water was clouded by rain, and 
 
Personal Traits. 45 
 
 I in courtesy to your husband yielded my heavier rod in order that 
 he might try the lower water with the minnow. 
 
 " He was, however, scarcely out of sight, before I spied, under 
 the alders, some glorious trout rising to caterpillars dropping frorn 
 the bushes. In ten minutes I had three of these fine fellows on 
 the bank — one of them weighed three pounds, others two pounds 
 each. We caught nothing after the rain had ceased. 
 
 "This performance set me up in your husband's opinion, and 
 he took me with him to Shelford, where dwelt Sir Charles Wale. 
 It was at Shelford that I executed the feat to which he refers in his 
 Miscellanies.* 
 
 " The Times coach used to take us up to breakfast, and many a 
 good trout rewarded our labors. Then we dined with Sir Charles 
 at five P.M., and walked back to Cambridge in the evening. Oh ! 
 what pleasant talk was his, so full of poetry and beauty ! and, what 
 I admired most, such boundless information. 
 
 " Besides these expeditions we made others on horseback, and 
 I think at times we followed the great Professor Sedgwick in his 
 adventurous rides, which the livery stable-keepers called joUy- 
 gizing ! f The old professor was generally mounted on a bony 
 giant, whose trot kept most of us at a hand gallop. Gaunt and 
 grim, the brave old Northern man seemed to enjoy the fun as 
 much as we did — his was not a hunting seat — neither his hands 
 nor his feet ever seemed exactly in the right place. But when we 
 surrounded him at the trysting-place, even the silliest among us 
 acknowledged that his lectures wei^e glorious. It is too true that 
 our method of reaching those trysting-places was not legitimate, 
 the greater number preferring the field to the road, so that the un- 
 happy owners of the horses found it necessary to charge more for 
 a day's jolly-gizing than they did for a day's hunting. 
 
 " There was another professor whose lectures we attended to- 
 gether, but he was of a different type and character — one who 
 taught the gentle art of self-defence — a negro of pure blood, who 
 appeared to have more joints in his back than are usually allotted 
 to humanity. In carrying out the science which he taught, we 
 occasionally discolored each other's countenances, but we thought 
 that we benefited by these lectures in more senses than one. We 
 had our tempers braced, yea, even our Christian charity ; for in- 
 stance, when we learnt to feel as we knew we ought for those who 
 had just punished us. 
 
 "To crown our sports, we have now only to add the all-absorb- 
 ing boating, and, dear Mrs. Kingsley, you will have reason to think 
 that we have so filled up our time, as to have little left for legiti- 
 
 * Chalk Stream Studies, Prose Idylls, p. 83. 
 
 \ Professor Sedgwick gave Geological Field Lectures on horseback to a class 
 in the neigliborhood of Cambridge. 
 
46 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 mate study ; and so, alack, it was with me, but not so, I fancy, 
 with your husband. However idle we both were at first, he took 
 to reading in sufficient time to enable him to realize the degree he 
 
 wanted After his examination, I altogether lost sight of 
 
 your husband until, about the year 1865, I wrote to him and en- 
 quired if the passage in the Chalk Stream studies did not refer to 
 me. I long to find his reply — it was a charming letter." 
 
 Now began his difficulties in theology about the Trinity, and 
 other important doctrines. He revolted from what seemed to 
 him then, the " bigotry, cruelty, and quibbling," of the Athanasian 
 Creed, that very Creed which in after years was his stronghold ; 
 and he could get no clergyman to help him with advice he could 
 rely on, on these points. Speaking of the clergy with whom he 
 came in contact, and of his religious doubts, he writes, 
 
 " This is not so much beyond reason, as it is beyond the proper 
 bounds of induction. From very insufficient and ambiguous 
 grounds in the Bible, they seem unjustifiably to have built up a 
 huge superstructure, whose details they have filled in according to 
 their own fancies, or alas 1 too often according to their own in- 
 terest Do not be angry. I know I cannot shake you, 
 
 and I think you will find nothing flippant or bitter — no vein of 
 noisy and shallow blasphemy in my doubts. I feel solemn and sad 
 on the subject. If the philosophers of old were right, and if I am 
 right in my religion, alas ! for Christendom ! and if I am wrong, 
 
 alas ! for myself! It is a subject on which I cannot jest 
 
 I will write soon, and tell you some of my temptations." 
 
 Cambridge, November, 1840. 
 
 " I have struggled to alter lately, and my alteration has been 
 remarked with pleasm-e by some, with sneers by others. ' Kings- 
 ley, they say-, is not half as reckless as he used to be.' .... 
 There is another benefit you have conferred upon me — careless- 
 ness for the opinion of the unworthy. Formerly, by a strange 
 paradox, which I see in too many minds, I was servile to the 
 opinions of the very persons I despised. I had no rule of morality 
 felt and believed. My morals were only theoretical, and public 
 opinion even more than self-interest, my only God. But now 
 . . . . that I have found a centralizing point connecting my theo- 
 retical notions of morality with my affections and my emotions, I 
 begin to find that there is an object to be attained in morahty be- 
 yond public esteem and self-interest — namely, the love and the 
 esteem of the good, and, consequently, of God himself. The love 
 and the esteem of the Deity, which I conceive is almost the same 
 
Doubts and Diffictdties. 47 
 
 thing as loving good for its own sake, I cannot fiilly appreciate yet, 
 or rather my natural feelings of the just and the beautiful, have, as 
 you say, been dimmed by neglect." .... 
 
 Janitary, 1841. 
 
 " .... I have an instinctive, perhaps a foolish fear, of any- 
 thing like the use of religious phraseology, because I am sure that 
 if these expressions were used by any one placed as I now am to 
 me, I should doubt the writer's sincerity. I find that if I allow 
 myself ever to use, even to my own heart, those vague and trite 
 expressions, which are generally used as the watchwords of religion, 
 their familiarity makes me careless, or rather dull to their sense, 
 while their specious glibness makes me prove myself alternately 
 fiend or angel, hurrying me on in a mass of language, of whose 
 precise import I have no vital knowledge. This is their eff"ect on 
 me. We know too well what it often is on others. Believe, then, 
 every word I write as the painful expression of new ideas and 
 feelings in a mind unprejudiced by conventionality in language, 
 or (I hope) in thought. ... I ask this because I am afraid of 
 the very suspicion of talking myself into a fancied conversion. I 
 see people do this often, and I see them fall back again. And 
 this, perhaps, keeps me in terror lest I should have merely mis- 
 taken the emotions of a few passionate moments for the calm 
 
 convictions which are to guide me through eternity I 
 
 have, therefore, in order to prevent myself mistaking words and 
 feelings for thoughts, never made use of technicalities. 
 
 "I have not much time for poetry,* as 1 am reading steadily. 
 How I envy, as a boy, a woman's life at the corresponding age- 
 so free from mental control, as to the subjects of thought and 
 reading — so subjected to it, as to the manner and the tone. We, 
 on the other hand, are forced to drudge at the acquirement of 
 confessedly obsolete and useless knowledge, of worn-out philoso- 
 phies, and scientific theories long exploded — while our finer senses 
 and our conscience are either scared by sensuality or suffered to 
 run riot in imagination and excitement, and at last to find every 
 woman who has made even a moderate use of her time, far beyond 
 us in true philosophy. 
 
 "I wish I were free from this university system, and free to fol- 
 fow such a course of education as Socrates, and Bacon, and More, 
 and Milton have sketched out." .... 
 
 Cambridge, Febrtia7-y, 1841. 
 
 " I strive daily and hourly to be calm. Every few minutes to 
 stop myself forcibly, and recall my mind to a sense of where I am 
 
 * During these years of trial and suspense he wrote little poetry. " Twill 
 Stars" and " Palinodia" are all that mark the time. 
 
48 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 — where I am going — and whither I ought to be tending. This is 
 most painful discipHne, but wholesome, and much as I dread to 
 look inward, I force myself to it continually. .... I am read- 
 ing seven to eight hours a day. I have refused hunting and driv- 
 ing, and made a solemn vow against cards. My trial of this new 
 mode of life has been short, but to have begun it is the greatest 
 difficulty. There is still much more to be done, and there are 
 more pure and unworldly motives of improvement, but actions 
 will pave the way for motives, almost as much as motives do for 
 actions 
 
 " You cannot understand the excitement of animal exercise 
 from the mere act of cutting wood or playing cricket to the 
 manias of hunting or shooting or fishing. On these things more 
 or less most young men live. Every moment which is taken from 
 them for duty or for reading is felt to be lost — to be so much time 
 sacrificed to hard circumstance. And even those who have calmed 
 from age, or from the necessity of attention to a profession, which 
 has become custom, have the same feelings flowing as an under- 
 current in their minds ; and, if they had not, they would neither 
 think nor act like men. They might be pure and good and kind, 
 but they would need that stern and determined activity, without 
 which a man cannot act in an extended sphere either for his own 
 good, or for that of his fellow-creatures. When I talk, then, of 
 excitement, 1 do not wish to destroy excitability, but to direct it 
 into the proper channel, and to bring it under subjection. I have 
 been reading Plato on this very subject, and you would be charmed 
 with his ideas 
 
 "Of the existence of this quality (excitability) there can be no 
 doubt, and you must remember the peculiar trial which this" 
 (alluding to the necessity for hard reading and giving up all amuse- 
 ment for the time being) " proves to a young man whose super- 
 fluous excitement has to be broken in like that of a dog or a horse 
 — for it is utterly animal. 
 
 At this time his physical strength was great. He walked one 
 day from Cambridge to London, fifty-two miles, starting early and 
 arriving in London at 9 p.m., with ease ; and for many years 
 afterwards a walk of twenty or twenty-five miles in a fresh country 
 was a real refreshment to him. 
 
 Speaking of "renewed violent struggles to curb" himself, which 
 made him "feel more agonizingly weak than ever," he says : 
 
 Cambridge, February, 1841. 
 
 " As for my degree, I can yet take high honors in the Univer 
 sity, and ought to get my fellowship ,: but I was very idle — and 
 very sinful — my first year. 
 
Reading and Resolutions. 49 
 
 " I attend morning chapel at eight ; read from nine to one or 
 two ; attend chapel generally again at live. I read for some hours 
 in the evening. As to my studies interesting me, if you knew the 
 system and the subjects of study, you would feel that to be impos- 
 sible. ... I wish to make duty the only reason for working, 
 but my heart is in very different studies." .... 
 
 May^ 1 84 1. 
 
 " My only reasons for working for a degree are that I may enter 
 the world with a certain prestige which may get me a living sooner. 
 . . . . Several of my intimate friends here, strange to say, are 
 going into the Church, so that our rooms, when we are not read- 
 ing, are full of clerical conversation. One of my friends, the son 
 of the English Minister at Turin, goes up for ordination next week. 
 How I envy him his change of life. I feel as if, once in the 
 Church, I could cling so much closer to God. I feel more and 
 more daily that a clergyman's life is the one for which both my 
 physique and morale were intended — that the profession will check 
 and guide the faulty parts of my mind, while it gives full room for 
 my energy — that energy which had so nearly ruined me ; but will 
 now be devoted utterly, I hope, to the service of God. My views 
 of theoretical religion are getting more clear daily, as I see more 
 completely the necessity of faith. What a noble mind Novalis's 
 must have been. Do you know his works ? or have you read the 
 
 review of them in Carlyle ? If not, pray do To publish 
 
 a translation of them will be one of the first results' of my German 
 studies, after my degree 
 
 " I forgot to thank you for the books. I am utterly delighted 
 with them." 
 
 The books referred to were Carlyle's works, and Coleridge's 
 "Aids to Reflection," Carlyle's "French Revolution," sent by 
 the same friend, had had a remarkable effect on his mind before 
 he decided upon taking holy orders, in establishing and intensifying 
 his belief in God's righteous government of the world. The " Mis- 
 cellanies," and "Past and Present," followed it up, and were most 
 useful to him, as was Maurice's "Kingdom of Christ," which she 
 sent at a later period. 
 
 Sully, June 12, 1841. 
 
 "My birth-night. I have been for the last hour on the sea-shore, 
 not dreaming, but thinking deeply and strongly, and forming deter- 
 minations which are to affect my destiny through time and through 
 eternity. Before the sleeping earth and the sleepless sea and stars 
 I have devoted myself to God ; a vow never (if He gives me the 
 faitli I pray for) to be recalled." .... 
 4 
 
50 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 A great change had long been coming over him, to which in a 
 •previous letter he points when he speaks of himself as 
 
 "Saved — saved from the wild pride and darkling tempests of 
 scepticism, and from the sensuality and dissipation into which my 
 own rashness and vanity had hurried me before I knew you. Saved 
 from a hunter's life on the Prairies, from becoming a savage, and 
 perhaps worse. Saved from all this, and restored to my country 
 and my God, and able to believe. And I do beheve, firmly and 
 practically, as a subject of prayer, and a rule of every action of my 
 life." .... 
 
 The Rev. James Montagu, Rector of Hawkwell, an old College 
 friend, writing to the editor in 1876, refers to this period thus : 
 
 " Our old Cambridge intercourse was to me very pleasant. There 
 was something in dear Charles's young days then, which drew me 
 (his senior by some six or eight years) v&xj much to him. There 
 was growing up in his brain, then indistinct and shadowy, much of 
 that which came out in riper manhood. There was a dreaminess 
 about him at times which caused remarks to be made about him. 
 1 have had it said to me, ' You seem to be much with Kingsley, is 
 he not a little odd and cracky?' and I can remember my answer 
 — 'It would take two or three of our heads to mend the crack.' 
 He would come up to my room with, 'Are you busy, Monty?' 
 * Not too busy for a chat with you, Kingsley.' And then I must 
 tell you how artfully and cunningly I used to slip paper and pen- 
 cils within his reach ; for I knew his wont to go on sketching all 
 sorts of fanciful things, while we worried our young heads over 
 other dreams as fanciful. Many of those pleasant memories come 
 cropping out at times, though long years have i^assed — and long 
 years make memory weak. Since those days, from his busy life, 
 our intercourse was but slight. I have not forgotten the few pleas- 
 ant days spent at Eversley ; nor shall I ever lose the pride I feel 
 in being called Charles Kingsley' s friend." 
 
 His every-day college life, his love of art and drawing powers 
 are recalled by another friend, now distinguished himself, as archi- 
 tect of St. Paul's Cathedral, Frank Penrose, Esq., F.S.A., &c., &c. 
 
 "My first acquaintance with Charles Kingsley was at South Clif- 
 ton, Lincolnshire, when I must have had some romps with him as 
 a little boy, say in 1823 ; but I saw nothing of him from that time 
 till he came up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, as a freshman, 
 in October, 1838, with me, and I welcomed him as something more 
 
Undergraduate Days. 51 
 
 than a casual acquaintance. We began duly attending the Col- 
 lege lectures, and I saw at once that he was a man of no ordinary 
 talents. I was ultimately the best of my years in mathematics ; 
 but, if I remember rightly, he at first held his own on those sub. 
 jects, and it was by his own vacating the ground that the tortoise 
 
 gave him the go-by in that department I was always 
 
 interested in your husband's conversation, and he was, I think, the 
 only man in Cambridge with whom I ever got any art talk. . . 
 . . In the boating department he was under my command, as 
 captain of the Magdalene Boat Club, in 1840-41 ; he never, to 
 the best of my belief, rowed in the races of our first boat. In those 
 of the second boat he did constantly, and was regular on practis- 
 ing days What I remember best are his sketches of 
 
 figure subjects — his showing me his Cambridge English verse prize 
 poem, the Crusades. It was unsuccessful, but it showed the latent 
 poetic genius. 
 
 " I must add his dog Muzzie, a clever, sedate-looking grey 
 Scotch terrier, of whom he was very fond. My last shall be a 
 negative point, and you will not think it unacceptable. I never 
 saw him do anything that I should have any objection to tell you." 
 
 " ' We were both very idle,' said Mr. J. Barstow, • in those days 
 — he idler than I apparently, for he often asked me to finish his 
 papers for him, that he might have something to present to our 
 common tutor. He lived very much alone, I think he was fonder 
 of the saddle than the boats ; and T saw but little of him, but I 
 liked and admired much what I saw.' " 
 
 During the spring of this year he decided on the Church as his 
 profession instead of the law. His name had been down at I Jn- 
 coln's-inn, but circumstances and his own convictions altered his 
 plan of life, a change which he never regretted for a moment. 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER. 
 
 Shelford, Cambridge, Jime 23, 1841. 
 
 " I have been reading the Edinburgh Revietv (April, 1841), on 
 No. 90 of the Tracts for the Times, and 1 wish I could transcribe 
 
 every word, and send it to . Whether wilful or self-deceived, 
 
 these men are Jesuits, taking the oath to the Articles with moral 
 reservations which allow them to explain them away in senses 
 utterly diflerent from those of their authors. All the worst doctri- 
 nal features of Popery Mr. Newman professes to believe in." 
 
 Dr. Bateson, Master of St. John's College, Cambridge, his tutor 
 much beloved, whose kindly reception of him when he returned 
 
52 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 as Regius Professor of Modern History in i860, was a source of 
 grateful joy to him, thus recalls the undergraduate, to whom his 
 help was so important : 
 
 St. John's, December, 1875. 
 
 " Charles Kingsley came to Cambridge sufficiently well pre 
 pared. He was almost immediately made a scholar of Magdalene, 
 and he was prizeman at the college examination of freshmen in 
 June, 1839. 
 
 " I look back with much satisfaction, and shall always reflect 
 with pride on my engagement to serve him in the capacity of clas- 
 sical private tutor. He was my pupil for his three first terms, from 
 October, i8'38, to Midsummer, 1839, and again from October, 
 1840, to the end of the Long Vacation, 1841. Being appointed 
 in the' Michaelmas term of that year an examiner for the classical 
 tripos for the following year, for which he was to be a candidate, I 
 was unable to continue my engagement for a longer time. 
 
 " It is too true, as no one lamented more than himself, that 
 from various causes he made but an indifferent use of the opportu- 
 nities which his residence in Cambridge afforded him, at all events 
 for the greater part of the time. In this respect he differs little 
 from many of the men of poetic genius who have been under- 
 graduates at our universities. Whether it is that our system of 
 training and of frequent examinations, has something in it which 
 is repulsive and uncongenial, or that their fervid and impulsive na- 
 tures are unable to brook the restraint of our discipline, certain it 
 is that many youths of most brilliant promise, who have lived to 
 achieve great things in after years, have left our colleges with but 
 little cause to congratulate themselves on time well spent or 
 talents well employed. My own relations with Charles Kingsley 
 in those early days were always agreeable, although I was unable 
 to induce him to apply himself with any energy to his classical 
 work, until quite the close of his undergraduate career. Then, 
 indeed, he seemed an altered man. With wonderful ability and 
 surprising quickness during the last few months he made rapid 
 strides, and I can well remember admiring his papers, more espe- 
 cially those of Latin prose and verse, which he sent up for the 
 classical tripos. They exhibited excellence and power, due far 
 more to native talent than to industry or study, and raised him to 
 a place in the first class of the classical tripos. P'or after all his 
 degree was a good one, as senior optime in mathematics, and a 
 first class in classics ; but I must add that it was nothing compared 
 to what might have been attained by a man of "his powers. If he 
 had worked as an undergraduate with only a small portion of the 
 industry and energy which he exhibited after he left Cambridge, 
 there was no academic distinction that would not have been within 
 his reach." 
 
Incident of the Examination. 53 
 
 An incident occurred during the examination which was much 
 talked of at the time, and is recalled by the Rev. Rigby Kew- 
 ley, now Rector of Baldock, and Honorary Canon of Rochester : 
 
 '■'■ On one morning but one question remained of a paper on 
 mechanics, ' Describe a Common Pump.' Of the internal ma- 
 chinery of a pump Kingsley was unable to render a scientific ac- 
 count, but of the outside his vivid imagination suppUed a picture 
 which his facile pencil soon transferred to paper. Under the head- 
 ing, ' Describe a Pump,' he drew a grand village pump in the 
 midst of a broad green, and opposite the porch of an ancient 
 church. By the side of the pumj) stood, in all pomposity of his 
 office, the village beadle, with uniform and baton. Around were 
 women and children of all ages, shapes, dress, and sizes, each car- 
 rying a crock, a jug, a bucket, or some vessel large or small. 
 These were drawn with considerable power, and the whole was 
 lighted up with his deep vein of humor ; while around the pump 
 itself was a huge chain, padlocked, and surrounded by a notice, 
 ' This pump locked during Divine service.' This, Kingsley sent 
 up to the examiner as his answer to the question. I know not 
 whether he got any marks for it ; but it was so clever that the 
 moderator of the year had it framed and hung up on the wall of 
 his room." 
 
 He left Cambridge in February, much exhausted in body and 
 mind, from having, by six months' desperate reading, done work 
 which should have been spread over his three years of University 
 life. He came out in honors, first-class in classics, and senior opt. 
 in mathematics. 
 
CHAPTER IV. , 
 
 1842 — 1843. 
 Aged 23-24. 
 
 Reads for Holy Orders — Correspondence — Ordained Deacon — Settles at Eversley 
 — Parish Work — Letters. 
 
 During the spring, while slowly recovering the exhaustion of his 
 degree and reading for Holy Orders, he had the offer of two cura- 
 cies in Hampshire, at Kingsley and Eversley. He chose the 
 latter. 
 
 Chelsea, April, 1842. 
 
 '' . . .1 hope to be ordained in July to the Curacy of Evers- 
 ley in Hampshire. In the midst of lovely scenery — rich — but not 
 exciting. And you will be with me in your thoughts, in my village 
 visits, and my moorland walks, when I am drinking in from man, 
 and nature, the good and the beautiful, while I purge in my voca- 
 tion the evil, and raise up the falling and the faint. Can I not do 
 it ? for have I not fainted and fallen ? And do I not know too 
 well the bitterness that is from without, as well as the more dire 
 one, from within .... My reading at present must be exclu- 
 sively confined to divinity — not so yours. You may still range 
 freely among the meadows of the beautiful, while I am mining in 
 the deep mountains of the true. And so it should be through life. 
 The wotnan's part should be to cultivate the affections and the 
 imagination ; the man's the intellect of their common soul. She 
 must teach him how to apply his knowledge to men's hearts. He 
 must teach her how to arrange that knowledge into practical and 
 theoretical forms. In this the woman has the nobler task. But 
 there is one more noble still — to find out from the notices of 
 the universe, and the revelation of God, and the uninspired truth 
 which he has made his creatures to declare even in heathen lands, 
 to find out from all these the pure, mind of God, and the eternal 
 laws whereby He made us and governs us. This is true science ; 
 and this, as we discover it, will replace phantoms by reality, and 
 that darkling taper of ' common sense,' by the glorious light of cer- 
 
The Man and the Woman. 55 
 
 tainty. For this the man must bring his philosophy, and the 
 woman her exquisite sense of the beautiful and the just, and all 
 hearts and all lands shall lie open before them, as they gradually 
 know them one by one ! That glorious word know — it is God's 
 attribute, and includes in itself all others. Love — truth — all are 
 parts of that awful power of knowing, at a single glance, from and 
 to all eternity, what a thing is in its essence, its properties, and its 
 relations to the whole universe through all time ! I feel awe- 
 struck whenever I see that word used rightly, and I never, if I can 
 remember, use it myself of myself. But to us, as to dying Schiller, 
 hereafter many things will become plain and clear. And this is no 
 dream of romance. It is what many have approximated to before 
 us, with less intellectual, and no greater spiritual advantages, and 
 strange to say, some of them alone — buried in cloisters seldom — 
 in studies often — some, worst of all, worn down by the hourly 
 misery of a wife who neither loved them nor felt for them : but to 
 those who, through love, have once caught a glimi)se of ' the great 
 secret,' what may they not do by it xw years of love and thought .? 
 For this heavenly knowledge is not, as boyish enthusiasts fancy, 
 the work of a day or a year. Youth will pass before we shall have 
 made anything but a slight approximation to it, and having handed 
 down to our children the little wisdom we shall have amassed 
 while here, we shall commend them to God, and enter eternity 
 very little wiser in proportion to the universal knowledge than we 
 were when we left it at our birth, 
 
 " But still if our plans are not for time, but for eternity, our 
 knowledge, and therefore our love to God, to each other, to our- 
 selves, to everything, will progress for ever. 
 
 " And this scheme is practical too — for the attainment of this 
 heavenly wisdom requires neither ecstasy nor revelation, but prayer, 
 and watchfulness, and observation, and deep and solemn thought. 
 And two great rules for its attainment are simple enough^' Never 
 forget what and where you are ; ' and, ' Grieve not the Holy Spirit.' 
 And it is not only compatible with our duties as priests of the 
 Eternal, but includes them as one of the means to its attainment, 
 for 'if a man will do God's will, he shall know of the doctrine, 
 whether it be of God.' They do not speak without scriptural as 
 well as theoretical foundation, who think that we may hereafter be 
 called upon to preach God to other worlds beside our own ; and 
 if this be so, does not the acquirement of this knowledge become 
 a duty ? Knowledge and love are reciprocal. He who loves 
 knows. He who knows loves. Saint John is the example of the 
 first. Saint Paul of the second." 
 
 In the interval between Cambridge and his curacy he began to 
 write the life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, his ideal saint, not 
 
56 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 intending it for publication, but as a gift book to his wife on his 
 marriage day, if that day should ever come. 
 
 May, 1842. 
 
 "When it is finished," he says, "I have another work of the 
 same kind to begin — a life of St. Theresa — as a specimen of the 
 dreamy mystic, in contrast with the working ascetic, St. Elizabeth, 
 and to contrast the celibate saint with the married one. 
 
 " For this we must read Tersteegen, Jacob Behmen, Madame 
 Guyon, Alban Butler, Fenelon, some of Origen and Clemens Alex- 
 andiinus, and Coleridge's ' Aids,' &c., also some of Kant, and a 
 German history of mysticism. In order to understand puritanism 
 and evangelicalism, we must thoroughly understand asceticism and 
 mysticism, which have to be eradicated from them in preaching our 
 'Message.'" 
 
 y7^}te 8, 1842. 
 
 " Amuse yourself — get poetry and read it — T have a book called 
 'Tennyson's Poems,' the most beautiful poetry of the last fifteen 
 years .... Shall I send it you ? . 
 
 " Tell me if I am ever obscure in my expressions, and do not 
 fancy that if I am obscure I am therefore deep. If I were really 
 deep, all the world would imderstand, though they might not appre- 
 ciate. The perfectly popular style is the perfectly scientific one. 
 Tell me then when I am obscure, for to me an obscurity is a rea- 
 son for suspecting a fallacy .... Pray simply, ' O God lead 
 us into all Truth, and make us like little children.' Do not repine 
 when you feel no pleasure in the offices of religion, the change is 
 in you, and not in God, and the fact of your being sensible of, and 
 sorry for this change, shows that it is caused by no cessation of 
 your love to God or his grace to you — but by physical weakness." 
 
 Early in July he went to Farnham for his ordination. From 
 whence he writes : — 
 
 July 7, 1842. 
 
 J " I have finished the first day's examination better than I ex- 
 pected, and though 1 was so nervous at first that I could hardly 
 stand, I recovered myself tolerably afterwards. . . ." 
 
 " I shall hope to do tolerably to-morrow, and the greater part ot 
 Saturday I shall give up to prayer and meditation, and fasting." 
 
 Farnham, ytcly 10, 1842. 
 
 ". . . God's mercies are new every morning. Here I am 
 waiting to be admitted in a few hours to His holy ministry, and 
 take refuge for ever in His Temple ! . . . . Yet it is an awful 
 thing ! for we promise, virtually at least, to renounce this day not 
 
Preparation for Ordination. 57 
 
 only the devil and the flesh, but the world ; — to do nothing, know- 
 nothing, which shall not tend to the furtherance of God's Kingdom, 
 or the assimilation of ourselves to the Great Ideal, and to our 
 proper place and rank in the great system whose harmony we are 
 to labor to restore. And can we restore harmony to the Church, 
 luiless we have restored it to ourselves ? If our own souls are dis- 
 cords to the celestial key, the immutable symphonies which revela- 
 tion gives us to hear, can we restore the concord of the perplexed 
 vibrations round us ? . . . . We must be holy ! and to be holy 
 we must believe rightly as well as pray earnestly. We must bring 
 to the well of truth a spirit purified from all previous fancies, all 
 medicines of our own which may adulterate the water of life ! We 
 must take of that and not of our own, and show it to mankind. It 
 is that glory in the beauty of truth, which was my idol, even when 
 I did not practise or even know truth. But now that I know it, I 
 can practise it, and carry it out into the details of life ; now I am 
 happy ; now I am safe I . . . . 
 
 " But back ! back to the thought that in a few hours my whole 
 soul will be'waiting silently for the seals of admission to God's ser- 
 vice, of which honor I dare hardly think myself worthy, while I 
 dare not think that (jod would allow me to enter on them unwor- 
 thily .... Night and morning, for months, my prayer has 
 been : ' O God if I am not worthy ; if my sin in leading souls 
 from Thee is still unpardoned ; if I am desiring to be a deacon not 
 wholly for the sake of serving Thee ; if it be necessary to show me 
 my weakness and the holiness of Thy office still more strongly, O 
 God reject me ! ' and while I shuddered for your sake at the idea 
 of a repulse, I prayed to be repulsed if it were necessary, and in- 
 cluded that in the meaning of my petitioi:i ' Thy will be done.' 
 After this what can I consider my acceptance but as a proof that I 
 have not sinned too deeply for escape 1 as an earnest that God has 
 heard my prayer and will bless my ministry, and enable me not 
 only to raise myself, but to lift others with me ! Oh ! my soul, my 
 body, my intellect, my very love, I dedicate you all to God I And 
 not mine only . . . . to be an example and an instrument 
 of holiness before the Lord for ever, to dwell in His courts, to 
 purge His Temple, to feed His sheep, to carry the lambs and bear 
 them to that foster-mother whose love never fails, whose eye never 
 sleeps, the Bride of God, the Church of Christ ! .... I 
 would have written when I knew of my success yesterday, but 
 there was no town post. 
 
 " Direct to me next at Eversley !...." 
 
 And now Charles Kingsley settled down, at the age of twenty- 
 three, in Eversley ; little thinking it would be his home for thirty- 
 tluee years. 
 
58 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 The parish of Eversley (Aper's lea) was mostly common land 
 when he became curate, divided into three hamlets, each standing 
 on its own Httle green, surrounded by the moorland, with young 
 forests of self-sown fir trees cropping up in every direction. The 
 population was very scattered — "heth croppers" from time imme- 
 morial and poachers by instinct and heritage. It was on the 
 borders of Old Windsor Forest, the boundaries of which reached 
 the adjoining parish of Finchampstead ; and the old men could 
 remember the time when many a royal deer used to stray into 
 Eversley parish. Every man in those days could snare his hare, 
 and catch a good dinner of fish in waters not then strictly pre- 
 served ; and the old women would tell of the handsome muffs and 
 tippets, made of pheasants' feathers, not bought with silver, which 
 they wore in their young days. 
 
 Eversley Manor, it is said, was granted to the monks of West- 
 minster by a charter from Edward the Confessor. We know from 
 the charter that there was then a church at Eversley. William the 
 Conqueror renewed the grant of the manor. 
 
 It appears still to have belonged' to the church of Westminster, 
 in 1280 ; but it must ere long have passed from its possession, for 
 Bishop Woodlock of Winchester, in- the early years of the four- 
 teenth century, instituted a priest to Eversley, on the x^resentation 
 of Nicholas Heigheman. The chancel of the church dates from 
 about the time of Henry VII. 
 
 The great peculiarity of the parish are the fir trees, of which 
 there are three fine specimens on the rectory lawn. 
 
 For the first six weeks of his curate life he lived in the rectory 
 house, and the following letter contained a sketch of the lawn and 
 glebe from the drawing-room windows and a plan of the room. 
 
 Eversley Rectory, July 14, 1842. 
 
 " Can you understand my sketch ? I am no drawer of trees, 
 but the view is beautiful. The ground slopes upward from the 
 windows to a sunk fence and road, without banks or hedges, and 
 rises in the furze hill in the drawing, which hill is perfectly beauti- 
 ful in light and shade, and color .... Behind the acacia on 
 the lawn you get the first glimpse of the fir-forests and moors, of 
 which five-sixths of my parish consist. Those deHcious self-sown 
 firs ! Every step I wander they whisper to me of you, the delicious 
 past melting into the more delicious futrre. ' What has been, shall 
 be,' they say ! I went the other day to Bramshill Park, the home 
 
Daily Duties. 59 
 
 of the seigneur du pays here, Sir John Cope. And there I saw the 
 very tree where an ancestor of mine, Archbishop Abbot, in James 
 the First's time, shot the keeper by accident ! I sat under the 
 tree, and it all seemed to me like a present reality. I could fancy 
 the noble old man, very different then from his picture as it hangs 
 in the dining room at Chelsea. I could fancy the deer sweeping 
 by, and the rattle of the cross-bow, and the white splinters spark- 
 ling off the fated tree as the bolt glanced and turned — and then 
 the death shriek, and the stagger, and the heavy fall of the sturdy 
 forester — and the bow dropping from the old man's hands, and the 
 blood sinking to his heart in one chilling rush, and his glorious 
 features collapsing into that look of changeless and rigid sorrow, 
 which haunted me in the portrait upon the wall in childhood. He 
 never smiled again ! And that solemn form always spoke to me, 
 though I did not then know what it meant. It is strange that this 
 is almost the only portrait saved in the wreck of our family.* As 
 I sat under the tree, there seemed to be a solemn and remorseful 
 moan in the long branches, mixed with the airy whisper of the 
 lighter leaves that told of present as well as past ! 
 
 " J go to the school every day, and teach as long as I can stand 
 the heat and smell. The few children are in a room ten feet 
 square and seven feet high. I am going after dinner to read to an 
 old woman of 87; so you sefe I have begun. This is a plan of 
 my room. It is a large, low, front room, with a light paper and 
 drab curtains, and a large bow window, where I sit, poor me, 
 solitary in one corner." 
 
 Before his coming, the church services had been utterly neg- 
 lected. It sometimes happened that when the rector had a cold, 
 or some trifling ailment, he would send the clerk to the church 
 door at eleven, to inform the few who attended that there would be 
 no service. In consequence the ale-houses were full on Sunday 
 and the church empty, and it was up-hill work getting a congrega- 
 tion together. 
 
 July 17th was the young curate's first day of public ministration 
 in Eversley Church, and he felt it deeply. 
 
 * This picture of Archbishop Abbot, by Vandyke, came into the family 
 through William Kingsley, born 1626, Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to 
 Charles II. son of William Kingsley, Archdeacon of Canterbury, and Damaris 
 his wife, who was niece to Robertus Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury. The 
 archbishop was a great friend of Lord Zouche, then owner of Bramshill Park, 
 and while on a visit to him killed the keeper by accident with a bolt from his 
 cross-bow aimed at a stag. He was suspended for a time, and, it is said, never 
 smiled again. 
 
6o Charles Kings ley. 
 
 . "I was not nervous," he says, ''for I had prayed before going 
 into the desk that I might remember that I was not speaking on 
 my own authority, but on God's, and the feeUng that the responsi- 
 bihty (if I may so speak) was on God and not on me quieted the 
 weak terror I have of offending people." 
 
 EvERSLEY, Aug., 1842. 
 
 " M)'- views of poverty are very strange. Had I been a Haroun 
 Ah'aschid, with every sense 'lapped in Elysium,' I could have en- 
 joyed all. Tlie man who cannot enjoy, cannot be healthy, and 
 cannot be self-denying. But had I been a prairie hunter, cold and 
 nakedness and toil would have been no evils to me. I could have 
 enjoyed that which was given me, and never, I believe firmly, re- 
 membered that there were greater sensual pleasures in life." 
 
 " Never depreciate, according to the foolish way of sentimental- 
 ists, the brotherly love of men Remember the sanc- 
 tity attached to it in Scripture, and believe that in this, as in other 
 things, the man is the stronger vessel. There is something awful ! 
 spiritual, in men's love for each other ! It requires not even the 
 presence of the beloved brother or- friend — it requires no expres- 
 sion—it is too deep for emotion. It goes on its way like a mighty 
 unconscious stream, that brother's love, and sacrifices itself often 
 for a man with whom it never exchanges a word. I could tell you 
 a thousand stories — I will some day — to prove the mysterious 
 abysses of a man's heart — God's image ! Here is one. There 
 were two Dover coachmen — twins. One drove the up coach the 
 other the down for thirty years, so that they never saw each other 
 night or day, but when they whirled past once a day, each on his 
 box, on their restless homeless errand. They never noticed 
 each other in passing but by the jerk of the wrist, which is the cant 
 sign of recognition among horse-driving men. Brutes ! the senti- 
 nientalist will say — for they were both fat, jolly men 1 And when 
 one of them died, the other took to his bed in a few days, in per- 
 fect health, and pined away and died also ! His words were ' Now 
 Tom is gone, I can't stay.' Was not that spirit love? That story 
 always makes me ready to cry. And cases as strong are common." 
 
 EvERSLEY, 1842. 
 
 " , . , The body the temple of the Living God 
 
 There has always seemed to me something impious in the neglect 
 of personal health, strength, and beaut)', which the religious and 
 sometimes clergymen of this day affect. It is very often a mere 
 form of lazini^-.s-and untidiness !....! should be ashamed 
 of bein >• weak. I could not do half the little good I do do here, if 
 
Physical Exe7'cise. 6i 
 
 it were not for that strength and activity wliich some consider 
 coarse and degrading. Many clergymen would half kill themselves 
 if they did what I do. And though they might walk about as 
 much, they would neglect exercise of the arms and chest, and be- 
 come dyspeptic or consumptive. Do not be afraid of my over- 
 working myself If I stop, I go down. I must work 
 
 How merciful God has been in turning all the strength and hardi- 
 hood I gained in snipe shooting and hunting, and rowing and jack- 
 fishing in those magnificent fens to His work ! While I was follow- 
 ing my own fancies He was preparing me for His work. I could 
 wish I were an Apollo for His sake ! Strange idea, yet it seems 
 so harmonious to me ! ... Is it not an awful proof that mat- 
 ter is not necessarily evil, that we shall be clothed in bodies even 
 in our perfect state ? Think of that ! ... It seems all so 
 harmonious to me. It is all so full of God, that I see no inconsis- 
 tency in making my sermons while I am cutting wood, and no 
 'bizarrerie' in talking one moment to one man about the points of 
 a horse, and the next moment to another about the mercy of God to 
 sinners. I try to catch men by their leading ideas, and so draw them 
 off insensibly to my leading idea. And so I find — shall I tell you? 
 you know it is not vanity, but the wish to make you happy in the 
 thought that God is really permitting me to do His work — I find 
 that dissent is decreasing ; people are coming to church who never 
 went anywhere before ; that I am loved and respected — or rather 
 that God's ministry, which has been here deservedly despised, alas! 
 is beginning to be respected ; and above all, that the young wild 
 fellows who are considered as hopeless by most men, because most 
 men are what they call 'spoony Methodists,' i. e., effeminate ascet- 
 ics, dare not gainsay, but rather look up to a man who they see 
 is their superior, if he chose to exert his power in physical as well 
 as intellectual skill. 
 
 "So I am trying to become (harmoniously and consistently) all 
 things to all men, and I thank God for the versatile mind He has 
 given me. But I am becoming egotistical." 
 
 This was one secret of his influence in Eversley : he could swing 
 a flail with the threshers in the barn, turn his swathe with the mow- 
 ITS in the meadow, pitch hay with the hay-makers in the pasture, 
 irom knowing every fox earth on the moor, the " reedy hover" of 
 the pike, the still hole where the chub lay, he had always a word 
 in sympathy for the huntsman or the old poacher. With the far- 
 mer he discussed the rotation of crops, and with the laborer the 
 science of hedging and ditching. And yet while he seemed to ask 
 for information, he unconsciously gave more th^ ,ived. 
 
 At this time Mr. Maurice's "Kingd^- ' •lUst" wa? put into 
 
62 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 his hands. It was in a great crisis of his life, and he always said 
 that he owed more to that book than to any he had ever read, for 
 by it his views were cleared and his faith estabUshed. 
 
 It may seem strange to some that Carlyle's works should have 
 laid the foundation to which Coleridge's *' Aids " and Maurice's 
 works were the superstructure : but so it was. The friend who 
 gave them all to him little thought that Chevalier Bunsen, in his 
 "Hyppolytus" at a later period would strike the point of contact 
 between these three authors which explains their effect on Charles 
 Kingsley's mind. 
 
 Circumstances now caused a long break in this correspondence, 
 but the faith and patience with which the trial was met may be 
 seen in these parting words, or perhaps still more in some rules, 
 intended for one eye only, but from which extracts have been 
 made, in the hope they may help others who have the same thorny 
 road to travel, without such a friend and guide. 
 
 EVERSLEY, August, 1842. 
 
 " . . . Though there may be clouds between us now, yet 
 they are safe and dry, free from storm and rains — our parted state 
 now is quiet grey weather, under which all tender things will spring 
 up and grow, beneath the warm damp air, till they are ready for 
 the next burst of sunshine to hurry them into blossom and fruit. 
 Let us plant and rear all tender thoughts, knowing surely that 
 those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. ... I can under- 
 stand people's losing by trusting too little to God, but I cannot un- 
 derstand any one's losing by trusting too much to Him ! . . . ." 
 
 " There are two ways of looking at every occurrence — a bright 
 and a dark side. Two modes of action — Which is most wordiy of 
 a rational being, a Christian and a friend ? It is absurd, as a 
 rational being, to torture one's self unnecessarily. It is inconsis- 
 tent in a Christian to see God's wrath, rather than His mercy in 
 everything. . . . , How to avoid this morbidity of mind — 
 by prayer. ' Resist the devil and he will flee from you.' By turn- 
 ing your mind from the dark view. Never begin to look darkly at 
 a subject, without checking yourself and saying, ' Is there not a 
 bright side to this ? Has not God promised the bright side to me ? 
 Is not my happiness in my own power ? Do I not know that I am 
 ruining my mind and endangering the happiness of those dear to 
 me — by looking at the wrong side ? ' Make this your habit. 
 Every gift of God is good, and given for our happiness ; and we 
 sin if we abuse it. To use our fancy to our own misery is to abuse 
 it and to sin — the realm of the possible was given to man to hope, 
 
Parting Words, 6^, 
 
 and not to fear in If (in sorrow) the thought strikes 
 
 you tliat we are punished for our sins — mourn for them, and not for 
 the happiness which they have prevented. Rather thank God that 
 He has stopped us in time, and remember His promises of restor- 
 ing us if we profit by his chastisement. 
 
 "In cases of love to God and working to His glory in the first 
 and second intention read Taylor's ' Holy Living.' But eschew 
 his Popish fallacy about duties as different from perfections. Every 
 step in love and to God, and devotion to Him is a duty! That 
 doctrine was invented to allow mankind to exist, while a few self- 
 conceited shut themselves up in a state of unnatural celibacy and 
 morbid excitement, in order to avoid their duty, instead of doing 
 it. Avoid the Fathers, after Origen (including him), on this ac- 
 count — their theories are not universal .... 
 
 "... We may think too much ! There is such a thing as 
 mystifying one's self! Mystifying one's self is thinking a dozen 
 thoughts in order to get to a conclusion, to which one might arrive 
 by thinking one ; getting at ideas by an unnecessarily subtle and 
 circuitous path : then, because one has been through many steps, 
 one fancies one has gone deep. This is one form of want of sim- 
 plicity. This is not being like a little child, any more than analys- 
 ing one's own feelings. A child goes straight to its point, and it 
 hardly knows why. When you have done a thing, leave it alone. 
 You mystify yourself after the idea, not before. Second thoughts 
 may be best before action — they are folly after action, unless we 
 find we have sinned. The consistent Christian should have no 
 second thoughts, but do good by the first impulse. How few at- 
 tain to this. I do not object to subtlety of thought : but it is dan- 
 gerous for one who has no scientific guide of logic, &c. 
 
 "Aim at depth. A thought is deep in proportion as it is near 
 God. You may be subtle, and only perceive a trifling property of 
 the subject, which others do not. To be deep, you must see the 
 subject in its relation to God — yourself — and the universe; and 
 the more harmonious and simple it seems, the nearer God and the 
 deeper it is. All the deep things of God are bright — for God is 
 light. The religion of terror is the most superficial of all religions. 
 God's arbitrary will, and almighty power, may seem dark by them- 
 selves, though deep, as they do to the Calvinists ; but that is 
 because they do not involve His moral character. Join them with 
 the fact tliat He is a God of mercy as well as justice; remember 
 that His essence is love ; — and the thunder-cloud will blaze with 
 dewy gold, full of soft rain, and pure light ! 
 
 " Again : remember that habit, more than reason, will cure one 
 both of mystifying subtlety and morbid fear ; and remember that 
 habits are a series of individual voluntary actions, continued till 
 they become involuntary. One would not wish to become good 
 by habit, as the Aristotle-loving Tractarians do; but one must ac- 
 
64 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 quire tones of inind by habit, in cases in w-hich intellectual, not 
 iiioral obliquity, or constitutional ill-health is the cause of failure. 
 
 "Some minds are too 'subjective.' What I mean is, that they 
 may devote themselves too much to the subject of self and man- 
 kind. Now man is not 'the noblest study of man.' (What lies 
 the trashy poets of Pope and Johnson's age tell, which are taken 
 as gospel, and acted upon, because the idol said so !) God is the 
 noblest study of man. He is the only study fit for a woman de- 
 voted to Him. And Him you can study in three ways. 
 
 " I St. From His dealings in History. This is the real Philosophy 
 of History. Read Arnold's ' Lectures on Modern History.' (Oh ! 
 why did that noblest of men die ? God have mercy upon England ! 
 He takes the shining lights from us, for our National sins !) And 
 read as he tells us to read, not to study man a la Rochefoucauld, 
 but God a la David ! 
 
 " 2nd. From His image as developed in Christ the ideal, and in all 
 good men — great good men — David, Moses, St. Paul, Hooker, the 
 four Oxford martyrs, Luther, Taylor, Howard. Read about that 
 glorious Luther ! and like him strive all your life to free men from 
 the bondage of custom and self, the two great elements of the 
 world that lieth in wickedness ! Read Maurice for this purpose, 
 and Carlyle. 
 
 "3rd, From His works. Study nature — not scientifically — that 
 would take eternity, to do it so as to reap much moral good from 
 it. Superficial physical science is the devil's spade, with which he 
 loosens the roots of the trees prepared for the burning ! Do not 
 study matter for its own sake, but as the countenance of God ! 
 Try to extract every line of beauty, every association, every moral 
 reflection, every inexpressible feeling from it. Study the forms 
 and colors of leaves and flowers, and the growth and habits of 
 plants ; not to classify them, but to admire them and adore God. 
 Study the sky ! Study water ! Study trees ! Study the sounds 
 and scents of nature ! Study all these, as beautiful in themselves, ■ 
 in order to re-combine the elements of beauty ; next, as allegories 
 and examples from whence moral reflections maybe drawn ; next, 
 as types of certain tones of feeling, &c, ; but remain (yourself) in 
 God-dependence, superior to them. Learn what feelings they ex- 
 press, but do not let thern mould the tone of your mind ; else by 
 allowing a melancholy day to make you melancholy, you worship 
 the creature more than the Creator. No sight but has some beauty 
 and harmony ! 
 
 "Read geology — Buckland's ' Bridgewater Treatise' and you 
 will rise up awe-stru.ck and cling to God ! 
 
 " Study the human figure, both as intrinsically beautiful and as 
 expressing mind. It only expresses the broad natural childish 
 emotions, which are just what you want to return to. Study ' natural 
 language' — I mean the 'language of attitude.' It is an inexhaust- 
 
Parting Words. 65 
 
 ible source of knowledge and delight, and enables one human being 
 to understand another so perfectly. Draw,— -learn to draw and 
 -paint figures. No one with such freedom of touch in landscape 
 and perception of physical beauty requires anything but a few sim- 
 ple rules, and some common attention to attitudes, to draw ex- 
 quisitely. If you can command your hand in drawing a tree, you 
 can in drawing a face. Perfect your coloring .... It will keep 
 your mind employed on objective studies, and save you from morbid 
 introversion of mind — brooding over fallen man. It will increase 
 your perception of beauty, and thereby your own harmony of soul 
 and love to God ! 
 
 " Practise music — I am going to learn myself, merely to be able 
 to look after my singers .... Music is such a vent for the 
 feelings. .... 
 
 "Study medicine .... I am stud3ang it .... Make 
 yourself thoroughly acquainted with the wages, wants, and habits, 
 and prevalent diseases of the poor, wherever you go. _ 
 
 "Let your mind freely forth. Only turn it inwards at prayer 
 time, to recollect sins of wsliich you were conscious at the time, 
 not to look for fresh ones. They are provided against by prayer 
 for pardon of unintentional sins. What wisdom in our Church ! 
 She knew that if she allowed sin hunting, people would fancy, like 
 some Dissenters, that pretending everything they had done was sui- 
 ful, was a sign of holiness ! 
 
 "Let your studies, then, be objective entirely. Look forward 
 to the future with hope. Build castles, if you will, but only bright 
 ones, and not too many — better to live in- the Past. We cannot 
 help thanking God for that ! Blessed Past ! Has not God led us 
 like sheep through the desert ? Think of all He has done for us. 
 
 . . . . Be happy Weep, but let them be tears of 
 
 tliankfulness. 
 
 "Do not be too solicitous to find deep meanings in men's 
 words. Most men do, and all men ought to mean only what is 
 evident at first sight on their books (unless they be inspired or 
 write for a private eye). This is the great danger of such men as 
 Novalis, that you never know how much he means. Beware of 
 subtlety again. The quantity of sounding nonsense in the world 
 is incredible ! If you wish to be like a little child, study what a 
 little child could understand — nature ; and do what a little child 
 could do — love. 
 
 " Use your senses much, and your mind little. Feed on Nature, 
 and do not try to understand it. It will digest itself. It did so 
 when you were a baby the first time ! Look round you much. 
 Think little and read less ! Never give way to reveries. Have 
 
 always some employment in your hands When you 
 
 are doing nothing at night, pray and praise ! 
 
 " See how much a day can do ! I have since nine this morning, 
 S 
 
66 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 cut wood for an hour ; spent an hour and more in prayer and 
 humiliation, and thereby estabhshed a chastened but happy tone, 
 which lasts till now; written six or seven pages of a difficult part 
 of my essay ; taught in the school ; thought over many things 
 while walking ; gone round two-thirds of the parish visiting and 
 doctoring ; and written all this. Such days are lives — and happy 
 ones. One has no time to be miserable, and one is ashamed to 
 invent little sorrows for one's self while one is trying to relieve 
 such grief in others as would kill us, if we gave way or fancied 
 about them ! 
 
 " Pray over every truth, for though the renewed heart is not 
 ' desperately wicked,' it is quite ' deceitful ' enough to become so, 
 if God be forgotten a moment ! . . . 
 
 "Keep a common-place book, and put into it, not only facts 
 and thoughts, but observations on form, and color, and nature, 
 and little sketches, even to the form of beautiful leaves. They 
 will all have their charm, all do their work in consolidating your 
 ideas. Put everything into it. . . . Strive to put every idea 
 into a tangible form, and write it down* Distrust every idea which 
 you cannot put into words ; or rather distrust your own conception 
 of it. Not so with feelings. Therefore write much. Try to put 
 everything in its place in the great system . . . seeing the 
 realities of Heaven and Earth." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 1842 — 1843. 
 Aged 23-24. 
 
 Curate Life— Letter from Colonel W.— Brighter Prospects— Correspondence 
 Renewed — Promise of Preferment — Leaves Eversley. 
 
 A YEAR passed by of silence and self-discipline, hard reading and 
 parish duties. That sorrow was doing its work, his own words to 
 his parents will testify. 
 
 ". . . Christianity heightens as well as deepens the human as 
 well as the divine affections. 1 am happy, for the less hope, the more 
 
 faith God knows what is best for us, and very lucky 
 
 that He does, for I am sure we do not. Continual resignation, at 
 last I begin to find, is the secret of continual strength. ' Daily 
 dying,' as Behmen interprets it, is the path of daily living. . . ." 
 
 His mother now paid him a visit, and she gives this account of 
 his surroundings : — 
 
 Eversley, 1842. 
 
 " Here I am, in a humble cottage in the corner of a sunny 
 green, a little garden, whose flower-beds are surrounded with tall 
 and aged box, is fenced in from the path with a low white paling. 
 The green is gay with dogs, and i)igs, and geese, some running 
 frolic races, and others swimn'iing in triumph in a glassy pond, where 
 they are safe from all intruders. Every object around is either 
 picturesque or happy, fulhlling in their different natures the end of 
 
 their creation Surely it must have been the especial 
 
 providence of God that directed us to this place ! and the thought 
 of this brightens every trial. There is independence in every good 
 sense of the word, and yet no loneliness. The family at the Brewery 
 are devoted to Charles, and think they cannot do enough for him. 
 The dear old man says he has been praying for years for such a 
 time to come, and that Eversley has not been so blessed for sixty 
 years. Need I say rejoice with me. Here I sit surrounded by 
 your books and little things which speak of you." 
 
 To his college friend, Peter A. L. H. Wood, ^.sq. (now Rector 
 of Copford, Essex), he writes to beg for a visit in his solitude. 
 
6S Charles Kings ley, 
 
 *' Peter! Eversley, Augnst 5, 1842. 
 
 " Whether m the glaring saloons of Almack's, or making love 
 in the equestrian stateliness of the j3ark, or the luxurious recum- 
 bency of the ottoman, whether breakfasting at one, or going to bed 
 at three, thou art still Peter, the beloved of my youth, the staff of 
 my academic days, the regret of my parochial retirement ! — Peter ! 
 I am alone ! Around me are the everlasting hills, and the ever- 
 lasting bores of the country ! My parish is peculiar for nothing 
 but want of houses and abundance of peat bogs ; my parishioners 
 remarkable only for aversion to education, and a predilection for 
 fat bacon. I am wasting m)'- sweetness on the desert air — I say my 
 sweetness, for I have given up smoking, and smell no more. Oh, 
 Peter, Peter, come down and see me ! Oh that I could behold 
 your head towering above the fir-trees that surround my lonely 
 dwelling. Take pity on me ! I am ' like a kitten in the washhouse 
 copper with the lid on-! ' And, Peter, prevail on some of your friends 
 here to give me a day's trout-fishing, for my hand is getting out of 
 practice. But, Peter, I am, considering the oscillations and perplex 
 circumgurgitations of this piece-meal world, an improved man. I 
 am much more happy, much more comfortable, reading, thinking, 
 and doing my duty — much more than ever I did before in my life. 
 Therefore I am not discontented with my situation, or regretful 
 that I buried my first-class in a country curacy, like the girl who 
 shut herself up in a band-box on her wedding night {I'ide Rogers's 
 'Italy.') And my lamentations are not general (for I do not want 
 an inundation of the froth and tide-wash of Babylon the Great), but 
 particular, being solely excited by want of thee, oh Peter, who art 
 very pleasant to me, and wouldst be more so if thou wouldst 
 come and eat my mutton, and drink my wine, and admire my 
 sermons, some Sunday at Eversley. 
 
 " Your faithful friend, 
 
 " Boanerges Roar-at-the-Clods." 
 
 His friend responded to the call. " I paid him a visit," he says, 
 '' at Eversley, where he lived in a thatched cottage. So roughly was 
 he lodged that I recollect taking him some game, which was dried 
 to a cinder in the cooking and quite spoiled ; but he was as happy 
 as if he were in a palace. . . ." 
 
 And now the young curate, who had gained the love and respect 
 of the parish, was rewarded by brigher prospects. He had little 
 society, during his first year of curate life, except in the parish and 
 at Sandhurst, where he had one or two friends in the Senior de- 
 partment of the Military College. One of these friends thus de- 
 scribes their intercourse at this time :-- 
 
Brighter Days, 69 
 
 FROM COLONEL W. 
 
 *' My memory often runs back to the days at Sandhurst, wher. I 
 used to meet dear Kingsley continually in his little curate ror Is, 
 at the corner of the Green at Eversley ; when he told me of jis 
 attachment to one whom he feared he should never be able to 
 marry, and that he supposed that he should live the rest of his life 
 reading old books, and knocking his head against the ceiling of his 
 room, like a caged bird. And well I remember a particular Sun- 
 day, when walking with him to his church in the afternoon, having 
 dined with him at mid-day. It was a lovely afternoon in the au- 
 tumn — passing through the corn in sheaf, the bells ringing, and 
 people, young and old, gathering together near the church. He, 
 looking down on the Rectory house, said to me 
 
 " ' Oh ! how hard it is to go through life without wishing for the 
 goods of others ! Look at the Rectory ! Oh, if I were there with 
 a wife, how happy,' &c. God seemed to hear the desire of his 
 creature, for when the next year's corn was in sheaf, you were with 
 him at the Rectory. And he has told me in after years that his life 
 with you was one of constantly increasing love. I called at his 
 cottage one morning, and 1 found him almost beside himself, stamp- 
 ing his things into a portmanteau. ' What is the matter, dear 
 Kingsley ?' — ' 1 am engaged. 1 am going to see her now — to-day.^ 
 1 was so glad, and left him to his joy. 
 
 '" My tears will come to my eyes in writing these lines, for I 
 loved Kingsley as well as man can love man. I have only one lit- 
 tle scratch of a drawing of his. I have many pleasant reminiscen- 
 ces, sparks of his large mind, as in friendly chat we would sit and 
 draw together, or walk by river side and think of Nature, — and ail 
 one's strongest desires, — for a heart to share every thought and 
 sight. And now this picture in life is over " 
 
 In September, 1843, through the kindness of Lord Sidne)'' Os- 
 borne, a relation of his future wife. Lord Portman promised to give 
 Charles Kingsley one of the first small livings that fell to his gift, 
 and in the mean time advised him to apply for the curacy of Pim- 
 perne, near Blandford, which with a good house would be vacant 
 in the following spring. This being secured, Bishop Sumner gave 
 permission for his resigning the curacy of Eversley at Christmas. 
 
 The correspondence, which had dropped for a year, was now 
 
 resumed. 
 
 Eversley Cross, October, 1843. 
 
 " I am getting very strong, and have been threshing wheat a 
 good deal these last two wet days, which is splendid exercise. I 
 look forward to working in" the garden at Pimperne. What a place 
 for summer nights ! We will go and ^t in the church sometimes 
 
. yo Charles Kings ley. 
 
 on summer nights, too .... but I am not fond, you know, 
 of going into churches to pray. We must go up into the chase in 
 the evenings, and pray there with nothing but God's cloud temple 
 between us and His heaven ! And His choir of small birds and 
 night crickets and booming beetles, and all happy things who 
 praise Him all night long ! And in the still summer noon, too, 
 with the lazy-paced clouds above, and the distant sheep-bell, and 
 the bee humming in the beds of thyme, and one bird making the 
 hollies ring a moment, and then all still — hushed — awe-bound, as 
 the great thunderclouds slide up from the far south ! Then, there 
 to praise God ! Ay, even when the heaven is black with wind, the 
 thunder crackling over our heads, then to join in the p^an of the 
 storm-spirits to Him whose pageant of power passes over the earth 
 and harms us not in its mercy ! 
 
 " 1 once scandalized a man who had been sentimentalising about 
 Gothic aisles, by telling him that all agreed that they were built in 
 imitation of the glades of forest trees, with branches interlacing 
 overhead ! and that I liked God's work better than man's ! Jn the 
 Cathedral, we worship alone and the place is dumb, or speaks only 
 to us, raising a semi-selfish emotion ; that is, having its beginning 
 and end in us. In the forest, every branch and leaf, with the thou- 
 sand living things which cluster on them, all worship with us ! " 
 
 EvERSLEY, November, 1843. 
 
 " , . . As to self-improvement, the true Catholic mode of 
 learning is, to ' prove all things,' as far as we can without sin or 
 the danger of it, and 'hold fast that which is good.' Let us never 
 be afraid of trying anything, though copied from people of different 
 opinions to our own. And let us never, never be afraid of changing 
 our opinions — not our knowledge. If we should find fasting unsuc- 
 cessful, we will simply give it up — and so on with all practices and 
 opinions not -expressed in Scripture. That is a form of pride 
 which haunts the more powerful minds, the unwillingness to go 
 back from one's declared opinion, but it is not found in great child- 
 like geniuses. Fools may hold fast to their scanty stock through 
 life, and we must be very cautious in drawing them from it— for 
 where can they supply its place ? Therefore, there is no more 
 unloving, heartless man-murderer, than the man who goes about 
 trying, for the display of his own ' talents ' (a word I dislike), to 
 shake people in their belief, even when that belief is not quite 
 sound. Better believe in ghosts 'with no heads and jackboots 
 on,' like my Eversley people, than believe in nothing but self ! 
 Therefore Maurice's loving, Christian rule is, 'Never take away 
 from a man even the shadow of a spiritual truth, unless you can 
 give him substance in return.' Therefore, let those less educated 
 or less holy minds, who have found some truth, hold it in peace — 
 
Wandering Minstrels. Ji 
 
 not tear up all their belief along with their prejudices, tares and 
 wheat together, as the Tractarians are doing to the poor of England 
 now ! But those who discover much truth — ay, who make perhaps 
 only one truth really their own, a living integral law of their spirits 
 — must, in developing it, pass through many changes of opinion. 
 They must rise and fall back, and rise higher again, and fall and 
 rise again, till they reach the level table-land of truth, and can look 
 down on men toiling and stumbling in the misty valleys, where the 
 rising sunlight has not yet found its way. Or perhaps, their own 
 minds will oscillate, like a pendulum, between Dualism and Uni- 
 tarianism, or High Church and Low Church, until the oscillations 
 become gradually smaller, and subside into the Rest of Truth ! — 
 the peace which passes understanding I 1 fancy it is a law, that 
 the greater the mind, the stronger the heart, the larger will the 
 oscillations be, but the less they will be visible to the world, be- 
 cause the wise man will not act outwardly upon his opinions until 
 they ha.ve become knowledge, and his mind is in a state of rest. 
 This 1 think the true, the only doctrine of Reserve — reserve of our 
 own fancies, not of immutable truth. 
 
 ". .. . People smile at the 'enthusiasm of youth' — that 
 enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back at with a 
 sigh, perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that they 
 ever lost it. Is it not strange, that the only persons who appear 
 to me to carry to the grave with them the joyousness, simplicity, 
 and lovingness and trust of children, are the most exalted Chris- 
 tians ? Thmk of St. John, carried into the Church at Smyrna, at 
 the age of ninety-nine, and with his dying breath repeating the 
 same simple words, ' Little children, love one another.' " 
 
 EVERSLEY, October 27. 
 
 " . . . I have been making a fool of myself for the last ten 
 minutes, according to the world's notion of folly, for there have 
 been some strolling fiddlers under the window, and I have been 
 listening and crying like a child. Some quick music is so inex- 
 pressibly mournful. It seems just like one's own feelings — exulta- 
 tion and action, Avith the remembrance of past sorrow wailing uj), 
 yet without bitterness, tender ii^ its shrillness, through the mingled 
 .tide of present joy ; and the notes seem thoughts — thoughts pure 
 of words, and a spirit seems to call to me in them and cry, ' Hast 
 thou not felt all this ?' And I start when I find myself answering 
 unconsciously, ' Yes, yes, I know it all ! ' Surely we are a part of 
 all we see and hear ! ' And then the harmony thickens, and all 
 distinct sound is pressed together and absorbed in a confused 
 paroxysm of delight, where still the female treble and the male 
 base are distinct for a moment, and then one again — absorbed 
 into each other's being — sweetened and strengthened by each 
 
72 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 other's melody .... why should I not cry? Those men 
 have unconsciously told me my own tale ! why should 1 not love 
 them and pray for them ? Are they not my benefactors ? Have 
 they not given me more than food and dtink ? Let us never de- 
 spise the wandering minstrel. He is an unconscious witness for 
 God's harmony — a preacher of the world-music — the power of 
 sweet sounds, which is a link between every age and race — the 
 language which all can understand, though few can speak. And 
 who knows what tender thoughts his own sweet music stirs within 
 him, though he eat in pot-houses, and sleep in barns ! Ay, 
 thoughts too deep, for words are in those simple notes — why 
 should not we feel them ?...." 
 
 EvERSLEY, October, 1843. 
 
 " . . . I have been thinking of how we are to order our estab- 
 lishment at Pimperne. The best way will be, while we are in Somer- 
 setshire (a season of solemn and delightful preparation for our work) 
 we will hunt out all the texts in the Bible about masters and ser- 
 vants, to form rules upon them ; and our rules we will alter and 
 improve upon in time, as we find out more and more of the true 
 relation in which we ought to stand to those whom God has placed 
 
 under us 1 feel more and more that the new principle 
 
 of considering a servant as a trader, who sells you a certain amount 
 of work for a certain sum of money, is a devil's principle, and that 
 we must have none of it, but return as far as we can to the patri- 
 archial and feudal spirit towards them * 
 
 "... And religion, that is, truth, shall be the only thing in our 
 house. All things must be made to tend to it; and if they cannot 
 be made to tend to God's glory, the belief in, and knowledge of the 
 spiritual world, and the duties and ties of humanity, they must be 
 turned out of doors as part of 'the world.' One thing we must 
 keep up, if we intend to be anything like witnesses for God, in 
 l)erhaps the most sensual generation since Alaric destroyed Rome, 
 — I mean the continual open verbal reference of everything, even 
 to the breaking of a plate, f?f God and God's providence, as the 
 Easterns do. The reason why God's name is so seldom in people's 
 mouths is not that they reverence Him, as they say, too much to 
 talk of Him (! ! !), but because they do not think of him ! 
 
 " About our Parish. Islo clergyman knows less about the working 
 of a parish than I do ; but one thing I do know, that I have to 
 preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and to be instant in that, in 
 
 season and out of season and at all risks And therefore 
 
 1 pray daily for the Spirit of love to guide us, and the Spirit of 
 
 * He carried out this principle in daily life, and at his death all the servants 
 in his house had lived with him from seventeen to twenty-six years, and most 
 of those who had left the rectory, left to go to a home of their own. 
 
Order in daily Work. j^ 
 
 earnestness to keep us at work. For our work must be done by 
 praying for our people, by preaching to them, in church and out of 
 church (for all instruction is i^reaching — 7iide Hooker — by leading 
 them to pray and worship in the liturgy, and by setting them an ex- 
 ample ; — an example in every look, word, and motion, — in the pay- 
 ing of a bill, the hirmg of a servant, the reproving of a child. 
 
 " We will have no innovations in ceremony. Kut we will not let 
 public Avorship become ' dead bones.' We will strive and pray, day 
 and night, till we put life into it, till our parish feels that God is the 
 great Idea, and that all things are in Him, and He in all things. 
 The local means, to which so much importance is attached now-a- 
 days, by those very sects who pretend to despise outward instru- 
 ments, I mean the schools, charities, &c., I know nothing of, in 
 Pimperne. But we must attend to them (not alter them), and make 
 them tools for our work, which is to teach men that there is a God, 
 and that nothing done without Hint is done at all, but a mere sham 
 and makeshift. We must attend the schools and superintend the 
 teaching, going round to the different classes, and not hearing them 
 the letter, but trying by a few seasonable words to awaken them to the 
 spirit ; this is the distinction which is so neglected between the duty 
 of the parson and his wife, and that of the schoolmaster and mis- 
 tress The Church Catechism must be the main point of 
 
 instruction. Of the Bible, the Proverbs and the Gospels, with parts 
 picked from the leading points of Old Testament history, are all 
 they need know. They will soon learn the rest, if they can master 
 the real meaning and spirit of Solomon and St. John. Few have 
 done that, and therefore the Bible is a sealed book to the very people 
 who swear by it, i. e., by some twenty texts in it which lay down 
 their favorite doctrines plainly enough to be patched into a system, 
 and those not understood skin deep. Tet us observe the Ember 
 days, . . praying over the sins of the clergy, one's own especial- 
 ly. .. . entreating God's mercy on the country, as children of 
 a land fast hurrying to ruin in her mad love of intellectuality, mam- 
 monism,' and false liberty ! and to avert some portion of the coming 
 evil from Church and nation, . . ; . 1 see the dawn of better 
 knowledge. Piiseyism is a struggle after it. It has failed — already 
 failed, because unsound ; but the answer which it found in ten 
 thousand hearts shows that men are yearning for better things than 
 money, or dogmas, and that God's Spirit has not left us. Maurice 
 is a struggle after it — Thomas Carlyle is a struggle — This book of 
 Bosanquet's (' The Perils of the Nation ') is a struggle — All more or 
 less sound, towards true Christianity, and therefore true national 
 prosperity. But will they hear the voices which warn them ? , . . . 
 
 " But now I must bid good- night, and read my psalms and lessons 
 and pray " 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 1844 — 1847. 
 Aged 25-28. 
 
 Marriage — Curacy of Pimperne — Rectory of Eversley — Correspondence. 
 
 Early in 1844 Charles Kingsley was married to Fanny, daughter 
 of Pascoe Grenfell and Georgiana St. Leger his wife. He had 
 settled to take possession of the curacy of Pimperne, in Dorset- 
 shire, in the following spring, but the living of Eversley falling 
 vacant at that time, a strong etfort was made by the parishioners 
 to get the curate who had worked among them so indefatigably 
 appointed rector. While the matter was pending, he went down 
 into Dorsetshire for a few weeks alone to do the duty, staying 
 either at Durweston Rectory or at Blandford, during which inter- 
 val the following letters were written : — 
 
 Salisbury, March 31, 1844. 
 
 ". . . I spent a delightful day yesterday. Conceive my 
 pleasure at finding myself in Bemerton, George Herbert's parish, 
 and seeing his house and church, and fishing in the very meadows 
 where he, and Dr. Donne, and Izaak Walton, may have fished be- 
 fore me. I killed several trout and a brace of grayUng, about 
 three-quarters of a pound each — a fish quite new to me, smelling 
 just like cucT-unbers. The dazzling chalk-wolds sleeping in the 
 sun, the clear river rushing and boiling down in one ever-sliding 
 sheet of transparent silver, the birds bursting into song, and mating 
 and toying in every hedge-row — everything stirred with the gleam 
 of God's eyes, when ' He reneweth the face of the earth ! ' I had 
 many happy thoughts ; but I am very lonely. No time for more, 
 as 1 am going to prayers in the cathedral." 
 
 ^ Durweston Rectory, April 1, 1844. . 
 
 "I looked into and read much of ' Henry Martyn's Life' (East 
 Indian missionary) last night. My mind is in a chaos about him. 
 Sometimes one feels inclined to take him at his own word, and 
 believe liim, as he says, a mere hypochondriac : then the next 
 
Carlyle and Wordsworth. 75 
 
 moment he seems a saint. I cannot fathom it. Of this I am cer- 
 tain, that he is a much better man than I am." 
 
 Blandford, Ap-il 17, 1844. 
 
 ". . . More and more I find that these* writings of Carlyle's 
 do not lead to gloomy discontent — that theirs is not a dark but a 
 bright view of life : in reality, more evil speaking against the age 
 and its inhabitants is thundered from the pulpit daily, by both 
 Evangelical and Tractarian, than Carlyle has been guilty of in all 
 his works ; but he finds fault in tangible original language — they 
 speak evil of every one except their own party, but in such con- 
 ventional language that no ear is shocked by the oft-repeated for- 
 mulse of ' original sin ' and 'unconverted hearts,' and so on; and 
 the man who would be furious if Carlyle had classed him among 
 the ' valets,^ bears with perfect equanimity the information of Mr. 
 B * * *, that he is a ' vessel of wrath,' or of Dr. P* * *, that he has 
 put himself beyond the pale of Christ's atonement by sin after 
 baptism. Let us in all things take Dr. Johnson's golden rule : 
 ' First clear your mind of cant." 
 
 PiMPERNE, ^/r^'/ai, 1844. 
 
 "I have been reading Wordsworth's 'Excursion,' with many 
 tears and prayers too. To me he is not only poet, but preacher 
 and prophet of God's new and divine philosophy- — a man raised as 
 a light in a dark time, and rewarded by an honored age, for the 
 simple faith in man and God with which he delivered liis message ; 
 whose real nobility is independent of rank, or conventionahties of 
 language or manner, which is but the fashion of this world and 
 passes away. I am trying, in my way, to do good ; but what is 
 the use of talking to hungry paupers about heaven ? ' Sir,' as my 
 clerk said to me yesterday, ' there is a weight upon their hearts, 
 and they care for no hope and no change, for they know they can 
 be no worse off than they are.' And so they have no spirit to 
 arise and go to their Father ! Those who lounge upon down beds, 
 and throw away thousands at Crockford's and Almack's — they, the 
 refined of this eai'th, have crushed it out of them. I have been 
 very sad lately seeing this, and seeing, too, the horrid eftects of 
 that new Poor Law. You must be behind the scenes to see the 
 
 truth, in places which the Malthus's and 'sknow nothing 
 
 of." .... 
 
 " S. G. O. is deep in statistics and abuses. Heaven knows, 
 when there are so many abuses, we ought to thank a man wlio H'ill 
 hunt them out. I will never believe that a man has a real love for 
 the good and beautiful, except he attacks the evil and the disgusting 
 the moment he sees it ! Therefore you must make up your mind 
 
 * "The Miscellanies," and "Past and Present." 
 
76 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 to see nie, with God's help, a hunter out of abuses till the abuses 
 cease — only till then. It is very easy to turn our eyes away from 
 ugly sights, and so consider ourselves refined. The refined man to 
 me is he who cannot rest in peace with a coal-mine, or a factory, or 
 a Dorsetshire peasant's house near him, in the state in which they 
 are I am deep in 'The Perils of the Nation.' . . . ." 
 
 Sunday Night. 
 
 " You know, I suppose, all that I can tell you. I am to see Sir 
 John Cope at Arthur's Club House, to-morrow afternoon, and, at 
 all events, shall return to you Monday, perhaps Rector of Evers- 
 ley ! Forgive this short letter, as I am worn out ; but a bright 
 future opens. Blessed be God. . . ." 
 
 MONDAV. 
 
 " All is settled at last. Sir John has given me the living, and is 
 going to see the Bishop to-day, and I am to go down to Eversley 
 to-morrow. He wishes me to settle there as soon as possible. 
 God never fails those who put their trust in him " 
 
 " . . . The presentation is to be ready in a few days. I am 
 then to be instituted here in town, and then, please God, we shall 
 get to Eversley on Friday or Saturday. The packing, van, &c., 
 and some little comforts before we take possession, I have settled. 
 Congratulations, as you may suppose, are plentiful .... 
 and I had the pleasure of bringing the news myself to Eversley. 
 . . . . I go to the Bishop of Winchester to-morrow. I 
 took the whole duty at St. George's Hospital yesterday morning, 
 and preached a charity sermon at St. Luke's in the afternoon, and 
 at the old church in the evening ; and am very tired, body and 
 
 mind My brain has been in such a whirl that I have 
 
 had no time for deep thoughts. I can understand, by the events 
 of the last few days, how the minds of men of business, at the 
 very moment they are wielding the vastest commercial or physical 
 power, may yet be degraded and superficial. One seems to do so 
 much in ' business,' and yet with how little fruit : 7ve bustle, and 
 God works. That glorious, silent Providence — such a contrast to 
 physical power, with its blast furnaces and roaring steam engines ! 
 
 " Farewell till to-moiTOw " 
 
 He now settled as rector, at Eversley, with his wife ; and life 
 flowed on peacefully, notwithstanding the anxieties of a sorely 
 neglected parish, and the expenses of an old house which had not 
 been repaired for more than a hundred years. Owing to the cir- 
 cumstances under which the living fell vacant, the incoming tenant 
 got no dilapidation-money, and had arrears of Poor Rates and 
 
Settled at E vers ley. yy 
 
 the pay of the curate to meet. The house itself was damp and 
 unwholesome, surrounded with ponds which overflowed with every 
 heavy rain, and flooded not only the garden and stables, but all 
 the rooms on the ground floor, keeping up master and servants 
 sometimes all night, baihng out the water in buckets for hours 
 together ; and drainage works had to be done before it was habi- 
 table. From these causes, and from the charities falling almost 
 entirely on the incumbent, the living, though a good one, was for 
 years unremunerative ; but the young rector, happy in his home 
 and his work, met all difficulties bravely ; and gradually in the 
 course of years, the land was drained ; the ponds which ran through 
 the garden and stood above the level of the dwelling rooms were 
 filled up, and though the house was never healthy, it was habitable. 
 
 New clubs for the poor, shoe club, coal club, maternal society, 
 a loan fund and lending library, were established one after another. 
 An intelligent young parishioner, who is still school-master, was 
 sent by the rector to the Winchester Training College ; an adult 
 school was held in the rectory three nights a week for all the win- 
 ter months ; a Sunday school met there every Sunday morning and 
 afternoon ; and weekly cottage lectures were established in all the 
 out-lying districts for the old and feeble. The fact of there being 
 no school-house had a good effect in drawing the people within the 
 humanizing influences of the rectory, which was always open to 
 them, and will ever be associated in the minds of young and old 
 of this generation at Eversley, with the kind and courteous sym- 
 pathy and the living teaching which they all got from their rector. 
 
 At the beginning of his ministry there was not a grown-up man 
 or woman among the laboring class who could read or write — for 
 as boys and girls they had all been glad to escape early to field 
 work from the parish clerk's little stifling room, ten feet square, 
 where cobbling shoes, teaching, and caning went on together. As 
 to religious instruction, they had had none. 
 
 The church was nearly empty before the new curate came in 
 1842. The farmers' sheep, when pasture was scarce, were turned 
 into the neglected churchyard. Holy Communion was celebrated 
 only three times a year ; the communicants were few ; the alms 
 were collected in an old wooden saucer. A cracked kitchen basin 
 inside the font held the water for Holy Baptism. At the altar, 
 which was covered by a moth-eaten cloth, stood one old broken 
 
78 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 chair; and so averse were the parish authorities to any change 
 that when the new rector made a proposal for monthly commu- 
 nions, it was only accepted on his promising himself to supply the 
 wine for the celebration, the churchwardens refusing to provide 
 except for the three great festivals. This he continued to do till a 
 few years since, when Sir William Cope undertook the office of 
 rector's churchwarden, and at once put this matter on a right 
 footing. 
 
 The evil results of such years of neglect could only be conquered 
 by incessant labor, and the young rector's whole energies were de 
 voted to the parish. He had to redeem it from barbarism : but 
 it was a gentle barbarism, for the people, though not intelligently 
 responsive, were a kindly people, civil and grateful for notice, and 
 as yet wholly uninjured by indiscriminate almsgiving. He was 
 daily with them in their cottages, and made a point of talking to 
 the men and boys at their field work, till he was personally inti- 
 mate with every soul in the parish, from the women at their wash- 
 tubs, to the babies in the cradle, for whom he always had a loving 
 word or look. Nothing escaped his eye. That hunger for knowl- 
 edge on every subject, which characterized him through life, and 
 made him ready to learn from every laboring man what he could 
 tell him of his own farm work or the traditions of the place, had 
 put him when he was curate on an easy human footing with the 
 parishioners and was one secret of his influence ; so that before the 
 state of his health obliged him, in 1848, to take a curate, he had 
 got the parish thoroughly in hand. 
 
 It was from his regular house to house visiting in the week, still 
 more than his church services, that he acquired his power. If a 
 man or woman were suffering or dying, he would go to them five 
 and six times a day — and night as well as day — for his own heart's 
 sake as well as for their soul's sake. Such visiting was very rare 
 in those days. For years he seldom dined out ; never during the 
 winter months, when the adult school and the cottage readings 
 took up six evenings in the week ; and he seldom left the parish 
 except for a few days at a time to take his family to the sea-side, 
 which occurred the more frequently from the constant illness pro- 
 duced by the damp rectory ; but he was never easy away from his 
 work. 
 
 His only relaxation was a few hours' fishing in some stream close 
 
First Confirmation. 79 
 
 by. He never took a gun in hand, because from the poaching 
 tastes of his people he felt it might bring him into unpleasant col- 
 lision with them, and for this reason he never wished to be made a 
 magistrate, lest he should have to sit on the bench in judgment on 
 his parishioners. He could not afford to hunt, and when in after 
 years he took a gallop now and then to refresh himself, and to see 
 his friends in the hunting-field, where he was always welcome, it 
 was on some old horse which he had picked up cheap for parson's 
 work. " Another old screw, Mr. Kingsley,'' was said to him often 
 by middle class men, who were well aware that he could ride, and 
 that he knew a good horse when he saw it. They perhaps respected 
 him all the more for his self-denial. At tliis time there were ken- 
 nels in the parish; the fox-hounds (now known as Mr. Garth's) 
 were kept at Bramshill, Sir John Cope being Master. His stable- 
 men were a very respectable set of men, and most regular at church ; 
 and the rector, though he could not afford to ride, had always a 
 friendly word with the huntsman and whips ; his love of horses and 
 dogs and knowledge of sport made an intimacy between them, and 
 he soon won their respect and affection. Of this they gave early 
 proof, for when the first confirmation after his induction was given 
 out in church, and he invited all who wished to be confirmed to 
 come down to the rectory for weekly instruction, the stud groom, a 
 respectable man of five-and-thirty, was among the first to come, 
 bringing a message from the whips and stablemen to say they had 
 all been confirmed once, but if Mr. Kingsley wished it they would 
 all be happy to come again ! 
 
 It had hitherto been the custom in Eversley and the neighbor- 
 ing parishes to let the confirmation candidates get over as they 
 could to some distant church, where the catechumens of four or five 
 parishes assembled to meet the bishop. Consequently the public- 
 houses were usually full on confirmation day, which often ended in 
 a mere drunken holiday for boys and girls, who had many miles to 
 walk, and had neither superintendence nor refreshm&nt by the way 
 provided for them. When he became rector, matters were ar- 
 ranged very differently for the Eversley people. Each candidate 
 was prepared separately as well as in class, for six weeks before- 
 hand, and for the six Sundays previous to the confirmation, the 
 catechism, creeds, and office of confirmation explained publicly. 
 On the day itself the young people assembled early for refreshment 
 
So Charles Kingsley. 
 
 at the rectory, whence they started in two vans for Heckfield 
 church. He himself Avent with the boys, and his wife or some 
 trustworthy person with the girls, and never lost sight of them till 
 they returned, the girls to their homes, the boys and young men, 
 some of them married men, who, from long years of neglect, had 
 never been confirmed, to the rectory, where a good dinner awaited 
 them, and they spent the evening in wandering over the glebe, or 
 looking at curiosities and picture-books indoors, ending with a few 
 words on their duty. So henceforth the solemn day was always 
 associated with pleasant thoughts and an nmocent hoUday, which 
 made the young people more inclined to come to him the week 
 following to be prepared for Holy Communion. The appearance 
 and manner of the Eversley catechumens were often remarked on 
 — the quiet dresses of the girls, and the neat caps provided for 
 them. These seem trifling matters to dwell on in days when such 
 things are done decently and in order in all parishes : but thirty- 
 two years ago Eversley set the example- on Confirmation as well 
 as on many other days. 
 
 His preaching was always remarkable. The only fault which 
 Bishop Sumner found with the sermons he took up to show him 
 when he went to Farnham for his Priest's Ordination, was that they 
 Avere too colloquial : but it was this very peculiarity which arrested 
 and attracted his hearers, and helped to fill a very empty church. 
 His original mind and common sense alike revolted from the use 
 of an unmeaning phraseology, and as all the facts of life were to 
 him sacred, he was unfettered as to subject-matter and modes of 
 expression. 
 
 During the summer of 1844 he made acquaintance with Mr. Mau- 
 rice, to whose writings he owed so much ; and the acquaintance 
 soon strengthened into a deep and enduring friendship. In the fol- 
 lowing letter he first ventured to consult him on his difficulties. 
 
 "My Dear Sir, 
 
 "I must apologise for addressing one so much my superior, 
 and so slightly acquainted with me, but where shall the young 
 priest go for advice, but to the elder prophet ? To your works I 
 am indebted for the foundation of any coherent view of the word of 
 God, the meaning of the Church of England, and the spiritual 
 phenomena of the ]:)resent and past ages. And as through your 
 thoughts God's spirit has given me catholicity, to whom therefore 
 can I better go for details on any of these points ? 
 
Letter from F. D. MaiLrice. 8i 
 
 " Two things are very troublesome to me at present. The want 
 of any j^hilosophical method of reading the Scriptures, without see- 
 ing in them merely proofs of human systems ; and the great prev- 
 alence of the Baptist form of dissent in my parish. The latter I 
 find myself unable to cope with, founded as it is on supra-lapsarian 
 Calvinistic dogmas, which have been received into the heart as the 
 deepest counsels of God. 
 
 " I therefore beg the favor of your advice upon these two sub- 
 jects, and feeling that much may be said that would not be written, 
 I must beg, if I am not guilty of too great an intrusion, that you 
 would grant me an interview with you in London. 
 
 " I know that the request is informal according to the ways of 
 the world, but I have faith enough in you to be sure that you will 
 take the request for what it is, an earnest struggle to get wisdom at 
 all risks from any quarter where it may be found." .^ . . . 
 
 The reply was as follows, and is given by the kind permission of 
 Mr. Maurice's executors. 
 
 REV. F. D. MAURICE TO REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 July 22, 1844. 
 
 " . . . I should be sorry not to give you the experience of 
 any blunders I may have committed in past time, with such expe- 
 rience as has been the fruit of them, and it is sometimes easier to 
 recover the different fragments of this experience, and to piece 
 them together in writing than in speaking. 
 
 " With respect to the study of the Scriptures, my own great error 
 has been that I have formed and abandoned so many plans, any 
 one of which, honestly pursued, might have led to good results. 
 I fancy this is a prevalent temptation, though I have yielded to it 
 and suffered from it more than any of my acquaintances. As I 
 would turn diseases to commodity, or, at least, as God is some- 
 times mercifully pleased to do this for us, I think I may say that 
 all the deplorable waste of time which these changes have oc- 
 casioned, has brought with it this compensation, that I have been 
 solemnly and inwardly impressed with the truth, that the Bible, as 
 a means of attaining to the knowledge of the living God, is pre- 
 cious beyond all expression or conception ; when made a substi- 
 tute for that knowledge, may become a greater deadener to the 
 human spirit than all other books. 
 
 " The method of the Bible itself, and the means of its being 
 overlooked, I tliink become more and more clear to us, as we keep 
 this consideration before us. If it be a human history, contaming 
 a gradual discovery of God, which discovery awakens the very fac- 
 ulties and apprehensions which are to receive it, the treatment of 
 it as a collection of notions, either about the invisible world or our 
 6 
 
82 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 own duty, must entirely mislead us in all our studies ; and whether 
 we rate it high or low, whether we extol it as the one rule of faith, 
 maintain its autliority to be concurrent with that of Church tradi- 
 tion, or look upon it merely as a set of fragments containing the 
 speculations of a certain nation about religious questions, the re- 
 sult will be much the same. In each case the end of the book 
 will be lost, and therefore all the steps to that end will be confused 
 and incomprehensible. But if once the teaciaers in our theological 
 schools would have courage to proclaim theology to be the knowl- 
 edge of God, and not the teaching of a religion, I am satisfied that 
 the scientific character of the Bible could be brought out as con- 
 spicuously as its practical character, one being seen to be involved 
 in the other. Then it would not be necessary to assert for theol- 
 ogy its place in the scientia scientiarum^ or to bid others fall into 
 their places in connection with it, and subordination to it ; nor 
 would it be necessary to be perpetually proclaiming church author- 
 ity in favor of such and such doctrines. The truths concerning 
 God would be felt so essential to the elucidation of those concern- 
 ing man and nature, the relations of one to the other would be so ev- 
 ident, there would be such a life infused into the features of human 
 knowledge, and such a beautiful order and unity in the whole of it, 
 that the opposition to them would be recognized as proceeding 
 just as much from ])rejudice and ignorance, sure to disappear when- 
 ever there were not moral causes to sustain them, as the opposition 
 to gravitation or any of the most acknowledged physical or mathe- 
 matical principles. I do not mean that this effect would follow 
 suddenly, or that the actual impediments to the gospel from human 
 pride and wickedness would be less felt. I suppose they would be 
 more felt after it had followed. But we should not then be obliged 
 to acknowledge that much of the resistance to the most precious 
 principles may actually proceed from a love to some others, or 
 even to those same ; we should not hear such a din of voices cry- 
 ing out for this thing and that ; and nearly forgetting God in their 
 love for abstractions ; we should not see so much violent straining 
 and perverting of texts to serve a purpose ; we should have much 
 less idolatry of the Bible, and much more reverence for it. And 
 the hard-working clergy of our parishes, having been trained in 
 such a school before they entered upon practical duty, would feel 
 a clearness in their minds, a readiness for occasions, a power of 
 bringing their studies to bear upon life, instead of being obliged, as 
 is now so much the case, either to shut their eyes against any new 
 light, or else to destroy and reconstruct their system each time that 
 any is vouchsafed to them. But since our universities afford us no 
 teaching of this kind at present, we must try to profit by the helps 
 which we have. Our actual work is, I think, the best of these 
 helps. It forces us, whether we will or no, out of the routine of 
 systems, and leads us to seek for something in scripture which is 
 
Letter from F. D. Maurice. 83 
 
 altogether unlike them. And though I would strongly urge every 
 one not to lose sight of the idea of that system of which I have 
 spoken, I would by no means recommend any one who was not 
 working as a professed theologian in the schools, to spend his time 
 in contriving how he may adjust his own reading to it. The use of 
 it to him v.'ill be far greater if he recollects that it exists when he 
 is reading a single book, or chapter, or text, than if he determines 
 doggedly to follow out the traces of it from Genesis to Revelation. 
 The subject of his studies, I should think, must be always best de- 
 termined by the wants of his parish. In preaching, I have always 
 found it best to follow the order of the services, taking my subject 
 from the epistle, gospel, collect, or first lesson, and 1 think if we 
 read on a ])lan, we can hardly find a much better one. The study 
 of words also is, I think, of immense profit, especially of famiUes 
 of words, as e.g., SLKatoo), cocrts, w/xa, oa-'jv-q, through an epistle, or 
 through many. Schmidt's 'Concordance' is worth much more, it 
 seems to me, than Schleusner's or Eretschneider's Lexicons; 
 though I do not mean to say they are of no value. I think^ too, 
 that it is desirable, cautiously and deliberately to question our- 
 selves about the leading idea of any Epistle ; I say cautiously and 
 deliberately, because the mere taking up with customary formulas 
 on the subject, such as that, the Epistles to the Romans and Gala- 
 tians are about justification, will, 1 am satisfied, lead us astray. 
 These Epistles are, I am convinced, strikingly different in their 
 object and character. With respect to the Romans, the great mis- 
 chief is, that commentators generally start from the third chapter, 
 looking upon the first and second as merely an introduction or 
 prologue, whereas any simple reader must perceive that St. Paul 
 enters at once on his subject, and that it is really the cjiavipu>arL<; t% 
 SLKaio(jvvr]<; tou 6eov, and not an abstract theory of justification." 
 
 " . . . It is difficult to speak on the second point in your 
 letter — the Baptists in your parish — without knowing how far they 
 are, or are not, practically Antinomian. In many places they are, 
 and a very vulgar brutal sect of Antinomians. Mr. Hall, who was 
 a Baptist, describes such a class of men as existing in his body, 
 and attacks them with a fury which proves that they must have 
 acquired great infiuence, and have been very numerous in his life- 
 time. In that case I should not be inclined to argue with them 
 against their ultra-Calvinism, or to show them how it strengthens 
 them in their evil courses ; I would rather admit what they say 
 when they refer man's goodness and conversion to the will of God, 
 and press the assertic^n of the apostle, ' This is the will of God, 
 even your sanctification,' that all the purposes of God's decrees 
 must be to make men righteous as He is, and that if the decrees to 
 which they appeal do not produce this result, they are not His, but 
 the devil's. And since their complaint of infant baptism must be 
 on the ground that the children have yet given no sign of faith in 
 
84 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 God, you may, without any personality, or any direct allusion to 
 themselves, ask how far the facts warrant us in expecting any 
 better result from the mature conscious baptism. Supposing, how- 
 ever, they should be honest, earnest men, however outrageous may 
 be their statements, I should be disposed rather to take advantage 
 of their doctrine, than to repudiate it. You say that man's fall, 
 and all other events, were parts of a gi'eat scheme of God. Well ! 
 I grant you that the fall did not in the least frustrate the scheme 
 of God. I grant you that it is very wrong to speak as if He had 
 merely devised a scheme as a remedy for the consequences of the 
 fall. Christ was before all things, and by Him all things consist. 
 In Him He created man, and His incarnation, though it came 
 later than the fall, was really in God's purpose before it. What 
 we preach is, that men, being endued with that flesh and blood 
 which Christ took, are to be looked upon as objects of God's love, 
 and that they are to be accused of setting at nought that love. 
 We do not set aside election ; our baptism is the witness for it. 
 By it we refer all things to God ; we testify that He chooses with- 
 out reference to their previous merits or holiness, and that all gifts 
 and graces come from Him. Of course such a statement as this 
 will be varied according to the capacities of the auditor, and the 
 nature of his objections ; but it is the kind of Unguage I should 
 use, and that not from any calculation as to the effects it might 
 produce, but from believing it to be the truest and honestest. In 
 supra-lapsarian Calvinism, there lies a deep recognition of God as 
 a living being, an originating will, which the feeble, frittering , 
 phrases of Arminianism can provide no substitute for. The great 
 misery of the Calvinist is, his constant substitution of the idea of 
 sovereignty for that of righteousness, which is the one always 
 brought before us in Scripture. I would seek to deliver him from 
 that evil, but as far as possible keeping entire and unhurt that 
 which he has already." .... 
 
 We return to his ©"wii letters. 
 
 The news of his brother Lieut, Kingsle3''s death from fever in 
 Torres Straits, on board H.M.S. " RoyaUst," now reached Eng- 
 land, and he writes to his wife from 
 
 Chelsea, February 26, 1845. 
 
 « , . . It is sad — very sad — but what is to be said ? I saw 
 huB twice last night in two different dreams — strong and well — and 
 so much grown — and I kissed him and wept over him — and woke 
 to the everlasting No ! 
 
 " As far as externals go, it has been very sad. The sailors say 
 commonly that there is but a sheet of paper between Torres Straits 
 
Death of Lieitt. Kings ley. 85 
 
 and Hell. And there he lay, and the wretched crew, in the little 
 brig, roasting and pining, day after day — never heard of, or hearing 
 of living soul for a year and a half. The commander died — half 
 the crew died — and so they died and died on, till in May no officer 
 was left but Gerald, and on the 17th of September he died too, 
 and so faded away, and we shall never see hiin more — for ever ? 
 God that saved me knows. Then one Parkinson, the boatswain, 
 had to promote himself to keep the pendant flying, all the officers 
 being dead, and in despair left his post and so brought the brig 
 home to Singapore, with great difficulty, leaking, with her mast 
 sprung — her crew half dead — a doomed vessel. O God, Thou 
 alone knovvest the long bitter withering baptism of fire, wherewith 
 the poor boy was baptized, day and night alone with his own soul. 
 And yet Thou wert right — as ever — perhaps there was no way but 
 that to bring him to look himself in the face, and know that life 
 was a reality, and not a game ! And who dare say that in those 
 weary, weary months of hope deferred, the heart eating at itself, 
 did not gnaw through the crust of vanities (not of so very long 
 growth either), and the living water which he did drink in his 
 childhood find vent and bubble up ! Why not — seeing that God 
 is love?" .... 
 
 Early in 1S45 Dean Wood, of the Collegiate Church of Middle- 
 ham, having two vacant stalls to dispose of, offered one to his son, 
 the Rev. Peter Wood, now Rector of Copford, and the other to 
 Charles Kingsley, his son's old college friend. The canonries 
 were honorary, and had no duties connected with them, but being 
 of historic interest, the two friends accepted the honor, and 
 went down together to be inducted, to the stalls of St. Anthony 
 and St. George. The deanery was abolished in 1856, on the 
 • death of Dean Wood. This was his first visit to Yorkshire, 
 a county attractive to him, from its people as much as from its 
 ■scenery. 
 
 The rest of the year was spent quietly at Eversley in parish work 
 and sermon writing : but the state of parties in Church and State, 
 especially the former, lay heavy on his heart, and made him very 
 anxious to join or start some periodical in which the young men of 
 the day could find a vehicle for free expression of their opinions. 
 The ' Oxford and Cambridge Review ' was then in existence, and 
 it was proposed to make that the vehicle, and if not, to start a new 
 one. On all these points Mr, Maurice was consulted, though he 
 would not join. 
 
S6 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 TO THE REV. R. COWLEY POWLES. 
 
 Chelsea, December ii, 1845. 
 
 " About the 'Oxford and Cambridge Review.' — Froude seems 
 to dread any fresh start, .... and I shall chew the cud and 
 try to find out my own way a little longer before I begin trying to 
 lead others. 
 
 '' God help us all ! for such a distempered tangled juncture 
 must end in the cutting of the Gordian knot, by the higher or 
 lower powers ; and as the. higher have fairly denied their cutting 
 ability and have given it up, perhaps the lower iriay try their hands 
 at it. 1 would, if 1 were hovering between nine shillings a week 
 and the workhouse, as the sum of all attainabilities this side of 
 heaven. God help us all ! I say again ; for there is no counsel to 
 be got anywhere from man, and as for God's book, men have 
 made it mean anything and nothing, with their commenting and 
 squabbhng, and doctrine picking, till one asks with Pilate, ' What is 
 truth ? ' Well, at all events, God knows, and Christ the King 
 knows, and so all must go right at last, but in the meantime ? 
 
 " I am just now a sort of religious Shelley, an Ishmael of catho- 
 licity, a John the Baptist, minus his spirit and power, alas ! be- 
 moaning myself in the wilderness. Were I to stop praying, and 
 remembering my own sins daily, 1 could becom'e a Democritus 
 Junior, and sitting upon the bench of contemplation, make the 
 world my cock-pit, wherein main after main of cocklets — the 
 ' shell,' alas ! scarce ' off their heads,' come forth to slay and be 
 slain, mutually, for no quarrel, except ' thou-cock art not me-cock, 
 therefore fight ! ' But I had as soon be the devil as old Lucretius, 
 to sit with him in the ' Sapientum templa serena, despicere unde 
 queas alios, atque, cernere passim errantes.' One must feel for 
 one's fellows — so much better, two out of three of them than one's 
 self, though they will fill themselves with the east wind, and be 
 proportionably dyspeptic and sulky. 
 
 " Nobody trusts nobody. The clergy are split up into innumer- 
 able parties, principally nomadic. Every one afraid to speak. 
 Every one unwilling to listen to his neighbor ; and in the mean- 
 time vast sums are spent, and vast work undertaken, and yet 
 nobody is content. Everybody swears we are going backward. 
 Everybody swears it is not his fault, but the Evangelicals, or the 
 Puseyites, or the Papists, or the ministry ; or everybody, in shorf, 
 who does not agree with him. Pardon this jeremiad, but I am an 
 owl in the desert, and it is too sad to see a huge and busy body of 
 clergy, utterly unable to gain the confidence or spiritual guidance 
 of the nation, and yet never honestly taking the blame each man 
 upon himself, and saying, ' I, not ye have sinned.' 
 
 "Pardon, again, ihis threnodia, but I am sick of matters, and do 
 earnestly wish for some one to whom to pour out my heart. The 
 
• Hiving a Swarm of Bees. Sy 
 
 principles which the great kings and bishops of the middle ages, 
 and our reformers of the i6th century felt to be the foundation of 
 a Church and nation, are now set at nought equally by those 
 who pretend to worship the middle ages, and those who swear by 
 the reformers. And Popery and Puritanism seem to be fighting 
 their battle over again in England, on the foul middle ground of 
 mammonite infidelity. They are re-appearing in weaker and less 
 sincere forms, but does that indicate the approach of their individ- 
 ual death, or our general decay ? He who will tell me this shall be 
 
 my prophet ; till then 1 must be my own 
 
 " . . . . My game is gradually opening before me, and my ideas 
 getting developed, and ' fixed,' as the Germans would say. But, 
 alas ! as Hare has it, is not in one sense ' every man a liar ? ' false 
 to his own idea, again and again, even if, which is rare now-a-days, 
 we have one ? " 
 
 TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 EvERSLEY, May, 1846. 
 
 " . . . I got home at four this morning after a delicious 
 walk — a poem in itself I never saw such a sight before as the 
 mists on the heath and valleys, and never knew what a real bird 
 chorus was. I am lonely enough, but right glad I came, as there 
 
 is plenty to do I shall start to-morrow morning, and 
 
 will lose no time waiting for coaches at Ryde, but walk on at once 
 
 to Shanklin. St. Elizabeth progresses, and consolidates 
 
 I have had a great treat to-day ; saw a swarm of bees hived, for 
 the first time in my hfe. Smith was gone to Heckfield, -so G. 
 White sent his cart for old Home ; and I stood in the middle of 
 the flying army, and saw the whole to my great delight. Certainly 
 man, even in the lowest grade, is infinitely wonderful, and infinitely 
 brave — give him habit and self-confidence. To see all those little 
 poisonous insects crawling over Home, wrapt in the one thought 
 of their new-born sister-queen ! I hate to think that it is vile self- 
 interest — much less mere brute magnetism (called b}^ the ignorant 
 'instinct'), which takes with them the form of loyalty, prudence, 
 order, self-sacrifice. How do we know that they have no souls ? 
 'The beasts which perish ? ' Ay, but put against that 'the spirit 
 of the beast which goeth downward to the earth' — and whither 
 then ? ' Man perisheth,' too, in scripture language, yet not for 
 ever. But I will not dream, 
 
 "I fancy you and baby playing in the morning. Bless you, my 
 
 two treasures 1 had a most busy and interesting day 
 
 yesterday in London. Called on * * * and found him under- 
 going all the horrors of a deep, and as I do think, healthy baptism 
 of fire — not only a conversion, but a discovery that God and the 
 devil are living realities, figliting for his body and soul. This, 
 in a man of vast thought and feeling, who has been for years a 
 
88 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 confirmed materialist, is hard work. He entreated me not to 
 
 leave him 
 
 " God help us all. and save our country — not so much from the 
 fate of France, as from the fate of Rome — internal decay, and fall- 
 ing to pieces by its own weight ; but I will say no more of this — 
 perhaps 1 think too much about it." .... 
 
 TO THE REV. R. C. POWLES. 
 
 December, 1846. 
 
 " Do not, for God's sake, compliment me. If you knew the 
 mean, inconsistent, desultory being I am in action, in spite of my 
 fine words, you would be ashamed of me, as I am of myself. But 
 I cannot stave off the conviction of present danger and radical 
 disease in our national religion. And though I laugh at myself 
 sometimes for conceit and uncharitableness — tamen usque recurrit — 
 that hand-writing on the wall ; that ' mene, mene ' against Angli- 
 canism and Evangelicalism at once — both of which more and more 
 daily prove to me their utter impotence to meet our social evils. 
 Six months in a country parish is enough to prove it. What is to 
 be done I do not see. A crisis, political and social, seems approach- 
 ing, and religion, like a rootless plant, may be brushed away in the 
 struggle. Maurice is full of fear — I had almost said despondence — 
 and he, as you know, has said in his last book, that ' The real struggle 
 of the day will be, not between Popery and Protestantism, but be- 
 tween Atheism and Christ.' And here we are daubing walls with 
 untempered mortar — quarrelling about how we shall patch the 
 superstructure, forgetting that the foundation is gone — Faith in 
 anything. As in the days of Noah with the Titans — as in the days 
 of Mahomet with the Christian sects of the East, they were eating, 
 and drinking, and quarrelling, no doubt, and behold the flood 
 came and swept them all away. And even such to me seems the 
 prospect of the English Church. 
 
 " People say indignantly, ' Oh ! but look at her piety ; look at 
 the revival ; her gospel doctrines ; her church-building. She is 
 beginning to live and not to die.' But we who have read history 
 know how the candle always flames up at the last with a false gal- 
 vanic life, when the spirit is goae. Remember the Church in Eng- 
 land just before the Reformation, how she burst out into new life ; 
 how she reformed her monasteries ; how she filled her pulpits ; 
 how she built more churches and colleges in fifty years than she had 
 in two hundred before — Somersetshire as a single example — how 
 she was in every respect, within as well as without, immeasurably 
 improved just before the monasteries were dissolved. But her 
 time was come. ' The old order ' was to ' change,' ' giving place 
 to the new ' while God ' fulfils Himself in many ways,' as Tennyson 
 has it. And not even a More and a Fisher could save her from 
 
A Periodical Proposed. 89 
 
 her fire-death, and phoenix resurrection. Mene ! Mene ! I say- 
 again for us. 
 
 "But we. must, in the widest and divinest sense, make friends of 
 the Mammon of. unrighteousness. It is the new commercial aris- 
 tocracy ; it is the scientific go-ahead-ism of the day which must 
 save us, and which we must save. We have licked the feet of the 
 feudal aristocrats for centuries, and see whither they have brought 
 us, or let us bring ourselves. In plain truth, the English clergy 
 must Arnold-ise, if they do not wish to go either to Rome or to the 
 workhouse, before fifty years are out. There is, I do believe, an 
 Arnoldite spirit rising ; but most ' laudant, non sequuntur.' De- 
 cent Anglicanism, decent Evangelical Conservatism (or Evangeli- 
 calism) having become the majority, is now quite Conservative, 
 and each party playing Canute and the tide, as it can scramble 
 into the chair of authority, I would devote soul and body to get 
 together an Arnoldite party of young men. If we could but begin 
 a periodical in which every one should be responsible by name for 
 his own article, thereby covering any little difierences of opinion, 
 such as must always exist in a reforming party (though not in a 
 dead-bone-galvanising one, like the Tractarians). If we could but 
 start anything daring and earnest as a ' coroccio,' or flag of misery, 
 round which, as round David in the mountains, the spiritual rag- 
 tag might rally, and howl harmonious the wrongs of the clergy and 
 of literary men, it were a great thing gained ! 
 
 " I have had serious thoughts of what such a thing ought to be. 
 Its two mottoes should be Anti-Manichccism — (and therefore Anti- 
 Tractarian, and Anti-Evangelical) and Anti-Atheism. To attack 
 unsparingly those two things in every one, from the bishop to the 
 peasant; and to try, on the positive side, to show how all this pro- 
 gress of society in the present day is really of God, and God's 
 work, and has potential and latent spiritual elements, which it is 
 the duty and the glory of the clergy, if they are a clergy, to unfold 
 and christen. We should require a set of articles on Church Re- 
 form, a set on the Art of Worship, which should show that the 
 worshipless state of Evangelicalism is no more necessary than good, 
 and that Protestantism can just as much inspire itself into a glorious 
 artistic ritual of its own, as Popery and Anglicanism have into one 
 of their own. Then we should want a set of Condition-of-the-Poor- 
 Ballads or articles, or anything ' spicy ' on that point. A set on 
 the Religion of Science, and a set on Modern Poetry and the 
 Drama, cursing the opera and praying for the revival of the legiti- 
 mate. 
 
 " This, I think, might keep the game alive, if men would only be 
 bold and 'ride recklessly across country.' As soon as a man's 
 blood is cool, the faster he goes the safer he goes. Try to pick 
 your way and you tumble down. If men would but believe this 
 and be bold; we want some of that 'absolutism' which gave 
 
90 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 strength to the Middle Ages ; and it is only the tyranny of fashion 
 and respectability which keeps us from it ; for put the Englishman 
 into a new country, break the thrall of habit and the fear of man, 
 and he becomes great, absolute, Titanic at once." 
 
 The Magazine plan came to nothing, and 1846 passed unevent- 
 less in the routine of parish work and home happiness. Adult 
 classes, a music class on HuUah's plan to improve the church 
 music (which had been entirely in the hands of three or four poor 
 men, with a trombone and two clarionets) brought his people on 
 several nights in the week up to the rectory, where the long, un- 
 furnished dining-room served the purpose of schoolroom. He never 
 cared to leave his quiet home, doubly enriched by the presence of 
 a little daughter. 
 
 The following year his " Life of St. Elizabeth," which was 
 begun in prose in 1842, and had been gradually growing under his 
 hand, took the form of a drama. After working at it in this new 
 form for some months, the thought of publishing it crossed his 
 mind ; but he was so uncertain as to whether it was worth print- 
 ing, that he decided nothing till he had consulted four friends on 
 whose judgment and poetical verdict he could rely — the Hon. and 
 Rev. Gerald Wellesley, then Rector of Strathfieldsaye, now Dean 
 of Windsor ; Rev. F. D. Maurice ; Rev. Derwent Coleridge, of 
 St. Mark's ; and the Rev. R. C. Powles. Their opinion was unani- 
 mous, but the difficulty was to find a publisher who would under- 
 take the work of a young and unknown author. He took the MSS. 
 to London, from whence he wrote home. 
 
 " I breakfasted with Maurice this morning, and went over a great 
 deal of St. Elizabeth, and I cannot tell you how thankful I am to 
 God about it. He' has quite changed his mind about scene i of 
 act ii., Elizabeth's bower. He read it to Powles, who is decidedly 
 for keeping it in just as it is, and thinks it ought to offend no one. 
 He is very desirous to show the MSS. to A. G. Scott, Mrs. H. 
 Coleridge, Tennyson, and Van Artevelde Taylor. He says that 
 it ought to do great good with those who can take it in, but for 
 those who cannot, it ought to have a preface : and has more than 
 hinted that he will help me to one, by writing me something which, 
 if I like, I can prefix. What more would you have ?...." 
 
 "Coleridge's opinion of the poem is far higher than I expected. 
 He sent me to Pickering with a highly recommendatory note ; which 
 however, joined with Maurice's preface, was not sufficient to make 
 him take the risk off my hands. 
 
SL Elizabeth in Press. 91 
 
 "I am now going to Parker's, in the Strand. I am at once 
 very happy, very lonely, and very anxious. How absence in- 
 creases love ! It is positively good sometimes to be parted, that 
 one's affection may become conscious of itself, and proud, and 
 humble, and thankful accordingly " 
 
 Messrs. Parker, of 445 West Strand, undertook the publication, 
 and he writes joyfully to Mr. Powles : 
 
 "St. Elizabeth is in the press, having been taken off my hands 
 by the heroic magnanimity of Mr. J. Parker, West Strand, who, 
 though a burnt child, does not dread the fire. No one else would 
 have it. 
 
 "Maurice's preface comes out with it, and is inestimably not only 
 to I myself I, but to all men who shall have the luck to read it, 
 and the wit to understand it. I had hoped to have shown it to 
 you before it went, but ' non concessere columnae.' " 
 
 His eldest son was born this year, and named after Mr. Maurice, 
 who with Mr. Powles, stood sponsors to the boy. In the summer 
 he took his wife and two children for six weeks to Milford, a little 
 sea-side place near the edge of the New Poorest. It was his first 
 six weeks' holiday since his marriage, which he earned by taking 
 the Sunday services of Pennington, near Lymington. Here he had 
 a horse, and the rides in the beautiful scenery of the New Forest, 
 dear to him from old association with his father's youth and man- 
 hood, excited his imagination. It was only either at a great crisis 
 in his life, or in a time when all his surroundings were in perfect 
 harmony, that he could compose poetry. And now, when in the 
 forest, and in the saddle once more, or alone with his beloved ones, 
 with leisure to watch his babies, his heart's spring bubbled up into 
 song, and he composed several ballads : — " Oh she tripped over 
 Ocknell plain," "The Red King," and "The Outlaw." 
 
 He explored the forest day after day, with deep delight, and 
 laid up a store of impressions which in later years he began to 
 work up into a New Forest Novel. This, however, was never 
 completed. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Aged 29. 
 
 Publication of " Saint's Tragedy" — Chartist Riots — Tenth of April — Politics for 
 the People — Professorship at Queen's College — " Yeast " — Illness. 
 
 This year, so marked in the history of Europe, was one of the 
 most important of Charles Kingsley's life. " The Saint's Tragedy" 
 was published soon after Christmas, and, though it made little im- 
 pression on the literary world in England, yet gave him in one 
 sense a new position, especially among young men at the universi- 
 ties. The Drama was eagerly read at Oxford, and fiercely at- 
 tacked by the high church party, who were to be made still more 
 bitter against its author by the publication of "Yeast," which came 
 out later in the year as a serial in " Eraser's Magazine." He was 
 surprised himself to find the interest "The Saint's Tragedy" had 
 excited at Oxford. In Germany it was read and appreciated, 
 and Chevalier Bunsen expressed his opinion in very strong terms 
 about it. In higher quarters still the genius of the author was 
 recognized. 
 
 The Tragedy was reviewed, not very favorably, by Mr. (after- 
 wards Professor) Conington at Oxford. This, however, led to an 
 acquaintance, between author and critic, which soon ripened into 
 friendship ; and when, in the course of a few months, " Politics for 
 the People" were pubhshed, Mr. Conington became not only a 
 warm ally in the cause, but a regular contributor, and constant 
 visitor at Eversley. 
 
 During the winter he went to Oxford to stay a few days with his 
 friend, Mr. Powles, Fellow of Exeter : and he writes to his 
 wife : — 
 
 Oxford, March 30, 1848. 
 
 '* . . . I may, I suppose, tell you that I am here undergoing 
 the new process of being made a lion of, at least so Powles tells 
 me. They got up a meeting for me, and the club was crowded 
 
Parish- Work. 93 
 
 with men ii'.erely to see poor me, so I found out afterwards : very 
 lucky that I did not know it during the process of being trotted 
 out. It is very funny and new. 1 dine this afternoon with Con- 
 ington ; to-morrow with Palgrave ; Monday with Stanley, and so 
 on. I like Conington very much ; he is a good, hearty piece of 
 nature; and I like his review very much. Of course he did not 
 go to the bottom on the Love and Marriage question ; but there 
 he shovved his sense, Froude gets more and more interesting. 
 We had such a conversation this morning — the crust is breaking, 
 and the man coming through that cold polished shell. My darling 
 babies ! kiss them very much for me. Monday I go to Chalgi-ove 
 Field, to see Hampden's martyr place." 
 
 His parish work this year was if possible more vigorous than 
 ever. Every winter's evening was occupied with either night- 
 school at the rectory, about thirty men attending ; or little services 
 in the outlying cottages for the infirm and laboring men after their 
 day's work. During the spring and summer a writing class was 
 held for girls in the empty coach-house ; a cottage school for in- 
 fants was also begun on the common — all preparing the way for 
 the National School that was to be built some years later, and for 
 which the teacher was in training. The parish made a great step 
 forward. The number of communicants increased. The daily 
 services and evening sermons in Passion week seemed to borrow 
 intenser fervor and interest from the strange events of the great 
 world outside the small quiet parish, and though poorly attended, 
 still gathered together a few laboring folk. 
 
 The political events which shook all Europe to its very founda- 
 tions, stirred his blood, and seemed for the time to give him a 
 supernatural strength, which kept up till the autumn, when he 
 completely broke down. He wrote an article for "Eraser's Maga- 
 zine " (the first he ever contributed to a periodical) on Popery : 
 " Why should we fear the Romish Priests?" following up his 
 " Saint's Tragedy," which had struck the key note of the after 
 work of his life ; and " Yeast " now was seething in his mind. Of 
 his contributions to "Politics for the People" more will be said 
 hereafter. He preached to his people on emigration, on poaching,- 
 and on the political and social disturbances of the day. In addi- 
 tion to parish and literary work he accepted the Professorship of 
 English Literature and Composition at Queen's College, Harley 
 Street, then in its infancy, of which Mr. Maurice was President, 
 
94 Charles Kings ley, 
 
 and he went up to London to give a lecture once a week. He was 
 also proposed for a professorship at King's College. He was in 
 constant communication with Mr. Maurice and the knot of re- 
 markable men who gathered round him. He made acquaintance 
 with Bishop Stanley, of Norwich, and his distinguished son ; with 
 Archdeacon Hare, Arthur Helps, John Hullah, James Anthony 
 Froude, John Malcolm Ludlow, and many other men of mark, but 
 to none did he become more strongly attached than to Mr. Thomas 
 Hughes. 
 
 On the news of the Chartist rising and petition reaching Evers- 
 ley, he determined, having closed his evening classes in the parish 
 for the winter, to go to London for a few days ; and on the morn- 
 ing of the loth of April, with his friend Mr. John Parker, jun., who 
 had been spending the Sunday at Eversley, he went up to see 
 what was going on. Mr. Parker, like many owners of property in 
 London, was nervous and anxious about the results of the day, 
 telling Mrs. Kingsley, half in joke as he left the door, that she 
 might expect to hear of his shop having been broken into, and 
 himself thrown into the Trafalgar Square fountains by the mob. 
 
 On arriving in London, they went to the house of business at 
 445 West Strand, then on to Mr. Maurice's ; and in the afternoon 
 he and Mr. Ludlow walked to Kennington Common, where pour- 
 ing rain damped the spirits of the crowds assembled. By mid-day 
 post he wrote to Eversley. 
 
 London, April lo, Monday. 
 
 " . . . All is right as yet. Large crowds,' but no one expects 
 any row, as the Chartists will not face Westminster Bridge, but are 
 gone round by London Bridge and Holborn, and are going to send 
 up only the legal number of Delegates to the House. 1 am just 
 going on to Maurice. The only fear is maurauding in the suburbs 
 at night; but do not fear for me, I shall be safe at Chelsea at 5. 
 I met Colonel Herman, who says there is no danger at all, and 
 the two Mansfields, who are gone as specials, to get hot, dusty, 
 and tired — nothing else. I will send down a letter by the latest 
 post." 
 
 April 11^ Evening. 
 
 "The events of a week have been crowded into a few hours. I 
 was up till 4 this morning, writing posting placards under Maurice's 
 auspices, one of which is to be got out to-morrow morning, the 
 rest when we can get money. Could you not beg a few sovereigns 
 
Address to Workmen. 95 
 
 somewhere, to help these poor wretches to the truest ahns ? — to 
 words — texts from the Psahns, anything which may keep one 
 man from cutting his brother's throat to-morrow or Friday ? Pray, 
 pray, help us. Maurice has given me the highest proof of confi- 
 dence. He has taken me into counsel, and we ai-e to have meet- 
 ngs for prayer and study, when I come up to London, and we are 
 to bring out a new set of real ' Tracts for the Times,' addressed to 
 the higher orders. Maurice is d la haiUeur des circo7istances — de- 
 termined to make a decisive move. He says: 'If the Oxford 
 tracts did wonders, why should not we ? Pray for us. A glorious 
 future is opening, and both Maurice and Ludlow seem to have 
 driven away all my doubts and sorrows, and I see the blue sky 
 again and my Father's face ! " 
 
 On Wednesday, the 12th, all was still quiet, and this placard 
 which he had written was posted up, in London. 
 
 " WORKMEN OF ENGLAND ! 
 
 " You say that you are wronged. Many of you are wronged ; 
 and many besides yourselves know it. Almost all men who have 
 heads and hearts know it — above all, the working clergy know it. 
 They go into your houses, they see the shameful filth and dark- 
 ness* in which you are forced to live crowded together ; they see 
 your children growing up in ignorance and temptation, for want 
 of fit education ; they see intelligent and well-read men among 
 you, shut out from a Freeman's just right of voting ; and they see 
 too the noble patience and self-control with which you have as yet 
 borne these evils. They see it, and God sees it. 
 
 " Workmen of England ! You have more friends than you 
 think for. Friends who expect nothing from you, but who love 
 you, because you are their brothers, and who fear God, and there- 
 fore dare not neglect you, His children ; men who are drudging 
 and sacrificing themselves to get you your rights ; men who know 
 what your rights are, better than you know yourselves, who are 
 trying to get for you something nobler than charters and dozens of 
 Acts of Parliament — more useful than this 'fifty thousandth share 
 in a Talker in the National Palaver at Westminster 'f can give you. 
 You may disbelieve them, insult them — you cannot stop their 
 working for you, beseeching you as you love yourselves, to turn 
 back from the precipice of riot, which ends in the gulf of universal 
 distrust, stagnation, starvation. 
 
 " You think the Charter would make you free — would to God it 
 would ! The Charter is not bad ; if the men who nse it are not 
 bad ! But will the Charter make you free ? Will it free you from 
 
 * The Window tax was not then taken off. f Cailyle. 
 
g6 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 slavery to ten-pound bribes? Slavery to beer and gin? Slavery 
 to every spouter who flatters your self-conceit, and stirs up bitter- 
 ness and headlong rage in you ? That, I guess, is real slavery ; 
 to be a slave to one's own stomach, one's own pocket, one's own 
 temper. Will the Charter cwxq that ? Friends, you want more 
 than Acts of Parliament can give. 
 
 " Englishmen ! Saxons 1 Workers of the great, cool-headed, 
 strong -handed nation of England, the workshop of the world, the 
 leader of freedom for 700 years, men say you have common-sense ! 
 then do not humbug yourselves into meaning ' licence,' when you 
 cry for ' liberty ; ' who would dare refuse you freedom ? for the Al- 
 mighty God, and Jesus Christ, the poor Man, who died for poor 
 men, will bring it about for you, though all the Mammonites of the 
 earth were against you. A nobler day is dawning for England, a 
 day of freedom, science, industry ! 
 
 " But there will be no true freedom without virtue, no true 
 science without religion, no true industry without the fear of God, 
 and love to your fellow-citizens. 
 
 " Workers of England, be wise, and then you must be free, for 
 you will he. Jit to be free. 
 
 " A Working Parson." 
 
 On the evening of the T2th, Archdeacon Hare, Mr. Maurice, 
 and this little group of friends assembled at Mr. John Parker's 
 rooms, West Strand, whence he writes home, 
 
 Parker's, Strand, April 12, 6 p.m. 
 
 ". . . I really cannot go home this afternoon. I have spent 
 i*- with Archdeacon Hare, and Parker, starting a new periodical — 
 a Penny ' People's Friend,' in which Maurice, Hare, Ludlow, 
 Mansfield, and I, &c. are going to set to work, to supply the place 
 of the defunct 'Saturday Magazine.' I send you my first placard. 
 Maurice is delighted with it. I cannot tell you the interest which 
 it has excited with every one who has seen it. It brought the 
 tears into old Parker's eyes, who was once a working printer's boy. 
 1 have got already ^2 10s. towards bringing out more, and 
 Maurice is subscription-hunting for me. He took me to Jelf to- 
 day, the King's College principal, who received me very kindly, 
 and expressed himself very anxious to get me the professorship, 
 and will write to me as soon as the advertisements are out. I will 
 be down at Winchfield to-morrow. Kiss the babes for me. Parker 
 begs to remark that he has not been thrown into the Trafalgar 
 fountain." 
 
 On the 13th he returned to Eversley much exhausted, and 
 preached on the Chartist riots to his own people the following 
 
Mr. Hughes Recollections. 97 
 
 Sunday. And now working in his parish, writing for the " Politics," 
 pieparing his lecture for Queen's College, and sending in testimo- 
 nials* for a professorship at King's College, for which Mr. Maurice 
 had proposed him to the Council, filled up every moment of time. 
 The various writers for the " Politics," including Mr. Conington, 
 were continually coming to Eversley to talk over their work and 
 consult "Parson Lot." 
 
 As one qf the few survivors of those most intimately associated 
 with the author of " Alton Locke," his friend, Mr. Tom Hughes, 
 has written an eloquent preface to a fresh reprint of that work and 
 of " Cheap Clothes, and Nasty," from which he has kindly allowed 
 the following extracts to be used. Mr. Hughes, speaking of the 
 distinct period of Charles Kingsley's life extending from 1848 to 
 1856, says : — 
 
 ". . . My first meeting with him was in the autumn of 
 1847, at the house of Mr. Maurice, who had lately been appointed 
 Reader of Lincoln's Inn. No parochial work is attached to that 
 post, so Mr. Maurice had undertaken the charge of a small district 
 in the parish in which he lived, and had set a number of young 
 men, chiefly students of the Inns of Court, who had been attracted 
 by his teaching, to work in it., Once a week, on Monday evenings, 
 they used to meet at his house for tea, when their own work was 
 reported upon and talked over. Suggestions were made and plans 
 considered ; and afterwards a chapter of the Bible was read and 
 discussed. Friends and old pupils of Mr. Maurice's, residing in 
 the country, or in distant parts of London, were in the habit of 
 coming occasionally to these meetings, amongst whom was Charles 
 Kingsley. 
 
 " His poem,f and the high regard and admiration which Mr. 
 Maurice had for him, made him a notable figure in that small 
 society, and his presence was always eagerly looked for. What 
 impressed me most about him when we first met was, his affection- 
 ate deference to Mr. Maurice, and the vigor and incisiveness of 
 everything he said and did. He had the power of cutting out what 
 he meant in a few clear words, beyond any one I have ever met. 
 The next thing that struck one was, the ease with which he could 
 turn from playfulness, or even broad humor, to the deepest earnest. 
 At first I think this startled most persons, until they came to find 
 
 * These testimonials were chiefly based on the historic power displayed in the 
 "Saint's Tragedy," and on his own high personal character, from tlie Bishop 
 of his Diocese, Archdeacon Hare, and many other friends. 
 
 \ " The Saint's Tragedy." 
 
 7 
 
98 Charles Ki7igsley. 
 
 out the real deep nature of tlie man ; and that his broadest humor 
 had its root in a faith which realized, with extraordinary vividness, 
 the fact that God's Spirit is actively abroad in the world, and that 
 Christ is in every man, and made him hold fast, even in his saddest 
 moments, — and sad moments were not infrequent with him, — the 
 assurance that, in spite of all appearances, the world was going 
 right, and would go right somehow, 'Not your way, or my way, but 
 God's way.' The contrast of his humility and audacity, of his dis- 
 trust in himself and confidence in himself, was one of those puzzles 
 which meet us daily in this world of paradox. But both qualities 
 gave him a peculiar power for the work he had to do at that time, 
 with which the name of Parson Lot is associated. It was at one 
 of these gatherings, towards the end of 1847 or early in 1848, when 
 Kingsley found himself in a minority of one, that he said jokingly, 
 he felt much as Lot must have felt in the Cities of the Plain, when 
 he seemed as one that mocked to his sons-in-law. The name 
 Parson Lot was tlien and there suggested, and adopted by him, as 
 a familiar nom de plume. He used it from 1848 up to 1856 ; at 
 first constantly, latterly much more rarely. But the name was 
 chiefly made famous by his writings in 'Politics for the People,' 
 ' The Christian Socialist,' and the ' Journal of Association,' three 
 periodicals which covered the years from '48 to '52 ; by 'Alton 
 Locke,' and by tracts and pamphlets, of which the best known, 
 ' Cheap Clothes, and Nasty,' is now republished. 
 
 " In order to understand and judge the sayings and writings of 
 Parson Lot fairly, it is necessary to recall the condition of the 
 England of that day. Through the winter of 1847-8, amidst wide- 
 spread distress, the cloud of discontent, of which chartism was the 
 most violent symptom, had been growing darker and more menac- 
 ing, while Ireland was only held down by main force. The break- 
 ing out of the revolution on the Continent in February increased the 
 danger. In March there were riots in London, Glasgow, Edin- 
 burgh, Liverpool, and other large towns. On April 7th, ' the Crown 
 and Government Security Bill,' commonly called ' the Gagging Act,' 
 was introduced by the Government, the first reading carried by 265 
 to 24, and the second, a few days later, by 452 to 35. On the loth 
 of April the Government had to fill London with troops, and put 
 the Duke of Wellington in command, who barricaded the bridges 
 and Downing street, garrisoned the Bank and other public buildings, 
 and closed the Horse Guards. When the momentary crisis had 
 passed, the old soldier declared in the House of Lords, that no 
 great society had ever suffered as London had during the preceding 
 days, while the Home Secretary telegraphed to all the chief mag'ls- 
 trates of the kingdom the joyful news that the peace had been kept 
 in London. In April, the Lord Chancellor, in introducing the 
 Crown and Government Security Bill in the House of Lords, re- 
 ferred to the fact, that 'meetings were daily held, not only in 
 
Mr. Hughes Recollections. 99 
 
 London, but in most of the manufacturing towns, the avowed object 
 of which was to array the people against the constituted authority of 
 these reahns.' For months afterwards the Chartist movement, 
 though i^lainly subsiding, kept the Government in constant anxiety ; 
 and again in June, 1848, the Bank, the Mint, the Custom House, 
 and other pubHc offices were filled with troops, and the Houses 
 of Parliament were not only garrisoned but provisioned as if for a 
 siege. 
 
 " From that time, all fear of serious danger passed away. The 
 Chartists were completely discouraged, and their leaders in prison ; 
 and the upper and middle classes were recovering rapidly from 
 the alarm which had converted a million of them into special con- 
 stables, and were beginning to doubt whether the crisis had been so 
 serious after all, whether the disaffection had ever been more than 
 skin deep. At this juncture a series of articles appeared in the 
 Morning Chronicle, on London labor and the London poor, which 
 startled the well-to-do classes out of their jubilant and scornful 
 attitude, and disclosed a state of things which made all fair-minded 
 people wonder, not that there had been violent speaking and some 
 rioting, but that the metropolis had escaped the scenes which had 
 lately been enacted in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and other Continental 
 capitals. 
 
 "It is only by an effort that one can now realize the strain to 
 which the nation was subjected during that winter and spring, and 
 which, of course, tried every individual man also, according to the 
 depth and earnestness of his political and social convictions and 
 sympathies. The group of men who were working under Mr. 
 Maurice were no exce])tions to the rule. The work of teaching 
 and visiting was not, indeed, neglected, but the larger questions 
 which were being so strenuously mooted — the points of the people's 
 charter, the right of public meeting, the attitude of the laboring 
 class to the other classes, absorbed more and more of their atten- 
 tion. Kingsley was very deeply impressed with the gravity and 
 danger of the crisis — more so, I think, than almost any of his 
 friends ; probably because, as a country parson, he was more 
 directly in contact with one class of the poor than any of them. 
 How deeply he felt for the agricultural poor, how faithfully he re- 
 flected the passionate and restless sadness of the time, may be 
 read in the pages of ' Yeast,' which came out later in ' Fraser.' As 
 the winter months went on this sadness increased, and seriously 
 affected his health."* 
 
 On the 6th of May the first number of " Politics for the People " 
 appeared. Its regular contributors were nearly all university men, 
 
 *From Mr. Thomas Hughes's Preface to "Alton Locke," and "Cheap 
 Clothes, and Nasty," by Parson Lot. 
 
lOO Charles Kings ley. 
 
 clergymen of the Church of England, London barristers, men of 
 science, and among them Archdeacon Hare, Sir Arthur (then Mr.) 
 Helps, and a distinguished London physician, A few letters from 
 workingmen, one signed " One of the wicked Chartists of Ken- 
 nington Common," were readily admitted. Three papers on the 
 National Gallery and British Museum, three letters to Chartists, 
 some poetry, and a tale, "The Nun's Pool," which was rejected by 
 the publisher as too strong, were Mr. Kingsley's only contribu- 
 tions. His weekly lecture at Queen's College, with two sermons 
 every Sunday, and his indefatigable parish work (he had then no 
 curate), prevented his doing more for the " Politics." It was a 
 remarkable though short-lived publication, and those whose 
 opinions of the " Radicals, Socialists, Chartists," who set it on foot, 
 were formed by the public press, without reading the book itself^ 
 would be surprised at the loyal, conservative, serious tone of its 
 contents, and the gravity, if not severity, with which it attacked 
 physical force Chartism, monster meetings, and the demand for 
 universal suffrage by men who had neither education nor moral 
 self-government to qualify them for a vote. 
 
 But to return to Mr. Hughes's Preface. "But it may be said, 
 apart from his writings, did not Parson Lot declare himself a 
 Chartist in a public meeting in London ; and did he not preach in 
 a London pulpit a political sermon,* which brought up the incum- 
 bent, who had invited him, to protest from the altar against the 
 doctrine which had just been delivered ? 
 
 "Yes ! both statements are true. Here are the facts as to the 
 speech. In the early summer of 1848, some of those who felt with 
 Charles Kingsley that the ' People's Charter' had not had fair play 
 or courteous treatment, and that those who signed it had real wrongs 
 to complain of, put themselves into communication with the lead- 
 ers, and met aiid talked with them. At last it seemed that the 
 time was come for some more pubhc meeting, and one was called 
 at the Cranbourn Tavern, over which Mr. Maurice presided. After 
 the president's address several very bitter speeches followed, and 
 a vehement attack was especially directed against the Church and 
 and clergy. The meeting waxed warm, and seemed likely to come 
 to no good, when Kingsley arose, folded his arms across his chest, 
 threw his head back, and began — with the stammer which always 
 came at first when much moved, but which fixed every one's atten- 
 tion at once — ' I am a Church of England Parson ' — a long i:)ause 
 — 'and a Chartist;' and then he went on to explain how far he 
 
 * This incident belongs to a later period, 1851, and will be given in its place. 
 
Mr. Hughes Recollections. loi 
 
 thought them right in their claim for a reform of Parliament ; how 
 deeply he sympathized with their sense of the injustice of the law as 
 it affected them ; how ready he was to help in all ways to get these 
 things set right ; and then to denounce their methods in very much 
 the same terms as I have already quoted from his letters to the 
 Chartists. Probably no one who was present ever heard a speech 
 which told more at the time. I had a singular proof that the effect 
 did not pass away. The most violent speaker on that occasion 
 was one of the staff of the leading Chartist newspaper. I lost sight 
 of him entirely for more than twenty years, and saw him again, a 
 little grey shrivelled man, by Kingsley's side, at the grave of Mr. 
 Maurice, in the cemetery at Hampstead. 
 
 " The experience of this meeting encouraged its promoters to 
 continue the series of Tracts, which they did with a success which 
 surpiised no one more than themselves. 
 
 " The fact is, that Charles Kingsley was born a fighting man, 
 and believed in bold attack. ' No human power ever beat back a 
 resolute forlorn hope,' he used to say ; ' to be got rid of, they must 
 be blown back with grape and canister, because the attacking party 
 have all the universe behind them, the defence only that small part 
 which is shut up in their walls.' And he felt most strongly at this 
 time that hard fighting was needed. ' It is a pity,' he writes to Mr. 
 Ludlow, ' that telling people what's right won't make them do it ; 
 but not a new fact, thougli the world has quite forgotten it, and 
 assures you that the dear sweet incompris mankind only wants to 
 be told the way to the millennium to walk willingly into it — which 
 is a lie. 
 
 "The memorials of his many controversies lie about in the 
 periodicals of that time, and any one who cares to hunt them up 
 will be well repaid, and struck with the vigor of the defence, and 
 still more with the complete change in public opinion which has 
 brought the England of to-day clean round to the side of Parson 
 Lot. The most complete, perhaps, of his fugitive pieces of this 
 kind, is the pamphlet ' Who are the Friends of Order? ' published 
 by J VV. Parker & Son, in answer to a very fair and moderate arti- 
 cle in ' Eraser's Magazine.' The Parson there points out how he 
 and his friends were ' cursed by demagogues as aristocrats, and by 
 tories as democrats, when in reality they were neither,' and urges 
 that the very fact of the continent being overrun with communist 
 fanatics, is the best argument for preaching association here." * 
 
 To those who cannot look back on the political storms of 
 1848-49, his contributions on the subject of Art, on the pictures in 
 
 * Preface to " Alton Locke," by T. Hughes. 1876. 
 
I02 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 the National Gallery, and on the British Museum will be more con- 
 genial. This last we give entire : 
 
 BRITISH MUSEUM. 
 
 " My friend, Will Willow Wren is bringing before our readers the 
 beauty and meaning of the Hving natural world — the great Green- 
 book which holds ' the open secret,' as Goethe calls it, seen by all, 
 but read by, alas ! how few. And I feel as much as he, that nature 
 is infinitely more wonderful than the highest art ; and in the com- 
 monest hedgeside leaf lies a mystery and beauty greater than that 
 of the greatest picture, the noblest statue — as infinitely greater 
 as God's work is infinitely greater than man's. But to those who 
 have no leisure to study nature in the green fields (and there are 
 now-a-days too many such, though the time may come when all will 
 have that blessing), to such I say, go to the British Musem ; there 
 at least, if you cannot go to nature's wonders, some of nature's 
 wonders are brought to you. 
 
 "The British Museum is my glory and joy ; because it is almost 
 the only place which is free to English citizens as such — where the 
 poor and the rich may meet together, and before those works of 
 God's spirit, 'who is no respecter of persons,' feel that 'the Lord 
 is the maker of them all.' In the British Museum and the Na- 
 tional Gallery alone the Englishman may say, ' Whatever my coat 
 or my purse, I am an Englishman, and therefore I have a right 
 here. 1 can glory in these noble halls, as if they were my own 
 house.' 
 
 "English commerce, the joint enterprise and industry of the 
 poor sailor as well as the rich merchant, brought home these treas- 
 ures from foreign lands, and those glorious statues — though it was 
 the wealth and taste of English noblemen and gentlemen (who in 
 that proved themselves truly noble and gentle) which placed them 
 here, yet it was the genius of English artists — men at once above 
 and below all ranks^ — ^men who have worked their way up, not by 
 money or birth, but by worth and genius, which taught the noble 
 and wealthy the value of those antiques, and which proclaimed 
 their beauty to the world. The British Museum is a truly equaliz- 
 ing place, in the deepest and most spiritual sense ; therefore I 
 love it. 
 
 " And it gives the lie, too, to that common slander, ' that the 
 English are not worthy of free admission to valuable and curious 
 collections, because they have such a trick of seeing with their fin- 
 gers ; such a trick of scribbling their names, of defiling and disfigur- 
 ing works of art. On the Continent it may do, but you cannot 
 trust the English.' 
 
 " This has been, like many other untruths, so often repeated, 
 that people now take it for granted ; but I believe that it is utterly 
 
Paper on the British Museum. 103 
 
 groundless, and I say so on the experience of the British Museum 
 and the National Gallery. In the only two cases, I believe, in 
 which injury has been done to anything in either place, the de- 
 stroyers were neither artisans, nor even poor reckless heathen 
 street-boys, but persons who had received what is too often mis- 
 called ' a liberal education.' The truth is, that where people pay 
 their money (as they do in some great houses) for the empty pleas- 
 ure of staring at luxuries which they cannot enjoy, vulgar curiosity 
 too often ends in jealous spite ; and where people consider them- 
 selves unjustly excluded from works of art, which ought, as far as 
 possible, to be made as free as the common air, mean minds will 
 sometin;ies avenge their fancied wrongs by doing wrong themselves. 
 But national property will always be respected, because all will be 
 content, while they feel that they have their rights, and all will be 
 careful while they feel that they have a share in the treasure. 
 
 " "Would that the rich, who, not from selfishness so much as from 
 thoughtlessness, lock up the splendid collections from the eyes of 
 all but a favored few, would go to the British Museum in Easter 
 week ! Would that the Deans and Chapters, who persist (in spite 
 of the struggles of many of their own body) in making penny-peep- 
 shows of God's houses, built by public piety and benevolence — of 
 St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, which belongs not to them at 
 all, but to God and the people of England, would go to the British 
 Museum in Easter week and see there hundreds of thousands, of 
 every rank and age, wandering past sculptures and paintings, 
 which would be ruined by a blow — past jewels and curiosities, any 
 one of which would buy many a poor soul there a month's food and 
 lodging — only protected by a pane of glass, if by that ; and then 
 see not a thing disfigured— much less stolen. Everywhere order, 
 care, attention, honest pride in their country's wealth and science; 
 earnest reverence for the mighty works of God, and of the God- 
 insjnred. 1 say, the people of England prove themselves worthy 
 of free admission to all works of art, and it is therefore the duty of 
 those who can to help them to that free admission. 
 
 " What a noble, and righteous, and truly brotherly plan it would 
 be, if all classes would join to form a free National Gallery of Art 
 and Science, which might combine the advantages of the present 
 Polytechnic, Society of Arts, and British Institution, gratis. Manu- 
 facturers and men of science might send thither specimens of their 
 new inventions. The rich might send, for a few months in the 
 year — as they do now to the British Institution — ancient and 
 modern pictures, and not only pictures, but all sorts of curious 
 
 works of art and nature, which are now hidden in their drawingf- 
 .... o 
 
 rooms and libraries. There might be free liberty to copy any ob- 
 ject, on the copyist's name and residence being registered. And 
 surely artists and men of science might be found, with enough of 
 the spirit of patriotism and love, to explain gratuitously to all com- 
 
I04 Charles Kiiigsley. 
 
 ers, whatever their rank or dass, the wonders of the Museum. I 
 really believe that if once the spirit of brotherhood got abroad 
 among us ; if men once saw that here was a vast means of educat- 
 ing, and softening and uniting those who have no leisure to study, 
 and few means of enjoyment, except the gin-shop and Cremorne 
 Gardens } if they could but once feel that here was a project, 
 equally blessed for rich and poor, the money for it would be at 
 once forthcoming from many a rich man, who is longing to do good, 
 if he could only be shown the way ; and from many a poor jour- 
 neyman, who would gladly contribute his mite to a truly national 
 museum, founded on the principles of spiritual liberty, equality and 
 fraternity. All that is wanted is the spirit of self-sacrifice, patriot- 
 ism and brotherly love — which God alone can give — which 1 be- 
 lieve He is giving more and more in these very days. 
 
 " I never felt this more strongly than some six months ago, as I 
 was looking in at the windows of a splendid curiosity-shop in 
 Oxford Street, at a case of humming-birds. I was gloating over 
 the beauty of those feathered jewels, and then wondering what was 
 the meaning, what was the use of it all ? — why those exquisite 
 little creatures should have been hidden for ages, in all their splen- 
 dors of ruby and emerald and gold, in the South American forests, 
 breeding and fluttering and dying, that some dozen out of all those 
 millions might be brought over here to astonish the eyes of men. 
 And as I asked myself, why were all these boundless varieties, 
 these treasures of unseen beauty, created ? my brain grew dizzy 
 between pleasure and thought ; and, as always happens when one 
 is most innocently delighted, ' I turned to share the joy,' as 
 Wordsworth says ; and next to me stood a huge, brawny coal- 
 heaver, in his shovel hat, and white stockings and high-lows, gazing 
 at the humming-birds as earnestly as myself. As I turned he 
 turned, and 1 saw a bright manly face, with a broad, soot grimed 
 forehead, from under which a pair of keen flashing eyes gleamed 
 wondering, smiling sympathy into mine. In that moment we felt 
 ourselves friends. If we had been P'renchmen, we should, 1 sup- 
 pose, have rushed into each other's arms and 'fraternised' upon 
 the spot. As we "were a pair of dumb, awkward Englishmen, we 
 only gazed a half-minute, staring into each other's eyes, with a 
 delightful feeling of understanding each other, and then burst out 
 both at once with — ' Isn't that beautiful ? ' ' Well, that is ! ' And 
 then both turned back again, to stare at our humming-birds. 
 
 " I never felt more thoroughly than at that minute (though, 
 thank God, I had often felt it before) that all men were brothers ; 
 that fraternity and equality were not mere political doctrines, but 
 blessed God-ordained facts ; that the party-walls of rank and 
 fashion and money were but a paper prison of our own making, 
 which we might break through any moment by a single hearty and 
 kindly feeling ; that the one spirit of God was given without 
 
Devotion to Duty. 105 
 
 respect of persons ; that the beautiful tilings were beautiful alike 
 to the coal-heaver and the parson ; and that before the wondrous 
 works of God and of God's inspired genius, the rich and the poor 
 might meet together, and feel that whatever the coat or the creed 
 may be, ' A man's a man for a' that,' and one Lord the maker of 
 them all. 
 
 " For believe me, my friends, rich and poor — and I beseech you 
 to think deeply over this great truth — that men will never be. 
 joined in true brotherhood by mere plans to give them a self-inter- 
 est in common, as the Socialists have tried to do. No ; to feel 
 for each other, they must first feel with each other. To have 
 their sympathies in common, they must have not one object of 
 gain, but an object of admiration in common ; to know that they 
 are brothers, they must feel that they have one Father ; and a way 
 to feel that they have one common Father, is to see each other 
 wondering, side by side, at His glorious works ! . 
 
 " Parson Lot." 
 
 He had a sore battle to go through at this time with his own 
 heart, and with those friends and relations, religious and worldly, 
 who each and all from their own particular standpoint deprecated 
 the line he took, and urged him to withdraw from this sympathy 
 with the people, which was likely to spoil his prospects in life. In 
 reference to this he writes to his wife : — 
 
 *' . . . 1 will not be a liar. I will speak in season and out 
 of season. I will not shun to declare the whole counsel of God. 
 I will not take counsel with flesh and blood, and flatter myself 
 into the dream that while every man on earth, from Maurice back 
 to Abel, who ever tried to testify against the world, has been 
 laughed at, misunderstood, slandered, and that, bitterest of all, by 
 the very people he loved best, and understood best, I alone am to 
 escape. My path is clear, and I will follow in it. He who died 
 for me, and who gave me you, shall I not trust Hina through what- 
 soever new and strange paths He may lead me ?...." 
 
 TO MR. LUDLOW. 
 
 EVERSLEY, July^ 1848. 
 
 " 1 should have answered yesterday your noble and kind letter, 
 had not my afternoon been employed in forcing a cruel, lazy farmer 
 to shoot a miserable horse which was rotting alive in front of my 
 house, and superintending its death by aid of one of my own 
 bullets. What an awful wonderful thing a violent death is, even in 
 a dumb beast ! 1 would not have lost the sight for a great deal. 
 But now to business. You take a strange way to frighten a man otf 
 from novel-writing, by telling a man that he may become the greatest 
 
io6 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 novelist of the age. If your good opinion of me was true, I should 
 have less fear for myself, for a man could not become that in this 
 wonderful era, without having ideas and longings which would force 
 him to become something far better than a novelist ; but for myself, 
 chaotic, piecemeal, passionate, 'lachemar' as I am, I have fears as 
 great as your own. I know the miserable, peevish, lazy, conceited, 
 faithless, prayerless wretch I am, but I know this, too, that One is 
 guiding me, and driving me when I will not be guided, who will 
 make me, and has made me go His way and do His work, by fair 
 means or by foul. He set me on writing this 'novel.' He has' 
 taught me things about the hep,rt of fast sporting men, and about 
 the condition of the poor, and our duty to them, which I have no 
 doubt He has taught many more, but He has not set any one else 
 to speak about them in the way in which I am speaking. He has 
 given me a certain artistic knack of utterance (nothing but a 
 knack), but He has done more. He has made the ' Word of the 
 Lord like tire within my bones,' giving me no peace till I have 
 spoken out. I know I may seem presumptuous — to myself most 
 of all, because I know best the ' liar to my own idea ' which I am. 
 I know that He has made me a parish priest, and that that is the 
 duty which lies nearest me, and that I may seem to be leaving my 
 calling in novel-writing. But has He not taught me all these very 
 things by my parish-priest Hfe ? Did He, too, let me become a 
 strong, daring, sporting wild-man-of the- woods for nothing ? Surely 
 the education which He has given me, so different from that which 
 authors generally receive, points out to me a peculiar calling to 
 preach on these points, from my own experience, as it did to good 
 old Isaac Walton, as it has done in our day to that truly noble 
 man, Captain Marryat. Therefore I must believe ' Se tu segui la 
 tua Stella ' with Dante, that He who ordained my star will not lead 
 me into temptation, but through it, as Maurice says. Without 
 Him all places and methods of life are equally dangerous — with 
 Him, all equally safe. Pray for me, for in myself I am weaker 
 of purpose than a lost greyhound, lazier than a dog in rainy 
 weather. 
 
 •'But I feel intensely the weight of your advice to write no more 
 novels. Why should I ? I have no more to say. When this is 
 done I must set to and read. The symbolism of nature and the 
 meaning of history must be my studies. Believe me I long for 
 that day — the pangs of intellectual labor, the burden of spiritual 
 pregnancy, are not pleasant things. A man cannot write in the 
 fear of God without running against the devil at every step. He 
 cannot sit down to speak the truth without disturbing in his own 
 soul a hornet swarm of lies. Your hack-writer of no creed, your 
 bigot Polyphemus, whose one eye just helps him to see to eat men, 
 they do not understand this ; their pens run on joyful and light of 
 heart. But no more talk about myself. 
 
Letter to his Datighter. 107 
 
 " Read a poem written by an acquaintance of mine, Clough of 
 Oxford, ' The Bothie of Toper-na-Voirlich,' and tell me if you do 
 not think it a noble specimen of Pantagruelism, and a hopeful sign 
 for ' Young Oxford,' of which he is one of the leaders " 
 
 Having been appointed Professor of English Literature at 
 Queen's College, Harley Street, he gave his first introductory lecture 
 on May 13th, and continued lecturing weekly. 
 
 In the summer he made an expedition with Mr. Maurice to 
 Crowland Abbey, near Peterborough, which deeply impressed him 
 at the time, and formed one of the strong features in his story of 
 " Hereward " at a later date. " We spent there a priceless day," 
 he says; "these days with Maurice have taught me more than I 
 can tell. Like all great things, he grows upon one more and 
 more." He wrote several letters to his little daughter at this time;, 
 full of poetry and natural history, of which one is given. 
 
 TO HIS LITTLE GIRL ROSE. 
 
 DuxFORD, Cambridge. 
 
 "My dear Miss Rose, 
 
 " I am writing in such a curious place. A mill where they 
 grind corn and bones, and such a funny little room in it full of 
 stuffed birds. And there is a flamingo, such a funny red bird, with 
 long legs and a long neck, as big as Miss Rose, and sharks' jaws, 
 and an armadillo all over great scales, and now I will tell you about 
 the stork. He is called Peter, and here is a picture of him. See 
 what long legs he has, and a white body and black wings, and he 
 catches all the frogs and snails, and eats them, and when he is 
 cross, he opens his long bill, and makes such a horrible clattering 
 like a rattle. And he comes to the window at tea time, to eat 
 bread and butter, and he is so greedy, and he gobbled down a great 
 pinch of snuff out of Daddy's box, and he was so sick, and we all 
 laughed at him, for bemg so foolish and greedy. And do you know 
 there are such curious frogs here that people eat, and there were 
 never any found in England before Mr. Thurnall found them, and 
 he sent them to the British Museum and the wise men were so 
 pleased, and sent him leave to go to the British Museum and see 
 all the wonderful things whenever he liked. And he has got such 
 beautiful butterflies in boxes, and whole cupboards full of birds' eggs, 
 a.nd a river full of beautiful fish, and Daddy went fishing yesterday, 
 and caught an immense trout, very nearly four pounds weigh tj and 
 he raged and ran about in the river so long, and Daddy was quite 
 tired before he could get him out. And to-day Daddy is going 
 back to Cambridge to get a letter from his dear home. And do 
 you know when Mr. Thurnall saw me drawing the stork, he gave 
 
io8 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 me a real live stork of my own to bring home to Miss Rose, and we 
 will put him in the kitchen garden to run about — what fun ! And 
 to-morrow Daddy is going to see the beautiful pictures at the Fitz- 
 william Museum, and the next day he is goin'g to fish at Shelford, 
 and the next day, perhaps, he is coming home to his darlings at 
 Eversley Rectory, for he does not know what to do without them. 
 . . . . How haj^py Miss Rose must be with her dear mother. 
 She must say, ' thank God for giving me such a darling mother ! ' 
 
 "Kiss her for me and Maurice, and now good-bye, and I will 
 bring home the stork. 
 
 " Your own Daddy." 
 
 His acquaintance with Mr. Thomas Cooper, Chartist, was made 
 this year, and out of it grew a long correspondence, of which this 
 is the first letter. The rest will come at a later period. 
 
 Eversley, June \^, 1848. 
 
 " Ever since I read your brilliant poem, ' The Purgatory of Sui- 
 cides,' and its most affecting preface, I have been possessed by a 
 desire to thrust myself, at all risks, into your acquaintance. The 
 risk which I felt keenly, was the fear that you might distrust me, 
 as a clergyman ; having, I am afraid, no great reason to love that 
 body of men. Still, I thought, the poetic spu'it ought to be a bond 
 of communion between us. Shall God make us brother poets, as 
 well as brother, men, and we refuse to fraternise ? I thought also 
 that you, if you have a poet's heart, as well as the poet's brain 
 which you have manifested, ought to be more able than other men 
 to appreciate and sympathise with my feelings towards ' the work- 
 ing classes.' 
 
 "You can understand why I held back — from shame — a false 
 shame, perhaps, lest you should fancy me a hypocrite. But my 
 mind was made up when 1 found an attack in the 'Common- 
 wealth,' on certain papers which I had published in the 'Politics 
 of the People,' under the name of Parson Lot. Now I had hailed 
 with cordial pleasure the appearance of the ' Commonwealth,' and 
 sympathised thoroughly with it — and here was this very ' Coiiimon- 
 weakh ' attacking me on some of the very points on which I most 
 agreed with it. It seemed to me intolerable to be so misunder- 
 stood. It had been long intolerable to me, to be regarded as an 
 object of distrust and aversion by thousands of my countrymen, 
 my equals in privilege, and too often, alas ! far my superiors in 
 worth, just because I was a clergyman, the very office which ought 
 to have testified above all others, for liberty, equality, brotherhood, 
 for time and eternity, I felt myself bound, then, to write to you, 
 to see if among the nobler spirits of the working classes I could 
 not make one friend who would understand me. My ancestors 
 
Prostration. 109 
 
 fought in Cromwell's army, and left all for the sake of God and 
 liberty, among the ])ilgrim fathers, and here were men accusing me 
 of 'medieval tyranny.' I would shed the last drop of my life 
 blood for the social and political emancipation of the people of 
 England, as God is my witness \ and here are the very men for 
 whom I would die, fancying me an 'aristocrat.' It is not enough 
 for me that they are mistaken in me. I want to work with them. 
 I want to realize my brotherhood with them. I want some one 
 like yourself, intimately acquainted with the mind of the working 
 classes, to give me such an insight into their life and thoughts, as 
 may enable me to consecrate my powers effectually to their ser- 
 vice. For them I have lived for several years. 1 come to you to 
 ask you if you can tell me how to live more completely for them. 
 If you distrust and reject my overtures, I shall not be astonished — 
 pained I shall be — and you must know as well as I, that there is 
 no bitterer pain than to be called a rogue because you are honester 
 than your neighbors, and a time-server, because you have intellect 
 enough to see both sides of a question." 
 
 In the autumn he quite broke down, while writing " Yeast," as 
 a series of papers in " Eraser's Magazine." He had not recovered 
 the excitement of the Chartist movement, and having at that time 
 no curate, every hour was occupied with sermon writing, cottage 
 visiting, and he was forced to write "Yeast" at night when the 
 day's work was over, and the house still. This was too much for 
 brain and nerves, and one Sunday evening, after his two services 
 had been got through with difficulty, he fell asleep, slept late into 
 the next day, and awoke so exhausted that his medical man was 
 alarmed at his weakness, ordered complete rest and change to 
 Bournemouth. From thence, after a month's rest, he returned to 
 Eversley only to sink again. 
 
 rO AN OXFORD FRIEND. 
 
 Eversley, December, 1848. 
 
 " I have delayed answering your letter because I did not wish 
 to speak in a hurry on a subject so important to you. I am afraid 
 
 that 's report of my opinion has pained you — really it ought not : 
 
 I spoke only as a friend and in sincerity. I cannot advise you to 
 publish the poems of yours wliich I have seen — at least for some 
 years, and I will give you my reasons 
 
 " First, you write too easily ; that same imp 'facility' must not 
 be let to ruin you, as it helped to ruin Theodore Hook. You 
 must never put two words or lines where one will do ; the age is 
 too busy and hurried to stand it. Again, you want to see a great 
 
I i,o Charles Kijtgsley. 
 
 deal more, and study more — that is the only way to have materi- 
 als. Poets cannot create till they have learnt to recombine. The 
 study of man and nature ; the study of poets and fiction writers of 
 all schools is necessary. And, believe me, you can never write 
 like Byron, or anybody else worth hearing, unless by reading and 
 using poetry of a very different school from his. The early dramat- 
 ists, Shakespeare above all ; and not less the two schools which made 
 Shakespeare ; the Northern ballad literature ; nay even, T find the 
 Norse myths. And, on the other hand, the Romance literature 
 must be known, to acquire that objective power of embodying 
 thoughts, without which poetry degenerates into the mere intellec- 
 tual reflective, and thence into the metrical-prose didactic. Read, 
 mark, and learn, and do not write. I never wrote five hundred 
 lines in my life before the 'Saint's Tragedy,' but from my childhood 
 I had worked at poetry from Southey's ' Thalaba,' Ariosto, Spen- 
 ser, and the ' Old Ballads,' through almost every school, classic 
 and modern, except the Spanish, and, alas ! a very little German, 
 and that by translations. And I have not read half enough. I 
 have been studying all ]5hysical sciences which deal with phe- 
 nomena ; I have been watching nature in every mood ; I have 
 been poring over sculptures and paintings since I was a little boy 
 — and all I can say is, I do not know half enough to be a poet in 
 the nineteenth century, and have cut the Muse/?'^ tempore. 
 
 " Again, you have an infinity to learn about rhythm and metre, 
 and about the coloring and chiaroscuro of poetry ; how to break 
 up your masses, and how to make masses ; high lights and shad- 
 ows; major and minor keys of metre ; rich coloring alternating 
 with delicate. All these things have to be learnt, if you wisli to 
 avoid monotony, to arrest the interest, to gain the cardinal secret 
 of giving ' continual surprise in expectation,' and ' expectation in 
 surprise.' 
 
 "Now don't be angry with me. I think you have a poetic 
 faculty in you, from the mere fact of your having been always 
 lusting to get your thoughts into poetry ; and because I think 
 you have one, therefore I don't want you to publish, or even 
 write, till you have learnt enough really to enable you to embody 
 your thoughts. They are good and vigorous, and profitable to 
 the age ; but they are as yet too bare-backed — you must go clothes- 
 hunting for the poor naked babbies. 
 
 Let me hear from you again, for I am very much interested in 
 all you do, and your true friend and well wisher." 
 
 After a second prostration of strength, he was advised to give 
 up all work entirely, and the winter and spring were spent in 
 North Devon, at llfracombe and Lynmouth. 
 
CHx\PTER VIII. 
 
 Aged 30. 
 
 Winter in Devonshire — Ilfracombe — Decides on taking Pupils — Correspondence^ 
 Visit to London — Social Questions — Fever at Eversley — Renewed Illness — • 
 Returns to Devonshire — Cholera in England — Sanitary Work — Bermondsey 
 —Letter from Mr. C. K. Paul. 
 
 This year began in ill-health at Ilfracombe, where Mr. Maurice 
 with other friends came to visit him, and went away depressed at 
 seeing the utter exhaustion, mental and bodily, of one who had been 
 the life and soul of their band of workers in 1848. He was able to 
 do nothing for months — riding, walking, and even conversation were 
 too much for him ; and wandering on the sea-shore, collecting shells 
 and zoophytes, with his wife and children, was all the exertion 
 . that he could bear, while dreaming over " The Autobiography of a 
 Cockney Poet," which in the autumn was to develop into " Alton 
 Locke." With much difficulty he got through an article on Mrs. 
 Jamieson's Sacred and Legendary Art " for " Fraser's Magazine," 
 which he had promised.* Mr. Froude came to him from Oxford in 
 P'ebruary, and then and there made acquaintance with his future 
 wife, IVErs. Kingsley's sister, who was also at Ilfracombe. There 
 are few letters to mark the Avinter and spring of 1849, ^"^ fewer 
 poems. 
 
 During a solitary ride on Morte Sands, he composed some 
 elegiacs, of which he speaks in the following letter : 
 
 TO J. MALCOLM LUDLOW, ESQ. 
 
 Ilfracombe, February^ 1849. 
 
 ". . . . I send you the enclosed lines as some proof that 
 
 the exquisite elegiac metre suits our English language (as indeed 
 
 everything beautiful does). They are but a fragment. You were 
 
 the cause of their not being finished ; for your kindness swept away 
 
 * Since published in his Miscellanies. 
 
112 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 the evil spirit of despondency, and I hold it a sin to turn on the 
 Werterian tap, of malice prepense. If they are worth finishing, I 
 shall have sorrows enough ere I die, no doubt, to put nie in the 
 proper vein for them again. I send them off to escape the torn)ent 
 of continually fidgeting and polishing at them ; for whatever I may 
 say in defence of my own case, I dare not let anything go forth, 
 except as highly finished as I can make it. Show them to the 'oak 
 of the mountain,' the Master (Mr. Maurice), he will recognize the 
 place, and the feeling of much of them, and ask him whether, 
 with a palinode, setting forth how out of winter must come spring, 
 out of death life, they would not be tolerably true 
 
 Wearily stretches the land to the surge, and the surge to the cloudland ; 
 
 Wearily onward I ride, watching the water alone. 
 
 Not as of old, like Homeric Achilles, kv&u yaiuv, 
 
 Joyous knight errant of God, thirsting for labor and strife. 
 
 No more on magical steed borne free through the regions of ether, 
 
 But, like the hack which I ride, selling my sinew for gold. 
 
 Fruit-bearing autumn is gone ; let the sad, quiet winter hang o'er me — 
 
 What were the spring to a soul laden with sorrow and shame? 
 
 Blossoms would fret me with beauty ; my heart has no time to be -praise them ; 
 
 Grey rock, bough, surge, cloud, waken no yearning within. 
 
 Sing not, thou skylark above ! Even angels pass hushed by the weeper. 
 
 Scream on, ye sea fowl ! my heart echoes your desolate cry. 
 
 Sweep the dry sand on, thou wild wind, to drift o'er the shell and the sea-weed ;' 
 
 Sea-weed and shell, like my dreams, swept down the pitiless tide. 
 
 Just is the wave which uptore us ; 'tis Nature's own law which condemns us ; 
 
 Woe to the weak who, in pride, build on the faith of the sand ! 
 
 Joy to the oak of the mountain ; he trusts to the might of the rock-clefts; 
 
 Deeply he mines, and in peace feeds on the wealth of the stone. 
 
 " .... I have hope also of the book which I am writing, 
 the Autobiography of a Cockney Poet, which has revealed itself to 
 me so rapidly and methodically, that I feel it comes down from 
 above, and that only my folly can spoil it — which I pray against 
 daily. ^ 
 
 " .... I never felt the reality and blessing of that church 
 confession and absolution more than 1 did in this morning's ser- 
 vice. Thank you for all and every hint 
 
 "Tell Charles Mansfield I have found to-day another huge 
 comatula, and bottled him with his legs, by great dodging. I am 
 always finding something fresh 
 
 " Best love to all our'friends. Poor Mam-ice ! But a little per- 
 secution is a blessing to any man. Still it does make one sick to 
 hear these quill-driving cowards and bigots attacking him." 
 
Taking Pupils. 113 
 
 The expenses of illness, and his inability to meet them by writing, 
 obliged him now to think of some other means, and he consulted 
 Mr. Maurice about taking pupils. Mr. Maurice wrote at once to 
 Professor Thompson, now Master of Trinity, Cambridge : 
 
 '^ Kingsley, who, 1 think, is known to you, has been disabled for 
 some time, and has been obliged to leave his living. He is much 
 better, and wishes very much for a pupil to prepare for orders or 
 even for college. He is now at Ilfracombe. At Eversley he would 
 have accommodation in a very pleasant house. I do not know a 
 man more fitted for the work — scarcely any one equally fitted. He is 
 a good, accurate, and enthusiastic scholar, full of knowledge of all 
 things about him, and delight in them ; and more likely to give a 
 young man of the day a good direction in divinity, meeting his 
 difiiculties and dealing honestly with them, than any person I have 
 fallen in with. His conversation is full of interest even when he is 
 ill ; when he is well he is the freshest, freest hearted man in England, 
 
 . . . His home is altogether most pleasant, and those who 
 dwell in it. \i you can give him help, I shall be most grateful to 
 you. 
 
 ^ " Yours ever truly, 
 
 " F. D. Maurice." 
 
 He gives his own plan of teaching, or rather training a pupil, in 
 a characteristic letter to Mrs. Scott, wife of Rev. A. J. Scott, after- 
 wards Principal of Owens College, Manchester : 
 
 " Will you excuse my burdening you with another word about 
 pupils ?....! am not going to talk of what I can teach ; 
 but what I should try to teach, would be principally physical 
 sciencf, history, English literature, and modern languages. In my 
 eyes the question is not what to teach, but how to educate ; how 
 to train not scholars, but men ; bold, energetic, methodic, liberal- 
 minded, magnanimous. If 1 can succeed in doing that, I shall do 
 what no salary can repay — and what is not generally done, or ex- 
 pected to be done, by private tutors " 
 
 On the receipt of this letter, Mr. Scott remarked, "That is what 
 is wanted, and it is what Charles Kingsley will do." Notwith- 
 standing the efforts of his friends, the pupils were not forthcoming. 
 His writings had caused a strong prejudice against him ; and it was 
 not till the following year that he succeeded. The long waiting 
 was repaid when the pupil came, and the labor, which throughout 
 was a labor of love, was more than repaid, being spent on one who 
 
114 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 realised the tutor's ideal in after life. That pupil will speak for him- 
 self in another chapter. 
 
 It had been a great sorrow to him to give up his work at Queen's 
 College, and he was never able to resume it. Besides two intro- 
 ductory lectures on literature and composition, instinct with genius, 
 now out of print, he only delivered one course on Early English 
 Literature. The Rev. Alfred Strettell took his place. 
 
 From Clovelly, where he went with his wife's sister and Mr. 
 Froude, he writes home : 
 
 "Only a few lines, for the post starts before breakfast. We got 
 here all safe. C. enjoyed herself by lying in misery at the bottom 
 of the boat all the way. ... 1 cannot believe my eyes : the 
 same place, the pavement, the same dear old smells, die dear old 
 handsome loving faces again. It is as if I was a little boy again, 
 or the place had stood still while all the world had been rushing 
 and rumbling on past it; and then I suddenly recollect your face, 
 and those two ducks on the pier ; and it is no dream ; this is the 
 dream, and I am your husband ; what have I not to thank God 
 for? I have been thanking Him; but where can I stop? We 
 talk of sailing home again, as cheapest and pleasantest ; most 
 probably Friday or Saturday. To-day I lionize Charlotte over 
 everything. Kiss the children for me." 
 
 The following letter, addressed to a young man going over to 
 Rome, though incomplete, is too valuable to omit. Several pages 
 have been lost, which will account for any want of sequence. 
 
 Harley House, Clifton, May ii, 1849. 
 "My Dear Sir, — 
 
 "I have just heard from Charles Mansfield, to my inexpressi- 
 ble grief, that you are inclined to join the Roman Communion ; 
 and at the risk of being called impertinent, I cannot but write my 
 whole heart to you. 
 
 " What I say may be ixapa rov XoyoV, after all ; if so, pray write 
 and let me know what your real reasons are for such a step. I 
 think, as one Christian man writing to another, I may dare to en- 
 treat this of you. For believe me I am no bigot. I shall not 
 trouble )'0U with denunciations about the 'scarlet woman' or the 
 ' little horn.' I cannot but regard with awe, at least, if not rever- 
 ence, a form of faith which God thinks good enough still for one 
 half (though it be the more brutal, profligate, and hel])less half) of 
 Europe. Believe me, I can sympathise with you. I have been 
 through it ; I have longed for Rome, and boldly faced the conse- 
 
The Church of Rome. 115 
 
 quences of joining Rome ; and though I now have, thank God, 
 cast all wish of change behind me )'ears ago, as a great lying devil's 
 temptation, yet I still long as ardently as ever to see in the Church 
 of England much which only now exists, alas ! in the Church of 
 Rome. Can I not feel for you ? Do I not long for a visible, one, 
 organized Church ? Do 1 not shudder at the ghastly dulness of 
 our services ? Do I not pray that I may see the day when the 
 art and poetry of the nineteenth century shall be again among us, 
 turned to their only true destination — the worship of God ? Have 
 I shed no bitter, bitter tears of shame and indignation in cathedral 
 aisles, and ruined abbeys, and groaned aloud 'Ichabod, Ichabod, 
 the glory is departed,' etc." 
 
 [Here some pages are lost.] 
 
 " Can you not commit the saving of your soul to Him that made 
 your soul ? I think it will be in good keeping, unless you take it 
 out of His hands, by running off where he has not put you. Did 
 you never read how ' He that saveth his soul shall lose it.' Be- 
 ware. 
 
 " Had you been born an Italian Romanist I would have said to 
 you. Don't leave Rome; stay where you are and try to mend the 
 Church of your fathers ; if it casts you out, the sin be on its own 
 head ; and so I say to you. Do you want to know God's will 
 about you ? What plainer signs of it, than the fact that he has 
 made you, and educated you as a Protestant Englishman. Here, 
 believe it — believe the providentiani, ' Dei in rebus revelatam.' — 
 Here He intends you to work, and to do the dut}*- which lies near- 
 est. Hold what doctrines you will, but do not take yourself out 
 of communion with your countrymen, to bind yourself to a sys- 
 tem which is utterly foreign to us and our thoughts, and only by 
 casting off which, have we risen to be the most mighty, and, with all 
 our sins, perhaps the most righteous and pure of nations (a fact 
 which the Jesuits do not deny). I assure you that they tell their 
 converts that the reason why Protestant England is allowed to be 
 so much more righteous than the Romish nations is — to try the 
 faith of the elect ! ! You will surely be above listening to such 
 anile sophistry ! 
 
 "But still, you think, ' yoti may be holier there than here.' 
 Ah, sir, ' coelum, non animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt.' 
 Ultramontanism will be a new system ; but not, I think, a new 
 character. Certain outward acts, and certain inward feelings, 
 which are all very nice, and right, and pleasant, will be made easier 
 for you there than here : you will live so charmingly by rule and 
 measure ; not a moment in the day but will be allotted out for you, 
 with its appropriate acts of devotion. True, now you are a man, 
 standing face to face with God ; then you will (believe one who 
 knows) find yourself a machine, face to face, not with God, but 
 with a priest and a system, and hosts of inferior deities, of which 
 
Ti6 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 hereafter. Oh ! sir, you, a free-born Englishman, brought up in 
 that hberty for which your forefathers died on scaffolds and in bat- 
 tle-fields — that liberty which begot a Shakspeare, a Raleigh, a Ba- 
 con, Milton, Newton, Faraday, Brooke — will you barter away that 
 inestimable gift because Italian pedants, who know nothing of 
 human nature but from the books of prurient celibates, tell you that 
 they have got a surer 'dodge ' for saving your soul than those have, 
 among whom God's will, not your own, has begotten and educated 
 you ? But you ' will be able to rise to a greater holiness there.' 
 Holiness, sir? Devoutness, you mean. The 'will of God' is 
 your holiness already, and you may trust Him to perfect His will 
 in you here — for here He has i)ut you — if by holiness you mean 
 godliness and manliness, justice and mercy, honesty and usefulness. 
 But if by holiness you mean ' saintliness,' I quite agree that Rome 
 is the place to get that, and a poor pitiful thing it is when it is got 
 — not God's ideal of a man, but an effeminate shaveling's ideal. 
 Look at St. Francis de Sales, or St. Vincent de Paul's face, and then 
 say, does not your English spirit loathe to see that? God made 
 man in His image, not in an imaginary Virgin Mary's image. And 
 do not fancy that you will really get any spiritual gain by going 
 over. The very devotional system which will educe and develop 
 the souls of people born and bred up under it, and cast, constitu- 
 tionally and by hereditary associations, into its mould, will only 
 prove a dead leaden crushing weight on an Englishman, who has, 
 as you have, tasted from his boyhood the liberty of the Spirit of 
 God. You will wake, my dear brother, you vvill wake, not alto- 
 gether, but just enough to find yourself not believing in Romish 
 doctrines about saints and virgins, absolutions and indulgences, 
 but only believing in believing them — an awful and infinite differ- 
 ence, on which I beseech you earnestly to meditate. You will 
 find yourself crushing the voice of conscience, common-sense, and 
 humanity — I mean the voice of God within you, in order to swal- 
 low down things at which your gorge rises in disgust. You will 
 find the Romish practice as different from the Romish ideal as the 
 English is from the English ideal, and you will find amid all your 
 discontents and doubts, that the habits of religious excitement, 
 and of leaning on priests whom you will neither revere nor trust 
 for themselves, will have enchained you like the habits of a drunk- 
 ard or an opium-eater, so that you must go back again and again 
 for self-forgetfulness to the spiritual laudanum-bottle, which gives 
 now no more pleasant dreams, but only painful heartache, and 
 miserable depression afterwards. I know what I have seen and 
 heard from eye-witnesses. 
 
 " 1 know you may answer — This may be all very fine, but if 
 Rome be the only true Church, thither I must go, loss or gain. 
 Most true. But take care how you get at this conviction that Rome 
 is the true Church ; if by a process of the logical understanding, 
 
The Cliarticts, 1 1 7 
 
 that is most unfair, for you have to renounce the conchisions of 
 the understanding when you go to Rome. How tlien can you let 
 it lead you, to a system which asserts in limiiie that it has no right 
 to lead you any where at all ? 
 
 " But I must defer this question, and also that of Romish 
 cesthetics, to another letter. I make no apology for plain speak- 
 ing ; these are times in which we must be open with each other. 
 And I was greatly attracted by the little I saw of you. I know 
 there is a sympathy between us ; and having passed through these 
 temptations in my own person, God would judge me if I did not 
 speak what He has revealed to me in bitter struggles. One word 
 more. Pray, answer this, and pray wait. Never take so impor- 
 tant a step without at least six months' deliberate waiting, not till, 
 but after your mind is made up. Five-and twenty years God has 
 let you remain a Protestant. Even if you were wrong in being 
 one, He will surely pardon your remaining one six months longer, 
 in a world where the roads of error are so many and broad that a 
 man may need to look hard to find the narrow way. 
 
 Before resuming work again at Eversley, he went to London, 
 and took up the old thread by attending a Chartist meeting on the 
 3d of June, and on the 19th a workmen's meeting on the Land 
 Colonization question, and from Chelsea he writes home : 
 
 " .... I could not write yesterday, being kept by a poor 
 boy who had fallen off a truck at Croydon and smashed himself, 
 whom I escorted to Gu)-'s Hospital. 1 have spent the whole day 
 running up and down London on business. I breakfasted with 
 Bunsen, such a divine-looking man, and so kind. I have worlds 
 to tell you. Met F. Newman last night, and breakfast with him 
 to-morrow. I had a long and interesting talk with Froude last 
 night 
 
 '' Monday. — I spent yesterday with Ludlow, and went with him 
 to Dr. Thorpe's, and to Lincoln' s-inn Chapel in the afternoon — a 
 noble sight. ^Maurice's head looked like some great, awful Gior- 
 gione portrait in the pulpit, but oh, so worn, and the face worked 
 so at certain passages of the sermon. 
 
 " Long and most interesting talk with Mons. Chevallier this 
 morning. London is perfectly horrible. To you alone I look for 
 help and advice — God and you, — else I think at times I should 
 
 cry myself to death The women's shoe-makers are not 
 
 set up yet. My sermons (' Village Sermons') are being lent from 
 man to man, among the South London Chartists, at such a pace 
 that Cooper can't get them back again. And the Manchester 
 men stole his copy of the Saint's Tragedy 
 
Ii8 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 " I have just been to see Carlyle." 
 
 (Later) " On Friday I dined at Maurice's. Met Mrs. Augustus 
 Hare, and a brother of the Archdeacon's, an officer in the Prussian 
 army, also Mr. and Mrs. Scott, who were very kind indeed. I 
 took George to a soiree at Parker's, and introduced him to all the 
 set there. On Saturday we dined at Ludlow's, met dear Charles 
 Mansfield and a Frenchman, now being tried in Paris for the June 
 Row, a complete Red Republican and Fourierist ; he says nothing 
 but Christianity can save France or the world. I had an intensely 
 interesting talk with him. In the evening the Campbells, Shorter 
 the Chartist, and Dr. Walsh, came in^ and we had a glorious 
 evening. . . . ." 
 
 Jtine 12, 1849 (^y Birthday). 
 
 " Last night will never be forgotten by many, many men. 
 Maurice was — I cannot describe it. Chartists told me this morn- 
 ing that many were affected even to tears. The man was inspired 
 — gigantic. No one commented on what he said. He stunned 
 lis ! I will tell you all when I can collect myself. .... 
 
 " This morning I breakfasted with Dr. Guy, and went with him 
 
 Tailor hunting, very satisfactory as yet Yesterday 
 
 afternoon with Professor Owen at the College of Surgeons, where I 
 saw unspeakable things " 
 
 He now settled at Eversley again, and threw himself into the 
 full tide of parish work with the loving help of the Rev. H. Percy 
 Smith, of Baliol, who was ordained to the curacy of Eversley. 
 The season was unhealthy ; cholera was brooding over England, 
 and a bad low fever broke out at Eversley, which gave the rector 
 incessant work and anxiety. The parishioners got frightened. It 
 -Tvas difficult to get nurses for the sick, so that he was with them at 
 all hours ; and after sitting up a whole night with one bad case, a 
 laborer's wife, the mother of a large family, that he might himself 
 give the noui'ishment every half-hour on which the poor woman's 
 life depended, he once more completely broke down, and London 
 physicians advised his taking a sea voyage. A trip to America 
 and back was proposed ; but he dreaded the loneHness, and his 
 parents being strongly averse to the plan, he went again to 
 Devonshire, hoping that a month's quiet and idleness would re- 
 store him. 
 
 From thence he writes home. 
 
Fishing. 119 
 
 ToRRiDGE Moors, West Country Inn. 
 
 " I have been fishing the Torridge to-day. Caught i^ dozen — 
 very bright sun, which was against me. To-morrow I return to 
 Clovelly. 1 have got a companion here who is fishing and collect- 
 ing his rents. Gentleman-like man, and fiiend of Hawker's the 
 West Country Poet. Tennyson was down here last year, and 
 walked in on Hawker to collect Arthur legends." 
 
 Clovelly, Aug. i6, 1849. 
 
 " I have read Rabelais right through, and learnt immensely fi-om 
 him. I have been reading P. Leroux's book on Christianity and 
 Democracy, and am now reading Ruskin. The weather has been 
 
 too stormy for trawling, but I have got a few nice shells 
 
 My landlady is an extraordinary woman, a face and figure as of a 
 queen, but all thought, sensibility and excitement ; a great ' devote ' 
 and a true Christian ; between grief and religion she has learnt a 
 blessed lesson. Old VVim. potters in, like an old grey-headed New- 
 foundland dog, about three times a day to look after me in all sorts 
 of kind and unnecessary ways. I have been pestered with letter 
 after letter asking me to join this new popular Church paper, but 
 have of course fought oif. I am convinced at moments that, after 
 all, the best place for me is at home " 
 
 " Saturday I start. J am quite in spirits at the notion of the 
 Moor. It will give me continual excitement ; it is C[uite new to 
 me — and I am well enough now to walk in moderation. I^et me 
 know when you receive my drawings. I am doing you a set more 
 — still better I hope. ' The Artist's Wife,' seven or eight shetches 
 of Claude Mellot and Sabina, two of my most darling ideals, with a 
 scrap of conversation annexed to each, just embodying my dreams 
 about married love and its relation to art " 
 
 TO J. M. LUDLOW, ESQ. 
 
 Clovelly, August 17, 1849. 
 
 " I am at last enjoying perfect rest — doing nothing but fish, 
 sail, chat with old sailor and Wesleyan cronies, and read, by way of 
 a nice mixture, Rabelais, Pierre Leroux, and Ruskin. The first, 
 were he seven times as unspeakably filthy as he is, I consider as 
 ])riceless in wisdom, and often in true evangelic godliness — more of 
 him hereafter. The second is indeed a blessed dawn. The third, 
 a noble, manful, godly book, a blessed dawn too : but I cannot 
 talk about them ; I am as stupid as a porpoise, and I lie in the 
 window, and smoke and watch the glorious cloud-phantasmagoria, 
 infinite in color and form, crawling across the vast bay and deep 
 woods below, and draw little sketches of figures, and do not even 
 dieam, much less think " 
 
I20 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 TO HIS WIFE. 
 CoLEBROOK, Crediton, September 2, 1849. 
 
 "Starting out to fish down to Drew's Teignton — the old Druid's 
 sacred place, to see Logan stones and cromlechs. Yesterday was 
 the most charming solitary day I ever spent in my life — scenery 
 more lovely than tongue can tell. It brought out of me the follow- 
 ing bit of poetry, with many happy tears. 
 
 POET. 
 
 I cannot tell what you say, green leaves, 
 
 I cannot tell what you say ; 
 But I know that there is a spirit in you, 
 
 And .a word in you this day. 
 
 I cannot tell what ye say, rosy rocks, 
 
 I cannot tell what ye say ; 
 But I know that there is a spirit in you, 
 
 And a word in you this day. 
 
 I cannot tell what ye say, brown streams, 
 
 I cannot tell what ye say ; 
 But I know in you too, a spirit doth live. 
 
 And a word in you this day. 
 
 THE WORD'S ANSWER. 
 
 Oh, rose is the color of love and youth, 
 
 And green is the color of faith and truth, 
 
 And brown of the fruitful clay. 
 
 The earth is fruitful, and faithful, and young. 
 
 And her bridal morn shall rise ere long. 
 
 And you shall know what the rocks and the streams. 
 
 And the laughing gi-een-woods say ! 
 
 " Show these to C. If she has taken in the real good of Spino- 
 zism, she ought to understand them. To-morrow I tramp for Two 
 Bridges." 
 
 And now the Cholera was once more in England, and sanitary 
 matters absorbed him. He preacJied three striking sermons at 
 Eversley, on Cholera, "Who causes Pestilence" (published to- 
 gether in 1854, with preface). He worked in London and the 
 country in the crusade against dirt and bad drainage. The terrible 
 revelations of the state of the Water supply in London saddened 
 
Memories by C. Kegan Paul. 121 
 
 and sickened him, and led to his writing an article in the " North 
 British Review" on the subject.* 
 
 At this period many young men from Oxford and elsewhere 
 gathered round him. The following letter from one of them, Mr. 
 C. Kegan Paul, speaks for itself of the life at Eversley, which had 
 become a centre to so many enquiring spirits. 
 
 " I first saw Charles Kingsley in Oxford, in the spring tSrm of 
 1848. He had just published the ' Saint's Tragedy,' and came up 
 to stay with his old schoolfellow, Cowley Powles, one of our Exeter 
 tutors. He had not, I think, the least notion he would find himself 
 famous, but he was so among a not inconsiderable section of young 
 Oxford, even one month after the drama had appeared. A large 
 number of us were thoroughly dissatisfied with the high-church 
 teaching, which then was that of most earnest tutors in Oxford. 
 There were, indeed, some noble exceptions, — Jowett of Balliol, 
 Powles of Exeter, Congreve of Wadham, Stanley of University, 
 Clough of Oriel. But they were scattered, and their influence was 
 over men here and there ; the high-churchmen held the mass of 
 intelligent young men, many of whom revolted in spirit, yet had 
 not found a leader. Here was a book which showed that there was 
 poetry also in the strife against asceticism, whose manly preface 
 was as stirring as the verse it heralded. We looked at its author 
 with the deepest interest ; it was a privilege to have been in the 
 room with him ; but my acquaintance with him was necessarily of 
 the slightest. 
 
 "In the summer of the following year, H. Percy Smith, of Balliol, 
 who also had met Kingsley and taken a walk with him during that 
 memorable Oxford visit, went to Eversley as curate, and almost as 
 soon as he was settled, invited me to stay with him in his lodgings, 
 about half a mile from the Rectory, The day after my arrival we 
 dined at the Rectory. You were then using as a dining-room the 
 larger room which afterwards was your drawing-room, and were 
 alone ; Percy and I were the only guests. We went into the study 
 afterwards while Kingsley smoked his pipe, and the evening is one 
 of those that stand out in my memory with peculiar vividness. 1 
 had never then, I have seldom since, heard a man talk so well. 
 
 "Kingsley's conversational powers were very remarkable. In 
 the first place he had, as may be easily understood by the readers 
 of his books, a rare command of racy and correct English, while he 
 was so many sided that he could take keen interest in almost any 
 subject which attracted those about him. He had read, and read 
 nuich, not only in matters which every one ought to know, but had 
 gone deeply into many out-of the-way and unexpected studies. Old 
 
 * "Water Supply of London," puljlislied in the MiscelUnies. 
 
122 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 medicine, magic, the occult properties of plants, folk-lore, mesmer- 
 ism, nooks and bye-ways of history, old legends ; on all these he 
 was at home. On the habits and dispositions of animals he would 
 talk as though he were that king in the Arabian Nights who under- 
 stood the language of beasts, or at least had lived among the 
 gipsies who loved him so well. The stammer, which in those days 
 was so much more marked than in later years, and which was a 
 serious discomfort to himself, was no drawback to the charm of his 
 conversation. Rather the hesitation before some brilliant flash of 
 words served to lend point to and intensify what he was saying ; 
 and when, as he sometimes did, he fell into a monologue, or recited 
 a poem in his sonorous voice, the stammer left him wholly, as it did 
 when he read or preached in church. 
 
 " When, however, I use the word monologue, it must not be 
 supposed that he ever monopolized the talk. He had a courteous 
 deference for the opinions of the most insignificant person in the 
 circle, and was even too tolerant of a bore. With all his vast 
 powers of conversation, and ready to talk on every or any subject, 
 he was never superficial. What he knew he knew well, and was 
 always ready to admit the fact when he did not know. 
 
 "The morning after that evening in the study, came a note to 
 me dated, ' Bed this morning,' inviting me to breakfast, and to 
 transfer my goods from the village public house — Percy Smith had 
 no spare bed-room — to the Rectory. I did so, and this was the 
 first of many visits, each one of increasing intimacy and pleasure. 
 1 cannot do better than expand some notes of those visits, which I 
 sent to the 'Examiner' newspaper, in the week which followed 
 Kingsley' s death last year : — 
 
 " ' To those who, in the years of which we speak, were constant 
 guests at Eversley, that happy home can never be forgotten. 
 Kingsley was in the vigor of his manhood and of his intellectual 
 powers, was administering his parish with enthusiasm, was writing, 
 reading, fishing, walking, preaching, talking, with a twenty-parson 
 power, but was at the same time wholly unlike the ordinary and 
 conventional parson. 
 
 " 'The picturesque bow-windowed Rectory rises to memory as it 
 stood with all its doors and windows open On certain hot summer 
 days, the sloping bank with its great fir-tree, the garden — a gravel 
 sweep before the drawing-room and dining-rooms, a grass-plat before 
 the study, hedged off from the walk — and the tall active figure of the 
 Rector trami)ing up and down one or the other. His energy made him 
 seem everywhere, and to pervade every part of house and garden. 
 The MS. of the book he was writing lay open on a rough standing 
 desk, which was merely a shelf projecting from the wall ; his pupils 
 — two in number, and treated like his own sons — were working in 
 the dining-room ; his guests perhaps lounging on the lawn, or read- 
 ing in the study. And he had time for all, going from writing to 
 
Memories by C. Kegan Paul. 123 
 
 lecturing on optics, or to a passage in Virgil, from this to a vehe- 
 ment conversation with a guest, or tender care for his wife — who 
 was far from strong — or a romp with his children. He would work 
 himself into a sort of white heat over his book, till, too excited to 
 write more, he would calm himself down by a pipe, pacing his grass- 
 plat in thought and with long strides. He was a great smoker, and 
 tobacco was to him a needful sedative. He always used a long 
 and clean clay pipe, which lurked in all sorts of unexpected places. 
 But none was ever smoked which was in any degree foul, and when 
 there was a vast accunuilation of old pipes, they were sent back 
 again to the kiln to be rebaked, and returi:ed fresh and new. 
 This gave him a striking simile, which, in "Alton Locke," he puts 
 into the mouth of James Crossthwaite. " Katie here believes 
 in Purgatory, where souls are burnt clean again, like 'bacca 
 pipes." ' 
 
 "When luncheon was over, and any arrears of the morning's 
 work cleared up, a walk with Kingsley was an occasion of constant 
 pleasure. His delight in every fresh or known bit of scenery was 
 most keen, and his knowledge of animal life invested the walk 
 with shigular novelty even to those who were already country bred. 
 1 remember standing on the top of a hill with him when the autumn 
 evening was fading, and one of the sun's latest rays struck a patcl\ 
 on the moor, bringing out a very peculiar mixture of red-brown 
 colors. What were the precise plants which composed that patch ? 
 He hurriedly ran over the list of what he thought they were, and 
 then set off over hedge and ditch, through bog and water-course, 
 to verify the list he had already made. 
 
 " During these afternoon walks he would visit one or another of 
 his very scattered hamlets or single cottages on the heaths. Those 
 who have read 'My Winter Garden,' in the 'Miscellanies,' know 
 how he loved the moor under all its aspects, and the great groves 
 of firs. Nothing was ever more real than Kingsley's parish visit- 
 ing. He believed absolutely in the message he bore to the poor, 
 and the health his ministrations conveyed to their souls, but he was 
 at the same time a zealous sanitary reformer, and cared for their 
 bodies also. I was with him once when he visited a sick man 
 suffering from fever. The atmosphere of the little ground-tioor 
 bed-room was horrible, but before the Rector said a word he ran 
 up-stairs, and, to the great astonishment of the uihabitants of the 
 cottage, bored, with a large auger he had brought with him, several 
 holes above the bed's head for ventilation. His reading in the 
 sick room and his words were wholly free from cant. The Psalms 
 and the Prophets, with judicious omissions, seemed to gain new 
 meaning as he read them, and his after-words were always cheerful 
 and hopeful. Sickness, in his eyes, seemed always to sanctify and 
 purify. He wouki say, with the utmost modesty, that the patient 
 endurance of the poor taught him day by day lessons which he took 
 
124 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 back again as God's message to the bed-side from which he had 
 learnt them. 
 
 " One great element of success in his intercourse with his parish- 
 ioners was his abounding humor and fun. What caused a hearty 
 laugh was a real refreshment to him, and he had the strongest be- 
 lief that laughter and humor were elements in the nature of God 
 Himself 
 
 " This abounding humor has with some its dangers. Not so 
 with Kingsley. No man loved a good story better than he, but 
 there was always in what he told or what he suffered himself to 
 hear, a good and pure moral underlying what might be coarse in 
 expression. While he would laugh with the keenest sense of 
 amusement at what might be simply broad, he had the most utter 
 scorn and loathing for all that could debase and degrade. And he 
 was the most reverent of men, though he would say things which 
 seemed daring because people were unaccustomed to .hear sacred 
 things named without a pious snuffle. This great reverence led 
 him to beeven unjust to some of the greatest humorists. I quoted 
 Heine one day at his table. 'Who was Heine?' asked his little 
 daughter. ' A wicked man, my dear,' was the only answer given 
 to her, and an implied rebuke to me. 
 
 " On the week-day evenings he frequently held a ' cottage 
 lecture ' or short service in a cottage, for the old and feeble who 
 lived at a distance from church. To this he would sally forth in a 
 fisherman's knitted blouse if the night were wet or cold. 
 
 " Old and new friends came and went as he grew famous — not 
 too strong a word for the feeling of those days — and the drawing- 
 room evening conversations and readings, the tobacco parliaments 
 later into the night, included many of the most remarkable persons 
 of the day. 
 
 " I do not give any recollections of those conversations, partly 
 because it would be difficult to do so without giving names which 
 I have no right here to introduce, and partly because his opinions 
 on all subjects will be amply illustrated in his own words from let- 
 ters to many who sought his advice. But 1 know that those 
 evening talks kept more than one who shared in them from 
 Rome, and weaned more than one from vice, while others had 
 doubts to faith removed which had long paralyzed the energy of 
 their lives. 
 
 " It would not be right, however, to pass over the fact that it was 
 through his advice, and mainly in consequence of the aid he gave 
 me, that I was myself enabled to take orders. You know that I 
 have again become a layman, but though my views have greatly 
 developed from those I held twenty-three years ago, I do not 
 regret that I then was encouraged to become a clergyman. Kings- 
 ley enabled me to dismiss at once and forever all faith whatever in 
 the popular doctrine of eternal punishment, and all the whole class 
 
Memories by C. Kegan Paul. 125 
 
 of dogmas which tend to confuse the characters of God and the 
 Devil. . 
 
 " A day rises vividly to memory, when Kingsley remained shut 
 up in the study during the afternoon, the door bolted, inaccessible ' 
 to all interruption. The drowsy hour had come on between the 
 lights, when it was time to dress for dinner, and talk, without the 
 great inspirer of it, was growing disjointed and fragmentary, when 
 he came in from the study, a paper, yet undried, in his hand, and 
 read us the ' Lay of the Last Buccaneer,' most spirited of all his 
 ballads. One who had been .lying back in an arm-chair, known 
 for its seductive properties as ' sleepy hollow,' roused up then, and 
 could hardly sleep all night for the inspiring music of the words 
 read by one of the very best readers I have ever heard. 
 
 " It was my good fortune to be staying with you through the sum- 
 mer in which the greater part of ' Hypatia ' was written. I was 
 especially struck not only with his power of work, but with the extra- 
 ordinary pains he took to be accurate in detail. We spent one 
 whole day in searching the four folio volumes of Synesius for a fact 
 he thought was there, and which was found there at last. The hard 
 reading he had undergone for that book alone would furnish an 
 answer to some who thought him superficial. 
 
 "Others will write better than I of his work in the parish gener- 
 ally, and of his theology. 
 
 " In some places in the country it is still the custom to perforin 
 part of the marriage service in the body of the church, and then 
 proceed to the chancel. So it had always been in the Oxfordshire 
 parish to which I was appointed. Kingsley told with infinite delight 
 how a curate at or near Bideford had tried to introduce the practice, 
 and how the Devon clerk protested, saying, ' First he went up the 
 church, and then he went down the church, side-a-ways, here-a-ways, 
 and theer-a-ways, a scrattlin' like a crab.' 
 
 " His sermons were full of most tender care for individual 
 cases known only to himself. When he was most impressive and 
 pathetic it was generally because his sermon touched the sorrow of 
 some one in the congregation, though the words seemed general. 
 Once, when I was to preach for him, he asked me to let him look 
 at two or three IMS. sermons I had with me. He read them care- 
 fully, and selected one, not by any means the best written. Preach 
 that, Charles ; there is a poor soul who will be in church whose sins 
 it may touch, and whose sorrows it may heal. God help us all.' 
 
 " In the summer of 185 1, I travelled from Reading to London 
 with Miss Mitford, who did not then know Kingsley, though after- 
 wards they became very good friends. She said she had driven by 
 Eversley churchyard a few days before, and had seen Kingsley 
 reading the funeral service ; that he looked quite what she should 
 have expected, ' a pale student.' I need hardly say she had seen 
 his curate, and that Kingsley was as unlike a pale student as any 
 
126 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 man who ever lived. His teniperament was artistic and impulsive. 
 He delighted in out-door life, in sport, in nature in all her moods 
 and phases. His ph)'sical frame was powerful and wiry, his com- 
 plexion dark, his eye bright and piercing. Yet he often said he did 
 not think that his would be along life, and the event has sadly con- 
 firmed his anticipations. 
 
 " My life at Eton as Master in College was one which left me 
 scant time for visits to Eversley. But my rare interviews with 
 Kingsley, when I snatched a day to drive over, were always full of 
 dehght. I often consulted him abo^it professional difficulties, and 
 found his insight into school-boy life most remarkable, and his 
 sympathy with the young unflagging. He spent one day only with 
 us at Eton in those eight years, but I remember his delight in a row 
 on the river, visiting the boys' bathing places. 
 
 " Cambridge, indeed, in those years was more accessible than 
 Eversley, and that again would furnish me with somewhat to say, 
 did not others know that portion of the life better than I. 1 was 
 staying at Cambridge at the time of the Prince Consort's death, 
 and remember how he was affected by it, as at the loss of a per- 
 sonal friend. I walked over the next day to Maddingley with 
 Kingsley, who wished to hear AVindsor news from some of the suite, 
 and met, on the way, more than one of the specially chosen young 
 associates of the Prince of Wales. I can never forget, nor probably 
 will those who were addressed forget, the earnest, solemn, and 
 ■ agitated tones in which he spoke of the Prince Consort's care for 
 his son, and the duty which lay on them, the Prince of Wales' 
 young friends, to see that they did all in their power to enforce the 
 wise counsel of him who was dead. 
 
 " My removal into Dorset yet further sundered us in person, but 
 never in heart. When we met from time to time, his cordial grasp 
 said more than words to assure me of the old brotherly affection. 
 
 •' Coming once more to live in London, I hoped for the old 
 unrestricted intimacy once again. It was not so to be. I saw him, 
 and saw him only but once, enough to notice that he was sorely 
 changed in body, which, though far from puny, was fretted away 
 by his fiery spirit. And when they laid him to rest, in Eversley 
 churchyard, near the graves where some whom he loved repose, 
 and where the shadow of the great Scotch fir lies each summer 
 afternoon, I could stand by his grave only in thought. But it will 
 ever have association of the most solemn kind. I am among those 
 many who can never forget that, widely as they have differed from 
 Charles Kingsley, and that, whatever were his failings and incom- 
 pletenesses, his was just that one influence which, at a time they 
 needed a guide, roused them to live manly lives, and play their 
 parts in the stir of the world, while to me he was the noblest, 
 truest, kindest friend I ever had or can hope to have." 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 1850— 1851. 
 Aged 31, 32. 
 
 Resigns the Office of Clerk in Orders at Chelsea — Pupil Life at Eversley — Pub- 
 lication of " Alton Locke" — Letters from Mr. Carlyle — Writes for " Chris- 
 tian Socialist" — Troubled State of the Country — Burglaries — The Rectory 
 Attacked. 
 
 The year 1850 was spent by the Rector of Eversley at home, in 
 better health, with still fuller employment ; for in addition to parish 
 and writing, he had the work of teaching a private pupil, which 
 was quite new to him. Times were bad, rates were high, rate- 
 payers discontented, and all classes felt the pressure. The Rector 
 felt it also, but he met it by giving the tenants back ten per cent, 
 on their tithe payments, and thus at once and for ever he woa 
 their confidence. 
 
 He had, since his marriage, held the office of Clerk in Orders in 
 his father's parish of St. Luke's, Chelsea, which added consider- 
 ably to his income, and in those days was not considered incom- 
 patible with non-residence ; but though his deputy was well paid, 
 and he himself occasionally preached and lectured in Chelsea, he 
 looked upon the post as a sinecure, and so he resigned it. The 
 loss of income must however be met, and this could only be done 
 by his pen. It was a heavy struggle just then, with Rector's Poor 
 Rates at ;^i5o per annum, and the parish charities mainly depen- 
 dent on him ; but he set to work with indomitable industry, and 
 by a great effort finished "Alton Locke." It was a busy winter, 
 for the literary work was not allowed to interfere with the pupil 
 work, or either with the parish ; he got up at five every morning, 
 and wrote till breakfast ; after breakfast he worked with his pupil 
 and at his sermons ; the afternoons were devoted as usual to cot- 
 tage visiting ; the evenings to adult school and superintending the 
 fair copy of "Alton Locke" made by his wife for the press. It 
 was the only book of which he had a fair copy made. His habit 
 
128 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 was thoroughly to master his subject, whether book or sermon, al- 
 ways out in the open air, in his garden, on the moor, or by the side 
 of a lonely trout stream, and never to put pen to paper till the 
 ideas were clothed in words ; and these, except in the case of 
 poetry, he seldom altered. For many years his writing was all 
 done by his wife from his dictation, while he paced up and down 
 the room. 
 
 When ''Alton Locke" was completed, the difficulty was to find 
 a pubUsher : Messrs. Parker, who had, or thought they had, suffered 
 in reputation for publishing "Yeast" in the pages of Fraser, and 
 " Politics for the People," refused the book ; and Mr. Carlyle 
 kindly gave the author an introduction to Messrs. Chapman & 
 Hall, who, on the strength of his recommendation, undertook to 
 bring it out. 
 
 " I have written to Chapman," says Mr. Carlyle, " and you shall 
 have his answer, on Sunday, if it come within post hours to-mor- 
 row ; if not then on Tuesday. But without any answer, I believe 
 I may already assure you of a respectful welcome, and the new 
 novel of a careful and hopeful examination from the man of books. 
 He is sworn to secrecy too. This is all the needful to-day, — in 
 such an imspeakable hurry as this present. 
 
 " And so, right glad myself to hear of a new explosion, or salvo 
 of red-hot shot against the Devil's Dung-heap, from that particular 
 battery, 
 
 " I remain, 
 
 "Yours always tndy, 
 
 " T. Carlyle." 
 
 The spread of infidel opinions among the working classes and 
 the necessity of meeting them, continually occupied him, and he 
 writes to his friend Mr. Ludlow, 
 
 "But there is something else which weighs awfully on my mind, 
 ' — the first number of Cooper's Journal, which he sent me the other 
 day. Here is a man of immense influence, openly preaching 
 Straussism to the workmen, and in a fair, honest, manly way, which 
 must tell. Who will answer him ? Who will answer Strauss ? Who 
 will denounce Strauss as a vile aristocrat, robbing the poor man of 
 his Saviour — of the ground of all democracy, all freedom, all asso- 
 ciation — of the Charter itself? Oh si viihi centum voces et ferrea 
 lingua. Think about that — talk to Maurice about that. To me 
 it is awfully pressing. If the priests of the Lord are wanting to the 
 cause now ! — woe to us ! ... . 
 
A Flood. 129 
 
 "Don't fire at me about smoking. I do it, because it does me 
 good, and I could not (for I have tried again and again) do without 
 it. I smoke the very cheapest tobacco. In the meantime I am 
 keeping no horse — a most real self-sacrifice to me. But if 1 did, I 
 should have so much the less to give to the poor. God knows all 
 about that, John Ludlow, and about other things too." 
 
 EvERSLEY, June, 1850. 
 
 " Up till one this morning, keeping a great flood out — amid such 
 lightning and rain as I think I never saw before; up to my knees 
 in water, working with a pickaxe by candle-light to break holes in 
 the. wall, to prevent all being washed away. Luckily my garden is 
 saved. But it all goes with me under the head of ' fun.' Some- 
 thing to do — and lightning is my highest physical enjoyment. I 
 should like to have my thunderstorm daily, as one has one's 
 dinner. What a providence I did not go to town last night. 
 My man was gone home, and we should have had the garden 
 ruined, and the women frightened out of their wits." 
 
 A new penny periodical had been proposed, to counteract the 
 spread of infidel opinions among the masses. Before it was set 
 on foot the writers for "Politics" brought out a series of tracts, 
 " On Christian Socialism." Among the most remarkable was 
 " Cheap Clothes, and Nasty," by Parson Lot,* exposing the slop- 
 selling system, which was at the root of much of the distress in 
 London and the great towns. The Tailors' Association was formed, 
 and a shop opened in Castle Street, to which the publication of 
 " Cheap Clothes " took many customers ; and in June, a friend 
 writes to Mrs. Kingsley from London : — 
 
 ". . . Three copies of 'Cheap Clothes, and Nasty' are 
 lying on the Guards' Club table ! Percy Fielding (Captain in the 
 Guards) went to Castle Street and ordered a coat, and I met two 
 men at dinner yesterday with Castle Street coats on." 
 
 In August the Rectory party had an addition, Mr. I^ees, a 
 young Cambridge man arriving for three months to read for Holy 
 Orders. It was a bold step in those days for any man to take, to 
 read divinity with the author of "Yeast" and "Alton Locke," but 
 after twenty-six years' ministry in the Church, he looks back to it 
 as a time not only of enjoyment, but of profit. 
 
 With his pupil he read Strauss's " I>eben Jesu," of which an 
 Enghsh translation had just been published. He considered 
 
 * Now republished in a new edition of " Alton Locke." 
 
130 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 Strauss, as he considered Comte eighteen years later, the great 
 false prophet of the day, who must be faced and fought against by 
 the clergy. 
 
 To another candidate for Holy Orders, who wrote to him at that 
 time, he replies : — 
 
 TO C. KEGAN PAUL, ESQ. 
 
 " You wish to know what to read for Orders ? That depends 
 on what you mean. If to get through a Bishop's examination, just 
 ask any one who has been lately ordained what he crammed ; and 
 cram that, which may take you some six weeks, and no trouble. 
 
 "But if you want to be of any use, I should advise you, if you 
 can, which all men cannot, to sit down and read your Bible 
 honestly, and let it tell you its own story, utterly careless of any 
 theories. High Church or Puritan, which have been put into the 
 text first, and then found there by their own inserters. 
 
 " For instance : read the Pentateuch and the books of Samuel 
 and Kings ; Isaiah in I^ovvth's and the minor prophets in New- 
 come's translation ; the Gospels from Alford's new text, and the 
 Epistles by the light of your own common sense and honest scholar- 
 ship. Believe that if ttoCc means a foot in profane Greek, it will 
 most likely mean a foot also in ecclesiastical Greek, and avoid the 
 popular belief that the Apostles write barbarisms, whenever their 
 words cannot be made to square at first sight with Laud or Calvin. 
 
 " For books : Kitto's ' Encyclopaedia of Biblical Literature' will 
 tell you all, that is known of Bible history and antiquities ; * and for 
 doctrine, I advise vou to read Maurice's ' Kingdom of Christ,' 
 ' Christmas Day and' other sermons,' and his new edition of the 
 'Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy.' 
 
 "Thus much now, but if you will ask me questions from time to 
 time, I will tell you all I know, if you think my knowledge worth 
 having. Never think of bothering me. It is a delight to me to 
 give hints to any one whom I can ever so little put forward in these 
 confused times." 
 
 During the autumn of 1850 the state of the country was ominous. 
 In his own parish there was still low fever, and a general depression' 
 prevailed. Work was slack, and as winter approached gangs of 
 housebreakers and men who preferred begging and robbery to the 
 workhouse, wandered about Hampshire, Surrey, and Sussex. No 
 house was secure. Mr. Holiest, the clergyman of Frimley, was 
 
 * It must be remembered that this was in 185c, before the " Dictionary of 
 the Bible," &c., &c., were published. 
 
Forebodings. 131 
 
 murdered in his own garden while pursuing the thieves ; and 
 the Httle Rectory at Eversley, whicli had never hitherto needed pro- 
 tection, and had scarcely a strong lock on its doors, was armed 
 with bolts and bars, fortunately before it too was attempted by the 
 same gang. The Rector slept with loaded pistols by his bed-side, 
 and policemen from Winchester watched in and about the quiet 
 garden by night. The future of England looked dark, and he writes 
 to Mr. Maurice : — 
 
 Eversley, Sunday, October, 1850. 
 " My dearest Master, 
 
 "I hear you are come home. If so, for God's sake come 
 down and see me, if but for a day. I have more doubts, perplexi- 
 ties, hopes, and fears to pour out to you than I could utter in a 
 week, and to the rest of our friends I cannot open. You compre- 
 hend me ; you are bigger than I. Come down and tell me what 
 to think and do, and let Fanny as well as me, have the delight of 
 seeing your face again. I would come to you, but I have two 
 pupils, and business besides, and also don't know when and how to 
 catch you. 
 
 " The truth is, I feel we are all going on in the dark, toward some- 
 thing wonderful and awful, but whether to a precipice or a paradise, 
 or neither, or both, I cannot tell. All my old roots are tearing up 
 one by one, and though I keep a gallant ' front ' before the Char- 
 lotte Street people (Council of Association), little they know of 
 the struggles within me, the laziness, the terror. Pray for me ; I 
 could lie down and cry at times. A poor fool of a fellow, and yet 
 feeling thrust ui)on all sorts of great and unspeakable paths, in- 
 stead of being left in peace to classify butterflies and catch trout. 
 
 "If it were not for the Psalms and Prophets, and the Gospels, 
 I should turn tail, and flee shamefully, giving up the whole ques- 
 tion, and all others, as (Zgri somniay 
 
 TO J. M. LUDLOW, ESQ. 
 
 Eversley, October, 1850. 
 
 " I have been thinking about two ways of working this penny 
 periodical, and which is the right. Whether our present idea is 
 not to write down to the people, to address ourselves too exclu- 
 sively to the working man, to give them only a part of our thoughts ? 
 Whether the truly democratic method would not be to pour out our 
 whole souls in it. To say, if not all we think, yet all we think fit 
 to say on every subject ; to make it, if possible, an organ of Chris- 
 tian teaching to all classes, on the things now agitating their minds. 
 
 " To have the best criticism, metaphysics, history, and everything 
 else, and by teaching all, to teach the working man merely as a. 
 
132 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 member of the whole, and of equal rights and mind with all. I 
 cannot help fancying this the true brotherly method — to speak to 
 factory-worker and duke alike — to put them on one common 
 ground, show that we consider them subject to the same law. 
 
 " The rogues are frightened off. I had to send a charge of 
 slugs, not deadly though unpleasantly straight, after one the other 
 night, and they have eschewed us since. 
 
 " I will get ready the Labor Conference Tract as soon as I can. 
 But I have been disorganized, and kept up at night by these sons 
 of Belial, and so I am behind in my work. . . . ." 
 
 " Jerenn"ah is my favorite book now. It has taught me more 
 than tongue can tell. But I am much disheartened, and am 
 minded to speak no more words in this name (Parson Lot). Yet 
 all these bullyings teach one, correct one, warn one, show one 
 that God is not leaving one to go one's own way. ' Christ reigns,' 
 quoth Luther." 
 
 ''Alton Locke" came out in August, and the verdict of the 
 Press was of course a severe one. The best artizans, however, 
 hailed it as a true picture of their class and circumstances, and 
 there are still thoughtful men and women of the higher orders who 
 consider it one of the finest of his productions. Mr. Carlyle's 
 words on the subject are noteworthy. 
 
 Chelsea, October 31, 1850. 
 
 " It is now a great many weeks that I have been your debtor 
 for a book which in various senses was very welcome to me. 
 ' Alton Locke ' arrived in Annandale, by post, from my wife, early 
 in September, and was swiftly read by me, under the bright sun- 
 shine, by the sound of rushing brooks and other rural accompani- 
 ments. I believe the book is still doing duty in those parts ; for I 
 had to leave it behind me on loan, to satisfy the public demand. 
 Forgive me that I have not, even by a word, thanked you for this 
 favor. Continual shifting and moving ever since, not under the 
 best omens, has hindered me from writing almost on any subject 
 or to any person. 
 
 " Apart from your treatment of my own poor self (on which sub- 
 ject let me not venture to speak at all), I found plenty to like, and 
 be grateful for in the book : abundance, nay exuberance of gen- 
 eral zeal ; head-long impetuosity of determination towards the man- 
 ful side on all manner of questions ; snatches of excellent poetic 
 desciiption, occasional sunbursts of noble insight ; everywhere a 
 certain wild intensity, which hol'ds the reader fast as by a spell : 
 these surely are good qualities, and pregnant omens in a man of 
 your seniority in the regiment ! At the same time, I am bound to 
 
Letter from Thomas Carlyle. 133 
 
 say, the book is definable as crude ; by no manner of means the 
 best we expect of you — if you will resolutely temper your fire. 
 But to make the malt sweet, the fire should and must be slow : 
 so says the proverb, and now, as before, I include all duties for 
 you under that one ! ' Saunders Mackaye,' my invaluable country- 
 man in this book, is nearly perfect ; indeed I greatly wonder how 
 you did contrive to manage him — his very dialect is as. if a na- 
 tive had done it, and the whole existence of the rugged old hero 
 is a wonderfully splendid and coherent piece of Scotch bravura. 
 In both of your women, too, I find some grand poetic features ; 
 but neither of them is worked out into the ' Daughter of the Sun ' 
 she might have been ; indeed, nothing is worked out anywhere 
 in comparison with ' Saunders ; ' and the impression is of a fer- 
 vid creation still left half chaotic. This is my literary verdict, both 
 the black of it and the white. 
 
 " Of the grand social and moral questions we will say nothing 
 whatever at present : any time within the next two centuries, it is 
 like, there will be enough to say about them ! On the whole, you 
 will have to persist ; like a cannon-ball that is shot, you will have to 
 go to your mark, whatever that be. I stipulate farther that you 
 come and see me when you are at Chelsea ; and that you pay no 
 attention at all to the foolish clamor of reviewers, whether laud- 
 atory or condemnatory. 
 
 "Yours with true wishes, 
 
 "T. Carlyle." 
 
 The publication of "Yeast" brought him some enemies and 
 many correspondents ; and more than one "fast man" came down 
 from London to open his heart to its author and ask advice. In 
 the religious world the Anglican question occupied one large sec- 
 tion of the Church, and the tide set Rome-wards. Clergymen 
 wrote to him to ask him to advise them how to save members of 
 their flock from Popery ; mothers to beg him to try and rescue their 
 daughters from the influence of Protestant confessors ; while wo- 
 men themselves hovering between Rome and Anglicanism, be- 
 tween the attractions of a nunnery and the monotonous duties of 
 family life, laid their difficulties before the author of the " Saint's 
 Tragedy." He who shrank on principle from the ofiice of father- 
 confessor had the work thrust upon him by many whom he never 
 met face to face in this world, and whom he dared not refuse to 
 help. 
 
 The labor was severe to a man who felt the importance of such 
 communications, and the responsibility of giving counsel, as in- 
 
134 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 tensely as he did ; and those who saw the daily letters on his study 
 table would say that the weight of such correspondence alone was 
 enough to wear any man down, who had not in addition sermons 
 to write, books to compose, a parish to work, and a pupil to teach. 
 But his iron energy, coupled with a deep conscientiousness, en- 
 abled him to get through it. " One more thing done," he would 
 say, " thank God," as each letter was written, each chapter of a 
 book or page of sermon dictated to his wife ; " and oh ! how 
 blessed it will be when it is all over, to lie down in that dear 
 churchyard." 
 
 The correspondence increased year by year, as each fresh book 
 touched and stirred fresh hearts. Officers both in the army and 
 navy would write to him — all strangers — one to ask his opinion 
 about duelling ; another to beg him to recommend or write a ra- 
 tional form of family prayer for camp or hut ; another for a set of 
 prayers to be used on board ship in her Majesty's navy ; others on 
 more delicate social points of conscience and conduct, which the 
 writers would confide to no other clergyman ; but all to thank him 
 for his books. The atheist dared tell him of his doubts ; the pro- 
 fligate of his fall ; young men brought up to go into Holy Orders, 
 but filled with misgivings about the Articles, the Creeds, and, more 
 than all, on the question of endless punishment, would pour out all 
 their difficulties to him ; and many a noble spirit now working as a 
 priest and pastor in the Church of England would never have 
 taken orders but for Charles Kingsley. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 1851. 
 Aged 32. 
 
 Opening of the Great Exhibition — Attack on "Yeast" in tlie " Guardian" and 
 Reply — Occurrence in a London Church — Goes to Germany — Letter from 
 Mr. John Martineau. 
 
 The year of the Great Exhibition, which began with distress and 
 discontent in England, and ended with a Revolution in Paris, was 
 a notable one in the life of Charles Kingsley. His parochial work 
 was only varied by the addition of new plans of draining the parish 
 at the points where low fever had prevailed ; which he success- 
 fully carried out without help from any sanitary board. " Hypa- 
 tia " was begun as a serial in "Eraser's Magazine." "Santa 
 Maura " and several shorter poems were written. He contributed 
 to the " Christian Socialist " eight papers on " Bible Politics, or 
 God justified to the People," four on the " Firmley Murder," three 
 entitled "The Long Game," a few ballads and sonnets, and "The 
 Nun's Pool," which had been rejected by the publishers of "Poli- 
 tics." He preached two sermons in London, one of which made 
 him notorious, and occasionally he attended the Conferences of 
 the Promoters of Association. He crossed the Channel for the 
 first time. His friendshi]) with Erederika Bremer, the Swedish 
 novelist, and with Miss Mitford, date from this year. 
 
 In January he writes to Mr. Maurice about the new romance 
 which was dawning upon his imagination. 
 
 EvERSLEY, January 16, 1851. 
 
 " A thousand thanks for all your advice and information, which 
 encourages me to say more. I don't know how far I shall be able 
 to write much for the ' Christian Socialist.' Don't fancy that I am 
 either lazy or afraid. But, if I do not use my pen to the uttermost 
 in earning my daily bread, I shall not get through this year. I 
 am paying off the loans which I got to meet the expenses of re- 
 
136 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 pairing and furnishing ; but, with an income reduced this year by 
 more than 200/., having given up, thank God, that sinecure clerk- 
 ship, and having had to return ten per cent, of my tithes, owing to 
 the agricultural distress, I have also this year, for the first time, the 
 opportunity, and therefore the necessity, of supporting a good 
 school. My available income, therefore, is less than 400/. I can- 
 not reduce my charities, and I am driven either to give up my 
 curate, or to write, and either of these alternatives, with the in- 
 creased parish work, for I have got either lectures or night school 
 every night in the week, and three services on Sunday, will demand 
 my whole time. What to do unless 1 get pupils I know not. 
 Martineau leaves me in June. 
 
 "My present notion is to write a historical romance of the be- 
 ginning of the fifth century, which has been breeding in my head 
 this two years. But how to find time I know not. And if there 
 is a storm brewing, of course I shall have to help to fight the Phil- 
 istines. Would that I had wings as a dove, then would I flee away 
 and be at rest ! I have written this selfish and egotistical letter to 
 ask for your counsel ; but I do not forget that you have your own 
 troubles. My idea in the romance is to set forth Christianity as 
 the only really democratic creed, and philosophy, above all, s])ir- 
 itualism, as the most exclusively aristocratic creed. Such has been 
 my opinion for a long time, and what I have been reading lately 
 confirms it more and more. Even Synesius, ' the philosophic ' 
 bishop, is an aristocrat by the side of Cyril. It seems to me that 
 such a book might do good just now, while the Scribes and Phaii- 
 sees. Christian and heathen, are saying, ' This people, which 
 knoweth not the law, is accursed ! ' Of English subjects I can 
 write no more just now. I have exhausted both my stock and my 
 brain, and really require to rest it, by turning it to some new field, 
 in which there is richer and more picturesque life, and the elements 
 are less confused, or rather, may be handled more in the mass 
 than English ones now. 1 have long wished to do something an- 
 tique, and get out my thoughts about the connection of the old 
 world and the new ; Schiller's ' Gods of Greece ' expresses, I think, 
 a tone of feeling very common, and which finds its vent in modern 
 Neo-Platonism — Anythingarianism. But if you think I ought not, 
 1 will not. I will o\iQy your order." 
 
 TO GEORGE BRIMLEY, ESQ. 
 
 Monday, October, 185 1. 
 
 " I am quite astonished at th^ steady-going, respectable people 
 who approve more or less of ' Al.on Locke.' It was but the other 
 night, at the Speaker's, that Sir *** ***^ considered one 
 of the safest Whig traditionists in England, gave in his adher- 
 ence to the book in the kindest terms. Both the Marshalls have 
 
Teetotalism. 137 
 
 done the same — so has Lord Ashburton. So have, strange to say, 
 more than one ultra-respectable High-Tory Squire — so goes the 
 world. If you do anything above party, the true-hearted ones of all 
 parties sympathize with you. And all I want to do is to awaken 
 the good men of all opinions to the necessity of shaking hands and 
 laying their heads together, and to look for the day when the bad 
 of all parties will get their deserts, which they will, very accurately, 
 before Mr. Carlyle's friends, ' The Powers' and ' The Destinies,' 
 have done with them. 
 
 " The article I have not seen, and don't intend to. There is no 
 use for a hot-tempered and foul-mouthed man like myself j^raying 
 not to be led into temptation, and then reading, voluntarily, at- 
 tacks on himself from the firm of Wagg, Wenham, and Co. But if 
 you think I ought to answer the attack formally, pray tell me so. 
 
 " Hypatia grows, little darling, and I am getting very fond of 
 her ; but the period is very dark, folks having been given to lying 
 then, as well as now, besides being so blind as not to see the mean- 
 ing of their own time (perhaps, though, we don't of ours), and so 
 put down, not what we should like to know, but what they liked 
 to remember. Nevertheless there are materials for a grand book. 
 And if 1 fail in it, I may as well give up writing — perhaps the best 
 thing for me ; though, thanks to abuse-puffs, my books sell pretty 
 steadily." 
 
 The " Christian Socialist " movement had been severely at- 
 tacked in an article in the " Edinburgh " and in the "Quarterly ; " 
 in both articles Communism and Socialism were spoken of as 
 identical, and the author of "Alton Locke" was pointed at as the 
 chief offender. 
 
 Among other topics discussed in the " Christian Socialist " was 
 " Teetotalism." While Mr. Kingsley argued against it, and for 
 the right of the poor man to wholesome (and therefore not public- 
 house) beer, he was for ever urging on landlords, magistrates, and 
 householders to make a stand against the increasing number of 
 public-houses and consequent increase of drunkenness and de- 
 moralization, which paralyzed the work of the clergy, by refusing 
 licences to fresh public-houses, and above all by withholding spirit 
 licences. He saw no hope for country parishes unless the number 
 of public-houses could be legally restricted by the area of the jiar- 
 ish and the amount of populatiorfHo the lowest possible number, 
 and those placed under the most vigilant police superintendence, 
 especially in the outlying districts where they are nests of poachers 
 and bad characters, and utterly ruinous to the boys, girls, and 
 
138 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 young men who frequent them from the moment they leave 
 school. 
 
 TO THOMAS HUGHES, ESQ. 
 
 ". . . . You are green in cottoning to me about our '48' 
 mess. Because why? I lost nothing — 1 risked nothing. You 
 fellows worked like bricks, spent money, and got midshipman's 
 half-i)ay (nothing a day and find' yourself ), and monkey's allowancei 
 (more kicks than halfpence). 1 risked no money ; 'cause why, I 
 had none ; but made money out of the movement, and fame too. 
 I've often thought what a poor creature I was. I made ;^i5o by 
 ' Alton Ivocke,' and never lost a farthing ; and I got, not in spite 
 of, but by the rows, a name and a standing with many a one who 
 would never have heard of me otherwise, and I should have been 
 a mendicant if I had holloaed when I got a facer, while I was win- 
 ning by the cross, though I didn't mean to fight one. No. And 
 if I'd had ^,4^100,000, I'd have, and should have, staked and lost it 
 all in 1848-50. I should, Tom, for my heart was and is in i*-, and 
 you'll see it will beat yet; but we ain't the boys, we don't see but 
 half the bull's eye yet, and don't see at all the policeman which is. 
 a-going on his beat behind the bull's eye, and no thanks to us. 
 Still, some somedever, it's in the fates, that association is the pure 
 caseine, and must be eaten by the human race if it would save its 
 soul alive, which, indeed, it will ; only don't you think me a good 
 fellow for not crying out, when I never had more to do than scratch 
 myself, and away went the fleas. But you all were real bricks ; 
 and if you were riled, why let him that is without sin cast the first 
 stone, or let me carsfit for him, and see if I don't hit him in the 
 eye. 
 
 " Now to business ; I have had a sorter kinder sample day. 
 Up at five, to see a dying man ; ought to have been up at two, but 
 Ben King, the rat-catcher, who came to call me, was taken ner- 
 vous ! ! ! and didn't make row enough ; was from 5.30 to 6.30 with 
 the most dreadful case of agony — insensible to me, but not to his 
 pain. Came home, got a wash and a pipe, and again to him at 
 eight. Found him insensible to his own pain, with dilated pupils, 
 dying of pressure of the brain — going any moment. Prayed the 
 conmiendatory prayers over him, and started for the river with VV, 
 Fished all the morning in a roaring N.E. gale, with the dreadful 
 agonized face between me and the river, pondering on The mystery. 
 Killed eight on ' March brown,' a ' governor,' by drowning the flies 
 and taking 'em out gently to see if aught was there, which is the 
 only dodge in a north-easter. 'Cause why? The water is warmer 
 than the air — ergo, fishes don't like to put their noses out o' doors, 
 and feeds at home down stairs. It is the only wrinkle, Tom. The 
 captain fished a-top, and caught but three all day. They weren't 
 
Notes on Fishing. 139 
 
 going to catch a cold in their heads to please him or any man. 
 Clouds burn up at i p.m. I put on a minnow, and kill three 
 more ; I should have had lots, but for the image of the dirty hick- 
 ory stick, which would ' walk the waters like a thing of life,' just 
 ahead of my minnow. Mem. never fish with the sun in your back ; 
 it's bad enough with a fly, but with a minnow its strychnine and 
 prussic acid. My eleven weighed together four and a-half pounds, 
 three to the pound ; not good, considering I had passed many a 
 two-pound fish, I know. 
 
 •' Corollary. — Brass minnow don't suit the water. Where is 
 your wonderful minnow ? Send me one down, or else a horn one, 
 which I believes in desperate ; but send me something before 
 Tuesday, and I will send you P.O.O, Horn minnow looks like a 
 gudgeon, Avhich is the pure caseine. One pounder I caught to-day 
 on the ' March brown,' wouiited his wittles, which was rude, but 
 instructive ; and among worms was a gudgeon three inches long 
 and more. Blow minnows — gudgeon is the thing. 
 
 " Came off the water at three. Found my man alive, and, thank 
 God, quiet. Sat with him, and thought him going once or twice. 
 What a mystery that long, insensible death-struggle is ! Why 
 should they be so long about it ? Then had to go to Hartley 
 Row for an Archdeadon's Sunday-school meeting — three hours 
 useless (I fear) speechifying and shop ; but the archdeacon is a 
 good man, and works like a brick beyond his office. Got back at 
 10.30, and sit writing to you. So goes one's day. All manner of 
 incongruous things to do, and the very incongruity keeps one 
 beany and jolly. Your letter was delightful. I read part of it to 
 W., who says you are the best fellow on earth, to which I agree. 
 " So no more from your sleepy and tired, 
 
 " C. KiNGSLEY." 
 TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 EvERSLEY Rectory. 
 
 " Friday. Such a ducking ! such a storm ! I am glad you were 
 not at home for that only. We were up fishing on the great lake 
 at Bramshill : the morning soft, rich, and lowering, with a low, fall- 
 ing glass. I have been i)rophesying thunder for two or three days. 
 Perch would not bite. I went to see E. H. ; and read and jirayed 
 with her. How one gets to love consumptive patients. She seems 
 in a most hajDpy, holy state of mind, thanks to Smith. Then I went 
 on to L. G. ; sat a long time with her, and came back to the lake 
 — day burning, or rather melting, the country looking glorious. 
 The day as hot without sun, as it generally is with. There appeared 
 a black storm over Reading. I found the luckless John had 
 hooked a huge jack, which broke everything in a moment, and 
 went off with all his spinning tackle which he prizes so. Tlien the 
 storm began to work round in that mysterious way storms will, and 
 
140 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 gather from every quarter, and the wind which had been dead calm* 
 S.E., blew N.E., N., W., and lastly as it is doing now, and always 
 does after these ex])losions, S.W. And then began such a sight, 
 and we on the island in the middle of the great lake ! The light- 
 ning was close, and we seemed to strike the ground near Sand- 
 hurst again and again, and the crackle and roar and spit and 
 grumble over our heads was awful. 1 have not been in such a storm 
 for four years. And it rained — fancy it ! We walked home after 
 an hour's ducking. I gave John a warm bath and hot wine and 
 water, for I did not feel sure of his strength. I am not ashamed to 
 say that I prayed a great deal during the storm, for we were in a 
 very dangerous place in an island under high trees ; and it seemed 
 dreadful never to see you again. I count the hours till Monday. 
 Tell the chicks I found a real wild duck's nest on the island, full of 
 eggs, and have brought one home to hatch it under a hen ! Kiss 
 them for me. We dined at the T.'s last night, and after dinner went 
 birds' nesting in the garden, and found plenty. Tell Rose a bull- 
 finch's, with eggs, and a chaffinch's, and an oxeye's, and a thrush's, 
 and a greenfinch's; and then Ball and I, to the astonishment and 
 terror of old Mrs. Caujpbell, climbed to the top of the highest fir 
 tree there, to hang our hats on the top. 
 
 The opening of the Great Exhibition was a matter of deep in- 
 terest to him, not only for its own sake, but for that of the Great 
 Prince who was the prime mover in the undertaking. On enter- 
 ing the building he was moved to tears ; to him it was like going 
 into a sacred place, not a mere show as so many felt it, and still 
 less a mere gigantic shop, in which wares were displayed for selfish 
 purposes, and from mere motives of trade competition. The 
 science, the art, the noble ideas of universal peace, universal 
 brotherhood it was meant to shadow forth and encourage, excited 
 him intensely, while the feeling that the realization of those great 
 and noble ideas was as yet so far off", and that these achievements 
 of physical science were mere forecastings of a great but distant 
 future, saddened him as profoundly. Four days after the opening, 
 he preached to a I^ondon congregation in St. Margaret's, West- 
 minster, on Psalm Ixviii. 18, and Eph. iv. 8 : " When He ascended 
 up on high. He led captivity captive, and received gifts for mefi, 
 yea, even for His enemies, that the Lord God might dwell among 
 them,'' he startled his hearers by contrasting the wide-spread un- 
 behef of the present day in God, as the Fount of all science, all 
 art, all the intelligence of the nation, with the simple faith of our 
 forefathers. 
 
Attack on ''Yeast!' 141 
 
 In the month of May there was a review of his "Yeast" in the 
 " Guardian " by a well-known Oxford graduate, a strong partisan 
 of the Anglican party. The review was anonymous, and con- 
 tained very grave charges against the book and its writer — of 
 heresy — of encouraging profligacy, &c., &c. 
 
 Their effect was to leave a general impression that the book in- 
 culcated the vilest principles, and most pernicious doctrines, while 
 not a single quotation from it was given, so as to afford the readers 
 of the review an opportunity of judging for themselves. 
 
 Mr. Kingsley had hitherto made it a rule not to answer news- 
 paper attacks on himself, especially those of the religious press, 
 but these charges being beyond all precedent, he repudiated them 
 in the following indignant words : 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE " GUARDIAN." 
 
 May, 1851. 
 " Sir, 
 
 " Having lived for several years under the belief that the Editor 
 of the ' Guardian ' was a gentleman and a Christian, 1 am bound 
 to take for granted that you have not yourself read the book called 
 ' Yeast,' which you have allowed" to be reviewed in your columns. 
 This answer therefore is addressed, not to you, but to your re- 
 viewer ; and I have a right to expect that you will, as an act of 
 common fairness, insert it. 
 
 " I most thoroughly agree with the reviewer that he has not mis- 
 understood me ; on the contrary, he sees most clearly the gist of 
 the book, as is proved by his carefully omitting any mention what- 
 soever of two questions connected with a character whose existence 
 is passed over in silence, which form the very pith and moral of 
 the whole book. I know well enougli why he has ignored them ; 
 because they were the very ones which excited his wrath. 
 
 " But he makes certain allegations against me which I found it 
 somewhat difficult to answer, from their very preposterousness, till, 
 in Pascal' s Fifteenth Provincial Letter, I fell on an argument 
 which a certain Capuchin Father, Valerian, found successful against 
 the Jesuits, and wnich seems to suit the reviewer exactly. I shall 
 therefore proceed to apply it to the two accusations which concern 
 me most nearly as a churcliman. 
 
 " I. He asserts that I say that ' it is common sense and logic to 
 make ourselves children of God by believing that we are so when 
 we are not.' Sir, you and your readers will hardly believe me 
 when I tell you that this is the exact and formal oi)i)Osition to 
 what I say, that the words which he misquotes, by leavin^^ out the 
 context and the note of interrogation, occur in a scornful reductio 
 
142 Charles Ki7zgsley. 
 
 ad ahsiirdum of the very doctrine which he wantonly imputes to 
 me, an appeal to common sense and logic against and not for the 
 lie of the Genevan School. 1 have a right to use the word ' wan- 
 tonly,' for he cannot say that he has misunderstood me ; he has 
 refused to allow me that plea, and I refuse to allow it to him. In- 
 deed, I cannot, for the passage is as plain as daylight, no school- 
 boy could misunderstand it ; and every friend to whom 1 have 
 shown his version of it has received it with the same laughter and 
 indignation with which I did, and felt with me, that the only 
 answer to be given to such dishonesty was that of Father Valerian, 
 ' Mentiris i7npudentissime! 
 
 "2, So with the assertion, that the book 'regards the Cathohc 
 doctrine of the Trinity as the same thing with that of the Vedas 
 Neo-Platonists,' &c. &c. ; or considers 'a certain amount of youth- 
 ful profligacy as doing no real and permanent harm to the charac- 
 ter — perhaps strengthening it — for a useful and even religious life ; 
 and that the existence of the passions is a proof that they are to 
 be gratified.' Sir, I shall not quote passages in disproof of these 
 calumnies, for if I did I should have to quote half the book. I 
 shall simply reply, with Father Valerian, '■Mentiris impudentis- 
 sime.' 
 
 " I shall enter into no further defence of the book ; I have no 
 doubt of there being many errors and defects in it. I shall be 
 most thankful to have them pointed out, and to correct them most 
 patiently. But one thing I may say, to save trouble hereafter, that 
 whosoever henceforth, either explicitly or by insinuation, says that 
 I do not hold and believe ex aiiinio, and in the simple and literal 
 sense, all the doctrines of the Catholic and Apostohc Church of 
 England, as embodied in her Liturgy or Articles, shall have no 
 answer from me but Father Valerian's Mentiris impudentissime. 
 "I am, Sir, 
 
 " Your obedient and faithful servant, 
 
 " The Author of ' Yeast.' " 
 
 In speaking of this correspondence, Mr. Maurice says : 
 
 "If / had been accused of profligacy and heresy, as Mr. Kings- 
 ley has been in the ' Guardian,' I believe I should have felt much 
 more indignation than he has, though I might have expressed it 
 with less simplicity and brevity. If a man in a mask, calling him- 
 self a 'We,' tells a clergyman that he has been all his hfe uttering 
 a lie, that his whole professions before God and man are a lie, that 
 he is an advocate for profligacy when he professes to make men 
 moral, a deliberate teacher of heresy when he knows that his in- 
 most desire is to preach the Catholic faith, and when he knows 
 that he expresses that desire most loudly, not in the presence of 
 dignitaries who might patronize him for it, but of infidels who 
 
Effect of ''Yeasty 143 
 
 would desjjise him for it, it does not seem very strange that such 
 a clergyman should say in Latin or English, Sir We ! thou thyself 
 tellest a lie " 
 
 Some may think it needless to revive these old controversies, 
 but attacks on his moral teaching in this case, and at a later 
 period on " Hypatia," implying as they did, a want of moral prin- 
 ciple in himself, and the encouragement of it in others, touched 
 , Mr. Kingsley on his tenderest point, and cannot be passed over, 
 if only to show those who know what the results of his work ha?ve 
 been, and have seen the different tone taken since by the religious 
 press with regard to him and his writings, what sore battles he had 
 at one time to fight, what bitter insults he had to stand, while 
 laboring day and night for the good of others. But when once the 
 moment and the expression of righteous indignation was over, he 
 had a wonderful power of putting attacks and the individuals who 
 made them, out of his mind, bearing no malice, and going on his 
 way. " Life is too hard work in itself," he would say, " to let one 
 stop to hate and suspect people." 
 
 The " Guardian" replied again, reiterating its charges, but hap- 
 pily there was another side to the question. Only three weeks 
 before these attacks he had received the following among many 
 other testimonies to the moral influence of " Yeast," on men 
 whose hearts could not be touched by teachers of a narrower 
 school : 
 
 April 2, 1851. 
 « Dear Sir, 
 
 " I have just finished ' Yeast' 171 extenso, having only skimmed 
 it in Fraser, and, fresh from the book, 1 cannot resist communi- 
 cating to you my heartfelt thanks for it. You will not care about 
 whether / thank you or not ; never mind, I shall relieve myself by 
 writing, and you at any rate will not feel insulted. I believe you 
 have taken up the right ground in standing firmly by the spirit of 
 Christianity, and the divineness of Christ's' mission, and showing 
 the people how they are their best friends and the truest reformers. 
 I have been as far as most people into the Kingdom of the Ever- 
 lasting No, and had nearly, in my intellectual misery, taken up 
 with blank Atheism and the Reasoner ; and should have done so, 
 had not my heart rebelled against my head, and flooding in upon 
 me reflections of earlier, purer days, brighter days of Faith, bade 
 me pause. For six months I have been looking back to Chris- 
 tianity, my heart impelling me towards it ; my head urging me 
 
144 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 into farther cimmerias. I wanted some authoritative word to 
 confirm my heart, but could not meet with it. I read orthodox 
 books of argument, of persuasion, of narrative, but I found they 
 only increased my antagonism to Christianity. And I was very 
 miserable — as I believe all earnest men must be when they find 
 themselves God-abandoned in times like these — when, picking up 
 your ' Christian Socialist,' I read your ' God justified to the 
 People,' and felt that here now was a man, not a mere empty 
 evangelical tub-thumper (as we of the North call Ranters), but a 
 bona fide man, with a man's intellect, a man of genius, and a 
 scholar, and yet who did not spit upon his Bible, or class it with 
 Goethe and Dante, but could have sympathies with all the ferment 
 of the age ; be a Radical Reformer without being a vague Denier, 
 a vaguer * Spiritualist,' as our ' Leader ' friends have it, or an utter 
 Atheist. If this man, on further acquaintance, prove what 1 sus- 
 pect him to be, here is the confirmation I desire. Impelled by 
 this, and by the accounts I gathered of you from Mr. and Mrs. 
 Carlyle, I devoured 'Yeast;' and 'Alton Locke,' I am now in 
 the middle of (I am no novel reader, which must be my excuse 
 for being so late in the field). I find that I am quite correct, that 
 I have not exaggerated your capacity at all ; and having, day and 
 night, meditated on what you have to say, I feel that the con- 
 firmation I have got from you is sufficient. But I have another 
 better confirmation in my own heart. I feel as if I had emerged 
 from a mephitic cavern into the open day. In the midst of worldly 
 reverses, such as I never before experienced, I feel a mental 
 serenity I never before knew ; can see life and my role in life, 
 clear and definite for the first time, through all manner of inter- 
 vening entanglements. 
 
 " I know not by what right I make you my father confessor, but 
 I feel strangely drawn towards you, and even at the risk of being 
 deemed impertinent, must send this rambling missive to thank you 
 and to bless you for having helped in the light and the leaven to a 
 sad yeasty spirit hitherto. 
 
 In the summer of 185 1 several London clergymen arranged to 
 have courses of lectures speciall^y^ addressed to the working men, 
 who came in numbers to see the Great Exhibition. One of these 
 clergymen, whose church was in the neighborhood of a lecture- 
 hall much frequented by working men of atheistic views, begged 
 Mr. Maurice to take part in his course of lectures and (once more 
 to quote Mr. Hughes's words) : 
 
 " to ask Kingsley to do so also ; assuring Mr. Maurice that he 
 'had been reading Kingsley' s works with the greatest interest, and 
 
Occurrence in a London C/inrc/i. 145 
 
 earnestly desired to secure him as one of his lecturers.' ' I prom- 
 ised to mention this request to him,' Mr. Maurice says, ' though I 
 knew he rarely came to London, and seldom preached except in 
 his own parish. He agreed, though at some inconvenience, that 
 he would ]jreach a sermon on the Message of the Church to the 
 Laboring Man. I suggested the subject to him. The incumbent 
 intimated the most cordial approval of it. He had asked us, not 
 only with a previous knowledge of our published writings, but 
 expressly because he had that knowledge. I pledge you my word 
 that no questions were asked as to what we were going to say, and 
 no guarantees given. Mr. Kingsley took precisely that view of 
 the message of the Church to laboring men which every reader of 
 his books would have expected him to take.' 
 
 "Kingsley took his text from Luke iv. verses 18 to 21 : 'The 
 Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to 
 preach the gospel to the poor,' &c. What then was that gospel ? 
 Kingsley starts at once with — ' I assert that the business for which 
 God sends a Christian priest in a Christian nation is, to preach 
 freedom, equality, and brotherhood, in the fullest, deepest, widest 
 meaning of those three great words ; that in as far as he so does, 
 he is a true priest, doing his Lord's work with His Lord's blessing 
 on him ; that in as far as he does not he is no priest at all, but a 
 traitor to God and man ; ' and again, ' I say that these words ex- 
 press the very pith and marrow of a priest's business ; I say that 
 they preach freedom, equality, and brotherhood, to rich and poor 
 for ever and ever.' Then he goes on to warn his hearers how there 
 IS always a counterfeit in this world of the noblest message and 
 teaching. 
 
 *' Thus there are two freedoms — the false, where a man is free to 
 do what he likes ; the true, where a man is free to do what he 
 ought. 
 
 " Two equalities — the false, which reduces all intellects and all 
 characters to a dead level, and gives the same power to the bad as 
 to the good, to the wise as to the foolish, ending thus in practice 
 in the grossest inequality; the true, wherein each man has equal 
 power, to educate and use whatever faculties or talents God has 
 given him, be they less or more. This is the divine equality 
 which the church proclaims, '"'.d nothing else proclaims as she 
 does. 
 
 " Two brotherhoods — the false, where a man chooses who shall 
 be his brothers, and whom he will treat as such ; the true, in which 
 a man believes that all are his brothers, not by the will of the flesh, 
 or the will of man, but by the will of God, whose children they 
 all are aUke. The church has three special possessions and 
 treasures. Tlie Bible, which proclaims man's freedom, Baptism 
 his equal'*-', the Lord's Supper his brotherhood." — (Preface to 
 'Alton 1 .ke'). 
 10 
 
146 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 The sermon was listened to with profound attention by a large 
 congregation, in which were many working men. But at its close, 
 just as the preacher was about to give the blessing, the incumbent 
 rose in the reading-desk and declared, that while he agreed with 
 nnich that had been said by the preacher, it was his painful duty 
 .to add that he believed much to be dangerous and much untrue. 
 
 The excitement of the congregation was intense ; the working 
 men could with difificuly be kept quiet, and to a man of the 
 preacher's vehement temperament it must have required a great 
 effort not to reply. He only bowed his head, and with deepened 
 solemnity came down from the pulpit, passed straight through the 
 crowd that thronged him with outstretched hands, and an eager 
 "God bless you, sir," on their lips, and went into the vestry, where 
 his friends gathered round him to express their sympathy, and to 
 take the sermon from him that it might be printed exactly as it was 
 written. '-Those," said Mr. Maurice, "who observed the solem- 
 nity of Mr. Kingsley's manner while he was delivering his sermon, 
 still more when he was praying with the congregation, and blessing 
 them, will believe that the thought of having unwittingly made 
 himself a stumbling-block to his fellow-men, was infinitely more 
 bitter to him than any mere personal insult which he was called 
 upon to endure." 
 
 " You will have heard ere this," writes a friend to Mrs. Kingsley 
 the day following, " all about the strange event of last night. 
 
 . Nothing could justify the violation of church order and de- 
 cency which was committed Thank God, thank Him 
 
 on your knees, that Charles did not answer a single word ; if he 
 had, I do not know what might not have happened. Robertson 
 and Hansard had severally to quiet knots of working men, who 
 were beginning to hiss or otherwise testify their disapproval. A 
 word from Charles, or, indeed, from any one on his behalf, might 
 have raised such a storm as God only could have quelled. 
 
 " What the consequences of the whole thing may be, none, I 
 suppose, can tell ; but they are in God's hands, and He knows 
 best, and makes all things work together for good for us if we truly 
 fear Him. Charles, I think, feels that it is his only policy to keep 
 quiet — and so must his friends for the present. Tell him old Lum- 
 ley is showing himself a man, and will be extremely glad to i)ublish 
 the sermon. . . . ." 
 
 Mr. Kingsley returned to Eversley exhausted and depressed, and 
 in the meantime the storm burst. A leading morning paper began 
 
Sympathy of Workiiig Men. 147 
 
 the attack, with an article, which being full of inaccuracies, made 
 its due impression on those who did not know the facts, and who 
 were already strongly prejudiced against the " Apostle of Socialism." 
 
 This was followed by a letter from the Bishop of I^ondon (Dr. 
 Bloomfield), who hearing of the disturbance, wrote to Mr. Kingsley 
 to express his displeasure, and forbade him to preach in London. 
 Mr. Kingsley replied most respectfully, requesting his lordship to 
 suspend his judgment till he had read the sermon. Meanwhile 
 letters of sympathy poured in from all quarters, from a few of the 
 clergy, from many of the laity, and from numbers of working 
 men. There was a meeting of working men on Kennington Com- 
 mon, and an expression of their warm allegiance and sympathy. 
 A proposal was also made before the bishop's prohibition was with- 
 drawn, to induce Mr. Kingsley to start a free church independent 
 of episcopal rule, with a promise of a huge following. It is need- 
 less to say he did not entertain this proposal for a moment. 
 
 In the meantime the sermon was printed, and a copy sent to the 
 Bishop, who wrote at once to ask Mr. Kingsley to come up and 
 see him at London House ; and after a kind reception he withdrew 
 his prohibition, and in a fortnight Mr. Kingsley preached at the 
 parish church of Chelsea. 
 
 Before the meeting on Kennington Common, the secretary of 
 the John Street Lecture Hall, where the principal audience was 
 composed of Chartists, free thinkers, and followers of Strauss, wrote 
 to offer Mr. Kingsley the use of their lecture hall, which he de- 
 clined in the following words : 
 
 EvERSLEY, June 26, 1851. 
 
 " I have conferred with my friends on their willingness to give 
 lectures in John Street, and find it to be their unanimous opinion, 
 that to do so, would be interpreted by the public into an approval, 
 more or less, of other doctrines which are taught there, from which 
 I, of all men in England, differ most strongly, and from which I 
 hold myself bound most strongly to protest. 
 
 "As a churchman, such a suspicion would be intolerable to me, 
 as it would be gratuitously incurred. Those who wish to know my 
 opinions will have plenty of opportunities elsewhere ; and I must 
 therefore, in common with my friends, distinctly, but most cour- 
 teously, decUne your kind offer of the John Street lecture rooms." 
 
 He was so much exhausted with the work and the controversies 
 of the last eight months, that his parents, who were going to Ger- 
 
148 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 many for some weeks, seeing the importance of his having tho- 
 rough change, persuaded him to leave his parish in the care of a 
 curate and go abroad with them. It was the first time he had 
 crossed the water, and it was quite a revelation to him, — to be 
 enjoyed as thoroughly as he could enjoy any thing which took him 
 from his home. But even in new scenes his fiery spirit could not 
 rest ; and the cause of the Church and the People pressed heavily 
 on him. 
 
 TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 Menderscheid, August 7. 
 
 " I write from the loveliest place you can imagine, only how we 
 got here I know not ; having lost our way between some 'feld' or 
 other to here. We found ourselves about 8 p.m. last night at the 
 top of a cliff 500 feet high, with a roaring river at the bottom, and 
 710 path. So down the cliff face we had to come in the dark, or 
 sleep in the forest to be eaten by wild boars and wolves, of which 
 latter, one was seen on our route yesterday ' as high as a table.' 
 And down we came, knapsacks, fishing-rods, and all ; which process 
 must not be repeated often if we intend to revisit our native shores. 
 I have seen such wonders, I don't know where to begin. Craters 
 filled sometimes with ghastly blue lakes, with shores of volcanic 
 dust, and sometimes, quaintly enough, by rye-fields and reapers. 
 The roads are mended with lava ; the whole country the strangest 
 jumble, alternations of Cambridgeshire ugliness (only lifted up 1,200 
 feet high) with all the beauties of Devonshire. The bed of the 
 Issbach, from the baths of Bertrich, up which we came yesterday, 
 was the most ravishingly beautiful glen scenery I ever saw ; such 
 rocks — such baths — such mountains covered with huge timber — 
 not mere scrub, like the Rhine forests. Such strips of lawn here 
 -and there between the stream and the wood. All this, of course, 
 you get on a grander scale on the Moselle, which was perfectly 
 exquisite ; yet there is a monotomy in its luxious richness and soft- 
 ness, and I was right glad to find myself on my legs at Alf. Two 
 days of that steamer running would have been too much for one, 
 with its heat and confinement, so I think this plan of walking is the 
 best. Weather glorious." 
 
 Treves, Angzist 17. 
 
 " Here we are at Treves, having been brought here under ar- 
 rest, with a gensdarme from the Mayor of Bittsburg, and liberated 
 next morning with much laughter and many curses from the police 
 here. However, we had the pleasure of spending a night in pri- 
 son, among fleas and felons, on the bare floor. It appears the 
 barbarians took our fishing-rods for ' todt-instrumenten ' — deadly 
 
Arrested at Treves. 149 
 
 weapons — and our wide-awakes for Italian hats, and got into their 
 addle pates that we were emissaries of Mazzini and Co. distributing 
 political tracts, for not a word of politics had we talked. Luckily 
 the police-inspector here was a gentleman, and his wife and daugh- 
 ter ladies, and they did all they dare for us, and so about ten next 
 morning we were set free with many apologies, and the gensdarme 
 (who, after all, poor fellow, was very civil) sent back to Bittsburg 
 with a reprimand. We are the lions of Treves at present, for the 
 affair has made a considerable fuss. We leave this to-morrow after 
 having seen all the wonders — and what wondei^s there are to see. 
 I need not tell you all I have felt here and at Fleissem. But at 
 first the feeling that one is standing over the skeleton of the giant 
 iniquity — Old Rome — is overpowering. And as I stood last night 
 in that amphitheatre, amid the wild beasts' dens, and thought of 
 the Christian martyrdoms and the Frank prisoners, and all the hell- 
 ish scenes of agony and cruelty that place had witnessed, I seemed 
 to hear the very voice of the Archangel whom St. John heard in Pat- 
 mos, crying, ' Babylon the Great is fallen ; ' but no more like the 
 sound of a trumpet, but only in the still whisper of the night breeze, 
 and through the sleeping vmeyards, and the great still smile of God 
 out of the broad blue heaven. Ah ! and you were not there to 
 feel it with me ! I am so longing to be home ! " 
 
 Before going abroad, he had parted with the beloved pupil who 
 had become quite one of the family at the Rectory, and was dear 
 to him and his wife as a son. Mr. John Martineau's graphic words 
 and tender recollections of the eighteen months he spent at Evers- 
 ley, give the best picture of the home life at that period, between 
 January 21, 1850, and June 28, "851. 
 
 Park Corner, YIy.ck.^iyaX), Christmas Eve, 1875. 
 
 " I first knew him in January, 1850. I entered his house as his 
 pupil, and was for nearly a year and a half his constant companion ; 
 indeed, out of doors, almost his only companion, for during the 
 greater part of the time he had no other pupil, and hardly any inti- 
 mate friends within reach. He was then in his thirty-first year, in 
 the fulness of his strength ; I a raw receptive school-boy of fifteen ; 
 so that his mind and character left their impression upon mine as 
 a seal does upon wax. What that impression was I will put down 
 as best I can. 
 
 "He was then, above all things and before all things else, a 
 parish clergyman. His parish work was not indeed so laborious 
 and absorbing as it had been six years before, when he was first 
 made Rector. The efforts of these six years had told, the seed 
 was bearing fruit, and Eversley would never again be as it had 
 
150 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 been. His health had nearly broken down not long before, and he 
 had now a curate to help him, and give him the leisure which he 
 needed for writing and other things. Still, even so, with a large 
 and straggling though not very populous parish, with his share of 
 three services on Sunday and cottage-lectures on two week-day 
 evenings in winter, there was much for him to do ; throwing him- 
 self into it, as he did, with all his intensity and keen sense of 
 responsibility. At this time, too, he had not, as in later years, the 
 help and the purses of laymen to assist him. 
 
 "These were the days when farm-laborers in Hampshire got 
 from eight to ten shillings a week, and bread was dear, or had not 
 long ceased to be so. The cholera of 1849 had just swept through 
 the country, and though it had not reached Eversley, a severe kind 
 of low fever had, and there had been a season of much illness and 
 many deaths, during which he had, by his constant, anxious, tender 
 care of the sick poor, won their confidence more than ever before. 
 The poor will not go to the relieving officer if they can get their needs 
 supplied elsewhere ; and the Eversley poor used to go for relief, 
 and something more than relief, to the Rectory. There were few 
 mornings, at that time, that did not bring some one in distress, 
 some feeble woman, or ailing child, or a summons to a sick bed. 
 Up to that time he had allowed (I believe) no man or woman in 
 his parish to become an inmate of the work-house through infirmity 
 or old age, except in a few cases were want had been the direct 
 consequence of indolence or crime. 
 
 " At times, too, other poor besides those of his parish, might be 
 seen at his door. Gipsies were attracted to him from all the 
 country round. He married and christened many of them, to 
 whom such rites were things almost unknown. 
 
 " I cannot give any description of his daily life, his parish 
 work, which will not sound couimonplace. There were the morn- 
 ings chiefly spent in reading and writing, the afternoons in going 
 from cottage to cottage, the long evenings in writing. It sounds 
 monotonous enough. But there never was a man with whom life 
 was less monotonous, with whom it was more full to overflowing, 
 of variety, and freshness. Nothing could be so exquisitely delight- 
 ful as a walk with him about his parish. Earth, air, and water, as 
 well as farm-house and cottage, seemed full of his familiar friends. 
 By day and by night, in fair weather and in storm, grateful for 
 heat and cold, rain and sunshine, light and soothing darkness, he 
 drank in nature. It seemed as if no bird, or beast, or insect, 
 scarcely a drifting cloud in the sky, passed by him unnoticed, un- 
 welcomed. He caught and noted every breath, every sound, 
 every sign. With every person he met he instinctively struck some 
 point of contact, found something to appreciate — often, it might 
 be, some information to ask for — which left the other cheered, 
 self-respecting, raised for the moment above himself; and whatever 
 
Letter from Mr. John MartiJieau. 151 
 
 the passing word might be, it was given to high or low, gentle or 
 simple, with an appropriateness, a force, and a genial courtesy, in 
 the case of all women, a deferential courtesy, which threw its spell 
 over all alike, a spell which few could resist. 
 
 " So many-sided was he that he seemed to unite in himself more 
 types and varieties of rnind and character, types differing as widely 
 as the poet from the man of science, or the mystic from the soldier ; 
 to be tilled with more thoughts, hopes, fears, interests, aspirations, 
 temptations than could co-exist in any one man, all subdued or 
 clenched into union and harmony by the force of one iron will, 
 which had learnt to rule after many a fierce and bitter struggle. 
 
 " His senses were acute to an almost painful degree. The sight 
 of suffering, the foul scent of a sick-room — well used as he was to 
 both— would haunt him for hours. For with all his man's strength 
 there was a deep vein of woinafi in him, a nervous sensitiveness, an 
 intensity of sympathy, which made him suffer when others suffered, 
 a tender, delicate, soothing touch, which gave him power to under- 
 stand and reach the heart ; to call out, sometimes at first sight 
 (^what he of all men least sought), the inmost confidences of men 
 and women alike in all classes of life. And he had sympathy with 
 all moods from deepest grief to lightest humor — for no man had a 
 keener, quicker perception of the humorous side of anything — a 
 love and ready word of praise for whatever was good or beautiful, 
 from the greatest to the least, from the heroism of the martyr to tlie 
 shape of a good horse, or the folds of a graceful dress. And this 
 wide-reaching hearty a]ipreciation made a word of praise from him 
 sweeter, to those who knew him well, than volumes of commenda- 
 tion from all the world besides. 
 
 " His every thought and word was penetrated with the belief, 
 the full assurance, that the world — the world of the soldier or the 
 sportsman, as well as the world of the student or the theologian — • 
 was God's world, and that everything which He had made was 
 good. ' Humani nihil a me alienum puto,' he said, taught by his 
 wide human sympathies, and encouraged by his faith m the Incar- 
 nation. And so he rejected, as Pharisaic and unchristian, most of 
 what is generally implied in the use of such words as ' carnal,' 
 'unconverted,' 'worldly,' and thereby embraced in his sympathy, 
 and won to faith and hope, many a struggling soul, many a bruised 
 reed, whom the narrow and exclusive ignorance of schools and 
 religionists had rejected. 
 
 "No human being but was sure of a patient, interested hearer in 
 him. 1 have seen him seat himself, hatless, beside a tramp on the 
 grass outside his gate in his eagerness to catch exactly what he had 
 to say, searching him, as they sate, in his keen kindly way with 
 question and look. With as great a horror of paui)erism and alms- 
 giving as any professed political economist, it was in practice very 
 hard to him to icfuse any one. The sight of unmistakable misery, 
 
152 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 however caused, covered to him, the multitude of sins. I recollect 
 his passing" backwarJs and forwards again and again — the strong 
 impulsive will for once irresolute — between the breakfast-room and 
 a miserable crying woman outside, and 1 cannot forget, though 
 twenty-five years have passed since, the unutterable look of pain 
 and disgust with which, when he had decided to refuse the request, 
 he said, ' Look there ! ' as he pointed to his own well-furnished 
 table. 
 
 " Nothing roused him to anger so much as cant. Once a 
 scoundrel, on being refused, and thinking that at a parsonage and 
 with a parson it would be a successful trick, fell on his knees on 
 the door-step, turned up the whites of his eyes and began the dis- 
 gusting counterfeit of a prayer. In an instant the man found him- 
 self, to his astonishment, seized by collar and wrist, and being 
 swiftly thrust towards the gate, with a firm grip and a shake that 
 deprived him of all inclination to resist, or, till he found himself 
 safe outside it, even to remonstrate. 
 
 '■'■ He had at that time great physical strength and activity, and 
 an impetuous, restless, nervous energy, which I have never seen 
 equalled. All his strength, physical, mental, and moral, seemed 
 to find expression in his keen grey eyes, which gazed, with the look 
 of an eagle, from under massive brows, divided from each other by 
 two deep perpendicular furrows — at that time, together with the 
 two equally deep lines from nostril to mouth, very marked features 
 in his face. One day, in a neighbors yard, a large savage dog flew 
 out at him, straining at its chain. He walked up to it, scolding it, 
 and by mere force of eye, voice, and gesture, drove it into its 
 kennel, close to which he stopped, keeping his eye on the cowed 
 animal, as it growled and moved uneasily from side to side. He 
 had done the same thing often before, and had even pulled an in- 
 furiated dog out of its kennel by its chain, after having driven it in. 
 
 " By boyish habits and tastes a keen sportsman, the only sport 
 he ever enjoyed at this time was an occasional day's trout or pike 
 fishuig, or throwing a fly for an hour or two during his afternoon's 
 •walk over the little stream that bounded his parish. Hunting he 
 had none. And in later years, when he did hunt occasionally, it 
 was generally a matter of two or three hours on an old horse, taken 
 as a relaxation in, the midst of work, not, as with most other men, 
 as a day's work in itself Fond as he was of horses, he never in 
 his life had one worth fifty pounds, so little self-indulgent was he. 
 He never then, or afterwards — so far as I know — went out shoot- 
 
 "Though exercising intense self control, he was very restless and 
 excitable. Constant movement was a relief and almost a necessity ' 
 to him. His study opened by a door of its own upon the garden, 
 and most of his sermons and books were thought out and composed 
 as he paced up and down there, at all hours and in all weathers, 
 
Mr. Maurice. 153 
 
 his hands behind his back, generally smoking a long clay pipe ; for 
 tobacco had, as he found by experience — having once tried a year's 
 total abstinence from it — an especially soothing beneficial effect 
 upon him. He ate hurriedly, and it was an effort to him to sit still 
 through a meal. His coat frequently had a white line across the 
 back, made by his habit of leaning against the whitened chimney- 
 piece of the dining-room during breakfast and dinner. Once in the 
 long summer days we were condemned to a more than usually dull 
 dinner-party at a neighbor's house, where the only congenial person 
 was a young scientific doctor from the next parish. After dinner, 
 it being broad daylight, we were all in the garden, and opposite to 
 us were two high thick-foliaged trees. I do not know which of 
 the two suggested it, but in an instant his coat and the doctor's 
 were off, and they were racing each other, each up his tree, like 
 schoolboys, one gettmg first to the top, the other first down again 
 to the ground. 
 
 "Of society he had then very little, and it was rarely and un- 
 willingly that he passed an evening away from home. He did not 
 seek it, and it had not yet begun to seek him. Indeed, at no time 
 was general society a congenial element to him j and those who 
 knew him only thus, did not know him at his best. A few intimate 
 friends, and now and then a stranger, seeking his advice on some 
 matter, would come for a night or a Sunday. Amongst the former, 
 and honored above all, was Mr. Maurice. One of his visits hap- 
 pened at a time when we had been startled by a burglary and 
 murder at a parsonage a few miles off, and had armed ourselves 
 and barricaded the rambling old Rectory in case of an attack. In 
 the middle of the night an attempt was made to force open the 
 back door, which roused us all, and we rushed down stairs with 
 pistols, gunSj and blunderbuss, to expel the thieves, who, however, 
 had taken alarm and made off. Mr. Maurice, the only unarmed 
 and the coolest man amongst us, was quietly going out alone, in 
 the pitch darkness, into the garden in pursuit of them, when Mr. 
 Kingsley fortunately came upon him and stopped him ; and the 
 two passed the rest of the night together talking over the study-fire 
 till morning came. 
 
 " Many a one has cause to remember that Study, its lattice 
 window (in later years altered to a bay), its great heavy door, 
 studded with large projecting nails, opening upon the garden ; its 
 brick floor covered with matting ; its shelves of heavy old folios, 
 with a fishing-rod, or landing-net, or insect-net leaning against 
 them ; on the table, books, writing materials, sermons, manuscript, 
 proofs, letters, reels, feathers, fishing-flies, clay-pipes, tobacco. On 
 the mat, perhaps — the brown eyes, set in thick yellow hair, and 
 gently-agitated tail, asking indulgence for the intrusion — a long- 
 bodied, short-legged Dandy Dinmont Scotch terrier, wisest, hand- 
 somest, most faithfiil, most memorable of its race. When the rest 
 
154 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 of the household went to bed, he would ask his guest in, ostensibly 
 to smoke. The swing-door would be flung open and slam heavily 
 after him, as it al\va3^s did, for he would never stop to catch and 
 close it. And then in the quiet of night, when no fresh face could 
 come, no interruption occur to distract him, he would give himself 
 wholly to his guest, taking up whatever topic the latter might sug- 
 gest, whatever question he might ask, and pouring out from the 
 full stores of his knowledge, his quick intuitive sagacity, his ready 
 sympathy. Then it was, far more than in the excitement and dis- 
 traction of many voices and many faces, that he was himself, that 
 the true man appeared ; and it was at times such as these that he 
 came to be known and trusted and loved, as few men ever have 
 been, as no man has been whom I ever knew. 
 
 " He had to a wonderful degree the power of abstraction and 
 concentration, which enabled him to arrange and elaborate a whole 
 sermon, or a chapter of a book, while walking, riding, or even fly- 
 fishing, without making a note, so as to be able on his return to 
 write or dictate it in clear terse language as fast as pen could move. 
 He would read a book and grasp its essential part thoroughly in a 
 time so short that it seemed impossible that his eyes could have 
 traversed its pages. Compared with other men who have written 
 or thought much, he worked for a few hours in the day, and with- 
 out much system or regularity ; but his application was so intense 
 that the strain upon his vital powers was very great. Nor when he 
 ceased could his brain rest. Except during sleep, — and even that 
 was characteristic, so profound was it, — repose seemed impossible 
 to him for body or mind. So that he seemed to live three days, as 
 it were, while other men were living one, and already foresaw that 
 there would be for him no great length of years. 
 
 " Connected with this rapid living was a certain impatience of 
 trifles, an inaccuracy about details, a haste in drawing conclusions, 
 a forgetfulness of times and seasons, and of words lightly spoken 
 or written, and withal an impulsive and almost reckless generosity, 
 and fear of giving pain, which sometimes placed him at an unfair 
 disadvantage and put him formally in the wrong when substantially 
 he was in the right. It led him, too, to take too hastily a favor- 
 able estimate of almost every one with whom he came personally 
 into contact, so that he was liable to suffer from misplaced con- 
 fidence ; while in the petty matters of daily life it made him a bad 
 guardian of his own interests, and but for the wise and tender 
 assistance that was ever at his side would almost have overwhelmed 
 him with anxieties. 
 
 " In the pulpit, and even at his week-day cottage-lectures, where, 
 from the population of his parish being so scattered, he had some- 
 times scarcely a dozen hearers, he was at that time eloquent be- 
 yond any man I ever heard. For he had the two essential con- 
 stituents of eloquence, a strong man's intensity and clearness of 
 
Hesitatiofi in Speech. 155 
 
 conviction, and a command of words, not easy or rapid, but sure 
 and unhesitating, an unfailing instinct for the one word, the most 
 concrete and pictorial, the strongest and the simplest, which 
 expressed Jiis thought exactly. 
 
 ''Many have since then become familiar with his preaching, 
 many more with his published sermons, but few comparatively can 
 know what it was to hear him, Sunda)^ after Sunday, in his own 
 church and among his own people, not preach only, but read, or 
 rather pray, the prayers of the Church-service. vSo completely was 
 he in harmony with these prayers, so fully did they satisfy him, that 
 with all his exuberance of thought and imagination, it seemed as if 
 for him there was nothing to be asked for beyond what they asked 
 for. So that in his cottage-lectures, as in his own household wor- 
 ship, where he was absolutely free to use any words he chose, I 
 scarcely ever heard him use a word of prayer other than the words 
 of the Prayer-book. 
 
 " In conversation he had a painful hesitation in his speech, which 
 diminished as he got older, though it never wholly left him. Bat 
 in preaching, and in speaking with a set purpose, he was wholly 
 free from it. He used to say that he could speak for God but not 
 for himself, and took the trial — and to his keenly sensitive nature it 
 was no small one, — patiently and even thankfully, as having by 
 God's mercy saved him from many a temptation to mere brilliancy 
 and self-seeking. The successful effort to overcome this difficulty 
 increased instead of diminishing the impressiveness of his voice, 
 for to it was partly due the strange, rich, high-pitched, musical 
 monotone in which he prayed and preached, the echo of which, as 
 it filled his church, or came borne on the air through the open 
 window of a sick room, seems to travel over the long past years 
 and kindle his words afresh, as I read them in the cold dead page. 
 
 " And as it was an unspeakable blessing to Eversley to nave him 
 for its Rector, so also it was an inestimable benefit to him to have 
 had so early in life a definite work to do which gave to his generous 
 sympathetic impulses abundant objects and responsibilities and a 
 clear purpose and direction. Conscious, too, as he could not but 
 be, of great powers, and impatient of dictation or control, the 
 repose and isolation of a country parish afforded him the best and 
 healthiest opportunities of development, and full liberty of thought 
 and speech, with sufficient leisure for reading and study. 
 
 " Great as was his love of natural science, in so many of its 
 branches, his genius was essentially that of a poet. Often a time 
 of trouble and sadness — and there was in him a strong undercurrent 
 of sadness at all times, — would result in the birth of a lyrical poem 
 or song, on a subject wholly unconnected with that which occupied 
 him, the production of which gave him evident relief, as though in 
 some mysterious way his mind was thereby disburdened and set free 
 for the reception of uew thoughts and impressions. In June, 1851, 
 
156 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 he preached a powerful sermon to working men in a London 
 church. No sooner had he finished it than the incumbent who 
 had asked him to preach, rose in the reading-desk and denounced 
 it. It was a painful scene, which narrowly escaped ending in a 
 riot, and he felt keenly — not the insult to himself — but the dis- 
 credit and scandal to the Church, the estrangement that it would 
 be likely to increase between the clergy and the working men. He 
 came home the day after, wearied and worn out, obliged to stop 
 to rest and refresh himself at a house in his parish during his after- 
 noon's walk. That same evening he brought in a song that he had 
 written, the ' Three Fishers,' as though it were the outcome of it 
 all ; and then he seemed able to put the matter aside, and the 
 current of his daily life flowed as before. 
 
 " Not that he at this time — or indeed at any time — wrote micch 
 verse. Considering that what the world needed vvas not verse, 
 however good, so much as sound knowledge, sound reasoning, 
 sound faith, and above all, as the fruit and evidence of the last, 
 sound morality, he did not give free rein to his poetical faculty, 
 but sought to make it his servant, not his master, to use it to 
 illuminate and fix the eyes of men on the truths of science, of 
 social relationship, of theology, of morality. His books — and they 
 are many — are the living witnesses of the fruit of these efforts, of 
 the many purposes, the varied subjects, on which he employed the 
 gift that was in him. The letters which he received in countless 
 numbers, often from utter strangers who knew nothing of him but 
 from his books, seeking counsel on the most delicate and important 
 matters of life, testify how great a gift it was, how truly and 
 telhngly it was used. 
 
 "In reading all his writings, on whatever subject, it must not be 
 forgotten that he was a poet, — that he could not help think:'ng, 
 feeling, and writing as a poet. Patience, industry, a memory for 
 detail, he had, even logical and inductive power of a certain in- 
 tuitive intermittent kind, not sustained, indeed, or always reliable, 
 for his was not a logical, or in details an accurate mind, and surface 
 inconsistencies are not hard to find in his writings ; but as a poet, 
 even if he saw all sides, he could not express them all at once. 
 The very keenness of his sympathy, the intensity with which he 
 realized all that was passing around him, made it impossible for 
 him to maintain the calm unruffled judgment of men of a less fiery 
 temperament, or to abstract and devote himself to the pursuit of 
 any one branch of study without being constantly distracted from it 
 and urged in some new direction by the joys and sorrows of the 
 surging world around, to seek if by any means he might find a 
 medicine to heal its sickness. 
 
 " Hence it may, perhaps, be that another generation will not 
 fully realize the wide-spread influence, the great power, he exer- 
 cised through his writings. For, in a sense, it may be said that, as 
 
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A Radical and Chartist. 157 
 
 to some of thein, not their least merit is that in part they will not 
 live, except as the seed lives in the corn which grows, or water in 
 the plant which it has revived. For their power often lay mainly 
 in the direction of their aim at the special need of the hour, the 
 memory of which has passed, or will pass, away. As his ' Master,' 
 as he affectionately and humbly called Mr. Maurice, was a theo- 
 logian, and, in its original sense, a ' Prophet,' so Mr. Kingsley, as 
 Piiest and Poet, gloried in interpreting, expanding, applying him. 
 ' 1 think this Avill explain a good deal of Maurice,' was the single 
 remark I heard him make when he had completed 'Yeast.' 
 
 " In later years, as his experience widened, his judgment ripened, 
 his conclusions were more calmly formed. But his genius was 
 essentially of a kind that conies to maturity early, when the imagi- 
 nation is still vivid, the pulses of life beat fastest, and the sym- 
 pathies and affections are most passionately intense. And I 
 venture to think that these comparatively early years were amongst 
 the best of his life, best in all senses. It was at this time, the first 
 half of the year 1850, that he completed 'Alton Locke,' which, 
 containing though it may more faults, sweeping accusations, hasty 
 conclusions, than any of his writings, is nevertheless his noblest 
 and most characteristic book — at once his greatest poem and his 
 grandest sermon. 
 
 " With the great outside world, with the world of politicians and 
 the press, and still more with the religious world, so called, as 
 represented by the religious newspapers, he was in those years at 
 open war. Popular as he afterwards became, it is difficult now to 
 realize how great was the suspicion, how bitter the attacks, 
 especially from the religious newspapers, which his books and 
 sermons drew down upon him. Not that he in general cared much 
 for praise or blame from the newspaper press, so venal and un- 
 principled did he — not without reason — consider most of it, Whig, 
 Tory, Radical, and religious. At that time he did not take in or 
 read any daily paper. The Spectator, then edited by Mr. Rintoul, 
 and with Mr. Brimley for its chief critic, was almost his only source 
 of news. 
 
 " It was then about two years after the events of 1848, and for 
 him the one all-important and absorbing question of Politics was 
 the condition, physical and mental, of the working-classes and the 
 poor in town and country. On that question he considered that 
 all the leading parties of the legislature had alike shown themselves 
 indifferent and incapable. This conviction, and a deep sympathy 
 with the suffering poor, had made him a Radical. Nay, on at least 
 one occasion, he publicly and deliberatety declared himself a 
 Chartist — a name which then meant a great deal,-^and for a clergy- 
 man to do this was an act the boldness of which it is difficult to 
 appreciate now. 
 
 " So vividly did he realize the sufferings of the poor, so keenly 
 
158 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 did he feel what he deemed the callousness and the incompetence 
 of the Government to alleviate them, and the mass of the upper 
 and middle classes, that at times he seemed to look, with trembling, 
 for the coming of great and terrible social convulsions, of a • day of 
 the Lord,' such as Isaiah looked for, as the inevitable fate of a 
 world grown evil, yet governed still by a righteous God. In later 
 years this feeling gradually left him — alread}', perhaps, it was 
 beginning to fade. But it was no mere pulpit or poetic gust. It 
 penetrated (I think) occasionally even to the lesser matters of 
 daily life. Late one dark night he called me out to him into the 
 garden to listen to a distant sound, which he told me was a fox's 
 bark, bidding me to remember it, for foxes might soon cease to 
 be in England, and I might never hear one bark again. 
 
 " This phase of his life has been described by one who knew it 
 in an earlier stage, and far better than I. I will only say that, 
 looking back upon his daily life and conversation at that time, I 
 believe he was democratic in his opinions rather than in his instincts, 
 more by force of conviction than by natural incHnation. A doc- 
 trinaire, or a lover of change for the sake of change, he never was ; 
 and when he advocated democratic measures, it was more as a 
 means to an end than because he altogether liked the means. From 
 the pulpit, and with his pen, he claimed brotherhood with all men. 
 No man in his daily intercourse respected with more scrupulous cour- 
 tesy the rights, the dignity of the humblest. But he instinctively dis- 
 liked a 'beggar on horseback.' Noblesse oblige^ the true principle 
 of feudalism, is a precept which shines out conspicuously in all his 
 books, in all his teaching, at this period of his life, as at all others. 
 
 "In later years his convictions became more in accord with this 
 natural tendency of his mind, and he gradually modified or aban- 
 doned his democratic opinions, thereby, of course, di^awing down 
 upon himself the reproach of inconsistency from those who con- 
 sidered that he had deserted them. To me, looking back at what 
 he was when he wrote ' Yeast,' and ' Alton Locke,' the change 
 seems rather the natural development of his mind and character 
 under more or less altered circumstances, partly because he saw 
 the world about him really improving, partly because by experience 
 he found society and other existing institutions more full of healthy 
 life, more available as instruments of good, more willing to be 
 taught, than he had formerly thought. 
 
 " pjut, at that time, in his books and pamphlets, and often in 
 his daily familiar speech, he was pouring out the whole force of his 
 eager, passionate heart, in wrath and indignation, against starva- 
 tion wages, stifling workshops, reeking alleys, careless landlords, 
 roofless and crowded cottages, hard and canting religion. His 
 'Poacher's Widow' is a piercing, heart-rending cry to heaven for 
 vengeance against the oppressor. ' Thera is a righteous God,' is 
 its burthen, ' and such things cannot and shall not, remain to de- 
 
The Bristol Riots. 159 
 
 face the world which He has made. Laws, constitutions, cliurches, 
 are none of His if they tolerate such ; they are accursed, and 
 they uuist perish — destroy what they may in their fall. Nay, they 
 will perish in their own corruption.' 
 
 " One day, as he was reading with me, something led him to tell 
 me of the Bristol Riots of 1832. He was in that year a schoolboy 
 of thirteen, at Bristol, and had shpped away, fascinated by the 
 tumult and the horror, into the midst of it. He described — rap- 
 idly pacing up and down the room, and, with glowing, saddened 
 face, as though the sight were still before his eyes, — the brave, 
 patient soldiers sitting hour after hour motionless on their horses, 
 the blood streaming from wounds on their heads and faces, wait- 
 ing for the order which the miserable, terrified Mayor had not 
 courage to give ; the savage, brutal, hideous mob of inhuman 
 wretches plundering, destroying, burning ; casks of spirits broken 
 open and set flowing in the streets, the wretched creatures drink- 
 ing it on their knees from the gutter, till the flame from a burning 
 house caught the stream, ran down it with a horrible rushing sound, 
 and, in one dreadful moment, the prostrate drunkards had become 
 a row of blackened corpses. Lastly, he spoke of the shameless- 
 ness and the impunity of the guilty ; the persecution and the 
 suicide of the innocent. 
 
 "'That sight,' he said, suddenly turning to me, 'made me a 
 Radical.' 
 
 '' 'Whose fault is it,' I ventured to ask, ' that such things can be ? ' 
 
 " ' Mine,' he said, ' and yours.' 
 
 " I understood partly then, I have understood better since, 
 what his Radicalism Avas. 
 
 " From his home lile I scarcely dare, even for a moment, try to 
 lift the veil. I will only say that having had the priceless blessing 
 of admission to it, the daily sight of him in the closets of his home 
 relations has left me a deeper debt of gratitude, and more precious 
 memories, created higher hopes and a higher ideal, than all other 
 manifestations combined of his character and intellect. To his 
 wife — so he never shrank from, affirming in deep and humble 
 thankfulness — he owed the whole tenor of his life, all that he had 
 worth living for. It was true. And his every word and look, and 
 gesture of chivalrous devotion for more than thirty years, seemed 
 to show that the sense of boundless gratitude had become part of 
 his nature, was never out of the undercurrent of his thoughts. 
 Little thinking that he was to be taken first, and with a prospect 
 of a long agony of loneliness imminent from hour to hour, the last 
 flash of genius from his breaking heart was to gather into three 
 sim])le, pregnant words, as a last oft'ering to her, the whole story 
 of his life, of the Faith he preached and lived in, of his marriage, 
 blessed, and yet to be blessed. He was spared that agony. Over 
 his giave first arc written his words, 
 
 'Amavimus, ainamus, amabimus. '" 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 1852. 
 
 Aged s^. 
 
 Strike in the Iron-Trade — Correspondence on Social and Metaphysical Ques- 
 tions — Mr. Erskine comes to Fir Grove — Parson Lot's last Words — Birth of 
 his youngest Daughter — Letter from Frederika Bremer. 
 
 The short holiday of the past year had so far invigorated Charles 
 Kingsley that he worked without a curate for a time. The literary 
 work was hampered by the lieavy correspondence, principally with 
 strangers, who little knew what labor each letter cost him. Of 
 one very valuable series of letters with the son of a clergyman, a 
 young man of atheistical opinions, connected with the " Reasoner," 
 /^/ewspaper, and who eventually died a professing Christian, only 
 tw^, letters are preserved, the rest having been by the will of their 
 owner destroyed at his death, as referring to a phase in his life 
 which it would be painful to his family to recall. Another series, 
 to Thomas Cooper, the Chartist, though spread over this and 
 several years, will be given together in a later chapter. His liter- 
 ary work consisted of " Hypatia," now coming out monthly in 
 ''Eraser's Magazine;" "Phaeton," and a reply to an attack on 
 Christian Socialism in " Eraser's Magazine," which was not in- 
 serted. In the summer he amused himself by trying his hand at 
 hexameters, and began the poem of " Andromeda." His parish 
 work prevented his helping personally in the Co-operative Move- 
 ment in London ; but he was consulted from time to time by the 
 Council of Promoters, and in the great lock-out of the Iron Trade 
 in January he wrote to explain his views on the matter. This let- 
 ter " will show," as Mr. Hughes truly says, " how far Kingsley was 
 an encourager of ' violent measures or views.' " 
 
 TO TOM HUGHES, ESQ. 
 
 EvERSLEY, January 28, 1852. 
 
 " You may have been surprised at my having taken no part in 
 this Amalgamated Iron Trades' matter. And I think that I am 
 
Masters and Men. i6i 
 
 bound to say why I have not, and how far I wish my friends to 
 interfere in it. 
 
 " I do think that we, the Council of Promoters, shall not be 
 wise in interfering between masters and men ; because — i. I 
 question whether the points at issue between them can be fairly 
 understood by any person not conversant with the practical de- 
 tails of the trade 
 
 "2. Nor do I think they have put their case as well as they 
 might. For instance, if it be true that they themselves have in- 
 vented many, or most, of the improvements in their tools and ma- 
 chinery, they have an argument in favor of keeping out unskilled 
 laborers, which is unanswerable, and yet what they have never 
 used — viz. : 'Your masters make hundreds and thousands by these 
 improvements, Avhile we have no remuneration for this inventive 
 talent of ours, but rather lose by it, because it makes the introduc- 
 tion of unskilled labor more easy. Therefore the only way in 
 which we can get anything like a payment for this inventive faculty 
 of which we make you a present over and above our skilled labor, 
 for which you bargained, is to demand that we, who invent the 
 machines, if we cannot have a share in the profits of them, shall 
 at least have the exclusive privilege of using them, instead of their 
 being, as now, turned against us.' That, I think, is a fair argu- 
 ment ; but 1 have seen nothing of it from any speaker or writer. 
 
 " 3. I think whatever battle is fought, must be fouglit by "tlie 
 men themselves. The present dodge of the Manchester school is 
 to cry out against us, as Greg did, ' These Christian Socialists are 
 a set of mediaeval parsons, who want to hinder the independence 
 and self-help of the men, and bring them back to absolute feudal 
 maxims ; and then, with the most absurd inconsistency, when we 
 get up a Co-operative workshop, to let the men work on the very 
 independence and self-help of which they talk so fine, they turn 
 round and raise just the opposite yell, and cry, 'The men can't be 
 independent of capitalists ; these associations will fail because the 
 men are helping themselves' — showing that what they mean is, 
 that the men shall be independent of every one but themselves — 
 independent of legislators, parsons, advisers, gentlemen, noblemen, 
 and every one that tries to help them by moral agents ; but the 
 slaves of the capitalists, bound'to them by a servitude increasing 
 instead of lightening with their numbers. Now, the only way in 
 which we can clear the cause of this calumny, is to let the men 
 fight their own battle ; to prevent any one saying, ' These men are 
 the tools of dreamers and fanatics,' which would be just as ruin- 
 ously blackening to them in the public eyes, as it would be to let 
 the cry get abroad, ' This is a Socialist movement, destructive of 
 rights of property, Conmiunism, Louis Blanc, and the devil, &c.' 
 You know the infernal stuff which the devil gets up on such 
 occasions — having no scruples about calling himself hard names 
 II 
 
1 62 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 ■ when it suits his purpose, to blind and frighten respectable old 
 women. 
 
 " Moreover, these men are not poor distressed needle-women 
 or slop-workers. They are the most intelligent and best educated 
 workmen, receiving incomes often higher than a gentleman's son 
 whose education has cost looo/. ; and if they can't fight their own 
 battles, no men in England can, and the people are not ripe for 
 association, and we must hark back into the competitive rot heap 
 again. All, then, that we can do is, to give advice when asked — 
 to see that they have, as far as we can get at them, a clear stage 
 and no favor, but not by pubhc, but by private influence. 
 
 " But we can help them in another way by showing them the 
 way to associate. That is quite a distinct question from their quar- 
 rel with their masters, and we shall be very foolish if we give the 
 press a handle for mixing up the two. We have a right to say to 
 masters, men, and public, ' We know, and care nothing about the 
 iron strike. Here are a body of men coming to us, wishing to be 
 shown how to do that which is a right thing for them to do — well 
 or ill off, strike or no strike, namely, associate ; and we will help 
 and teach them to do that to the very utmost of our power.' 
 
 "The Iron Workers' co-operative shops will be watched with 
 lynx eyes, calumniated shamelessly. Our business will be to tell 
 the truth about them, and fight manfully with our pens for them. 
 But we shall never be able to get the ears of the respectabilities 
 and the capitalists, if we appear at this stage of the business. What 
 we must say is, ' If you are needy and enslaved, we will fight for 
 you fiom pity, whether you be associated or competitive. But you 
 are neither needy, nor, unless you choose, enslaved ; and therefore 
 we will only fight for you in proportion as you become associates. 
 Do that, and see if we can't stand hard knocks for your sake.' " 
 
 We now come to the more private correspondence of the year. 
 
 TO » , ESQ.* 
 
 EvERSLEY, Whit Tuesday, 1852. 
 
 "My Dear Mr. , 
 
 " Sad as your letter was, it gave me much pleasure : it is al- 
 ways a pleasure to see life springing out of death — health returning 
 after disease, though, as doctors know, the recovery from asphyxia 
 or drowning is always as painful as the temporary death itself was 
 
 painless P'aith is born of doubt. 'It is not life but 
 
 death where nothing stirs.' I take all these struggles of yours 
 
 * A young man of nineteen, to whom he was personally a stranger, but who 
 wrote to him laying bare his whole heart, having woke up from a course of sin 
 and unbelief in black despair. 
 
Sympathy with Young Men. 163 
 
 as simply so many signs that your Father in heaven is treating you 
 as a father, that He has not forsaken you, is not offended with you, 
 but is teaching you in the way best suited to your own idiosyn- 
 crasy, the great lesson of lessons. ' Empty thyself, and God will 
 fill thee.' 1 am not a man of a mystical or romantic turn of mind; 
 but I do say and know, both from reason and experience, that we 
 must be taught, even though it be by being allowed for awhile to 
 make beasts of ourselves, that we are of ourselves, and in our- 
 selves, nothing better than — as you see in the savage — a sort of 
 magnified beast of prey, all the more terrible for its wondrous fa- 
 culties ; that neither intellect nor strength of will can save us from 
 degradation ; that they may be just as powerful for evil as for 
 good ; and that what we want to make us true men^ over and 
 above that which we bring into the world with us, is some sort of 
 Godgiven instinct, motive, and new principle of fife in us, which 
 shall make us not only see the right, and the true, and the noble, 
 but love it, and give up our wills and hearts to it, and find in the 
 confession of our own weakness a strength, in the subjection of 
 our own will a freedom, in the utter carelessness about self a self- 
 respect, such as we have never known before. 
 
 "Do not — do not fancy that any confession of yours to me can 
 lower you in my eyes. My dear young man, I went through the 
 same devil's sewer, with a thousand times the teaching and advan- 
 tages which you have had. Who am I, of all men, to throw stones 
 at you ? But take your sorrows, not to me, but to your Father in 
 heaven. If that name. Father, mean anything, it must mean that 
 He will not turn away from His wandering child, in a way in which 
 you would be ashamed to turn away from yours. If there be pity, 
 lasting aff"ection, patience in man, they must have come from 
 Him. They, above all things, must be His likeness. Believe 
 that He possesses them a million times more fully than any human 
 being. 
 
 "St. Paul knew well, at least, the state of mind in which you are. 
 He said that he had found a panacea for it ; and his words, to judge 
 from the way in which they have taken root, and spread, and con- 
 quered, must have some depth and life in them. Why not try 
 them ? Just read the first nine chapters of St. Paul's Papistic to 
 the Romans, and write me your heart about them. But never 
 mind what anybody, Unitarian or Trinitarian,* may say they mean. 
 Read them as you would a Greek play — taking for granted that 
 they mean the simplest and most obvious sense which can be put 
 upon them. 
 
 " Let me hear more — I long for another letter. I need not say 
 that I consider your confidence an honor, and shall keep it sacred. 
 
 " Do not consult ******, \ love him well, but he has no 
 
 * His correspondent had been brouglit up a Unitarian. 
 
164 Charles Kiitgsley. 
 
 evangel for you. I should be glad to see him in the state you are 
 in now. It would be nearer health." 
 
 In the summer of 1852 the Right Hon. Thomas Erskine, with 
 his family, settled at Fir Grove, Eversley. For the next twelve 
 happy years he was friend and counsellor to the Rector, and to the 
 parish his influence and example was a priceless blessing. The 
 Judge and his family reheved him of a load of expense and conse- 
 quent anxiety in the matter of the parish charities, which had 
 hitherto fallen almost exclusively on the Rector ; regular district 
 visiting began, and at Fir Grove, which was henceforth like a second 
 home to him and his wife, some of the most charming friendships of 
 that period of his life were formed. It was a new era in Eversle)'', 
 and with fresh help and fresh hope he worked cheerfully, and had 
 the heart once more to turn his thoughts to poetry. The " Chris- 
 tian Socialist" at this time came to an end, and Parson Lot spoke 
 his " last words " in its last number, concluding thus : — 
 
 " Let us say little and work the more. We shall be the more 
 respected, and the more feared too for it. People will begin to 
 believe that v/e really know what we want, and really do intend to 
 get it, and really believe in its righteousness. And the spectacle 
 of silent working faith is one at once so rare and so noble, that it 
 tells more, even on opponents, than ten thousand platform pyro- 
 technics. In the meantime it will be no bad thing for us if we 
 are beaten sometimes. Success at first is dangerous, and defeat 
 an excellent medicine for testing people's honesty — for setting 
 them earnestly to work to see what they want, and what are the 
 best methods of attaining it. Our sound thrashings as a nation 
 in the first French war were the making of our armies ; and it is 
 good for an idea, as well as for a man, to ' bear the yoke in his 
 youth.' The return match will come off", and many, who are now 
 our foes, will then be our friends ; and in the meantime, 
 
 ' The proper impulse lias been given, 
 Wait a little longer.' 
 
 "Parson Lot." 
 
 This was his last signature as Parson Lot. At the same time he 
 writes to the editor : " If you want an Epicedium, I send one. 
 It is written in a hurry, so if you like, reject it ; but I have tried to 
 get the maximum of terseness and melody. 
 
An Epicedium. 165 
 
 "So die, thou child of stormy dawn, 
 
 Thou winter flower, forlorn of nurse ; 
 Chilled early by the bigot's curse, 
 The pedant's frown, the worldling's yawn. 
 
 Fair death, to fall in teeming June, 
 When every seed which drops to earth 
 Takes root, and wins a second birth 
 
 From streaming shower and gleaming moon 
 
 Fall warm, fall fast, thou mellow rain ; 
 
 Thou rain of God, make fat the land ; 
 
 That roots, which parch in burning sand, 
 May bud to flower and fruit again. 
 
 To grace, perchance, a fairer morn 
 In mighty lands beyond the sea. 
 While honor falls to such as we 
 
 From hearts of heroes yet unborn. 
 
 Who in the light of fuller day, 
 Of loving science, holier laws, 
 Bless us, faint heralds of their cause, 
 
 Dim beacons of their glorious way. 
 
 Failure? while tide-floods rise, and boil 
 Round cape and isle, in port and cove, 
 Resistless, star-led from above : 
 
 What though our tiny wave recoil ? 
 
 "Jime 9, 1852. 
 
 " Charles Kingsley." 
 
 TO J. M. LUDLOW, ESQ. 
 
 EvERSLEY Rectory, June 6, 1852. 
 
 " Too tired, confused, and happy to work, I sit down for a 
 chat with yon. 
 
 " I. About the last number of ' Hypatia.' I dare say you are 
 right. I wanted, for artistic purposes, to keep those two chapters 
 cool and calm till just the very end of each ; and it is very difficult 
 to be quiet without also being dull. But this, you know, is only 
 after all rough copy; and such running criticisms are of the very 
 greatest helj) to me. About the ' Saga : ' I sent it to A^Tax Miiller, 
 who did not like it at all, he said ; because, though he highly ap- 
 proved of the form (and gave me a good deal of learned advice 
 in re), it was too rational and moral and rounded, he said, and not 
 irrational and vast, and dreamy, and hyperbolic — like a true saga. 
 But 1 told him, that as a parson to the English public, I was ex- 
 
1 66 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 pected to point a moral ; and so I put Miiller's criticism and yours 
 too into the mouth of Agihnund, who complains of its respectable 
 Benjamin Franklin tone. 
 
 "As for the monks : 'pon honor they are slow fellows — but then 
 they were so horribly slow in reality. And I can't see but that 
 Pambo's palaver in my tale is jusL what I find in Rosweyde's ' Vitse 
 Patrum,' and Athanases' ' Life of Anthony.' Almost every ex- 
 pression of Pambo's is a crib from some one, word for word. And 
 his instances are historic ones. Moreover, you must recollect, 
 that Arsenius was no mere monk, but a finished gentleman and 
 court intriguer — taken ill with superstition. ... As for the 
 Sermons,* I am very glad you like any of them. About what you 
 don't like, I will tell you honestly, I think that I have not said 
 anything too strong. People must be cured of their horrible 
 notions of God's arbitrary power — His ' satisfaction ' in taking ven- 
 geance — His inflicting a ])ermanent arbitrary curse as a penalty — 
 His being the author of suffering or evil in any way. I have been 
 driven to it by this. It is easy enough in the case of a holy per- 
 son to use the stock phrase of its having ' pleased God to afflict 
 them,' because one sees that the affliction is of use ; but you can't 
 and darn't say that God is pleased, i.e., satisfied, or rejoiced to 
 afflict poor wretched heathens in St. Giles's, to whom, as far as we 
 can see, the affliction is of no use, but the N&xy reverse. The 
 school formula (not a Scripture one at all, mind) works very well 
 in the school, when at his desk -or in the pulpit the good pedant 
 is bringing out his system to a select audience of ' Christian friends,' 
 and forgetting, he and they too, that outside the walls lies a whole 
 world who, he confesses himself, have no more to do with his for- 
 mula (at least till they find themselves in hell at last) than sticks or 
 stones. But if I am to preach a gospel, it must have to do with 
 the people outside the tract-and-sermon-world, as well as inside it ; 
 
 and then the formula, like most others, don't fit 
 
 ■ "If, however, I found it in Scripture, I should believe it : what I 
 want is — plain inductive proof from texts. The ' it has pleased 
 the Lord to bruise Him,' is just the very opposite. The pi.th and 
 marrow of the 53d of Isaiah being, that He of whom it speaks is 
 afflicted, not for the good of His own soul, but for others — that He 
 is ennobled by being sacrificed. It seems to me, that the only way 
 to escape the dilemma really is, to believe that God is what He 
 has revealed Himself to be — ' A Father.' If a child said, ' I was 
 naughty, and it pleased my father to whip me for it,' should we not 
 feel that the words were hollow and absurd ? And if F. died 
 to-morrow. God forbid that I should say of my Father in heaven, it 
 pleased Him to take her from me. If the Lord Jesus is the express 
 image of His Father's glory, then His Father cannot be like that. 
 
 * National Sermons, First Series. 
 
Sorrozv a?id its Lessons. 167 
 
 For could I dare believe that it would not pain the Blessed Lord 
 infinitely more than it would pain me, if He was compelled by my 
 sins, or by any other necessity of His government of this rebel- 
 lious world, to inflict on me, not to mention on the poor little chil- 
 dren, that bitter agony ? In the face of such real thoughts, school 
 terms vanish, and one has to rest on realities ; on the belief in 
 a human-hearted, loving, sorrowing Lord, and of A Father whose 
 
 image He, in some inexplicable way is or one would go mad. 
 
 And 1 have always found, in talking to my ]ieoi)le in private, that all 
 second-hand talk out of books about the benefits of affliction, was 
 rain against a window pane, blinding the view — but never entering. 
 But I ca?i make a poor wretch believe — ' the Lord Jesus is just as 
 sorry as you that you have compelled Him for a while to deliver 
 you over to Satan for the punishment of the flesh, that your soul 
 maybe saved thereby.' Till you can make them believe that God 
 is not pleased, but ^/jrpleased to afflict them, I never found them 
 any the better for their affliction. They take either a mere hypo- 
 critically fatahst view of their sorrow, or else they are terrified and 
 despairing, and fancy themselves under a curse, and God angry 
 with them, and are ready to cry, ' I^et us curse God and die ! If 
 God be against me, what matter who is for me?' And so with 
 * * * * J have been trying hard to make him believe that his 
 soriows come from himself and the devil, just because he has been 
 believing that they came from God. He has been believing and 
 telling me that ' he is under a curse : that God's wrath is perma- 
 nently abiding on him for acts committed at school years ago, 
 which never can be undone, and that therefore — ' If God be 
 against him, what matter who is for him ? ' 
 
 " Now I have been trying to tell him, as I do every one — ' If 
 God be for you, what matter who is against you ! ' I have been 
 saying to him what Anthony used to say, as Pambo quotes him to 
 Arsenius. I have been trying to make him understand that he is 
 not in the devil's hands one moment longer than he likes, because 
 God is as much the enemy of his sorrows as he is of his own, and 
 that the moment he will allow God to remov6' those sorrows, the 
 
 Lord will rejoice in doing so Am I to tell him it 
 
 pleased God that he should do such and such wrong, or am I to 
 tell him, that ' it pleased the devil into whose power, not God but 
 you yourself put yourself years ago, deliberately separating your 
 own will from God, and determining to be a law unto yourself, and 
 to do exactly what was right in the sight of your own eyes ? But 
 God abhors your misery ; God yearns to lift you out of it.' If I 
 can make him feel diat first, then, and then only, I can go on to 
 say, ' But He will not lift you out of it till it has taught you the 
 lesson which He intends you to learn ; ' because then (instead of 
 canting generalities, which, God forgive me, I too often use, and 
 feel ready to vomit my own duty soul out the next minute) I can 
 
1 68 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 tell him what lesson God intends him to learn by affliction, namely, 
 the very lesson which I have been trying to teach him, — the very 
 lesson which I preached in the three sermons on the cholera — that 
 God is the foe of all misery and affliction ; that He yearns to raise 
 us out of it, and to show us that in His presence is the fulness of 
 life and joy, and that nothing but our own wilfulness and imperfec- 
 tion keep us in it for an instant. I dare not say this of A. or B. I 
 leave them to impute sin to themselves, but I will impute to 
 myself, and not to God's will, the cause of every finger ache I 
 have, because I know that I nevel: had a sorrow which I did not 
 cause myself, or make necessary for myself by some sin of my 
 own ; and I will stand by the service of the ' Visitation of the 
 Sick,' which represents the man's sins as the reason of the sickness, 
 and his recovery as God's will and desire. ' He doth not afflict 
 willingly or grieve the children of men,' is a plain Scripture, and I 
 will not explain it away to suit any theory whatsoever about the 
 origin of evil ; but beheve that the first chapter of Job, and the two 
 accounts of David's numbering the people, tell us all we can know 
 about it. Thus, so far from allownig that what I say of God's 
 absolute love of our happiness and hatred of our misery is the half- 
 truth, which must be limited by anything else, I say it is the whole 
 truth, the root truth, which must limit all theories about the benefit 
 of suffering, or any other theories, and must be preached abso- 
 lutely, nakedly, unreservedly first, as the Lord Jesus preached it, 
 instead of any such theories or schemes (however true) to be of 
 any real benefit to men. 
 
 " I know all this is incoherent ; but I don't pretend to have 
 solved this or any other problem. If you prove to me seven large 
 self-contradictions in my own harangue it won't matter. All you 
 will do, will be to drive me to a Socratic dialogue, which is the 
 only way I can argue. 
 
 " This is the end of my say, which I could not finish the other 
 night." 
 
 TO THE SAME. 
 
 yune, 1852. 
 
 ** As Browning says : 
 
 ' Come in any shape, 
 As a victor crowned with vine. 
 Or a beaten slave, 
 Only come, 
 'Tis thy coming wliich I crave.' 
 
 " In three weeks' time, or a month at furthest, we shall be de- 
 lighted to see thee. My beloved roses will be just in glory, the 
 fish will be just in season ; thanks to the late spring. My old 
 
His Poetic Faculty. 169 
 
 hunter will be up from grass, and proud to carry you and me — per 
 gig — to see the best of men, John Paine, saint and hop-grower, of 
 Farnham, Surrey. Also we will talk of all matters in heaven and 
 earth. That is, unless I am so deeply unthankful, as indeed I am, 
 for all my blessings that the Giver finds it necessary, against His 
 will, to send some bitter among my paradise of sweets .... 
 
 But What has become of a huge packet I sent to you through 
 
 Louis? It contained a burlesque novel in G. W. Reynolds's style, 
 which I had highly finished, and would not lose not for no money. 
 It must and shall be found ; therefore disgorge ! 
 
 " Oh ! ah ! eh ! . . . . I have laid a poem and it won't 
 hatch ! Oh for Mr. Cantelo * and his ecc-ecc-ecc cackle callobion ! 
 . . . . Perseus and Andromeda. . . . T have written a lot 
 in blank verse, and a lot in the metre of Hood's 'Hero and Lean- 
 der ' (a noble poem, and so little known), and I can't please my- 
 self. Rhymed metres run away with you, and you can't get the 
 severe, curt, simple objectivity you want in them, and unrhymed 
 blank verse is very bold in my hands, because I won't write 
 'poetic diction,' but only plain English — and so I can't get mythic 
 grandeur enough. Oh for the spirit of Tennyson's ' OEnone ! ' 
 Write, pity, and advise. 
 
 ". . . What you say * * * writes to a friend about my ' ergon ' 
 being poetry is quite true. I could not write ' Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin,' and I can write poetry .... there is no denying it : 
 I do feel a different being when I get into metre — I feel like 
 an otter in the water, instead of an otter ashore. He can run fast 
 enough ashore, and keep the hounds at a tearing gallop, as my legs 
 found this spring in Snowdonia, but when he takes water, then in- 
 deed he becomes beautiful, full of divine grace and freedom, and 
 exuberance of power. Go and look at him in the Zoological Gar- 
 dens, and you'll see what I mean. When I have done ' Hypatia ' 
 I will write no more novels. I will write poetry — not as a profes- 
 sion — but I will keep myself for it, and I do think I shall do some- 
 thing that will live. I feel my strong faculty is that sense o^ form, 
 which, till I took to poetry, always came out in drawing, drawing, 
 but poetry is the true sphere, combining painting and music and 
 history all in one." 
 
 A friend lent him an old horse this year which gave him 
 constant amusement, and kept him in health, and he writes to Mr. 
 T. Hughes : — 
 
 " I had just done my work, and seen my poor, and dinner was 
 coming on the table yesterday — just four o'clock, — when the bow- 
 wows appeared on the top of the Mount, trying my patch of gorse ; 
 
 * Then hatching chickens by artificial heat at the Egyptian Hall. 
 
170 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 so I jumped up, left the cook shrieking, and off. He wasn't there, 
 but I knew where he was, for I keep a pretty good register of 
 foxes (ain't they my parishioners, and parts of my flock ?) ; and, as 
 the poor fellows had had a blank day, they were very thankful to 
 find themselves in five minutes going like mad. We had an hour 
 and a half of it — scent breast high as the dew began to rise (bleak 
 north-easter — always good weather), and if we had not crossed a 
 second fox, should have killed him in the open ; as it was we lost 
 him after sunset, after the fiercest grind I have had this nine years, 
 and I went back to my dinner. The old horse behaved beau- 
 tifully ; he is not fast, but in the enclosed woodlands he can live 
 up to any one and earned great honor by leaping in and out of the 
 Tvoddon ; only four more doing it, and one receiving a mucker. I 
 feel three years younger to-day. 
 
 " P.S. — The whip tells me there were three in the river together, 
 rolling over horse and man ! What a sight to have lost even by 
 being a-head. 
 
 '• Have you seen the story of the run of January 7, when Mr. 
 Woodburne's hounds found at Blackholme, at the bottom of 
 Windermere, and ended beyond Helvellyn, more than fifty miles 
 of mountain. After Applethwaite Crag (where the field lost them) 
 they had a ring on High Street (2700 feet) of an hour unseen by 
 mortal eye ; and after that were seen by shepherds in Patter- 
 dale, Brotker Water, top of Fairfield (2900) Dunnaid Gap ; and 
 then over the top of Helvellyn (3050) ; and then to ground on 
 Birkside Screes — I cannot find it on the maps. But what a poetic 
 thing ! Helvellyn was deep in frost and snow. Oh, that I could 
 Avrite a ballad thereanent. The thing has taken possession of me ; 
 but I can't find words. There was never such a run since we 
 were born ; and think of hounds doing the last thirty miles alone ! " 
 
 One of his many correspondents at this time was Frederika 
 Bremer, the Swedish novelist, Vi^ho, in the previous autumn among 
 other visitors,- paid a visit to Eversley Rectory. She had come to 
 England to see the Great Exhibition, but she expressed one still 
 stronger desire, which was to see Charles Kingsley, whose writings 
 had struck a deep chord in her heart. It would be needless to say 
 that he thought her one of the most highly cultivated women he 
 had ever conversed with, and her sweet gentleness and womanli- 
 ness attracted him still more than her intellect. After she left 
 Eversley, she sent him Esaia Tegner's " Frithiof's Saga," with this 
 inscription: "To the Viking of the New Age, Charles Kingsley, 
 this story of the Vikings of the Old, from a daughter of the Vikings, 
 his friend and admirer, Frederika Bremer." He had several letters 
 
Letter from Frederika Bremer. 171 
 
 from her, but there is only space for this one, sent with a copy of 
 her "Midnight Sun." 
 
 FREDERIKA BREMER TO CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 London, Nov. i, 1851. 
 "My young Friend, 
 
 "Will you allow me to call you in writing, in plain words, 
 what I have called and do call you in my mind and heart ? You 
 must think then it is a baptismal of the spirit and you must under- 
 stand it. I have received your books. They shall go with me 
 over the sea to my fatherland, and there in my silent home, I shall 
 read them, live in them, enjoy them deeply, intensely. I know it, 
 know it all the better since I have been with you. 1 have had a 
 dream sometimes of a young brother — like that one that was 
 snatched away from me in his youth ; like him but more ardent, a 
 young mind that I could like, love, sympathize with, quarrel with, 
 live vs'ith, influence, be influenced by, follow, through the thorny 
 path, through tropical islands, through storm and sunshine, higher 
 and higher ascending in the metamorphosis of existence. I had 
 that dream, that vision again when I saw you, that made me so sad 
 at parting. But let that pass. With much we must part. Much 
 must pass. More will remain. The communion of related souls 
 will remain to be revived again and again. I shall hear from you, 
 and I will write to you. Meantime my soul will hover about you 
 with the wings of blessing thoughts. 1 send you some books ; not 
 the one I thought of, I could not get a copy. But I send a copy 
 of my last book, the ' Midnight Sun.' As you are fond of Natural 
 History, the sketch of the people and provinces of Sweden in the 
 introduction may interest you, this much belongs to the natural 
 history of a country. The voyage up to the mountains of the mid- 
 night sun, the scenery there is perfectly true to nature ; I have 
 seen and lived it through myself Frithiof's Saga I take peculiar 
 pleasure in asking you to accept, as a true follower of Scandinavian 
 mind and life, and as the story of a spirit to whom your own 
 is nearly related. 
 
 "The universal, the tropical mind seems more embodied in man 
 in the rigid zones of the north, than in those of tropical nature. 
 (It is strange but it seems to me to be so) the old Viking's great- 
 ness was that he wanted to conquer the whole world and make 
 it his own. The mission of the spiritual Viking seems to me the 
 higher one to conquer the world to God. So is yours. God speed 
 you ! and He will ! God bless you and yours, your lovely wife 
 first among those, and lastly — me as one of yours in sisterly love." 
 
 In the autumn of 1852 an effort was made to open the Crystal 
 Palace on Sundays — a move which many thought would stem the 
 
T72 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 tide of Sunday drunkenness, and his friend Mr. George Grove 
 wrote to him on the subject. He replied — 
 
 TO GEORGE GROVE, ESQ. 
 
 October 28, 1852. 
 
 " I am in sad perplexity about your letter. I have been talking 
 it over with Maurice. He says he shall take the matter in hand 
 in his I>incoln's Inn sermons, and that it is a more fit thing for a 
 London than for a country parson, being altogether against my 
 meddling. My great hitch is that my family are strongly the other 
 way, and that although my father himself is very liberal on the mat- 
 ter, it would pain him dreadfully to see me in the wars with the 
 Evangelical party on that point. His health is bad, and he is very 
 nervous. You are sure to carry your point. But this I can do — • 
 I will sound through a friend the Morning Chrojiicle and Guardian. 
 A little good management on your company's part would get the 
 whole of the High Church on their side — you and the company are 
 as right as a church literally, for the Catholic doctrine and disci- 
 pline are on your side 
 
 "Don't fancy me afraid. You and the world know that I am not 
 that : but if I were to tell you all the little ins and outs which 
 make me shrink, you would see that I was right." 
 
 TO THE SAME. 
 
 ■ January 2, 1853. 
 
 " I send you an ex-cathednx opinion, which may do even 
 more good than if I appended my too notorious name. But yet I 
 use freely a pamphlet, here enclosed, by the Rev. Baldwin Brown,* 
 which I think the wisest and most eloquent speech, save Maurice's, 
 which I have seen on the matter. 
 
 "FOR PUBLICATION. 
 
 " My DEAR Grove, — T am much shocked to hear that this Anti- 
 Crystal-Palace Agitation is injuring the clergy in the estimation of 
 the laity. Those who have taken part in it must bear their own 
 burden ; for whatsoever they have said and done is really, and 
 ought to be clearly understood to be, the consequence of their own 
 party opinions, and not of the doctrines either of the Bible or of 
 the Church of England. The Church of England knows nothing 
 of that definition of the Sabbath as a fast ; which the Puritans bor- 
 rowed from the Pharisees and Rabbins of the most fallen and 
 
 * Minister of Brixton Independent Church, author of " The Higher Life," 
 " The Home Life," and a remarkable little volume published in 1875, entitled 
 " The Doctrine of Annihilation in the Light of the Gospel of Love." 
 
Letter to George Grove. 173 
 
 hideous period of Judaism, and which the Lord denounced again 
 and again as contrary to, and destructive of, the very idea and 
 meaning of the Sabbath. The Church of England calls Sunday a 
 feast-day, and not a fast ; and it is neither contrary to her ritual 
 letter, nor to her spirit, to invite on that day every Englishman to 
 refresh himself with the sight of the wonders of God's earth, or 
 with the wonders of men's art, which she considers as the results 
 of God's teaching and inspiration. 
 
 " The letter, moreover, as well as the spirit of the Bible is di- 
 rectly in favor of the arguments brought forward by the Crystal 
 Palace Company's advocates. The Sabbath, it declares, was made 
 for man. And man, it declares to be, not a niere ' soul to be 
 saved' (an expression nowhere used in Scripture, in its modern 
 sense of a spirit, to be got safely through to some future state of 
 bliss), but as consisting of body, soul, and spirit — meaning by soul 
 what we call intellect and feelings. And therefore any institution, 
 which like the Crystal Palace tends to give healthy and innocent 
 rest and refreshment to body, mind, and tastes, is in accordance in 
 a lower sphere certainly, but still directly in accordance with the 
 letter of the Sabbatical institution, as a day of rest made for man 
 as man. 
 
 " I think that you would find, — were any real danger to the Crys- 
 tal Palace scheme to require a wide-spread agitation in its favor, 
 that the High Church party, as well as the great majority of ' moder- 
 ate churchmen,' would coincide in this yiew, and that the present 
 outcry would be found to have proceeded only from that rapidly 
 decreasing Low Church party, which tries to unite most eclectically 
 and inconsistently a watery Calvinism with the profession of the 
 Catholic creeds and formularies of the Church of England. Firmly 
 convinced that in this case the Vox Populi coincides with the Vox 
 Dei, 
 
 " I remain, yours faithfully, 
 
 "A High Church Parson." 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 1853- 
 Aged 34. 
 
 The Rector in his Church — "Hypatia" Letters from Chevalier Bunsen — Mr, 
 Maurice's Theological Essays — Correspondence with Thomas Cooper. 
 
 The books which entailed so many letters, now also attracted 
 strangers to Eversley Church on Sunday. Officers from Sandhurst 
 would constantly walk over, and occasionally a stray clergyman 
 would be seen in the free sittings. 
 
 "Twenty-five Village Serm6ns" had been published in 1849, ^^^ 
 had been brought into notice by a review in the "Times," and 
 " Sermons on National Subjects," perhaps the most remarkable of 
 all his volumes of sermons, had just been brought out. His 
 preaching was becoming a great power. It was the speech of a 
 live man to living beings. 
 
 "Yes, my friends," he would say, "these are real thoughts. 
 They are what come into people's minds every day; and I am here 
 to talk to you about what is really going on in your soul and mine ; 
 not to repeat to you doctrines at second hand out of a book, and 
 say, ' There, that is what you have to believe and do, and if you do 
 not, you will go to hell ; ' but to speak to you as men of like pas- 
 sions with myself; as sinning, sorrowing, doubting, struggling hu- 
 man beings ; to talk to you of what is in my own heart, and will be 
 in your hearts too, some day, if it has not been already. . . ." 
 
 The Collect he invariably used before preaching for twenty-four 
 years was the one for the Second Sunday in Advent, till about six 
 years ago, when the question of prayer before sermon being dis- 
 cussed in his parish, he consulted his diocesan (Samuel, Bishop 
 Wilberforce), and decided to abide by his opinion. From that time 
 he used in the morning the Invocation to the Trinity, in the after- 
 noon the usual Collect and Lord's Prayer. 
 
 After he gave out his text, the poor men in the free sittings un- 
 der the pulpit would turn towards Tiim, and settle, themselves into 
 
As a Preacher. 
 
 175 
 
 an attitude of fixed attention. In preaching he would try to keep 
 still and calm, and fi-ee from all gesticulation ; but as he went on, 
 he had to grip and clasp the cushion on which his sermon rested, 
 in order to restrain the intensity of his own emotion ; and when, 
 in spite of himself, his hands would escape, they would be lifted 
 up, the fingers of the right hand working with a peculiar hovering 
 
 EVBRSLEY CHURCH. 
 
 movement, of which he was quite unconscious ; his eyes seemed 
 on fire, his whole frame worked and vibrated. It was riveting to 
 see as well as hear him, as his eagle glance penetrated every cor- 
 ner of the church, and whether there were few or many there, it 
 was enough for him that those who were present were human be- 
 ings, standing between two worlds, and that it was his terrible re- 
 sponsibility as well as high privilege, to deliver a message to each 
 and all. The great festivals of the church seemed to inspire him, 
 and his words would rise into melody. At Christmas, Easter, 
 
176 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 Whitsuntide, and on the Holy Trinity especially, his sermon be- 
 came a song of gladness ; during Advent, a note of solemn warn- 
 ing. On Good Friday, and through the Passion week evening ser- 
 vices, it would be a low and mournful chant, uttered in a deep, 
 plaintive, and at moments, almost agonised tone, which hushed his 
 congregation into a silence that might be felt. 
 
 The evening services for the Passion Week were given at an 
 hour to suit the laboring men on their way home from work, when 
 a few would drop into church, and to those few he preached a short 
 sermon of about fifteen minutes, which a London congregation 
 would have gone miles to hear. Those who were present, some- 
 times only fifteen to twenty besides his own family, will not forget 
 the dimly-lighted chuch in the twilight of the spring evenings, with 
 its little sprinkling of worshippers, and the silence as uf death and 
 the grave, when with a look which he never seemed to have at any 
 other season, he followed Christ through the sufferings of the Holy 
 Week, beginning with either the liii. or Ixiii. of Isaiah, on each day 
 its own event, from the First Communion to the Betrayal — the 
 Denial of Peter, the fate of Judas, on to the foot of the Cross. 
 And when " the worst was over," with what a gasp of relief was 
 Easter Even, with its rest and quietness, reached ; and with signi- 
 ficant words about that intermediate state, in which he so deeply 
 believed, he would lead our thoughts from the peaceful sepulchre 
 in the garden to the mysterious gate of Paradise. 
 
 Passion Week was, to him, a time of such real and terrible pain 
 that he always thanked God when it was over ; and on Easter day 
 he would burst forth into a song of praise once more, for the Blessed 
 Resurrection not only of Christ the Lord, but of man, and of the 
 dear earth he loved so well — spring after winter, birth after death. 
 Every gnat that danced in the sunshine on the blessed Easter 
 morn ; every blade of grass in the dear churchyard spoke of hope 
 and joy and a living God. And the flowers in the church, and the 
 graves decked with bright wreaths, would add to his gladness, as he 
 paced up and down before service. Many a testimony has come 
 to the blessing of those village sermons. "Twenty-five village 
 sermons," said a clergyman working in a great city parish, " like a 
 plank to a drowning man kept me from sinking in the 'blackness 
 of darkness,' which surrounds the unbeliever. Leaning upon these, 
 while carried about by every wind of doctrine, I drifted hither and 
 
Preparation of Sermons. 177 
 
 thither, at last, thanks be to God, I found standing ground." But 
 none who merely read them could tell what it was to hear them, 
 and to see him, and the look of inspiration on his face, as he 
 preached them. While to those his nearest and dearest, who looked 
 forward with an ever fresh intensity of interest to the Sunday 
 services week after week, year after year, each sermon came with 
 double emphasis from the knowledge that the daily life of the week 
 days was no contradiction to, but a noble carrying out of the words 
 preached in church. 
 
 His sermons owed much to the time he gave himself'for prepara- 
 tion. The Sunday services, while they exhausted him physically, 
 yet seemed to have the effect of winding his spirit up to higher 
 flights. And often late on Sunday evening he would talk over 
 with his wife the subject and text of the next week's sermon. On 
 Monday, he would, if possible, take a rest, but on Tuesday, to use 
 his own words, it would be set on the stocks. The text already 
 chosen, the method of treating it was sketched, and the first half 
 carefully thought out before it was dictated or written, then put by 
 for a day or two, while yet it was simmering in his brain, and finished 
 on Friday. He seldom put off his sermon till Saturday. 
 
 This year, begun at Eversley and ended at Torquay, was one of 
 much anxiety and incessant labor. Unable to get a pupil, he was 
 therefore unable to keep a curate. The Sunday services, night 
 schools, and cottage lectures, were done single-handed ; and if he 
 seemed to withdraw from his old associates in the cause of co- 
 operation, and of the working men in London, it was not from 
 want of interest, but of time and strength. He went only once to 
 London, to lecture for the Needlewomen's Association. Constant 
 sickness in the parish and serious illness in his own household gave 
 him great anxiety; while the proceedings of the King's College 
 Council against his friend and teacher, Mr. Maurice, on the ground 
 of the views on eternal punishment, published in his Theological 
 Essays, depressed him deeply. But the year had its lights as well 
 as shadows; he had the comfort of seeing the first good national 
 school built and opened in his parish ; friends, new and old, came 
 and went — Mr. Maurice frequently — Bishop McDougall of Labuan, 
 and Mr. Alfred Tennyson. His intimacy with Bishop Wilberforce, 
 Chevalier Bun sen, and Miss Mitford deepened ; he made the per- 
 sonal acquaintance of several of his hitherto unknown correspond- 
 12 
 
178 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 ents, and met Mr. Robert Browning and his wife, for the first time, 
 at the house of mutual friends. 
 
 "Hypatia" this year came out as a book; and by thoughtful 
 people was recognized not only as a most valuable page of history, 
 but as a real work of art. In one section of the English Church it 
 made him bitter enemies, more bitter, perhaps, than were stirred 
 up by either "Yeast" or the " Saint's Tragedy." The work was 
 more appreciated in Germany than in England for some years. 
 
 " I delight in Hypatia^'' said Chevalier Bunsen, when reading it 
 as a serial the year before, " only I cannot get over the hardship 
 against our common ancestors in presenting them in that drunken 
 mood in which they appear as lawless and blood-sucking barbarians 
 and chronic berserkers, rather than what I thought them to be. But 
 I have only just landed Philammon at Alexandria, and therefore 
 am not able to judge." 
 
 The following letters, written after the book appeared as a whole, 
 are doubly interesting from their allusions to Baron Bunsen' s own 
 " Hyppolytus " : 
 
 CHEVALIER BUNSEN TO REV. C. KINGSLEY. 
 
 Prussia House, May^ 1853. 
 
 " I want just to send you a line to wish you joy for the wonderful 
 picture of the inward and outward life of Hypatia's age, and of the 
 creation of such characters as hers and Raphael's, and the other pro- 
 togonists. I have such a longing to see you quietly .... that 
 I had conceived a hope you might be induced to pay me a visit at 
 the seaside. One day by the sea is worth more than a month in 
 this distracting metropolis, or Great Sahara. 
 
 " I have written, with all the feeling of awe and responsibility, a 
 confession of my faith, as conclusive of the Preface to my ' Ignatius 
 and Hyppolytus.' .... I am anxious to read it to you, and 
 to speak it to you. 
 
 " You have performed a great and lasting work, but it is a bold 
 undertaking. You fire over the heads of the public, ojov vuv ctv^pwTroj 
 slov, as Nestor says, the pigmies of the circulating library. Besides, 
 you have (pardon me) wronged your own child most cruelly. Are 
 you aware that many people object to reading or allowing it to 
 be read, because the author, says in the Preface, it is not written 
 for those of pure mind ? * My daughters exclaimed when they read 
 
 * The passage referred lo is the cpening paragiaph of the Preface where the 
 author says, " A picture of life in the fifth century must needs contain much 
 
Letters froin Bit7zsen. 179 
 
 that in the Preface, after having read to their mamma the whole in 
 nmiibers to general edification, as they do Bible and Shakspeare 
 every day. I should wish you to have said, that in describing and 
 picturing an age like that, there must here and there be nudities 
 as in nature and as in the Bible. Nudities there are because there 
 is truth. For God's sake, let that Preface not come before Ger- 
 many without some modified expression. Impure must be the 
 minds who can be offended or hurt by your picture ! What offends 
 and hurts is the modern Lusfeniheit, that veiling over indecency, 
 exciting imagination to draw off the veil in order to see not God's 
 naked nature, but corrupted man's indecency. Forgive that I take 
 the child's part against the father ! But, indeed, that expression is 
 not the right, and unjust to yourself, and besides highly detrimental 
 to the book. 
 
 " You know of the persecution of the Evangelicals, and High and 
 dry against Maurice ! I go to-morrow to Hare, and stay till 
 Tuesday. I am sure you would be more than welcome there, with 
 me and Savage Landor, who arrives also to-morrow ; but I am 
 afraid you are not so easily movable. There is place at the rectory 
 or at Lime ; Mrs. Augustus Hare is there and well. 
 
 "I depend, however, on your being my guest at Carlton Terrace. 
 Take it as a joint invitation from my wife and myself to Mrs. Kings- 
 ley and yourself. I have been moved to write strange things in 
 the first volume of the new ' Hippolytus,' and in the Key (to which 
 Max Muller has contributed two most prodigious chapters). You 
 know the spirit writes what he will, and must. The times before us 
 are brimful of destruction — therefore of regeneration. The Nemesis 
 is coming, as Ate, 
 
 " Farewell, 
 
 " Ever yours faithfully, 
 
 " BUNSEN," 
 
 which will be painful to any reader, and which the young and innocent will do 
 well to leave altogether unread. It has to represent a very hideous, thouo^h a 
 very great, age ; one of those critical and cardinal eras in the history of the 
 
 human race, in which virtues and vices manifest themselves side by side evjn 
 
 at times, in the same person — with the most startling openness and power. One 
 who writes of such an era labors under a troublesome disadvantage. He dare 
 not tell how evil people were ; he will not be believed if he tell how good they 
 were. In the present case that disadvantage is doubled ; for while the sins of 
 the Church, however heinous, were still such as admit of being expressed in 
 words, the sins of the heathen world against which she fought, were utterly uu- 
 describable ; and the Christian apologist is thus compelled, for the sake of 
 decency, to state the Church's case far more weakly than the facts deserve. — 
 Preface to '• Hypatia," vii. 
 
i8o Charles Kings ley. 
 
 Again the Chevalier writes : 
 
 September 16, 1853. 
 
 " I must express to you, in a few words, how much I rejoice in 
 hearing that you intend to propose to Messrs. Tauchnitz to under- 
 take a German translation of your admirable ' Hypatia.' You 
 know what I think about it. You have succeeded in epicizing, 
 poetically and philosophically, one of the most interesting and 
 eventful epochs of the world, clothing the spirits of that age in the 
 most attractive fable ; you resuscitate the real history of the time 
 and its leading characters so poetically that we forget that instruc- 
 tion is conferred upon us in every page. I find no book to which I 
 can compare ' Hypatia' but Hope's ' Anastasius.' But how much 
 more difficult, and how much more important is the subject you 
 treat ! I find that my friends, not only here, but also in Germany, 
 share my opinion. I have sent a copy to Abaken, expressing to 
 him my anxiety it should be well translated. It requires a man of 
 unusual knowledge and talents to do justice to the original and to 
 the subject. Now nobody can manage that better than the distin- 
 guished house with which I understand you are connected. May I 
 soon hear that a translation is coming forth ? 
 
 " I hope you may be able to come to town during the beautiful 
 months of quiet. I shall be settled there for good from 15th Oc- 
 tober. ' Hippolytus ' is coming out in a second edition, but as 
 three different works. 
 
 " a, Hippolytus and his Age (first volume), newly-written, to 
 match the Picture of the congregational life in the second volume. 
 Two volumes. 
 
 " b, The Philosophical Key to it ; or Outlines of a Philosophy 
 of the History of Language and Religion. Two volumes. 
 
 " c, Analecta A^ite-Nicaena (the philosophical key). Three vol- 
 umes. 
 
 " When you come to town you must stay with me at Carlton 
 Terrace, that we may have quiet night hours and (if you are an 
 early riser) morning hours together, U7iter vier Aiigen, as we say. 
 In the meantime, T remain, 
 
 " My dear Mr. Kingsley, 
 
 " Ever yours faithfully, 
 
 " BUNSEN." 
 
 An attack on Mrs. Gaskell produced the following letter : 
 
 EvERSLEY Rectory, July 25, 1853. 
 " My dear Madam, 
 
 " I am sure that you will excuse my writing to you thus 
 abruptly when you read the cause of my writing. 
 
 " I am told, to my great astonishment, that you have heard 
 
Essays of Maurice. i8i 
 
 painful speeches on account of ' Ruth ; ' what was told me raised 
 all my indignation and disgust, 
 
 " Now 1 have read only a little (though, of course, I know the 
 story) of the book ; for the same reason that I cannot read ' Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin,' or 'Othello,' or 'The Bride of Lammermoor.' It 
 is too painfully good, as I found before I had read half a volume. 
 
 " But this I can tell you, that among all my large acquaintance 
 I never heard, or have heard, but one unanimous opinion of the 
 beauty and righteousness of the book, and that, above all, from 
 real ladies, and really good women. If you could have heard the 
 things which I heard spoken of it this evening by a thorough High 
 Church fine lady of the world, and by her daughter, too, as pure 
 and pious a soul as one need see, you would have no more doubt 
 than I have, that whatsoever the ' snobs ' and the bigots may 
 think, English people, in general, have but one opinion of ' Ruth,' 
 and that is, one of utter satisfaction, 
 
 " I doubt not you have had this said to you already often. Be- 
 lieve me, you may have it said to you as often as you will by the 
 purest and most refined of Paighsh women. 
 
 " May God bless you, and help you to write many more such 
 books as you have already written, is the fervent wish of 
 
 " Your very faithful servant, 
 
 " C. KlNGSLEY." 
 
 Mr. Maurice's volume of "Theological Essays" appeared at this 
 time, and the subject of one, on Eternal Life and Death, was 
 the cause of his dismissal from King's College by Dr. Jelf and the 
 Committee. The subject had occupied Mr. Kingsley's mind for 
 years, and the persecution of his friend and teacher roused all his 
 chivalry. 
 
 " The Time and Eternity Question," he says in writing to a 
 friend, "is coming before the public just now in a way which may 
 seriously affect our friend Maurice, unless all who love him make 
 good fight. 
 
 "Maurice's essays, as you say, will constitute an epoch. If the 
 Church of England rejects them, her doom is fixed. She will rot 
 and die, as the Alexandrian did before her. If she accepts them 
 — not as ' a code complete,' but as hints towards a new method 
 of thought, she may save herself still." 
 
 TO REV. F. D. MAURICE. 
 
 EVERSLEY, yuly 14, 1853. 
 
 "I have delayed writing to you about the Essays* till I had 
 read them over many times, which I have now done. 
 
 * "Theological Essays." 
 
1 82 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 " That I agree and admire, is needless to be said. It seems to 
 me that the book marks a new era in English ecclesiastical history 
 . . . not that yoiL, single-handed, have caused it : but that 
 you have justified and expressed what is seething in the minds of 
 so many. I was utterly astonished at finding in page after page 
 things which I had thought, and hardly dared to confess to myself, 
 much less to preach. However, you have said them now ; and I, 
 gaining courage, have begun to speak more and more boldly, 
 thanks to your blessed example, in a set of sermons on the 
 Catechism, accompanying your angels' trump on my private 
 
 penny-whistle Nevertheless, a tail of penny-whistles, 
 
 if they will only keep tune with you, may be useful. For there is 
 much in your book which will be caviare. I believe firmly that it 
 will do more good to the infidels and heretics than to the orthodox, 
 and I will tell you why. The former are not hampered in mind 
 by those forced dogmatic, systematised interpretations of theologic 
 words, which are destroying too often in the latter the plain sense 
 of right and wrong, truth and falsehood ; and they will, therefore, 
 take your words in their simple and honest meaning better than 
 'believers' and 'churchmen,' who, perhaps unconsciously to them- 
 selves, will be substituting for each of your Catholic expressions 
 some ghost of a meaning which they got from Crossman or Watts. 
 Therefore you must expect good pious people to accuse you of 
 misinterpreting scripture and preaching- a new gospel (which, 
 indeed, you do), and of the very faults of which you and I should 
 accuse them, that is of partial induction from those texts which 
 seem to make for your ' theory,' and here we of the penny-whistles 
 shall be of use to you, in verifying your inductions by applying 
 them to fresh texts. 
 
 " Moreover, you must submit to be accused of sentimentaUsm 
 because you appeal to inward experiences — by the Sadducees, 
 because they have not had these experiences, or don't like to con- 
 fess them to themselves — and by the Pharisees, because they allow 
 no spiritual experiences to be subjects of theologic inquiry, 
 except those which fit into their system ; and so, indeed, as 1 have 
 more than once dared to tell them, both disbelieve that man was ,^ 
 made in the image of God, and that God was made man of the 
 substance of his mother. 
 
 " On the whole, the outlook is perfectly awful, when one sees 
 the mountains of rubbish which have to be cleared before people 
 can be made to understand their Bible and prayer-book — and still 
 more awful, when one feels as I do, that I have just as much dirt 
 and dust to get out of my own brain and heart, before I can see 
 to take the mote out of my brother's eye ; and still more awful, 
 when one feels, as one does, that though you are utterly right in 
 asserting what the Bible says to be the keynote of our creeds and 
 prayer-book, yet that there is much, especially in the latter parts of 
 
F. D. Maurice and King' s College. 183 
 
 the prayer-book, which does chime in with the popular superstitions ; 
 that though the compilers were indeed inspired, and raised most 
 miraculously above their age, yet they were not always consistent 
 in seeing what was to be said, any more than Augustine was ; and 
 then comes the terrible business of being tempted to twist the 
 tenth word, in order to make it fit the other nine, and of being 
 called an eclectic, and of not being sure whether one is not one 
 really. Not that I am frightened at any such awful prospect. 
 If God is with us who can be against us ? If He has taught us so 
 far, we may trust Him to teach us more, and make our strength as 
 our day is. And if, as one is bound to expect, He does not show 
 us the whole truth in this life, but lets us stop short somewhere, 
 why what matter ? Let Him send by the hand of whom He will. 
 He has set us to carry the lamp in the lamp-race a little further 
 on — why should we pine at having to pass it on to fresh runners? 
 It is quite honor enough (and I suspect, before we get it done, we 
 shall find it quite work enough) to get one soul saved alive, or one 
 truth cleared from rubbish, before we die." 
 
 July, 1853. 
 
 " It seems to me that two courses only are open to you, my dear 
 master. One : to resign your King's College posts at once, with a 
 solemn and sincere printed protest against being required to believe 
 and say things which the Articles of the Church of England do not 
 require. Or, to fight it out to the very last and compel them to the 
 odium of rejecting you. 
 
 " Either course would excite the sympathy and indignation of vast 
 numbers. It remains to be considered. 
 
 " I. By which process most truth would be hammered out by the 
 strokes. 
 
 " 2. Which would give least scandal to the Church, i.e., which 
 would give least handle for heretics of the atheistic school to say, 
 ' Of course his opinions are incompatible with the Church. We 
 always knew it, now it is proved; and he must join us, or start a 
 schism of his own.' 
 
 " Now as for the first count. I seriously think that by fighting 
 as long as you can, you might bring the whole eschatological ques- 
 tion up into the field in such a way, that they would be forced not 
 only to give their opinions but their reasons, or unreasons for them ; 
 and then, in the eyes of the world, the triumph is pretty sure, as it 
 is written, ' Oh, that my enemy would write a book ! ' 
 
 " I think, too, that in this way so iiiuch of the real liberality of 
 our Articles and Liturgy might be made evident, as would prevent 
 the heretics having any important case against the Church, and 
 turn the wrath on to the present generation of rehgionists, and 
 
184 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 on the bishops, as I wish to save reUgion and episcopacy, in 
 England. 
 
 " But if you are so completely a tenant-at-will at King's College 
 that they can dismiss you without making their reasons public, then 
 your only plan, surely, is to forestall them, and throw up your cure 
 on the ground of your rights as an English priest, thereby again 
 preventing scandal, in the true sense of the verb. 
 
 " But whethersoever of these is your plan, will it not be expe- 
 dient for one of us at least, to get up the question historically ? It 
 seems to me that no such bondage has hitherto been formally 
 demanded in the English Church. And if we can prove this point, 
 we prove everything with precedent-worshijiping John Bull. The 
 whole matter for the next seven years will practically turn on, not, 
 * are you right or wrong ? ' but ' are you legally and formally per- 
 mitted or unpermitted ? ' and that will depend, in a vague business 
 (shame that it should be vague !) hke this, on — Were divines since 
 the Reformation allowed to have their own opinions on this point, 
 and yet to hold ecclesiastical preferment ? Indeed, paltry as this 
 point may seem, we must have it formally proved or disproved, 
 not only for our own safety, but for the safety of the Established 
 Church. 
 
 "■ Now do you know anything about this ? Do you know men 
 who do ? Or can you get me put in the way of finding out by 
 being told what books to read, and I will work it out. Let that be 
 my business. We will settle hereafter in what form my results 
 shall be brought into the battle. This seems to me the first indis- 
 pensable practical act — not of defence, but of offence. 
 
 " For I would not act on the defensive. If you only go to prove 
 that you may hold what you do, you will either be smashed by the 
 same arguments as smashed the good of Tract 90 with the evil of 
 it, or you will be sorely tempted hereafter dare manus and say, ' If 
 I can't hold this here, I will go where I can hold it' (not that you 
 will ever yield to that temptation, but that it will come, and must 
 be provided against). But if you go steadily on the offensive, say, 
 I and you must hold this, and proclaim yourself as the champion 
 of the honest and plain meaning of our formularies, and hurl back 
 the onus probandi on the popular party, you will frighten them, 
 get a hearing from the unorthodox, and bring over to your side 
 the great mass who fear change, while they love and trust their 
 formularies enough to be glad to have the right interpretation of 
 them. 
 
 " I was struck the other day by the pleasure which a sermon of 
 mine gave not only to my clods, but to the best of my high church 
 gentry, in which sermon I had just copied word for word your 
 Essay on Eternal Life and Death — of course stating the thing 
 more coarsely, and therefore more dangerously, than your wisdom 
 would have let you do — and yet people were delighted. 
 
Archdeacon Hare Consulted. 185 
 
 " Now forgive me, a thousand times I ask it, if I have seemed 
 to put myself up as a counsellor. You know what I feel for you. 
 But your cause is mine. We swim in the same boat, and stand or 
 fall henceforth together. I am the mouse helping the lion — with 
 this difference, that the mouse was outside the net when she gnawed 
 it, while I am inside. For if you are condemned for these 
 ' opinions ' I shall and must therefore avow them." 
 
 EvERSLEY, October 30. 
 
 "Well, dearest master I shall not condole with 
 
 you. You are above that : but only remind you of this day's 
 Psalms, which have been to me, strangely enough, the Psalms for 
 the day in all great crises of my life. 
 
 " Will you please get the correspondence published as soon as 
 possible, and send me down, if possible by return of post, the 
 whole of it, and also Jelf's notice in the Record. I promise you, 
 I will do nothing without consulting better and wiser men than 
 myself; and I will show you all arguments which I may write. 
 But the time is now come for those who love you to show their 
 colors, and their teeth also. I am too unhappy about you to say 
 much. You must know what I feel. I always expected it ; but 
 yet, when it comes one cannot face it a bit the better. Neverthe- 
 less, it is but a passing storm of dust." 
 
 He now consulted Archdeacon Hare about a protest : he went 
 to Oxford, and wrote to Cambridge. Archdeacon Hare's reply 
 will show what was proposed, and who were to be taken into 
 counsel : 
 
 FROM ARCHDEACON HARE. 
 
 St. Leonard's, Novetuber 10, 1853. 
 " My dear Mr. Kingsley, 
 
 " We know from of old that the Seniores Patrum were apt to 
 ^\x\\i\\\Q. Junior es inclined to act too precipitately; and it may 
 perhaps be this drag of old age that makes me think the plan 
 sketcht in your last letter somewhat over hasty. Time is an 
 unimportant element in our proceedings : two or three months 
 spent in the proper preparations will not injure, and may greatly 
 benefit our cause. If we begin with getting a good list of eminent 
 names to head our protest, before we publish it, it will be sure to 
 command attention, and many will follow such leaders ; while, if 
 it be circulated as the act of a small number, a cry will be raised 
 against it as issuing from a few latitudinarians, and the priest and 
 the scribe will pass it by on the other side. I should, indeed, be 
 delighted if Keble were to espouse our cause : but I remember 
 some sonnets of his, twenty years ago, on the blessings of the 
 
1 86 Charles Kingsley, 
 
 Athanasian Creed, which struck me with terror and awe. Being 
 absent from home, I cannot ascertain how Trench interprets the 
 last parable in Matthew xxv. ; but I would fain hope we might 
 have him : and he, as one of the Professors immediately affected 
 by the recent decision, would rightly take the lead. 
 
 " Thirl wall writes indignantly of the proceedings. When our 
 project is further advanced, I will write to him about it : but he 
 will have to consider how far a Bishop may join in such a protest. 
 Stanley might consult Whately, who, I fancy, has already written 
 on the subject. 
 
 " Thompson and Sedgwick would be with us ; and perhaps 
 Whewell also, if our protest were judiciously drawn up. 
 
 " In the preamble, we must state the immediate ground foi 
 the step we take, and the fact, not generally known, that our 
 church has implicitly sanctioned the exercise of private judgment 
 on this point, by the retracting of the 42d Article. It seems to 
 me, too, that we must say something to remove the prima facie 
 objection, which will strike most persons, from the Athanasian 
 Creed ; and I think this may be done without appearing to dog- 
 matize, while it will be a comfort to numbers to have this thorn 
 drawn out of their hearts. 
 
 " Stanley was in Cheshire the other day : I know not where he 
 is now. 
 
 " Yours most sincerely, 
 
 " Julius C. Hare. 
 
 " Since writing the above, I have a letter from Trench, pro- 
 posing to come to Hurstmonceaux on Tuesday next. It would be 
 a great delight to us, and would much forward our work, if you 
 could meet him there." 
 
 The following letters to Mr. Thomas Cooper, Chartist, who 
 wrote the " Purgatory of' Suicides " in 1843-4, while imprisoned 
 in Stafford Gaol on a charge of sedition, though spreading over 
 several years, will be more interesting if read together without 
 regard to dates. The corresponding letters that called them forth 
 are full of power and vigor, and have been kindly placed by Mr. 
 Cooper at the disposal of the editor, but want of space prevents 
 their publication. When Mr. Kingsley first knew Thomas Cooper, 
 he was lecturing on Strauss, in the John Street Lecture Rooms, to 
 working men ; and after long struggles with his own sceptical diffi- 
 culties, as will be seen by these letters, his doubts were solved, and 
 he became a lecturer on Christianity, a work he continues now at 
 the age of seventy. He is a man of vast reading and indomitable 
 
Letters to Thomas Cooper. 187 
 
 courage. His autobiography, published in 1872, is a remarkable 
 book well worth reading, both for its own sake and for the pictures 
 of working class life and thought, which it reveals.* 
 
 EvERSLEY, November z, 1853. 
 
 ". . . . Work and family illness have kept your kind letter 
 imanswered, with many others, till this leisure morning. As to 
 your ' Alderman Ralph,' 'I shall possess myself of a copy when I 
 come to London, and also do myself the pleasure of caUing upon 
 you. 
 
 "I am glad you hke ' Hypatia.' I wrote it with my whole 
 heart, trusting that I should find at least a few who would read it 
 with their whole hearts, and I have not been disappointed." (Your 
 Jew in ' Hypatia,' Thomas Cooper had said, shows me that you 
 understand me.) 
 
 " Your friend is a very noble fellow. As for converting either 
 you or him, — what 1 want to do, is to make people believe in 
 the Incarnation, as the one solution of all one's doubts and fears 
 for all heaven and earth, wherefore I should say boldly, that, even 
 if Strauss were right, the thing must either have happened some- 
 where else, or will happen somewhere some day, so utterly does 
 both my reason and conscience, and, as I think, judging from 
 history, the reason and conscience of the many in all ages and 
 climes, demand an Incarnation. As for Strauss, I have read a great 
 deal of him, and his preface carefully.f Of the latter, I must say 
 that it is utterly illogical, founded on a gross petitio principii ; as 
 for the mass of the book, I would undertake, by the same falla- 
 cious process, to disprove the existence of Strauss himself, or any 
 other phenomenon in heaven or earth. But all this is a long story. 
 
 * Life of Thomas Cooper, by himself, published by Hodder and Stoughton, 
 London. 
 
 f This refers to a letter in which Thomas Cooper says, "My friend, a noble 
 young fellow, says you are trying to convert him to orthodoxy, and expresses 
 great admiration for you. I wish you success with him, and I had almost said 
 I wish you could next succeed with me ; but I think I am likely to stick where 
 I have stuck for some years — never lessening, but I think increasing, in my love 
 for the truly divine Jesus — but retaining the Strauss view of the Gospel." 
 " Ah ! that grim Strauss," he says in a later letter, "how he makes the iron 
 agony go through my bones and marrow, when I am yearning to get hold of 
 Christ ! But you understand me ? Can you help me ? I wish I could be near 
 you, so as to have a long talk with you often. I wish you could show me that 
 Strauss's preface is illogical, and that it is grounded on a petitio principii. I 
 wish you could bring me into a full and hearty reception of this doctrine of the 
 Incarnation. I wish you could lift off the dead weight from my head and 
 heart, that blasting, brutifying thought, that the grave must be my ' end all.' " 
 
1 88 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 As long as you do see in Jesus the perfect ideal of man, you are 
 in the right path, you are going toward the light, whether or not 
 you may yet be allowed to see certain consequences which, as I 
 believe, logicalUy follow from the fact of His being the ideal. 
 Poor * * * * 's denial (for so I am told) of Jesus being the ideal of a 
 good man, is a more serious evil far. And yet Jesus Himself said, 
 * That if any one spoke a word against the Son of Man {i. e., 
 against Him as the perfect man) it should be forgiven him ' ; but 
 the man who could not be forgiven either in this world or that to 
 come, was the man who spoke against the Holy Spirit, i. e., who 
 had lost his moral sense and did not know what was righteous 
 when he saw it — a sin into which we parsons are as likely to fall as 
 any men, much more likely than the publicans and sinners. As 
 long as your friend, or any other man loves the good, and does it, 
 and hates the evil and flees from it, my Catholic creeds tell me 
 that the Spirit of Jesus, ' the Word,' is teaching that man ; and 
 gives me hope that either here or hereafter, if he be faithful over 
 a few things, he shall be taught much. 
 
 " You see, this is quite a different view from either the Dissent- 
 ers or Evangelicals, or even the High-Church parsons. But it is 
 the view of those old ' Fathers ' whom they think they honor, and 
 whom they will find one day, in spite of many errors and supersti- 
 tions, to be far more liberal, humane, and philosophical than our 
 modern religionists . . . ." 
 
 Thomas Cooper had now re-commenced lecturing at the Hall 
 of Science on Sunday evenings, simply teaching theism, for he had 
 not advanced farther yet in positive conviction. 
 
 " Immediately after I had obeyed conscience," he says in his 
 Autobiography, " and told the people I had been in the habit of 
 teaching, that I had been wrong, I determined to open my mind 
 fully to my large-hearted friend, Charles Kingsley. He showed 
 the fervent sympathy of a brother. We began a correspondence 
 which extended over more than a year. I told him every doubt, 
 and described every hope I had ; and he counselled, instructed, 
 and strengthened me to the end 
 
 " I told him that while I diligently read ' Bridgewater Treatises,' 
 and all the other books with which he furnished me, as a means 
 of beginning to teach sceptics the truth from the very foundation, 
 that the foundations themselves seem to glide from under my 
 feet. I had to struggle against my own new and tormenting 
 doubts about God's existence, and feared I should be at last over- 
 whelmed with darkness and confusion of mind. 
 
 " No, no ! " said my faithful and intelligent friend. " You will 
 get out of all doubt in time. When you feel you are in the 
 
yustice of God. 189 
 
 deepest and gloomiest doubt, pray the prayer of desperation ; 
 cry out, ' Lord, if Thou dost exist, let me know that Thou dost 
 exist ! Guide my mind by a way that I know not, into Thy truth,' 
 and God will deliver you." 
 
 TO THE SAME. 
 
 EvERSLEY, September i6, 1855. 
 
 " Poor * * * * sent me some time ago a letter of yours which I 
 ought to have answered before, in which you express dissatisfaction 
 with the ' soft indulgence ' which I and Maurice attribute to God. 
 I am sure you mistake us. No men are more ready to say (I at 
 least from experience) that 'it is a fearful thing to fall into the 
 hands of the living God.' All we say is, that God is just, and re- 
 wards every man according to his work. 
 
 " My belief is, that God will punish (and has punished already 
 somewhat) every wrong thing I ever did, unless I repent — that is, 
 change my behavior therein ; and that His lightest blow is hard 
 enough to break bone and marrow. But as for saying of any 
 human being whom I ever saw on earth that there is no hope for 
 them ; that even if, under the bitter smart of just punishment, 
 they opened their eyes to their folly, and altered their minds, even 
 then God would not forgive them ; as for saying that, I will not 
 for all the world and the rulers thereof. I never saw a man in 
 whom there was not some good, and I believe that God sees that 
 good far more clearly, and loves it far more deeply, than I can, 
 because He Himself put it there, and, therefore, it is reasonable to 
 believe that He will educate and strengthen that good, and chas- 
 tise and scourge the holder of it till he obeys it, and loves it, and 
 gives up himself to it ; and that the said holder will find such chas- 
 tisement terrible enough, if he is unruly and stubborn, I doubt not, 
 and so much the better for him. Beyond this I cannot say; but I 
 like your revulsion into stern puritan vengeance — it is a lunge too 
 far the opposite way, like Carlyle's ; but anything better than the 
 belief that our Lord Jesus Christ was sent into the world to enable 
 bad men to be infinitely rewarded, without doing anything worth 
 rewarding — anything, oh ! God of mercy, as well as justice, than 
 a creed which strengthens the heart of the wicked, by promising 
 him life, and makes * * * * * * * believe (as I doubt not he does 
 believe) that though a man is damned here, his soul is saved here- 
 after." 
 
 1S56. 
 
 "Your letter this morning delighted me, for / see that you see. 
 If you are an old hand at the Socratic method, you will be saved 
 much trouble. I can quite understand young fellows kicking at it. 
 Plato always takes care to let us see how all but the really earnest 
 kicked at it, and flounced off in a rage, having their own notions 
 
190 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 torn to rags, and scattered, but nothing new put in the place 
 thereof. It seems to me (I speak really humbly here) that the 
 danger of the Socratic method, which issued, two or three genera- 
 tions after in making his so-called pupils the academics mere 
 destroying sceptics, priding themselves on picking holes in every- 
 thing positive, is this — to use it without Socrates' great Idea, which 
 he expressed by * all knowledge being memory,' which the later 
 Platonists, both Greek and Jew, e. g., Philo and St. John, and 
 after them the good among the Roman stoics and our early 
 Quakers and German mystics, expressed by saying that God, or 
 Christ, or the Word, was more or less in every man the Light 
 which lightened him. I^etting alone formal phraseology, what I 
 mean, and what Socrates meant, was this, to confound people's 
 notions and theories, only to bring them to look their own reason' 
 in the face, and to tell them boldly, you know these things at heart 
 already, if you will only look at what you know, and clear from 
 your own spirit the mists which your mere brain and ' organization 
 and truth,' has wrapt round them. Men may be at first more 
 angry than ever at this ; they will think you accuse them of 
 hypocrisy when you tell them ' you know that I am right, and you 
 wrong : ' but it will do them good at last. It will bring them to 
 the one great truth, that they too have a Teacher, a Guide, an 
 Inspirer, a Father : that you are not asserting for yourself any 
 new position, which they have not attained, but have at last found 
 out the position which has been all along equally true of them auL. 
 you, that you are all God's children, and that your Father's Love 
 is going out to seek and to save them and you, by the only possible 
 method, viz., teaching them that He is their Father. 
 
 " I should advise you to stick stoutly by old Paley. He is 
 right at root, and I should advise you, too, to make your boast of 
 Baconian Induction being on your side, and not on theirs ; for 
 ' many a man talks of Robin Hood who never shot in his bow,' 
 and the ' Reasoner ' party, while they prate about the triumphs of 
 science, never, it seems to me, employ intentionally in a single 
 sentence the very inductive method whereby that science has 
 triumphed. But these things perhaps you know as well as I. 
 
 " For the end of your letter. Be of good cheer. When the 
 wicked man turneth from his wickedness (then, there and then), 
 he shall save his soul alive — as you seem to be consciously doing, 
 and all his sin and his iniquity shall not be mentioned unto him. 
 What your 'measure' of guilt (if there can be a measure of the 
 incommensurable spiritual) I know not. But this I know, that as 
 long as you keep the sense of guilt alive in your own mind, you 
 will remain justified in God's mind ; as long as you set your sins 
 before your face. He will set them behind His back. Do you ask 
 how I know that ? I will not quote ' texts,' though there are 
 
Systematic Work Healthful. 191 
 
 dozens. I will not quote my own spiritual experience, though I 
 could honestly : 1 will only say, that such a moral law is implied 
 in the very idea of ' Our Father in heaven.' 
 
 '■'■ P. S. — I have ordered ' Glaucus ' to be sent you. I wish you 
 would consider especially pp. 69-80, 95-7, 100-103. I send you 
 also Harvey's sea-side book, that you may read up the 'Echinus.' 
 I think a lecture simply on the ' Echinus ' would astonish weak 
 minds more utterly than anything I can guess at. I could help 
 you to all facts. As for specimens, I could send you a few. But 
 do you know Dr. Carpenter, at University Hall ? He is a good 
 man, full of desire to teach workmen wisdom, and knows the 
 ' Echini' better than any man on earth. He might help you to 
 facts and specimens better than I. But think it over. Can you 
 make drawings ? Again, have you Hugh Miller's invaluable 
 ' Footprints of the Creation,' a corroboration of Paley against the 
 ' Vestiges,' drawn principally from the geology of his favorite Old 
 Red Sandstone fishes? You will find it useful beyond any modern 
 book. Also, you must get a sight of Owen's new collection of his 
 Lectures. 
 
 " My father wants to know if you have ever seen old Mendels- 
 sohn's (the musician's grandfather) Answer to an Atheist at Ham- 
 burgh. I have heard that the book is highly valuable. Do you 
 know 'Kant's Theodicy?' It reveals A Being; but hardly a 
 ;^ather " 
 
 Through the exertions of his friends, Thomas Cooper was now 
 given copying work at the Board of Health, of which the Rt. 
 Hon. William Cowper was then President : his hearers at the Hall 
 of Science, already made bitter by his deserting the atheist camp, 
 made the fact of his doing government work and taking govern- 
 ment pay a fresh ground of opposition to his teaching, and Mr. 
 Kingsley writes : 
 
 Rectory, Chelsea, Jicne 14, 1856. 
 
 " I called and asked for you at the Board of Health, but you 
 were away ! You must not give up to low spirits — wait awhile, 
 and all will be right. Get into harness, become a habitue of the 
 place, get everyone's good word, and in six months you will be 
 found out to be a ' valuable man ; ' and then, in due time, you may 
 say what you like — and rise to something really worth having, 
 
 " It is, I know it, a low aim (I don't mean morally) for a man 
 who has had the aspirations which you have ; but may not Our 
 Heavenly Father just be bringing you through this seemingly de- 
 grading work, to give you what I should think you never had, — , 
 what it cost me, bitter sorrow to learn — the power of working in 
 
192 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 harness, and so actually drawing something, and being of real use. 
 Be sure, if you can once learn that lesson, in addition to the rest 
 you have learnt, you will rise to something worthy of you yet. My 
 dear Cooper, you are a very clever man. But — don't you think 
 that the God who made you is as fully aware of that fact as you or 
 I ? And is it not probable that He is only keeping your powers 
 seemingly useless, till you have learned to use them ? Now it has 
 seemed to me, in watching you and your books, and your hfe, that 
 just what you wanted was self-control. I don't mean that you 
 could not starve, die piece-meal, for what you thought right ; for 
 you are a brave man, and if you had not been, you would not have 
 been alive now. But it did seem to me, that what you wanted was 
 the quiet, stern cheerfulness, which sees that things are wrong, and 
 sets to to right them, but does it trying to make the best of them all 
 the while, and to see the bright side ; and even if, as often hap- 
 pens, there be no bright side to see, still ' possesses his soul in pa- 
 tience,' and sits whistling and working till ' the pit be digged for 
 the ungodly.' 
 
 " Don't be angry with me and turn round and say, ' You, sir, who 
 never knew what it was to want a meal in your life, who belong 
 to the successful class who have. What do you mean by preaching 
 these cold platitudes to me ?' For, Thomas Cooper, I have 
 known what it was to want things more precious to you, as well as 
 to me, than a full stomach ; and I learnt — or rather 1 am learning 
 a little — to wait for them till God sees good. And the man who 
 wrote ' Alton Locke ' must know a little of what a man like you 
 could feel to a man like me, if the devil entered into him. And 
 yet I tell you, Thomas Cooper, that there was a period in my 
 life — and one not of months, but for years, in which I would have 
 gladly exchanged your circumstantia, yea, yourself, as it is now, 
 for my circumstantia, and myself, as they were then. And yet I 
 had the best of parents and a home, if not luxurious, still as good 
 as any man's need be. You are a far happier man now, I firmly 
 believe, than I was for years of my life. The dark cloud has past 
 with me now.- Be but brave and patient, and (I will swear now), 
 by God, sir ! it will pass with you." 
 
 ytme 25, 1856. 
 
 " I have had a sad time, for a dear friend has died suddenly, or I 
 would have both written again to you, and called again ; but I could 
 not recollect yovu" exact address, and could not get it at the Board 
 of Health, and meanwhile this trouble came, and I had to exert 
 myself for a poor dear man left with a family of young folk, and ut- 
 terly broken-hearted. You are in the right way yet. I can put you 
 in no more right way. Your sense of sin is not fanaticism ; it is, I 
 suppose, simple consciousness of fact. As for helping you to Christ, 
 I do not believe i can one inch. I see no hope but in prayer, in 
 
Knowledge of God. ' 193 
 
 going to Him yourself, in saying : Lord if Thou art there, if Thou 
 art at all, if this all be not a lie, fulfil Thy reputed promises, and 
 give me peace and a sense of forgiveness, and the feeling that bad 
 as I may be. Thou lovest me still, seeing all, understanding all, 
 and therefore making allowances for all ! I have had to do that 
 in past days ; to challenge Him through outer darkness and the 
 silence of night, till I almost expected that He would vindicate 
 His own honor by appearing visibly as He did to St. Paul and St. 
 John ; but he answered in the still small voice only ; yet that was 
 enough. 
 
 " Read the book by all means ; but the book will not reveal 
 Him. He is not in the book ; He is in the heaven which is as 
 near you and me as the air we breathe, and out of that He must 
 reveal Himself; — neither priests nor books can conjure him up, 
 Cooper. Your Wesleyan teachers taught you, perhaps, to look for 
 Him in the book, as Papists would have in the bread ; and when 
 you found He was not in the book, you thought him nowhere ; but 
 He is bringing you out of your first mistake and idolatry, ay, 
 through it, and through all wild wanderings since, to know Him 
 Himself, and speak face to face with Him as a man speaks with 
 his friend. Have patience with Him. Has He not had patience 
 with you ? And therefore have patience with all men and things ; 
 and then you will rise again in His good time the stouter for your 
 long battle. 
 
 " As for worldly matters, there is nothing to be done now, but 
 to trust God to give you the right work in His own good time. 
 He has, you see, given you anchorage-ground when you fancied 
 yourself utterly adrift. Oh, trust this earnest of His care, and 
 ' wait on Providence.' Men may misuse that expression into 
 Micawber's cant, but there is an everlasting truth in it. In such a 
 work as God is doing with you, He will have it all His own way, 
 so that you shall have no chance of mistaking from whom the 
 blessing comes. 
 
 " Write again soon. Your letters are always pleasant to me. I 
 should have answered this before ; but I have been living for three 
 days on a vault, and a funeral, and the sight of utter woe." 
 
 EVERSLEY, December 4, 1856. 
 
 " Your letter is very cheering ; I wish I could tell you as much 
 about probabilities as I can about natural history. 
 
 "But, for the zoology, I will bring you up not only Cuvier, but 
 all the books I can think of. Have you Hiiber on the bee ? It 
 is old, but good. I will bring you Kirby and Spence's entomology, 
 where you will find wonders on bees and ants. Moreover, I can 
 help you, I think, with geological books.' Have you read Hitch- 
 cock, who is making a noise now ? and did you ever see a ' Boy's 
 13 
 
194 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 Dream of Geology ' ? But the most important book for you is 
 Sedgwick's 'Notes to his University Studies,' containing his refu- 
 tation of the ' Vestiges of Creation.' I come to town the loth, 
 and must have some talks with you, for now that we are got upon 
 my ground of Natural History, I think I could do more to hel[) 
 you in one talk than in three letters. A Lecture on Physical 
 Geography, as showing God's providence and care of man, might 
 be effective. Do you know 'Guyot's Earth and Man' ? an admir- 
 able book, which I can bring. I am going to get you Agassiz's 
 opening lecture to the British Association this year, which will be 
 quite invaluable to you. Borrow from some one Orr's ' Circle of 
 the Sciences' : with Owen's ' Tractate on Physiology.' " 
 
 56 Marina, St., Leonard's, May q^ 1857. 
 
 " About endless torment. (Keep that expression distinct from 
 eternal., which has been mixed up with it, the former being what 
 the popular creed really holds.) You may say, 
 
 " I. Historically, that, 
 
 " a. The doctrine occurs nowhere in the Old Testament, or any 
 hint of it. The expression, in the end of Isaiah, about the fire un- 
 quenched, and the worm not dying, is plainly of the dead corpses 
 of men upon the physical earth, in the valley of Hinnom, or Ge- 
 henna, where the offal of Jerusalem was burned perpetually. En- 
 large on this, as it is the passage which our Lord quotes, and by it 
 the meaning of His words must be primarily determined. 
 
 " b. The doctrine of endless torment was, as a historical fact, 
 brought back from Bab)'lon by the Rabbis. It was a very ancient 
 ])rimary doctrine of the Magi, an appendage of their fire-kingdom 
 of Ahriman, and may be found in the old Zends, long prior to 
 Christianity. 
 
 " <r. St. Paul accepts nothing of it as far as we can tell, never 
 making the least allusion to the doctrine. 
 
 " d. The Apocalypse simply repeats the imagery of Isaiah, and 
 of our Lord ; but asserts, distinctly, the non-endlessness of torture, 
 declaring that in the consummation, not only death, but Hell, shall 
 be cast into the Lake of Fire. ■ 
 
 " e. The Christian Church has never really held it exclusively, 
 till now. It remained quite an open question till the age of Jus- 
 tinian, 530, and significantly enough, as soon as 200 years before 
 that, endless torment for the heathen became a popular theory, pur- 
 gatory sprang up synchronously by the side of it, as a relief for the 
 conscience and reason of the Church. 
 
 "/". Since the Reformation, it has been an open question in the 
 English Church, and the philosophical Platonists, of the i6th and 
 17th centuries, always considered it as such. 
 
 '■'• g. The Church of England, bv the deliberate expunging of the 
 
Endless Torinent. 195 
 
 42nd Article, which affirmed endless punishment, has declared it 
 authoritatively to be open. 
 
 " h. It is so, in fact. Neither Mr. Maurice, I, or any others, who 
 have denied it, can be dispossessed or proceeded against legally in 
 any way whatsoever. 
 
 " Exegetically, you may say, I think, a. That the meanings of 
 the word oXwv and atwtos have little or nothing to do with it, 
 even if atwv be derived from det always, which I greatly doubt. The 
 word never is used in Scripture anywhere else, in the sense of end- 
 lessness (vulgarly called eternity). It always meant, both in Scrip- 
 ture and out, a period of time. Else, how could it have a plural 
 ■ — how could you talk of the seons, and seons of aeons, as the Scrip- 
 ture does ? Nay, more, how talk of oSros o aicov, which the trans- 
 lators with laudable inconsistency, have translated ' this world,' i.e., 
 this present state of things, *Age,' 'dispensation,' or epoch — 
 aiajv6o§, therefore, means, and must mean, belonging to an epoch, 
 or the epoch, and atwnos KoAao-ts is the punishment allotted to that 
 epoch. Always bear in mind, what Maurice insists on, — and 
 what is so plain to honest readers, — that our Lord, and the 
 Apostles, always speak of being in the end of an age or aeon, not as 
 ushering in a new one. Come to judge and punish the old world, 
 and to create a new one out of its ruins, or rather as the S. S. bet- 
 ter expresses it, to burn up the chaff and keep the wheat, i.e.. all 
 the elements of food as seed for the new world. 
 
 " I think you may say, that our Lord took the popular doctrine 
 because He found it, and tried to correct and purify it, and put it 
 on a really moral ground. You may quote the parable of Dives and 
 Lazarus (which was the emancipation from the Tartarus theory) as 
 the one instance in which our Lord professedly opens the secrets 
 of the next world, that He there represents Dives as still Abraham's 
 child, under no despair, not cut oif from Abraham's sympathy, and 
 under a direct moral training, of which you see the fruit. He is 
 gradually weaned from the selfish desire of indulgence for himself, 
 to love and care for his brethren, a divine step forward in his life, 
 which of itself proves him not to be lost. The impossibility of 
 Lazarus getting to him, or vice versa, expresses plainly the great 
 truth, that each being where he ought to be at that time, inter- 
 change of place {i.e., of spiritual state) is impossible. But it says 
 nothing against Dives rising out of his torment, when he has learnt 
 the lesson of it, and going where he ought to go. The connuon 
 interpretation is merely arguing in a circle, assuming that there are 
 but two states of the dead, ' Heaven ' and ' Hell,' and then trying 
 at once to interpret tlie parable by the assumption, and to prove 
 the assumption from the parable. Next, you may say that the 
 English damnation, like the Greek KarciKpto-is, is perhaps Kpttris sim- 
 ple, simply means condemnation, and is (thank God) retained in 
 that sense in various of our formularies, where I always read it, e.g.. 
 
196 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 * eateth to himself damnation,' with sincere pleasure, as protests in 
 favor of the true and rational meaning of the word, against the 
 modern and narrower meaning. 
 
 " You may say that Fire and Worms, whether physical or spirit- 
 ual, must in all logical fairness be supposed to do what fire and 
 worms do do, viz., destroy decayed and dead matter, and set free its 
 elements to enter into new organisms; that, as they are beneficent 
 and purifying agents in this life, they must be supposed such in the 
 future life, and that the conception of fire as an engine of torture, 
 is an unnatural use of that agent, and not to be attributed to God 
 without blasphemy, unless you suppose that the suffering (like all 
 which He inflicts) is intended to teach man something which he 
 cannot learn elsewhere. 
 
 " You may say that the catch, ' All sin deserves infinite punish- 
 ment, because it is against an infinite Being,' is a worthless amphi- 
 boly, using the word infinite in two utterly diff'erent senses, and 
 being a mere play on sound. That it is directly contradicted by 
 Scripture, especially by our Lord's own words, which declare that 
 every man (not merely the wicked) shall receive the due reward of 
 his deeds, that he who, &c., shall be beaten with few stripes, and so 
 forth. That the words ' He shall not go out till he has paid the ut- 
 termost farthing, evidently imply (unless spoken in cruel mockery) 
 that he may go out then, and that it is scandalous for Protestants 
 to derive from thence the opposite doctrine, while they call the 
 Papists rogues for proving the perpetual virginity of the B. V. Mary 
 from exactly the same use of Iws. 
 
 " Finally, you may call on them to rejoice that there is a fire of 
 God the Father whose name is Love, burning for ever unquench- 
 ably, to destroy out of every man's heart and out of the hearts of 
 all nations, and off" the physical and moral world, all which offends 
 and makes a lie. That into that fire the Lord will surely cast all 
 shams, lies, hypocrisies, tyrannies, pedantries, false doctrines, yea, 
 and the men who love them too well to give them up, that the 
 smoke of their /5acravtcr/Aos (i.e., the torture which makes men con- 
 fess the truth, -for that is the real meaning of it ; (SaaavLo-fxo^ means 
 the toi/c/i-stone by which gold was tested) may ascend perpetually, 
 for a warning and a beacon to all nations, as the smoke of the tor- 
 ment of French aristocracies, and Bourbon dynasties, is ascending 
 up to Heaven and has been ever since 1793. Oh, Cooper — Is it 
 not good news that t/iat fire is unquenchable ; that t/iat worm will 
 not die ? They tried, 7e'e tried in our ignorance, to quench that 
 fire when we put Louis XVHL on the throne. But the fire burned 
 up him and our chaffy works. The parti pretre tried to kill the 
 worm which was gnawing at their hearts, making them dimly aware 
 that they were wrong, and liars, and that God and His universe 
 were against them, and that they and their system were rotting and 
 must die. And they put poor Poerios and Madiais in prison, and 
 
Letters to Thomas Cooper. 197 
 
 show all the signs of weak terror, suspicion, spite : but they cannot 
 kill God's worm, Thomas Cooper. You cannot look in the face of 
 many a working continental priest without seeing that the worm is 
 at his heart. You cannot watch their conduct without seeing that 
 it is at the heart of their system. God grant that we here in Eng- 
 land — we parsons (dissenting and church) may take warning by 
 them. The fire may be kindled for us. The worm may seize our 
 hearts. To judge by the temper of the ' Record ' and the ' Morn- 
 ing Advertiser,' it has its fangs va. some of our hearts already. God 
 grant that in that day we may have courage to let the fire and the 
 worm do their work — to say to Christ, These too are thine, and 
 out of thine infinite love they have come. Thou requirest truth in 
 the inward parts, and I will thank Thee for any means, however 
 bitter, which thou usest to make me true. I want to be an honest 
 man, and a right man ! And, oh joy, TJioii wantest me to be so 
 also. Oh joy, that though I long cowardly to quench Thy fire, I 
 cannot do it. Purge us, therefore, oh Lord, though it be with fire. 
 Burn up the chatf of vanity and self-indulgence, of hasty prejudices, 
 second-hand dogmas, — husks which do not feed my soul, with 
 which I cannot be content, of which I feel ashamed daily — and if 
 there be any grains of wheat in me, any word or thought or power 
 of action which may be of use as seed for my nation after me, 
 gather it, oh Lord, into Thy garner. 
 
 " Yes, Thomas Cooper. Because I believe in a God of Abso- 
 lute and Unbounded Love, therefore I believe in a Loving Anger 
 of His, which will and must devour and destroy all which is 
 decayed, monstrous, abortive in His universe, till all enemies shall 
 be put under His feet, to be pardoned surely, if they confess them- 
 selves in the wrong, and open their eyes to the truth. And God 
 shall be All in All. 
 
 " Those last are wide words. It is he who limits them, not 
 I who accept them in their fulness, who denies the verbal inspira- 
 tion of Scripture." 
 
 St. Leonard's, May 20, 1857. 
 
 " I have been silent, not because I have forgotten. I have been 
 thinking earnestly on your letter, and this is a fragment of what I 
 think. 
 
 " Your anecdotes of Romaine and Clarke, &c., are new to me, 
 but not surprising, and most significant. I can understand well 
 how men, who considered the business of life to be the delivering 
 men from a fancied Tartarus, to save them //-(?;« God in fact — who 
 intended to move them into endless torture, were quite unable to 
 conceive of the Son as the express image of the Father. How 
 could He be, if the Father intended to damn, and the Son to save ? 
 Thus the Godhead of the Son became to them a necessary part of 
 their scheme of redemption, only because unleis He were God, 
 
198 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 His ' satisfaction ' and His ' merits ' would not be ' infinite,' and 
 the Trinity became a mere function of the ' scheme of redemp- 
 tion,' that again being a function of the 'fall.' 
 
 " This I have seen long, having been brought up among the 
 evangelicals ; but I never knew that their old j^rophets had stated 
 it so naively. But see what follows — what has followed in Geneva 
 and Germany — what followed with you — when the Tartarus and 
 the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction became incredible, then the 
 Divinity of Christ, becoming imnecessary, fell to the ground like- 
 wise — and socinianism, and at last deism, followed as a matter of 
 course. Think this out for yourself. It is historically as well as 
 logically true. 
 
 " Now with me. As I have told you, my reason demands a co- 
 equal and co-eternal Son, in order that He may be an ideal and 
 absolute Son at all. Adam Clarke's ' eternal generation being 
 eternal nonsense,' is a very rash, foolish, ignorant speech ; but 
 pardonable to a man of Locke's school, and therefore unable to 
 conceive of an ever-present and unceasing eternity, but referring 
 all things to the conditions of time — unable to conceive that an 
 eternal generation means an ever-present and unceasing one, by 
 which the Father saith at every and all moments of time, ' Thou 
 art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.' It is this Lockism 
 which infects all our pulpits, which makes even educated men un- 
 able to understand Maurice. 
 
 " But my heart. Cooper, demands the Trinity, as much as my 
 reason. I want to be sure that God cares for us, that God is our 
 Father, that God lias interfered, stooi)ed, sacrificed Himself for us. 
 I do not merely want to love Christ — a Christ, some creation or 
 emanation of God's — whose will and character, for aught 1 know, 
 may be different from God's. I want to love and honor the abso- 
 lute, abysmal God Himself, and none other will satisfy me — and in 
 the doctrine of Christ being co-equal and co-eternal, sent by, sacri- 
 ficed by, His Father, that he might do His Father's will, 1 find it 
 — and no puzzfing texts, like those you quote, shall rob me of that 
 rest for my heart, that Christ is the exact counterpart of Him in 
 whom we live, and move, and have our being. The texts are few, 
 ^only two after all ; on them I wait for light, as I do on many more ; 
 meanwhile, I say boldly, if the doctrine be not in the Bible, it 
 ought to be, for the whole spiritual nature of man cries out for it. 
 Have you read Maurice's essay on the Trinity in his theological 
 essays ? addressed to Unitarians ? If not, you must read it. 
 
 " About the word Trinity, I feel much as you do. It seems un- 
 fortunate that the name of God should be one which expresses a 
 • mere numerical abstraction, and not a moral property. It has, I 
 think, helped to make men forget that God is a Spirit — that is, a 
 moral being, and that moral spiritual, and that morality (in the 
 absolute) is God, as St. John saith God is love, and he that dwelleth 
 
Letters to Thomas Cooper. 199 
 
 in love dwelleth in God, and God in him — words which, were they 
 not happily in the Bible, would be now called rank and rampant 
 Pandieism. But, Cooper, I have that faith in Christ's right govern- 
 ment of the human race, that I have good hope that He is keeping 
 the word Trinity, only because it has not yet done its work ; when 
 it has. He will inspire men with some better one. 
 
 The following is the last letter which passed between the two 
 friends : 
 
 EvERSLEY, September 23, 1872. 
 
 " My dear Thomas Cooper, 
 
 '• I have been wandering for nearly a fortnight, the only scrap 
 of holiday I have had for two years, and only found your book and 
 letter yesterday. But I have read through your ' Plain Pulpit 
 Talk ' in two evenings, and I am a close and critical reader, and 
 with delight. That a man of your genius and learning should have 
 done the thing well does not surprise me. The delight to me is 
 ■ , the thing which you have done. 
 
 " I see the thorough right old morality — common to puritans, 
 old Anglican Churchmen, apostles, and prophets ; that you hold 
 right to be infinitely right ; and wrong ditto wrong; that you call a 
 spade a spade, and talk to men about the real plagues of their own 
 heart ; as Carlyle says, you ' do not rave against extinct Satans, 
 while quite unaware of the real man-devouring Satan at your elbow.' 
 My dear friend, go on and do that, and whether you call yourself 
 Baptist or Buddhist, I shall welcome you as one who is doing the 
 work of God, and fighting in the battle of the Lord, who makes 
 war in righteousiiess. But more. You are no Buddhist, nor even 
 an Unitarian 
 
 " I happen to be, from reason and science as well as from Scrip- 
 ture and Catholic tradition (I use a word I don't like, but you who 
 have read know that there is no better one as yet), I happen to be, 
 I say, an orthodox theologian, and to value orthodoxy more the 
 more I think, for its own sake. And it was a solid pleasure to me 
 to find you orthodox, and to find you deriving your doctrines con- 
 cerning right and wrong, and the salvation of men, from orthodox 
 theology. — Pp. 128, 131, is a speech of which no sound divine, 
 either of the Church of England or of the middle age, ought to be 
 ashamed. . . . But, my dear friend, whatever you do, don't 
 advocate disestablishing us. We are the most liberal religious body 
 in these realms. In our pale men can meet who can meet nowhere 
 else. Would to God you belonged to us, and we had your powers, 
 as we might have without your altering your creed, with us. But 
 if we — the one remaining root of union — we disestablish and become 
 a sect like the sects, then competition, not Christ will be God, and 
 we shall bite and devour one another, till atheism and M. Comte 
 
200 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 are the rulers of modern thought. I am not mad, but speak the 
 words of truth and soberness; and remember (I am sure you will, 
 though orators at public meetings would not) that my plea is quite 
 disinterested. If the Church of England were disestablished and 
 disendowed to-morrow, vested interests would be respected, and I 
 and others living on small incomes till our deaths. I assure you 
 that I have no family livings, or an intention of putting my sons 
 into them. My eldest son — a splendid young fellow — is roughing, 
 it successfully and honorably as an engineer anywhere between 
 Denver, U. S., and the city of Mexico. My next and only other 
 son may possibly go to join him. I can give no more solid proof 
 that, while Radical cockneys howl at me as an aristocrat and a 
 renegade, I am none ; but a believer in the persons of my own 
 children, that a man's a man for a' that." 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 1854. 
 Aged 35. 
 
 Torquay — Seaside Studies — Lectures in Edinburgh — Deutsche Theologie — Letter 
 from Baron Bunsen — Crimean War — Settles in North Devon — Writes 
 " Wonders of the Shore " and " Westward Ho." 
 
 *' ToRBAY is a place which should be as much endeared to the 
 naturalist as to the patriot and to the artist. We cannot gaze on 
 its blue ring of water and the great limestone bluffs which bound it 
 to the north and south without a glow passing through our hearts, 
 as we remember the terrible and glorious pageant which passed by- 
 it in the bright days of July, 1588, when the Spanish Armada 
 ventured slowly past Berry Head, with Elizabeth's gallant pack of 
 Devon captains (for the London fleet had not yet joined), following 
 past in its wake, and dashing into the midst of the vast line, undis- 
 mayed by size and numbers, while their kin and friends stood 
 watching and praying on the cliffs, spectators of Britain's Salamis. 
 The white line of houses, too, on the other side of the bay, is 
 Brixham, famed as the landing-place of William of Orange ; and 
 the stone on the pier-head, which marks his first footprints on 
 British ground, is sacred in the eyes of all true English Whigs ; and 
 close by stands the castle of the settler of Newfoundland, Sir 
 Humphrey Gilbert, Raleigh's half-brother, most learned of all 
 Elizabeth's admirals in life, most pious and heroic in death. And 
 as for scenery, though it can boast of neither mountain-peak nor 
 dark fiord, and would seem tame enough in the eyes of a Western 
 Scot or Irishman, yet Torbay has a soft beauty of its own, in the 
 rounded hills which slope into the sea, spotted with parks full of 
 stately timber trees, with squares of emerald grass and rich red 
 fallow fields, each parted from the other by the long line of tall 
 elms, just flushing green in the Spring hedges, which run down to 
 the very water's edge, their boughs un warped by any blast ; and 
 here and there apple orchards, just bursting into flower in the 
 Spring sunshine, and narrow strips of water meadow, where the 
 
202 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 red cattle are already lounging knee-deep in richest grass, within 
 ten yards of the rocky, pebble beach, which six hours hence will 
 be hurling columns of rosy foam high into the sunlight, and 
 sprinkling passengers, and cattle, and trim gardens, which hardly 
 know what frost and snow may be, but see the flowers of Autumn 
 meet the flowers of Spring, and the old year linger smiUngly to 
 twine a garland for the new." * 
 
 In these words Mr. Kingsley describes Torquay, where he 
 passed the winter and spring in 1854, during a leave of absence- 
 granted him by the Bishop on account of his wife's health, which 
 had suffered severely from the damp rectory at Eversley. 
 
 At this time, and for some years to come, the clergy of all 
 parties in the Church stood aloof from him as a suspected person. 
 The attacks of the religious press, perhaps happily for him, had so 
 alarmed the clergy of Torquay, High Church and Evangelical, 
 that all pulpit doors were closed against the author of " Alton 
 Locke," " Yeast," and " Hypatia," and he spent quiet peaceful 
 Sundays with his wife and children for the first time for many years. 
 Once only he was asked to preach in the parish church, and once 
 at the chapel of St. John, in a Lenten week-day service, when the 
 congregation, a High Church one, were surprised at his reverent 
 and orthodox views on the Holy Eucharist. It was a resting time, 
 and the temporary cessation from sermon writing and parish work 
 was very grateful to him, " a combination of circumstances having, 
 during the last year," he wrote to a friend, " so utterly exhausted 
 me, physically and intellectually, that I must lie very quiet for a 
 time, and I look forward with some dread even to the research 
 necessary to make my Edinburgh Lectures what they ought to be." 
 Once settled at Livermead, the father and children spent happy 
 hours on the shore, bringing home treasures every afternoon from 
 the rocks and sands, and from occasional dredging expeditions in 
 Tor Bay, to be classified and arranged in the vivarium, and to 
 amuse the invalid. A daily journal of natural history was kept, 
 and hampers of sea beasts, live shells, and growing seaweed sent 
 off to Mr. H. P. Gosse, then living in London. 
 
 This sea-side life led to a voluminous correspondence, illustrated 
 by his own beautiful sketches, the contents of which were summed 
 
 * The " Wonders of the Shore," p. 15. 
 
New Treasures. 203 
 
 up in an article in the " North British Review " on " The Won- 
 ders of the Shore." This article, afterwards developed into 
 " Glaucus," contained not only sketches of natural history, but 
 some of his deepest thoughts on theology as connected with the 
 Transmutation Theory and " The Vestiges of Creation." 
 
 At this time, while treading in the footsteps of Colonel George 
 Montagu, whose lynx eyes had espied them nearly in the same 
 spot fifty years before, he found washed ashore, in a cave neai 
 Goodrington, after a succession of south-easterly gales, a number of 
 Montagu's Chirodota {Synapta digitata) which had not been seen 
 in the interval. Of these he made many drawings, while, with 
 
 dehght, he studied their strange contortions ; and he writes : 
 
 TO H. p. GOSSE, ESQ. 
 
 LlVERMEAD, Januaiy 3, 1854. 
 
 "I jot down what I see of my pink chirodotas, (?) in case yours 
 die. They are quite distinct from scolanthus ; their power is one 
 of ^(?«traction, not of retraction : have no retractile longitudinally- 
 lined proboscis, and the tentacula from the mouth are twelve in 
 number, not fourteen, and are compound, not simple. Their form 
 is this : carrying a boss or thumb at the back of the quadri-palmate 
 horns, tlie smooth palm turned towards the mouth. These arms 
 are continually curving inward to an invisible mouth, generally in 
 alternate pairs, thus : 
 
 " You will see by my rough sketch what I mean. I can discern 
 no solid matter passing into the mouth from their strokes. They 
 are never spread out in a ring as in Johnstone's figure. 
 
 " One has parted with his tail, in the form of a globe of half inch 
 diameter, from which hang many white filaments, two inches long. 
 Another (perhaps the same) has two similar filaments protruding 
 from his tail, which under a quarter inch power, are full of white 
 globular granules in a glairy mucus. — I can see no more. AH these 
 filaments are knotted. The red spots are continued up the back 
 of the arms to the thumb. The body is covered with minute papil- 
 IcG (?) and irregular transverse wrinkles, along the salient ridges of 
 which the red spots generally run. The red spots become more 
 irregular toward the head, and delicate longitudinal pale lines ap- 
 pear between them. 
 
 " I have just been watching the dismemberment of a specimen. 
 It first threw off, without my seeing, a piece about an inch long, 
 with the white filaments protruding at each end ; then recom- 
 menced by a constriction an inch from the end ; the part beyond 
 the constriction rapidly swelled and contracted to half inch, and 
 began a series of violent rotations from right to left, till it had 
 
204 Charles Kingsley, 
 
 turned itself more than half round on the longitudinal (fig. 2) axis. 
 This circular wrenching continued principally in the part about to 
 separate (which was much more lively than the body of the animal) 
 till the part nearest it swelled and became transparent, disclosing 
 four muscular (?) bands, as in fig. 3. A second constriction and 
 rotations then took place, and I witnessed the separation, as in fig. 
 4, but no filaments escaped. The first parted bit remains very 
 lively. The parent animal was feeding busily with all its hands the 
 whole time. 
 
 "The animal has during the night broken itself into six pieces, 
 the filaments protruding at the point of separation or anterior end 
 in each. The process has hurt the water, making it milky ; of the 
 Holothurice, the brown have contracted both tentacula and suck- 
 ers, the white only the suckers, and, taking in a reef in their tenta- 
 cula, have inflated their heads with water, the mouth pouting in the 
 centre, like an auricula. 
 
 " N.B. — I have seen Cyprea Europjea during the last few days 
 suspend itself from the under-side of low-tide rocks by a glutinous 
 thread, an inch and more in length ; and when in captivity float 
 on the surface by means of a similar thread attached to a glutinous 
 bubble. Johnstone does not mention this. 
 
 "All the specimens of chirodota have since gone the same way, 
 and become dissolving views, plus an evil and sour smell." 
 
 In the well-stocked vivarium at home he could study the ways 
 of the lovely little Eolis papillosa, the bright lemon-colored Doris, 
 and the Cucumaria Hyndmanii, with their wondrous gills and 
 feathers — to common eyes mere sea-slugs, — and varieties of Ser- 
 pulae, with their fairy fringes only visible at happy moments to 
 those who have the patience to watch and wait for the sight ; while 
 the more minute forms of the exquisite Campanularia Syringa and 
 Volubilis, and the Sertularii, and that " pale pink flower of stone," 
 the Caryophyllia Smithii, with numberless others, were examined 
 under the microscope. Before leaving Torquay he made a rough 
 list of about sixty species of MoUusks, Annelids, Crustacea, and 
 Polypes found on the shore, nearly all new to him, and revealing a 
 new world of wonders to his wife and children. 
 
 To this period, his distinguished friend Professor Max Miiller, 
 who came to see him at Livermead, refers when he speaks of him 
 " on the Devonshire coast watching the beauty and wisdom of 
 Nature, reading her solemn lessons, and chuckling, too, over her 
 inimitable fun." The "inimitable fun " was enjoyed in watching 
 the movements and manners of the family of the Crustacea, espe- 
 
Lecturing in Edinburgh. 205 
 
 cially the soldier crab, of which he had always several specimens 
 in the vivarium, which were an inexhaustible source of merriment 
 to him, and which yet led him at the same moment to some of the 
 deep, strange speculations hinted at so reverently in the pages of 
 " Glaucus." 
 
 But these pursuits, however enchanting, did not engross him to 
 the forgetfulness of the great social questions of the day, and 
 early in the year we find him writing to Sir Arthur Helps, about 
 Sanitary matters, and urging the clergy to turn their minds to the 
 subject. 
 
 In February he went to Edinburgh to deliver four lectures on 
 the "Schools of Alexandria," at the Philosophical Institute. It 
 was his first visit to Scotland, and he writes to his wife : 
 
 Warriston, Wednesday. 
 
 "The lecture went off well. I was dreadfully nervous, and 
 actually cried with fear up in my own room beforehand ; but after 
 praying I recovered myself, and got through it very well, being 
 
 much cheered and clapped All the notabilities came, 
 
 and were introduced to me ; and I had some pleasant talk with 
 Sir James Maxwell. Mr. Erskine, of Linlathen, is a charming old 
 man. 
 
 " My second lecture went off better than the first, in spite of the 
 delicate points on which it touched. Nothing can exceed the cor- 
 diality of people." 
 
 Warriston, February 26. 
 
 •' It is at last over, and I start for England to-morrow. The last 
 
 lecture was more crowded than ever Altogether it 
 
 has been (if you had but been with me, and alas ! that poisons 
 everything) one of the most pleasant and successful episodes in 
 my life. I have not met with a single disagreeable — have been 
 heaped with kindness. I have got my say said without giving 
 offence, and have made friends which I hope will last for life. I 
 have seen the very best society in Scotland, and I cannot be thank- 
 ful enough to God for having sent me here, and carried me through. 
 To-night I dine with Sir * * * * * * a perfect fine gentleman of 
 the old school, who was twenty-five years in parliament, and ap- 
 proves highly of ' Alton Locke ' and ' Yeast ; ' as also does his 
 wife, who told me I had a glorious career before me, and bade 
 God speed me in it." .... 
 
 Returning from Scotland he stopped in London to see how Mr. 
 
2o6 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 Maurice's affairs were going on, on his way to Eversley, where he 
 had to remain during a change of curates. 
 
 " I have just seen Archdeacon Hare, who is looking better; but 
 this business of Maurice's has fretted him horribly. 1/ * * is work- 
 ing, tooth and nail, for Maurice in Lincoln' s-inn ; and the working 
 men in London, including many of the old Chartists of 1848, are 
 going to present a grand address to Maurice in St. Martin's Hall, 
 at which, I believe, I am to be a chairman. Kiss the babes for 
 me, and tell them 1 long to be with them on Tor sands. 
 
 " Did I ever tell you of my delightful chat with Bunsen ? I have 
 promised him to write a couple of pages preface to Miss Winkworth's 
 translation of the ' Deutsche Theologie.' Oh ! how you will revel 
 in that book ! . . . ." 
 
 The anxieties and expenses of illness were very heavy just now, 
 but he always met them by a brave heart and by cheering words, 
 to one who lamented the labor they entailed on him. 
 
 EvERSLEY, February. 
 
 " . . . . And — these very money difficulties 
 
 Has it not been fulfilled in them, ' As thy day so shall thy strength 
 be ? ' Have we ever been in any debt by our own sin ? Have 
 we ever really wanted anything we needed ? Have we not had 
 friends, credit, windfalls — in all things, with the temptation, a way 
 to escape ? Have they not been God's sending? God's way of 
 preventing the cup of bliss being over sweet (and I thank him 
 heartily it has «<?/been) ; and, consider, have they not been blessed 
 lessons? But do not think that I am content to endure them any 
 more than the race horse, because he loves running, is content to 
 stop in the middle of the course. To pay them, I have thought, 
 I have written, I have won for us a name which, please God, 
 may last among the names of English writers. Would you give 
 up the books I have written that we might never have been in 
 difficulties ? So out of evil God brings good ; or rather, out of 
 necessity He brings strength — and, believe me, the highest spirit- 
 ual training is contained in the most paltry physical accidents ; 
 and the meanest actual want, may be the means of caUing into 
 actual life the possible but slee])ing embryo of the very noblest 
 faculties. This is a great mystery ; but we are animals, in time 
 and space ; and by time and space and our animal natures, are we 
 educated. Therefore let us be only patient, patient ; and let God 
 our Father teach His own lesson. His own way. Let us try to 
 learn it well, and learn it quickly ; but do not let us fancy that He 
 will ring the school-bell, and send us to play before our lesson is 
 learnt. 
 
Bunseit and the Deutsche Theologie. 207 
 
 " Therefore '■ rejoice in your youth, ere the days come when 
 thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.' But make to yourself 
 no ghosts. And remember he who says, ' 1 will be happy some 
 day,' never will be happy at all. If we cannot be happy now 
 with ten times the blessings which nine-tenths of God's creatures 
 have, we shall never be happy though we lived a thousand years. 
 Let us lay this solemnly to heart, and take no thought for the 
 morrow." 
 
 February 27. 
 
 " The Guards march to-morrow ! How it makes one's blood 
 boil ! We send 10,000 picked men to Malta, en route for Con- 
 stantinople, and the French 60,000." 
 
 EvERSLEY, Ash Wednesday, March, 1854. 
 
 " . . . . The ' Deutsche Theologie ' is come from Bunsen : 
 i.e.^ both Miss Wink worth's MSS. and Mrs. Malcolm's printed 
 translation. Pray order Mrs. Malcolm's ' Old German Theology,* 
 with a preface by Martin Luther. You never read so noble a 
 book. The Reform Bill is shelved : excellent as it is, it does not 
 much matter at this minute. Two days after our deputation, that 
 bane of London, the Sewers Commission, awoke in the morning, 
 and behold they were all dead men ! Lord Palmerston, having 
 abolished them by one sentence the night before, and I have not 
 heard that any one is gone into mourning. The Board of Health 
 are now triumphant and omnipotent. God grant that they may 
 use their victory well, and not spoil it by pedantry and ideaUsm ! 
 Baines (capital man that he is !) brings in three clauses, which will 
 reform the whole poor-law, and strike at the root of cottage-de- 
 struction. The squires intend to show fight." 
 
 In reference to the evidence he gave on sanitary matters as one 
 of a deputation to Lord Palmerston, he says : 
 
 " I had an opportunity of teUing Lord Palmerston a great deal 
 which I trust may save many lives. Remember, it is now a 
 question of blood-guiltiness — that is all. But I am not going to 
 London any more about sanitary matters. The utter inability 
 of the Health of Towns Act to cleanse this or any other neigh- 
 boring parish made me consider what I have done as a parochial 
 duty " 
 
 The "Deutsche Theologie" was translated by Miss Susanna 
 Winkworth at Chevalier Bunsen's request, and Mr. Kingsley was 
 asked to write a preface. He had objections, and consulted Mr. 
 Maurice, who answered him thus : 
 
2o8 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 " I think your objections have great force, but I do not see that 
 they need prevent you from stating your conviction that, as a 
 practical work on Ethics, the book fully deserves to be translated and 
 read ; and that the discovery of the only correct MSS. is a reason 
 for introducing it to the public at this time. The religious people 
 -have no right to be scandalized by any thing that Lvither and 
 Spenser sanctioned. You can say that you, being more severely 
 orthodox than they were, cannot swallow all the sentences in it, 
 esteeming them to be too mystical and not quite scriptural, but 
 that nevertheless your judgment in the main jumps with the great 
 Evangelical authorities, and that you conceive they were anxious 
 to enlist such a witness against the self-seeking tendencies of the 
 religion of their time, as you and the translator are to claim him 
 for the same purpose in this day " 
 
 Chevalier Bunsen writes in the same strain : 
 
 " My dear Friend, 
 
 " My practical proposal coincides with that of Maurice. Keep 
 to the ethic point, and refer as to the metaphysical terminology to 
 Luther. I may, if required, say a word in the letter to Miss W. 
 about this point, although it would be much better for the book and 
 its readers if you, a clergymen of the Church of England, did it 
 instead. Now, having said so much, let me add a word on the 
 great subject itself. When I read your Preface to Hypatia (which 
 you know I think does not justice to the book), I thought I per- 
 ceived you had accepted the council-creeds more historically than 
 penetrated them philosophically. Otherwise you could not have 
 praised so much what I must believe to be only a great logical, 
 formal ingenuity, but compared with St. John and the apostohc 
 fathers down to Tertullian*and Origen, a perfect and thorough 
 misunderstanding, like that of an anatomist taking the corpse for 
 the living body. The more I study and think, the stronger that 
 conviction grows, for the inward witness goes with the outward. 
 You will see that my whole new volume has its centre in pointing 
 to facts which show that I cannot say less than what I do say ; 
 that our Confessions of Faith, if taken as making law, must be said 
 frankly to be confessions of the blunders of those who drew them 
 up : like the failure in an equation. The X is not made out, and 
 this is confessed. 
 
 "I have been at this point from 1817, when the Theologia Ger- 
 manica came into my hands at Rome. My Aphorisms,^ if you 
 read them with reference to this, will tell you more. 
 
 " The difference of God and Man, of the Logos, Christ and the 
 individual Christian, is that of the Infinite and the Finite, neither 
 
 * " Hippolytiis," vol. ii., first edition (1852). 
 
Before the House of Commons. 209 
 
 more nor less. This is nothing to those for whom nothing exists 
 which is not in space and time ; but much, and enough for all who 
 know that the finite — world and man — has no other key to its un- 
 derstanding except the infinite. No Werden without the Sein — rb 
 ovTiuq ov = 6 ovTug ojv. 
 
 " Now the Theologia Germanica says nothing more in the most 
 startling passages. But certainly we have learnt to say it better, 
 and you, the English, ought to help us to say it still better. For 
 this reason I have tortured my brains and your language, in laying 
 before you the Aphorisms. 
 
 " See whether we meet on this divine road. Excuse the hurried 
 and imperfect writing. I hope Mrs. Kingsley is continuing better. 
 A great anxious time of judgment is now hanging over Germany. 
 Detis providebit ! I correct two proof-sheets every day. 
 
 " Ever yours faithfully, 
 
 " BUNSEN." 
 
 These letters decided him, and he wrote to Miss Winkworth : 
 
 Torquay, March 25, 1854. 
 
 " I am conquered. I have written the preface this day, and 
 will send the MSS. on Monday. Pray translate that Unterschled 
 der Personen (if you can) ' the distinction of the persons : ' and 
 then we shall be at least, on that point, a I'abri du diable. I 
 believe Maurice is right. Pray show the preface to him and Bun- 
 sen, and whomsoever you like, that we may get the help of any 
 suggested improvement." 
 
 After the book had been out some time he writes again to Miss 
 Winkworth : 
 
 "You will be glad to hear, I am sure, that your Theologia is 
 being valued by every one to whom I have shown it. Sure I am 
 that the book will do very great and lasting good." 
 
 In the spring he went up to give evidence on two subjects which 
 he had much at heart before the House of Commons on Sanitary 
 Matters and on the insufficient pay of Parish Medical Officers. 
 His experience of eleven years in a parish had convinced him that 
 the pay of the parish doctor was much too low ; and he willingly 
 gave evidence on the subject, dwelling particularly on the fact that 
 under their present salaries no medical men could afford, or be 
 expected, to give two of the most important but most expensive 
 medicines — quinine and cod-liver oil. 
 14 
 
2IO Charles Kings ley. 
 
 TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 Chelsea Rectory, May, 1854. 
 
 " I am glad to have been up here. I have seen 
 
 very much life, and learnt very much. It was just what I wanted 
 after that Devon retirement. 1 went to meet Gosse at the I.in- 
 na;an, and met Darwin (the Voyage of the Beagle). Such a noble 
 face — as the average of the Linnseans, I must say, had. * * * * 
 is a quiet, meek man, and was very anxious to know whether I and 
 Maurice really ' denied the Atonement,' on which point, I think, I 
 satisfied him. 
 
 " We had a regular microscopic evening last night. George 
 
 with his microscope, and Mr. H with his — both magnificent. 
 
 The things they showed me were enough to strike one dumb. I 
 am enjoying the thought of bringing Gosse' s book down to you. 
 He has a whole chapter at the end on the things I sent him most 
 kindly written. 
 
 " Tell the dear children I long to see them, and will be home 
 Wednesday, without fail " 
 
 In the spring, as his wife was not allowed to return to the 
 colder climate of North Hants, he settled with his family at 
 Bideford, where his novel of " Westward Ho ! " was begun, 
 whose opening pages describe his surroundings for the next twelve 
 months. 
 
 While there, a lady consulted him about joining a sisterhood, 
 and he replies : 
 
 Bideford, yttly 24, 1854. 
 " Madam, 
 
 " Though I make a rule of never answering any letter from a 
 lady whom I have not the honor of knowing, yet I dare not refuse 
 to answer yours. First, because you, as it were, challenge me on 
 the ground of my books : and next, because you tell me that if I 
 cannot satisfy you, you will do that, to prevent which, above all 
 things, my books are written, namely, flee from the world, instead 
 of staying in it and trying to mend it. 
 
 " Be sure that I can sympathize with you most deeply in your 
 dissatisfaction with all things, as they are. That feeling grows on 
 me, as I trust in God (strange to say) it may grow on you, day by 
 day. I, too, have had my dreams of New Societies, brotherhoods, 
 and so forth, which were to regenerate the world. I, too, have had 
 my admirations for Old Societies and brotherhoods like those of 
 Loyola and Wesley, which intended to do the same thing. Bat I 
 have discovered, Madam, that we can never really see how much 
 evil there is around us, till we see how much good there is around 
 
Brotherhoods and Societies. 211 
 
 us, just as it is light which makes us, by contrast, most aware of 
 darkness. And I have discovered also, that the world is already 
 regenerated by the Lord Jesus Christ, and that all efforts of our 
 own to regenerate it are denials of Him and of the perfect regen- 
 eration which He accomplished wlien He sat down on the right 
 hand of God, having all power given to him in heaven and in 
 earth, that He might rule the earth in righteousness for ever. And I 
 have discovered also, that all societies and brotherhoods which 
 may form, and which ever have been formed, are denials of the 
 One Catholic Church of faitliful and righteous men (whether Pro- 
 testant or Roman Catholic, matters not to me) which He has estab- 
 lished on earth, and said that hell shall not prevail against it. And 
 when I look back upon history, as I have done pretty carefully, I find 
 that all such attempts have been total failures, just because, with 
 the ])urest and best intentions, they were doing this, and thereby 
 interfering with the Lord Jesus Christ's way of governing the 
 world, and trying to introduce some new nostrum and panacea of 
 their own, narrow and paltry, compared with His great ways in the 
 deep. 
 
 " Therefore, though Fox (to take your own example) was a most 
 holy man, Quakerism in general, as a means of regenerating the 
 world, has been a disastrous failure. And so (I speak from years 
 of intimate experience) has good John Wesley's Methodist attempt. 
 Both were trying to lay a new foundation for human society, and 
 forgetting that one which was already laid, which is Christ, who 
 surely has not been managing the earth altogether wrongly, Madam, 
 for 1800 years, or even before that ? 
 
 " So, again, with that truly holy and angelic man, St. Vincent de 
 Paul — has he succeeded ? VVhat has become of education, and of the 
 poor, in the very land where he labored ? God forbid that we Eng- 
 lish should be in such a state, bad as we are ! The moment the per- 
 sonal influence of his virtue was withdrawn, down tumbled all that 
 he had done. He (may (rod bless him all the same) had no pana- 
 cea for the world's ills. He was not a husband or a father — how 
 could he teach men to be good husbands and fathers ? You point 
 to what he and his did. 1 know what they did in South America, 
 and beautiful it was : but, alas ! I know, too, that they could give 
 no life to their converts ; they could not regenerate society among 
 the savages of Paraguay ; and the moment the Jesuit's gentle des- 
 potism was withdrawn, down fell the reductions again into savagery, 
 having lost even the one savage virtue of courage. The Jesuits were 
 shut out, by their vows, from political and family life. How could 
 they teach their pupils the virtues which belong to those states ? 
 But all Europe knows what the Jesuits did in a country where they 
 had every chance ; where for a century they were the real rulers, 
 in court and camp, as well as in schools and cloisters, 1 mean ii; 
 France. They tried their very best (and tried, 1 am bound to be- 
 
212 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 Heve, earnestly and with good intent) to regenerate France. And 
 they caused the Revolution. Madam, the horrors of 1793 were the 
 natural fruit of the teaching of the very men who not only would 
 have died sooner than bring about these horrors, but died too many 
 of them, alas ! by them. yXnd how was this ? By trying to set up 
 a system of society and morals of their own, they, without knowing 
 it, uprooted in the French every element of faith in, and reverence 
 for, the daily duties and relations of human life, without knowing 
 it — without meaning it. They would call me a slanderer if they 
 saw my words, and would honestly think me so. May God keep 
 you from the same snare, of fancying, as all ' Orders,' Societies, 
 and Sects do, that they invent a better system of society than the 
 old one, wherein God created man in His own image, viz., of father 
 and son, husband and wife, brother and sister, master and servant, 
 king and subject. Madam, these are more divine and godlike 
 words than all the brotherhoods, ' Societies of Friends,' ' Associa- 
 tions of the Sacred Heart,' or whatsoever bonds good and loving 
 men and women have from time to time invented to keep them- 
 selves in that sacred unity from which they felt they were falling. 
 I can well believe that you feel it difficult to keep in it now. God 
 knows that 1 do : but never will I (and I trust you never will) 
 yield to that temptation which the Devil put before our Lord, 
 ' Cast thyself down from hence, for it is written He shall give His 
 angels charge over Thee, &c.' Madam, whenever we leave the 
 station where God has placed us, be it for never so seemingly self- 
 sacrificing and chivalrous and "saintly an end, we are tempting the 
 Lord our God, we are yielding most utterly to that very self-will 
 which we are pretending to abjure. As long as you have a parent, 
 a sister, a servant, to whom you can do good in those simple every- 
 day relations and duties of life, which are most divine, because they 
 are most human, so long will the entering a cloister be tempting 
 the Lord your God. And so long. Madam, will it be the doing all 
 in your power to counteract every word which I have ever written. 
 My object has been and is, and 1 trust in God ever will be, to 
 make people see that they need not, as St. Paul says, go up into 
 heaven, or go down to the deep, to find Christ, because He, the 
 Word whom we preach, is very near them, in their hearts and on 
 their lips, if they would but believe it ; and ready, not to set them 
 afloat on new untried oceans of schemes and projects, but ready 
 to inspire them to do their duty humbly and simply where He has 
 put them — and, believe me, Madam, the only way to regenerate 
 the world is to do the duty which lies nearest us, and not to hunt 
 after grand, far-fetched ones for ourselves. "If each drop of rain 
 chose where it should fall, God's showers would not fall, as they do 
 now, on the evil and on the good alike. I know — I know from 
 the experience of m)' own heart — how galling this doctrine is — how, 
 like Naaman, one goes away in a rage, because the Prophet has 
 
The Crimean War. 213 
 
 not bid us do some great thing, but only to go and wash in the 
 nearest brook, and be clean. But, Madam, be sure that he who is 
 not faithful in a little will never be fit to be ruler over much. He 
 who cannot rule his own household will never (as St, Paul says) 
 rule the Church of God ; and he who cannot keep his temper, or 
 be self-sacrificing, cheerful, tender, attentive at home, will never be 
 of any real and i)ermanent use to God's poor abroad. 
 
 " VVherefore, Madam, if, as you say, you feel what St. Francis de 
 Sales calls ' a dryness of soul ' about good works and charity, con- 
 sider well within yourself, whether the simple reason, and (no 
 shame on you !) be not only because God does not wish you just 
 yet to labor among the poor ; because He has not yet finished 
 educating you for that good work, and therefore will not let you 
 handle tools before you know how to use them. 
 
 " Begin with small things, Madam — you cannot enter the pres- 
 ence of another human being without finding there more to do than 
 you or I, or any soul, will ever learn to do perfectly before we die. 
 Let us be content to do little, if God sets us at little tasks. It is 
 but pride and self-will which says, ' Give me something huge to 
 fight, — and I should enjoy that — but why make me sweep the 
 dust ? ' Finally, Madam, be sure 0/ one thing, that the Lord Jesus 
 Christ is King of this earth, and all therein ; and that if you will 
 do faithfully what He has set you to already, and thereby using the 
 order of a Deaconess well, gain to yourself a good foundation in 
 your soul's training. He will give you more to do in His good time, 
 and of His good kind. 
 
 " If you are inclined to answer this letter, let me ask you not to 
 answer it for at least three months to come. It may be good for 
 you to have read it over a second time. 
 
 " I am, Madam, 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 " C. KiNGSLEY." 
 
 TO T. HUGHES, ESQ. 
 
 BiDEFORD, December i8, 1854. 
 
 " . . . . As to the War, I am getting more of a Govern- 
 ment man every day. I don't see how they could have done better 
 in any n)atter, because I don't see but that /should have done a 
 thousand times worse in their place, and that is the only fair 
 standard. 
 
 " As for a ballad — oh ! my dear lad, there is no use fiddling 
 while Rome is burning. I have nothing to sing about those glorious 
 fellows, except ' God save the Queen and them.' I tell you the 
 whole thing stuns me, so I cannot sit down to make fiddle rhyme 
 with diddle about it — or blundered with hundred, like Alfred Tenny- 
 son. He is no TyrtJeus, though he has a glimpse of what Tyrta^us 
 
214 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 ought to be. But I have not even that ; and am going rabbit- 
 shooting to-morrow instead. But every man has his caUing, and 
 my novel is mine, because I am fit for nothing better. The book 
 (' Westward Ho ! ') will be out the middle or end of January, if the 
 printers choose. It is a sanguinary book, but perhaps containing 
 doctrine profitable for these times. My only pain is that I have 
 been forced to sketch poor Paddy as a very worthless fellow then, 
 while just now he is turning out a hero. 
 
 " I have made the deliberate amende honorable in a note. 
 
 " I suppose " (referring to some criticism of Mr. H.'s on ' West- 
 ward Ho !') "you are right as to Amyas and his mother ; I will 
 see to it. The letter in Purchas is to me unknown, but your con- 
 ception agrees with a picture my father says he has seen of Cap- 
 tain John (he thinks at Lord Anglesey's, at Beaudesert), as a prim, 
 hard, terrier-faced little fellow with a sharp chin, and a dogged 
 Puritan eye. So perhaps I am wrong : but I don't think that very 
 important, for there must have been sea-dogs of my stamp in plenty 
 too. 
 
 " Tummas ! Have you read the story of Abou Zennab, his horse, 
 in Stanley's ' Sinai,' p. 67? What a myth! What a poem old 
 Wordsworth would have writ thereon ! If I didn't cry like a baby 
 over it. What a brick of a horse he must have been, and what a 
 brick of an old head-splitter Abou Zennab must have been, to have 
 his commandments keeped unto this day concerning of his horse ; 
 and no one to know who he was, nor when, nor how, nor nothing. 
 I wonder if anybody '11 keep our commandments after we be gone, 
 much less say, ' Eat, eat, oh horse of Abou Kingsley ! ' " 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 1855- 
 Aged ;^6. 
 
 Bideford — Crimean War — Death of his friend Charles Blachford Mansfield — 
 " Westward Ho " — Letters from Mr. Henry Drummond and Rajah Brooke — 
 Drawing Class for Mechanics at Bideford — Leaves Devonshire — Lectures 
 to Ladies in London — Correspondence — Winter at Farley Court — The 
 " Heroes " Written. 
 
 The Crimean winter, bitter alike to the brave men before Sebas- 
 topol and to the hearts of all Englishmen and women at home, 
 weighed heavily on Charles Kingsley, to whom the War was like a 
 dreadful nightmare, which haunted him day and night. " I can 
 think of nothing but the war," he said, and on the receipt of a 
 letter from a friend which told him of the numbers of tracts sent out 
 to the soldiers which they never read and looked upon as so much 
 waste paper, and urging him to write something which would touch 
 them, he sat down, wrote off, and despatched the same day to 
 London a tract which is probably known to few in England — 
 "Brave Words to Brave Soldiers." Several thousand copies were 
 sent out and distributed in the Crimea, and the stirring words 
 touched many a noble soul. Jt was published anonymously to 
 avoid the prejudice which was attached to the name of its author 
 in all sections of the religious world and press at that period. 
 To his friend Mr. Tom Hughes he writes at this moment : 
 
 " You may have fancied me a bit of a renegade and a hanger- 
 back of late. 
 
 " ' Still in our ashes live their wonted fires.' 
 
 And if I have held back from the Socialist Movement, it has been 
 because I have seen that the world was not going to be set right in 
 any such rose-pink way, excellent as it is, and that there are heavy 
 arrears of destructio?i to be made up, before cofistruciiofi can even 
 begin ; and I wanted to see what those arrears were. And I do 
 see a little. At least I see that the old phoenix must burn, before 
 the new one can rise out of its ashes. 
 
2i6 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 " Next, as to our army. I quite agree with you about that — if 
 it existed to agree about. But the remnant that comes home, like 
 gold tried in the fire, may be the seed of such an army as the world 
 never saw. Perhaps we may help it to germinate. But please 
 don't compare the dear fellows to Cromwell's Ironsides. There is 
 a great deal of ' personal ' religion in the army, no doubt : and 
 personal religion may help men to endure, and complete the bull- 
 dog form of courage : but the soldier wants more. He wants a 
 faith that he is fighting on God's side; he wants mihtary and cor- 
 porate and national religion, and that is what I fear he has yet to 
 get, and what I tried to give in my tract. That is what Cromwell's 
 Ironsides had, and by it they conquered. This is what the Eliza- 
 bethans had up to the Armada, and by it they conquered." 
 
 To Miss Marsh he writes on the death of Captain Hedley Vicars, 
 93rd Regiment, who was shot in a sortie, March 23, 1855 : 
 
 North Down House, Bideford, May 9, 1855. 
 
 " . , . . These things are most bitter, and the only comfort 
 which I can see in them is, that they are bringing us all face to face 
 with the realities of human life, as it has been in all ages, and giving 
 us sterner and yet more loving, more human, and more divine 
 thoughts about ourselves, and our business here, and the fate of those 
 who are gone, and awakening us out of the luxurious, frivolous, un- 
 real dream (full nevertheless of harsh judgments, and dealings forth 
 of damnation), in which we have been living so long — to trust in a 
 Living Father who is really and practically governing this world 
 and all worlds, and who willeth that none should perish — and 
 therefore has not forgotten, or suddenly begun to hate or torment, 
 one single poor soul which is past out of this life into some other, 
 on that accursed Crimean soil. All are in our Father's hands ; and 
 as David says, Though they go down into hell. He is there. Oh ! 
 blessed thought — more blessed to me at this moment (who think 
 more of the. many than of the few) than the other thought, that 
 though they ascend into heaven with your poor lost hero, He is there 
 also. . . . ." 
 
 During the winter, on the 25th of February, a sorrow came, and 
 God took from him, for a time, one who had been his beloved 
 friend for seventeen years, the ever welcomed guest in his home 
 since his marriage, and dear to his wife and children as to himself. 
 His own words, partly from a slight prefatory sketch,* partly 
 
 *•' Brazil, Buenos Ayres, and Paraguay," by Charles B. Mansfield, Esq., 
 with a Sketch of the Author's Life, by Rev. Charles Kingsley. (Macmillan, 
 1856.) 
 
Charles Mansjleld. 217 
 
 from some notes found among his private papers, will best describe 
 Charles Blachford Mansfield ; and to those who love to dwell on 
 fair pictm-es of God's works, this picture of a human being, moulded 
 into His image, may be acceptable and inspiring. Any record of 
 Charles Kingsley would be incomplete unless it included a glimpse 
 of one who was so entwined with his Cambridge days, with the 
 rectory life at Eversley, with the winter in Devonshire, and at times 
 when the presence of any other third person would have been an 
 interruption. 
 
 *' I knew Charles Mansfield first when he was at Clare Hall in 
 1838-9, sometime in my freshman's winter. He was born in the 
 year 18 19, at a Hampshire parsonage, and in due time went to 
 school at Winchester, in the old days of that iron rule among mas- 
 ters, and that brutal tyranny among the boys themselves, which are 
 now fast disappearing before the example of influence of the great 
 Arnold. Crushed at the outset, he gave little evidence of talent 
 beyond his extraordinary fondness for mechanical science. But 
 the regime of Winchester told on his mind in after life for good and 
 for evil ; first, by arousing in him a stern horror of injustice (and in 
 that alone he was stern), which showed itself when he rose to the 
 higher forms, by making him the loving friend and protector of all 
 the lesser boys ; and next, by arousing in him a doubt of all prece- 
 dents, a chafing against all constituted authority, of which he was 
 not cured till after long and sad experience. What first drew me 
 to him was the combination of body and mind. He was so won- 
 derfully graceful, active, and daring. He was more like an ante- 
 lope than a man. H« had a gymnastic ])ole in his room on which 
 he used to do strange feats. There was a seal-skin, too, hanging 
 in his room, a mottled two-year-old skin, about five feet long, of a 
 seal which was shot by him down on the Cornish coast. The seal 
 came up to the boat side and stared at him, and he knocked 
 it over. That thing haunted him much in after life. He deplored 
 it as all but a sin, after he had adopted thi notion that it was 
 wrong to take away animal life, for which he used to scold me in 
 his sweet charitable way, for my fishing and entomologizing. He 
 has often told me that the ghost of the seal appeared to him in his 
 dreams, and stood by his bed, bleeding, and making him wretched. 
 
 "He was a good shot, and captain of his boat at Cambridge, I 
 think. His powers of leaping standing, exceeded almost any 
 man's J ever saw. 1 believe him to have been i:)hysically incapable 
 of fear. And since his opinions changed, and during the last war, 
 he has said to me that he wished he was at Sebastopol, handling a 
 rifle, I have been tempted to wish that he had been a soldier, 
 so splendid a one do 1 think he would have made. 
 
2i8 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 "The next thing which drew me to him was his intellect, not 
 merely that he talked of the highest things, but he did it in such a 
 wonderful way. He cared for nothing but truth. He would argue 
 by the hour, but never for arguing sake. None can forget the 
 brilliance of his conversation, the eloquence with which he could 
 assert, the fancy with which he could illustrate, the earnestness 
 with which he could enforce, the sweetness with which he could 
 differ, the generosity with which he could yield. Perhaps the 
 secret of that fascination, which even at Cambridge, and still 
 more in after life, he quite unconsciously exercised over all who 
 really knew him (and often, too, over those who but saw him for a 
 passing minute, or heard him in a passing sentence, yet went away 
 sa)'ing that they had never met his like), was that virtue of earnest- 
 ness. When I first met him at Cambridge he was very full of 
 Combe's works, and of 'Volney's Ruins of Empires.' He was 
 what would be called a materialist, and used to argue stoutly on it 
 with me, who chose to be something of a dualist or gnostic. I 
 forget my particular form of folly. But I felt all through that his 
 materialism was more spiritual than other men's spiritualism, be- 
 cause he had such an intense sense of the truly spiritual ; of right 
 and wrong. He was just waiting for the kingdom of God. 
 When the truth was shown to him, he leapt up and embraced it. 
 There was the most intense faith in him from the first that Right 
 was right, and wrong wrong ; that Right must conquer ; that there 
 was a kingdom of God Eternal in the heavens, an ideal righteous 
 polity, to which the world ought to be, and some day would be, 
 conformed. That was his central idea; I don't say he saw it 
 clearly from the first ; 1 don't say that he did not lose sight of it at 
 times, but I know that he saw it, for he was the first human being 
 that taught it to me. Added to this unconquerable faith in good, 
 was an unconquerable faith in truth. He first taught me not to 
 be afraid of truth. 'If a thing is so, you can't be the worse for 
 knowing it is so,' was his motto, and well he carried it out. This 
 was connected, it seems to me, with his intense conscientiousness. 
 Of course that faculty can be diseased, like any other, and men 
 may conscientiously do wrong. But what corrected it in him 
 in after life, and prevented it from becoming mere obstinacy 
 and fanaticism, was his wonderful humility. That grew on him 
 after his conversion. He had it not at starting. At first he was 
 charming, but wilful and proud. Afterwards he was just as 
 charming, but too apt to say to any and to every one, ' Here 
 am I, send me ! ' But of his conscientiousness I could write 
 Images. I will not here though, perhaps never — such fantastic 
 forms did it take. All knight-errant honor which I ever heard of, 
 that man might have, perhaps has, actually outdone. From the 
 time of his leaving Cambridge he devoted himself to those sciences 
 which had been all along his darling pursuits. Ornithology, geolo- 
 
Charles Mansfield. 219 
 
 gy, mesmerism, even old magic, were his pastimes ; chemistry and 
 dynamics his real work. He was a great ornithologist from child- 
 hood ; he knew eggs especially well : one of his plans, because he 
 did not like shooting the birds, was to observe them on the trees 
 with a telescope ; and though not ' musical ' in the common sense, 
 he knew the note of every English bird. I never knew him 
 wrong. The history of his next ten years is fantastic enough, 
 were it written, to form material for any romance. Long periods 
 of voluntary penury, when (though a man of fair worldly fortune) 
 he would subsist on the scantiest fare — a few dates and some 
 brown bread, or a few lentils — at the cost of a few pence a day, 
 bestowing his savings on the poor ; bitter private sorrows, which 
 were schooling his heart and temper into a tone more purely an- 
 gelic than I have ever seen in man ; magnificent projects, worked 
 out as far as they would go, not wildly and superficially, but on the 
 most deliberate and accurate grounds of science, then thrown 
 away in disappointment, for some fresh noble dream ; an intense 
 interest in the social and political condition of the poor, which 
 sprang up in him, to his great moral benefit, during the last five 
 years of his life. Here were the elements of his schooling — as 
 hard a one, both voluntary and involuntary, as ever human soul 
 went through. In all my life I never heard that man give vent to 
 a low or mean word, or evince a low or mean sentiment. Though 
 he had never, I suppose, seen much of the 'grand monde,' he was 
 the most perfectly, well-bred man at all points I ever saw ; and 
 exquisite judges have said the same thing. His secret seemed very 
 simple, if one could attain it ; but he attained it by not trying to 
 attain it, for it was merely never thinking about himself. He was 
 always thinking how to please others in the most trivial matters ; 
 and that, not to make them think well of him (which breeds only 
 affectation), but just to make them comfortable : and that was 
 why he left a trail of light wherever he went. 
 
 " It was wonderful, utterly wonderful to me in after life, know- 
 ing all that lay on his heart, to see the way he flashed down over 
 the glebe at Eversley, with his knapsack at his back, like a shining 
 star appearing with peace on earth and good-will to men^ and 
 bringing an involuntary smile into the faces of every one who met 
 him — the compelled reflection of his own smile. And his voice 
 was like the singing of a bird in its wonderful cheerfulness, and 
 tenderness, and gaiety. 
 
 " At last, when he was six and thirty years of age, his victory 
 in the battle of life seemed complete. His enormous and increas- 
 ing labor seemed rather to have quickened and steadied than tired 
 his brain. The clouds which had beset his path had all but cleared, 
 and left sunshine and hope for the future. His spirit had become 
 purified, not only into doctrinal orthodoxy, but also into a humble, 
 generous, and manful piety, such as I cannot hope often to behold 
 
2 20 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 again. He had gathered round him friends, both men and women, 
 who looked on him with a love such as might be inspired by a 
 being from a higher world. He was already recognized as one of 
 the most promising young chemists in England, for whose future 
 renown no hope could be too high-pitched ; and a patent for a 
 chemical discovery which he had obtained, seemed, after years of 
 delay and disappointment, to promise him what he of all men 
 coveted least, renown and wealth. One day he was at work on 
 some experiments connected with his patent. By a mistake of 
 the lad who assisted him, the apparatus got out of order, the 
 naphtha boiled over, and was already on fire. To save the prem- 
 ises from the effect of an explosion, Mr. Mansfield caught up the 
 still in his arms, an attempted to carry it out \ the door was fast ; 
 he tried to hurl it' through the window, but too late. The still 
 dropped from his hands, half flayed with Hquid fire. He scrambled 
 out, rolled in the snow, and so extinguished the flame. Fearfully 
 burnt and bruised, he had yet to walk a mile to reach a cab, and 
 was taken to Middlesex Hospital, where, after nine days of agony, 
 he died like a Christian man. 
 
 " Oh, fairest of souls ! Happy are those who knew thee 
 in this life ! Happier those who will know thee in the life to 
 come ! 
 
 ''C. K." 
 
 They are together now ! Two true and perfect knights of God, 
 perchance on some fresh noble quest ! 
 
 I^ittle has been recovered of the correspondence of this year, 
 much of which sprung out of the pubHcation of "Westward Ho ! " 
 That book was dedicated to Rajah Brooke and Bishop Selwyn, and 
 produced the following letter from Mr. Henry Drummond, and at 
 a later period, one from the Rajah himself: 
 
 Albemarle Street, May 13, 1855. 
 " Dear Sir, — 
 
 "I have just seen your noble dedication of 'Westward Ho !' 
 to Sir J. Brooke, and have taken the Hberty to desire a copy of 
 the shameful trial to which he has been subjected to be sent you, 
 as I am sure it will gratify you. I heard from him last week : he 
 is quite well, and all his work prospering. A remarkable thing is 
 about to take place in Sarawak. The people finding themselves 
 dealt with in a manner so superior to that in which they are dealt 
 with by their own rulers, have considered that the iieligion of their 
 present governor must be the true religion, and accordingly are 
 about to apply en masse to become members of Brooke's religion. 
 In my opinion the only means which should be used towards 
 
Rajah Brooke and ''Westward Ho!'' 221 
 
 heathen is the manifestation of mercy, justice, and truth. The 
 poor bishop's trouble will btrgin after he has got his converts. 
 "Begging pardon for this intrusion from a stranger, 
 
 " I am, Sir, 
 *' With great admiration of your writings, 
 "Your obedient Servant, 
 
 " Henry Drummond." 
 
 RAJAH SIR JAMES BROOKE TO REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 Dawlish, March 24, 1859. 
 " My Dear Sir, — 
 
 " I have long delayed to thank you in person for a very wel- 
 come dedication to ' Westward Ho ! ' but business, with many cares, 
 prevented me. 
 
 "I cannot, however, now that I hear of your kind interest in my 
 cause, and the exertions you are making to advance it, forbear 
 from assuring you of my sense of your good opinion, and the good 
 it does me mentally. My life is pretty well at its dregs, and I shall 
 be glad indeed to pass the few remaining months or years in quiet, 
 and free from the anxieties which must beset the post 1 have occu- 
 pied, but which of late years have been increased tenfold, owing to 
 the course or rather no course pursued by the Government. 
 
 " It is a sad but true experience, that everything has succeeded 
 with the natives, and everything has failed with the English in Bor- 
 neo. I am anxious to retire, for Sarawak should not be ruled by 
 a failing man, and I would not cling to power when unable to dis- 
 charge its duties. 
 
 " In due time I would fain hand over my staff to my successor if 
 permitted ; but if forced to return to Sarawak, to bear its anxieties 
 and share its trials, I shall know it is a duty though a trying one, and 
 shall not begrudge the exertion for the short time I can make it. 
 
 " Let me thank you, then, for your kindness, and let me have 
 the satisfaction of knowing you before I leave this country. 
 
 " Whenever I go again to town, I will let you hear from me, in. 
 the hope you will invite me to visit you. 
 
 "Believe me, my dear Sir, 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 "J. Brooke." 
 
 Having no parish work at Bideford, except during an outburst 
 of cholera, when he took a district for house to house visitation, 
 and occasional duty at Northam, Hartland, and Abbotsham, he 
 lectured on the Fine Arts, and got up a drawing-class for young 
 men, of which one of the members, Mr. Plucknett, (now head of 
 a great firm for the design and manufacture of art furniture and 
 
222 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 decoration in Warwick and Leamington,) feelingly speaks in a let- 
 ter to Mrs. Kingsley : 
 
 Warwick, Aj>ril, 1876. 
 
 " I was a youth in Bideford at the time Mr, Kingsley came to 
 reside there, when seeing the young men of the town hanging 
 about wasting their leisure hours in worse than wasting, his heart 
 yearned to do them good. He at first endeavored to establish a 
 Government Scliool of Art — this, however, failed. He then offered 
 to teach a class drawing — gratuitously. A few of us held a meet- 
 ing and hired a room in the house of the Poet Postman, Edward 
 Capern, who, although a married man, much older than the rest of 
 us, was a most hard-working pupil. I look back upon those even- 
 ings at Bideford as the pleasantest part of my life, and, with God's 
 blessing, I attribute my success iu life to the valuable instruction 1 
 received from Mr. Kingsley : his patience, perseverance, and kind- 
 ness won all our hearts, and not one of his class but would have 
 given his life for the master. He used, as no doubt you remem- 
 ber, to bring fresh flowers from his conservatory for us to copy as 
 we became sufficiently advanced to do so ; and still further on he 
 gave us lectures on anatomy, illustrating the subject with chalk 
 drawings on a large black board. His knowledge of geometry, 
 perspective, and free-hand drawing, was wonderful; and the rapid 
 and beautiful manner in which he drew excited both our admiration 
 and our ambition. I have reason to believe that most of the class 
 received lasting benefit, and have turned out well. Personally, I 
 may say, with truth, 1 have cause to bless the name of Mr. Kings- 
 ley as long as I live ; for I left home with little more than the 
 knowledge of my business, and the knowledge of drawing learned 
 in the class. After many years of hard work I am now at the head 
 of a good business, which I am proud to say is well known for the 
 production of art furniture, &c. I often thought of writing to Mr, 
 Kingsley, but diffidence prevented me. The last time I ever saw 
 him was in front of Lord Elcho's Cottage, at Wimbledon, at the 
 time the Belgians first came to the camp. I was there represent- 
 ing my corp from Bath as a marksman, and just as I was about to 
 speak to Mr. Kingsley, the Prince of Wales came out on the green 
 and entered into conversation with him, and my opportunity was 
 lost for ever. 
 
 " Though dead, he yet influences for good thousands of hearts 
 and minds ; and he is now reaping the reward of his noble eff"orts 
 while on earth to add to the sum of human happiness, and thus 
 leave the world better than he found it. I need not speak of the 
 time when the class ceased, and Mr. Kingsley invited us to your 
 house, to bid us farewell, and of our tribute of love and respect to 
 him " 
 
Facility in Sketching. 223 
 
 This tribute of love was a silver card case, which was very pre- 
 cious to him, given at the close of a happy evening, when the 
 class came to supper at North Down House. 
 
 The mention of the " black board " will remind many of his 
 masterly sketches, in public lectures and at his own school, where 
 he liked always to have a black board, with a piece of chalk, to 
 illustrate his teachings by figures, which spoke sometimes as elo- 
 quently as his words. His sense of form was marvellous, and, when 
 in doors, he was never thoroughly at ease without a pen or pencil 
 in his hand. In conversation with his children or guests his pencil 
 was out in a moment to illustrate every subject, whether it was 
 natural history, geological strata, geography, maps, or the races of 
 mankind. And even when writing his sermons his mind seemed 
 to find relief in sketching on the blotting-paper before him, or on 
 the blank spaces in his sermon-book, characteristic heads, and 
 types of face, among the different schools of thought, from the 
 mediaeval monk to the modern fanatic. At Bristol, when he was 
 President of the Educational Section at the Social Science Con- 
 gress, as he sat listening to the various speakers, pen in hand, for 
 the ostensible purpose of making notes, he covered the paper with 
 sketches suggested by the audience before him or by his own im- 
 agination ; and when the room was cleared, unknown to him, peo- 
 ple would return and beg to carry off every scrap of paper he had 
 used, as mementos. 
 
 In the end of May he left Devonshire and went up to London, 
 before settling at Eversley. He there gave a lecture to the Work- 
 ing Men's College, and one of a series to ladies interested in the 
 cause of the laboring classes. The subject he took was. The work 
 of ladies in the Country Parish. 
 
 The lecture, valuable in itself, is doubly so, as the result of the 
 first eleven years of his labor among the poor, and some extracts 
 are given to show the human and humane rules by which he worked 
 his parish. 
 
 " I keep to my own key-note," he says — " I say, Visit whom, 
 when, and where you will ; but let your visits be those of women to 
 womefi. Consider to whom you go — to poor souls whose life, com.- 
 pared with yours, is one long malaise of body, and soul, and spirit 
 — and do as you would be done by ; instead of reproving and fault- 
 finding, encourage. In God's name, encourage. They scramble 
 
224 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 through life's rocks, bogs, and thorn-brakes, clumsily enough, and 
 have many a fall, poor things ! But why, in the name of a God of 
 love and justice, is the lady, rolling along the smooth turnpike road 
 in her comfortable carriage, to be calling out all day long to the 
 poor soul who drags on beside her, over hedge and ditch, moss and 
 moor, barefooted and weary hearted, with half a dozen children on 
 her back — ' You ought not to have fallen here ; and it was very 
 cowardly to lie down there ; and it was your duty as a mother, to 
 have helped that child through the puddle ; while as for sleeping 
 under that bush, it is most imprudent and inadmissible?' Why 
 not encourage her, praise her, cheer her on her weary way by lov- 
 ing words, and keep your reproofs for )'ourself — even your advice ; 
 for she does get on her way after all, where you could not travel a 
 step forward ; and she knows what she is about perhaps better than 
 you do, and what she has to endure, and what God thinks of her 
 life-journey. The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger 
 intermeddleth not with its joy. But do not you be a stranger to 
 her. Be a sister to her. I do not ask you to take her up in your 
 carriage. You cannot ; perhaps it is good for her that you cannot. 
 . . . All I ask is, do to the poor soul as you would have her 
 do to you in her place. Do not interrupt and vex her (for she is 
 busy enough already) with remedies which she does not understand, 
 for troubles which you do not understand. But speak comfortably 
 to her, and say, ' I cannot feel with you, but I do feel/(9;' you : I 
 should enjoy helping you — but I do not know how — tell me. Tell 
 me where the yoke galls ; tell me why that forehead is grown old 
 before its time : I may be able to ease the burden, and put fresh 
 light into the eyes ; and if not, still tell me, simply because I am a 
 woman, and know the relief of pouring out my own soul into loving 
 ears, even though in the depths of despair.' Yes, paradoxical as 
 it may seem, I am convinced that the only way to help these poor 
 women humanly and really, is to begin by confessing to them that 
 you do not know how to help them ; to humble yourself to them, 
 and to ask their counsel for the good of themselves and of their 
 neighbors, instead of coming proudly to them, with nostrums, ready 
 compounded, as if a doctor should be so confident in his own know- 
 ledge of books and medicine as to give physic before asking the 
 patient's symptoms. 
 
 " I entreat you to bear in mind (for without this all visiting of the 
 poor will be utterly void and useless) that you must regulate your 
 conduct to them and in their houses, even to the most minute par- 
 ticulars, by the very same rules which apply to persons of your own 
 class. . . . Piety, earnestness, affectionateness, eloquence — 
 all may be nullified and stultified by simply keeping a poor woman 
 standing in her own cottage while you sit, on entering her house, 
 even at her own request, while she is at meals. She may decline 
 
Lecture to Ladies. 225 
 
 to sit ; she may beg you to come in : all the more reason for re- 
 fusing utterly to obey her, because it shows that that very inward 
 gulf between you and her still exists in her mind, which it is the 
 object of your visit to bridge over. If you know her to be in 
 trouble, touch on that trouble as you would with a lady. Woman's 
 heart is alike in all ranks, and the deepest sorrow is the one of 
 which she speaks the last and least. We should not like any one 
 — no, not an angel from heaven, to come into our houses without 
 knocking at the door, to say, ' I hear you are very ill off — I will 
 lend you a hundred pounds. I think you are very careless of 
 money, I will take your accounts into my own hands.' And still 
 less again, ' Your son is a very bad, profligate, disgraceful fellow, 
 who is not fit to be mentioned ; I intend to take him out of your 
 hands and reform him myself.' 
 
 " Neither do the poor like such unceremonious mercy, such un- 
 tender tenderness, benevolence at horse-play, mistaking kicks for 
 caresses. They do not like it, they will not respond to it, save in 
 parishes which have been demoralized by officious and indiscrimi- 
 nate benevolence, and where the last remaining virtues of the 
 poor, savage self-help and independence, have been exchanged for 
 organized begging and hypocrisy. 
 
 4s ^ ^ ^ ^ H< ^ 
 
 *' Approach, then, these poor women as sisters — learn lovingly 
 and patiently (aye, and reverently, for there is that in every human 
 being which deserves reverence, and must be reverenced if we 
 wish to understand it) ; learn, I say, to understand their troubles, 
 and by that time they will have learnt to understand your reme- 
 dies. For you have remedies. I do not undervalue your position. 
 No man on earth is less inclined to undervalue the real power of 
 wealth, rank, accomplishments, manners — even physical beauty. 
 All are talents from God, and I give God thanks when I see them 
 possessed by any human being ; for I know that they too can be 
 used in His service, and brought to bear on the true emancipation 
 of woman — her emancipation not from man (as some foolish per- 
 sons fancy), but from the devil, ' the slanderer and divider,' who 
 divides her from man, and makes her live a life-long tragedy, 
 which goes on in more cottages than palaces — a vie a part, a vie 
 incomprise — a life made up half of ill-usage, half of unnecessary 
 self-willed martyrdom, instead of being, as God intended half of 
 the human universe, a helpmeet for man, and the one bright spot 
 which makes this world endurable. Towards making her that, 
 and so realizing the primeval mission by every cottage hearth, 
 each of you can do something ; for each of you have some talent, 
 power, knowledge, attraction between soul and soul, which the 
 cottager's wife has not, and by which you may draw her to you, 
 by human bonds and the cords of love ; but she must be drawn by 
 them alone, or your work is nothing, and though you give the 
 15 
 
226 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 treasures of Ind, they are valueless equally to her and to Christ ; 
 for they are not given in His name, which is that boundless tender- 
 ness, consideration, patience, self-sacrifice, by which even the cup 
 of cold water is a precious offering — as God grant your labor 
 may be ! " 
 
 Again, as to teaching boys, he adds : 
 
 " There is one thing in school work which I wish to press on 
 you. And that is, that you should not confine your work to the 
 girls ; but bestow it as freely on those who need it more, and who 
 (paradoxical as it may be) will respond to it more deeply and 
 freely — the boys. I am not going to enter into the reason why. 
 I only entreat you to believe me, that by helping to educate the 
 boys, or even by taking a class, as I have seen done with admira- 
 ble effect, of grown-up lads, you may influence for ever, not only 
 the happiness of your pupils, but of the girls whom they will here- 
 after marry. It will be a boon to your own sex, as well as to ours, 
 to teach them courtesy, self-restraint, reverence for physical weak- 
 ness, admiration of tenderness and gentleness, and it is one which 
 only a lady can bestow. Only by being accustomed in youth to 
 converse with ladies will the boy learn to treat hereafter his sweet- 
 heart or his wife like a gentleman. There is a latent chivalry, 
 doubt it not, in the heart of every untutored clod ; if it dies out in 
 him, as it too often does, it were better for him I often think 
 that he had never been born ; but the only talisman which will 
 keep it alive, much more develop it into its fulness, is friendly and 
 revering intercourse with women of higher rank than himself, 
 between whom and him there is a great and yet blessed gulf 
 
 fixed." 
 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 One secret of his own influence was this loving, human teach- 
 ing. In writing at this time to an unknown correspondent, who 
 consulted him about his ragged-school work, in which he was just 
 then greatly discouraged, he says : 
 
 " As for the ragged school, I would say, though they curse, yet 
 bless thou — teach there all the more ; tell these lads and men that 
 they have a P'ather in heaven — show that you believe it, by your 
 looks, your manner, and common geniality, and brotherly kind- 
 ness, and general hopefulness of tone ; and let them draw their 
 own conclusions. God their Father will take good care that the 
 good seed shall grow." 
 
 During a few days' absence he writes to his wife : 
 
Suffering Working out Perfection. 227 
 
 EVERSLEY, Jzily 16, 1855. 
 
 ". . . . After all, the problem of life is not a difficult one, 
 for it solves itself so very soon at best — by death. Do what is right 
 the best way you can, and wait to the end to k?iow. Only we 
 priests confuse it with our formulas, and bind heavy burdens. How 
 many have I bound in my time, God forgive me ! But for that, 
 too, I shall receive my punishment, which is to me the most com- 
 forting of thoughts 
 
 *'Yes— 
 
 ' 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, 
 Oh life, not death for which we pant, 
 More life, and fuller, that I want.' 
 
 You are right — that longing to get rid of walls and roofs and all the 
 chrysalis case of humanity is the earnest of a higher, richer state of 
 existence. That instinct which the very child has to get rid of 
 clothes, and cuddle to flesh — what is it but the longing for fuller 
 union with those it loves ? But see again (I always take the bright 
 side), — If in spite of wars and fevers, and accidents, and the strokes 
 of chance, this world be as rich and fair and green as we have 
 found it, what must the coming world be like ? I,et us comfort 
 ourselves as St. Paul did (in infinitely worse times), that the suffer- 
 ings of this present time are not worthy to be compared Avith the 
 glory that shall be revealed. It is not fair either to St. Paul or to 
 God — to quote the one text about the creation groaning and tra- 
 vailing, without the other, which says, that it will not groan or tra- 
 vail long. Would the mother who has groaned and travailed and 
 brought forth children — would she give up those children for the 
 sake of not having had the pain ? No. Then believe that the world 
 and every human being in it who has really groaned and travailed, 
 will not give up its past pangs for the sake of its then present per- 
 fection, but will look back on this life, as you do on past pain, with 
 glory and joy. Oh ! let the bible tell its own tale, and be faithful 
 to its plam words, honestly and carefully, understood, and all will 
 be well. I come to-morrow .... and I shall see my dar- 
 ling children." 
 
 They now settled at Eversley ; but as winter approached, the 
 damp obliged liim, on his wife's account, to leave the rectory again ; 
 but not his people, to his and their great joy. He took a house for 
 six months on Farley Hill, a high and dry spot in the next parish. 
 In the intervals of parochial work and lectures at the various 
 diocesan institutes, he brought out a volume of " Sermons for the 
 Times," and wrote a book of Greek fairy tales for his children, 
 
2 28 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 which came out at Christmas, as "The Heroes," dedicated to Rose, 
 Maurice, and Mary. 
 
 TO J. M. LUDLOW, ESQ. 
 
 Farley Court, Nov., 1855. 
 
 " , . , . Some of your hints are valuable. I feel what you say 
 about not Greek and too Greek ; but Thad laid my account with 
 all that before I wrote. If I tell the story myself as you wish, I 
 catit give the children the Greek spirit — either morally or in man- 
 ner, therefore I have adopted a sort of simple ballad tone, and tried 
 to make my prose as metrical as possible. The archaisms are all 
 slips in the rough copy, and shall be amended, as shall all recondite 
 allusions ; but you must remember as to modernisms, that we 
 Cambridge men are taught to translate Greek by its modern equi- 
 valent even to slang. As to the word 'thrall,' about which you 
 are so wroth, I was not aware that I was wrong. It shall be 
 amended with thanks. My own belief is, that by taking the form 
 I have, I shall best do what I want, translate the children back into 
 a new old world, and make them, as long as they are reading, 
 forget the present, which is the true method of a — mtisemeni, while 
 tlie half metrical form will fix it in their minds, and give them 
 something to think over. I don't agree with you at all, nor does F., 
 about omitting allusions which the children can't understand. She 
 agrees with me that that is just what they like. 
 
 " Read, Oh read Longfellow's song of ' Hiawatha ' — never mind 
 a few defects, old hole-picker ; but read a set of myths as new as 
 delightful, and cause Tom Hughes to read them likewise." 
 
 TO THE SAME. 
 
 Farley Court, De€, 30, 1855. 
 
 "And for this fame, &c., 
 
 " I know a little of her worth. 
 
 "And I will tell you what I know. 
 
 " That, in the first place, she is a fact ; and as such, it is not 
 wise to ignore her, but at least to walk once round her, and see 
 her back as well as her front. 
 
 " The case to me seems to be this. A man feels in himself the 
 love of praise. Every man does who is not a brute. It is a 
 universal human faculty ; Carlyle nicknames it the sixth sense. 
 Who made it ? God or the devil? Is it flesh or spirit? a difficult 
 question ; because tamed animals grow to possess it in a high 
 degree ; and our metaphysic does not yet allow them spirit. 
 But, whichever it be, it cannot be for bad ; only bad when misdi- 
 rected, and not controlled by reason, the faculty which judges 
 between good and evil. Else why has God put His love of praise 
 
Fame and Praise. 229 
 
 into the heart of every child which is born into the world, and 
 entwined it into the holiest, filial, and family affections, as the 
 earliest mainspring of good actions ? Has God appointed that 
 every child shall be fed first with a necessary lie, and afterwards 
 come to the knowledge of your supposed truth, that the praise of 
 God alone is to be sought ? Or are we to believe that the child is 
 intended to be taught as deficately and gradually as possible the 
 painful fact, that the praise of all men is not equally worth hav- 
 ing, and to use his critical faculty to discern the praise of good men 
 from the praise of bad, to seek the former and despise the latter ? 
 I should say that the last was the more reasonable. And this I 
 will say, that if you bring up any child to care nothing for the 
 praise of its parents, its elders, its pastors, and masters, you may 
 make a fanatic of it, or a shameless cynic : but you will neither 
 make it a man, an Englishman, nor a Christian. 
 
 "But 'our Lord's words stand, about not seeking the honor 
 which comes from men, but the honor which comes from God 
 only ! ' True, they do stand, and our Lord's fact stands also, the 
 fact that he has created every child to be educated by an honor 
 which comes from his parents and elders. Both are true. Here, 
 as in most spiritual things, you have an antinomia, an apparent 
 contradiction, which nothing but the gospel solves. And it does 
 solve it ; and your one-sided view of the text resolves itself into 
 just the same fallacy as the old ascetic one. ' We must love God 
 alone, therefore we must love no created thing.' To which St. 
 John answers pertinently, ' He who loveth not his brother whom 
 he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?' 
 If you love your brethren, you love Christ in them. If you love 
 their praise, you love the praise of Christ in them. For consider 
 this, you cannot deny that, if one loves any person, one desires 
 that person's esteem. But we are bound to love all men, and that 
 is our highest state. Therefore, in our highest state, we shall 
 desire all men's esteem. Paradoxical, but true. If we believe in 
 Christmas-day ; if we believe in Whitsunday, we shall believe that 
 Christ is in all men, that God's spirit is abroad in the earth, and 
 therefore the dispraise, misunderstanding, and calumny of men 
 will be exquisitely painful to us, and ought to be so ; and, on the 
 other hand, the esteem of men, and renown among men for doing 
 good deeds will be inexpressibly precious to us. They will be 
 signs and warrants to us that God is pleased with us, that we are 
 sharing in that 'honor and glory' which Paul promises again and 
 again, with no such scruples as yours, to those who lead heroic 
 lives. We shall not neglect the voice of God within us ; but we 
 shall remember that there is also a voice of God without us, which 
 we must- listen to : and that in a Christian land, vox populi^ pa- 
 tiently and discriininately listened to, is sure to be found not far off 
 from the voii Dei. 
 
230 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 " Now, let me seriously urge this last fact on you. Of course, in 
 listening to the voice of the man outside there is a danger, as there 
 is in the use of any faculty. You may employ it, according to 
 Divine reason and grace, for ennobling and righteous purposes : or 
 you may degrade it to carnal and selfish ones ; so you may degrade 
 the love of praise into vanity, into longing for the honor which 
 comes from men, by pandering to their passions and opinions, by 
 using your powers as they would too often like to use theirs, for 
 mere self-aggrandisement, by saying in your heart — quam pulchrum 
 digito monstrari et dicier hie est. That is the man who wrote the 
 fine poem, who painted the fine picture, and so forth, till, by giv- 
 ing way to this, a man may give way to forms of vanity as base 
 as the red Indian who sticks a fox's tail on, and dances about 
 boasting of his brute cunning. I know all about that, as well as 
 any poor son of Adam ever did. But I know, too, that to desire 
 the esteem of as many rational men as possible ; in a word, to 
 desire an honorable and true renown for having done good in my 
 generation, has nothing to do with that ; and the more I fear and 
 struggle against the former, the more I see the exceeding beauty 
 and divineness, and everlasting glory of the latter as an entrance 
 into the communion of saints. 
 
 " Of course, all this depends on whether we do believe that 
 Christ is in every man, and that God's spirit is abroad in the earth. 
 Of course, again, it will be very difficult to know who speaks by 
 God's spirit, and who sees by Christ's light in him ; but surely the 
 wiser, the humbler path, is to give men credit for as much wisdom 
 and rightness as possible, and to believe that when one is found 
 fault with, one is probably in the wrong. For myself, on looking 
 back, I see clearly with shame and sorrow, that the obloquy which 
 I have brought often on myself and on the good cause, has been 
 almost all of it my own fault — that I have given the devil and bad 
 men a handle, not by caring what people would say, but by not 
 caring — by fancying that I was a very grand fellow, who was going 
 to speak what I knew to be true, in spite of all fools (and really 
 did and do intend so to do), while all the while I was deceiving 
 myself, and unaware of a canker at the heart the very opposite to 
 the one against which you warn me — T mean the proud, self-willed, 
 self-conceited spirit which made no allowance for other men's 
 weakness or ignorance ; nor again, for their superior experience 
 and wisdom on points which I had never considered — which took 
 a pride in shocking and startling, and defying, and hitting as hard 
 as I could, and fancied, blasphemously, as I think, that the word of 
 God had come to me only, and went out from me only. God 
 forgive me for these sins, as well as for my sins in the opposite 
 direction ; but for these sins especially, because I see them to be 
 darker and more dangerous than the others. 
 
 " For there has been gradually revealed to me (what my many 
 
The Voice Within and the Voice Without. 231 
 
 readings in the lives of fanatics and ascetics ought to have taught 
 me long before), that there is a terrible gulf ahead of that not 
 caring what men say. Of course it is a feeUng on which the spirit 
 must fall back in hours of need, and cry, ' Thou God knowest 
 mine integrity. I have believed, and therefore I will speak ; Thou 
 art true, though all men be liars !' But I am convinced that that is 
 a frame in which no man can live, or is meant to live ; that it is 
 only to be resorted to in fear and trembling, after deepest self- 
 examination, and self-purification, and earnest prayer. For other- 
 wise, Ludlow, a man gets to forget that voice of God without him, 
 in his determination to listen to nothing but the voice of God 
 Avithin him, and so he falls into two dangers. He forgets that there 
 is a voice of God without him. He loses trust in, and charity to, 
 and reverence for his fellow-men ; he learns to despise, deny, and 
 quench the Spirit, and to despise prophesyings, and so becomes 
 gradually cynical, sectarian, fanatical. 
 
 " And then comes a second and worse danger. Crushed into 
 self, and his own conscience and schema mimdi, he loses the 
 opportunity of correcting his impression of the voice of God 
 within, by the testimony of the voice of God without ; and so he 
 begins to mistake more and more the voice of that very flesh of 
 his, which he fancies he has conquered, for the voice of God, and 
 to become, without knowing it, an autotheist. And out of that 
 springs electicism, absence of tenderness for men, for want of 
 sympathy zuith men ; as he makes his own conscience his standard 
 for (xod, so he makes his own character the standard for men ; and 
 so he becomes narrow, hard, and if he be a man of strong will and 
 feelings, often very inhuman and cruel. This is the history of 
 thousands — of Jeromes, Lauds, Puritans who scourged Quakers, 
 Quakers who cursed Puritans ; Nonjurors, who though they would 
 die rather than offend their own conscience in owning William, 
 would plot with James to murder William, or devastate England 
 with Irish Rapparees and Auvergne dragoons. This, in fact, is the 
 spiritual diagnosis of those many pious persecutors, who, though 
 neither hypocrites or blackguards themselves, have used both as 
 instruments of their fanaticism. 
 
 " Against this I have to guard myself, you little know how 
 much, and to guard my children still more, brought up, as they 
 will be, under a father, who, deeply discontented with the present 
 generation, cannot but express that discontent at times. To make 
 my children ' banausoi,' insolent and scoffing radicals, beheving in 
 nobody and nothing but themselves, would be perfectly easy in me 
 if I were to make the watch-word of my house, ' Never mind what 
 people say.' On the contrary, I shall teach them that there are 
 plenty of good people in the world, that public opinion has pretty 
 surely an undercurrent of the water of life, below all its froth and 
 garbage, and that in a Christian country like this, where, with all 
 
232 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 faults, a man (sooner or later) has fair play and a fair hearing, the 
 esteem of good men, and the blessings of the poor, will be a pretty 
 sure sign that they have the blessing of God also ; and 1 shall tell 
 them, when they grow older, that ere they feel called on to become 
 martyrs, in defending the light within them against all the world, 
 they must first have taken care most patiently, and with all self- 
 distrust and humility, to make full use of the light which is 
 around them, and has been here for ages before them, and 
 would be here still, though they had never been born or thought 
 of The antinomy between this and their own conscience may 
 be painful enough to them some day. To what thinking man 
 is it not a life -long battle ? but I shall not dream that by denying 
 one pole of the antinomy I can solve it, or do anything but make 
 them, by cynicism or fanaticism, bury their talent in the earth, 
 and not do the work which God has given them to do, because 
 they will act like a parson who, before beginning his sermon, 
 should first kick his congregation out of doors, and turn the key ; 
 and not like St. Paul, who became all things to all men, if by any 
 means he might save some." 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 1856. 
 Aged 37. 
 
 Winter at Farley Court — Letter from a Sailor at Hong Kong — Union Strikes — 
 Fishing Poem and Fishing Flies — The Sabbath Question — Invitation to Snow- 
 donia — Visit to North Wales — American Visitors — Preface to Tauler's Ser- 
 mons. 
 
 The winter of 1856, spent at Farley Court, a lovely spot in Swal- 
 lowfield parish, adjoining to and overlooking Eversley, was a bright 
 and happy one. Living on high ground, and in a dry house, acted 
 as a tonic to him as well as to his family, and infused fresh life into 
 his preaching and his parish work. In his night-schools, which 
 were well attended, he gave lectures on mines, shells, and other 
 subjects connected with Natural History, illustrated with large 
 drawings of his own. The appearance of a ghost in the neighbor- 
 hood, which had greatly alarmed his parishioners, but which he 
 stalked down and found, as he expected, was a white deer, escaped 
 from Calverly Park, led to his preaching a sermon on Ghosts to his 
 people. The old incubus of the Crimean War was removed after 
 two years pressure, and the new one of the Indian Mutiny, which 
 weighed even more heavily upon him from the thought of the suf- 
 ferings of women and children, was as yet in the future, and his 
 heart rebounded again. The formation of the camp at Aldershot 
 created fresh interests for him at this time and during his remaining 
 years, by bringing a new element into his congregation at Eversley, 
 and giving him the friendship of many Crimean officers. In July 
 he was at Aldershot on the memorable occasion of the Queen's 
 first inspection of the remnant of her Crimean army, and saw the 
 march-past of the different regiments before Her Majesry, who was 
 on horseback — a sight never to be forgotten, and which impressed 
 him deeply. 
 
 In August the long dreamt of expedition to Snowdon with his 
 friends Mr. Tom Hughes and Mr. Tom Taylor, which resulted in 
 
234 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 the writing of " Two Years Ago," was accomplished. His spare 
 hours were devoted to the study and classification of the Phryganae, 
 which was carried on more by the side of trout streams in North 
 Wales and in an occasional day's fishing at Wotton and Wild Moor, 
 than in his own study. He contributed articles to the " North 
 British Review" on Art and Puritanism, and to ''Frazer's Maga- 
 zine" on Mystics and Mysticism,* and began his new romance. 
 During the summer and autumn many a pilgrimage was made by 
 Americans to the home of the author whose works were then per ■ 
 haps more appreciated at the other side of the Atlantic than in his 
 own country. Among these were Mrs. Beecher Stowe and her 
 sister, Mrs. Perkins. 
 
 The following letters will show the life and vigor which marked 
 his private correspondence this year : 
 
 TO T. HUGHES, ESQ. 
 
 Farley Court. 
 
 *'I wish you would make a vow, and keep it strong ; for F. says, 
 that if you will, I may : and that is not to ' cross the sea like Sophia,' 
 but to go with me to Snowdon next summer for a parson's week, 
 i.e. twelve days. For why? I have long promised my children a 
 book to be called ' Letters from Snowdon,' and I want to rub up 
 old memories, and to get new ones in parts which I have not seen. 
 You do not know how easy it is. You get second class into the 
 mail at Euston Square at 9 p.m., and breakfast at Aber, under the 
 Carnadds, next morning. An ordnance map, a compass, fishing- 
 tackle, socks, and slippers are all you want. Moreover, I do know 
 where to fish, and one of the crackest fishers of the part has pro- 
 mised to give me as many flies of his own making as I like, while 
 another can lend us boat or eoracle, if we went to fish Gwjmnant 
 Dinas. I conceive that, humanly speaking, if we went to work 
 judgmatically, we could live for \2s. a-day each at the outside (if 
 we are canny, at less), kill an amount of fish perfectly frightful, and 
 all the big ones, by the simple expedient of sleeping by day, walking- 
 evening and morning, and fishing during the short hot nights, Wales 
 is a cheap place, if you avoid show inns ; and, save a night at Capel 
 Curig, we need never enter a show inn. We may stay two or three 
 
 days at Pen-y-Gwyrrryynnwwdddelld there — I can't spell it, but 
 
 it sounds Pennygoorood, which is the divinest pig-sty beneath the 
 canopy, and at Bedgelert old Jones the clerk, and king of fisher- 
 men, will take us in — and do for us — if we Jet him. The parson 
 
 * Since published in the Miscellanies, 
 
Body and Soul. 235 
 
 of Bedgelert is a friend of mine also, but we must depend on our 
 own legs, and on stomachs, which can face braxy mutton, young 
 taters, Welsh poiter, which is the identical drainings of Noah's 
 flood turned sour, and brandy of more strength than legality. 
 Bread horrid. Fleas MCCCC ad infinitum. Bugs a sprinkUng. 
 For baths, the mountain brook ; for towel, a wisp of any endogen 
 save Scirpus triqueter, or Juncus squarrosus ; and for cure of all 
 ills, and supplement of all defects, baccy. Do come — you have no 
 notion of the grandeur of the scenery, small as it is compared with 
 the Alps." 
 
 TO , ESQ. 
 
 February 27, 1856. 
 
 " Your letter delighted me . . . . * * * gave me your mes- 
 sage. My answer is, I am going to preach on ' Saved by Hope' 
 to my people, on Sunday, and also when I preach for my father at 
 Chelsea on (D. V.) April 27, for the District Visiting Society .... 
 With regard to * * * I fear neither you nor any man can give him 
 a fresh back to his head : enlarge that deficient driving wheel in the 
 cerebellum, so as to keep the thinking and feeling part of the brain 
 at work. It is sad to see how much faults of character seeni to de- 
 pend on physiognomic defects ; but do they really depend upon it ? 
 Is a man's spirit weak because he has a poor jaw, and a small back 
 to his head ; or is his jaw poor, and his cerebellum small, because 
 his spirit is weak ? I would fain believe the latter ; fain believe 
 that the body is the exjiression of the soul, and is moulded by it, 
 and not, as Combe would have it, the soul by the body : my reason 
 points to that belief ; but I shrink from my own reason, because it 
 seems to throw such tremendous moral i;esponsibility on man, to 
 forbid one's saying ' poor fellow, it is not his fault, it is a constitu- 
 tional defect ; ' for if one says that a man is not responsible for the 
 form of his own soul — where does all virtue and vice go to ? And 
 this brings one straight to the question of madness, on which I fully 
 agree with you. I said so in print, long ago, in a sermon on Ahab 
 at Ramoth Gilead, which you will find in my first set of National 
 Sermons. And I have seen cases myself which I could attribute 
 to nothing else. I cannot but believe that a pecuhar kind of 
 epilepsy of which I have had two cases among the poor of my 
 parish, and some of the horrible phenomena of puerperal mania, 
 are ' the unclean spirit ' of the New Testament. I am perfectly 
 certain that the accesses of mingled pride, rage, suspicion, and 
 hatred of everybody and everything, accompanied by tlie most un- 
 speakable sense of loneliness and '•darkness' (St. John's metaphor, 
 for it is tlie only one), which were common to me in youth, and 
 are now, by God's grace, very rare (though I am just as capable of 
 them as ever, when I am at unaivares and give place to the devil 
 
236 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 by harsh judgments or bitter words) were and are nothing less than 
 temporary possession by a devil. I am sure that the way in which 
 those fits pass off in a few minutes, as soon as I get ashamed of 
 myself, is not to be explained by ' habit,^ either physical or moral 
 (though '■moral habits' I don't believe in), but by the actual in- 
 tervention of an unseen personage, I believe our Lord Jesus Christ 
 Himself, driving away that devil. I had once a temporary madman 
 here among our cottagers, who in his first fit tore off his clothes 
 and ran away into the woods naked. (I suspect that desire of 
 nakedness to be the blind effort to be merely himself, and to escape 
 from the sense of oppression caused by something, or being over 
 and above self, i.e.^ fi'om possession). In that fit I did not see him, 
 it was before I came here. In his second he turned melancholy 
 mad, walked up and down in silence, and when he spoke, declared 
 that the devil had hold of him, and would not let him sleep. The 
 Doctor luckily believed in demoniacal possession, and came to me, 
 saying, ' I can't cure this man's mind by making his liver act. 
 You must make his liver act by curing his mind.' I went to the 
 patient and agreed with him fully, that the devil was in him ; and 
 I said, ' I will tell you why he is in you ; because, my dear man, 
 you have been a thief, and a cheat, and a liar ' {as all the world 
 knew), ' and have sold yourself to the father of lies. But if you 
 will pray to God to forgive you (and then I set forth those precious 
 promises in Christ, which the Record thinks I don't believe), ' and 
 will lead a new and honest life, you may snap your fingers at the 
 devil.' And after awhile the man got well, and has had no return 
 for seven years. I did that in the face of the troublesome fact, 
 that his son (and a great rogue too) was subject to melancholy 
 madness also, and that his sister was evidently cracked — her mad- 
 ness being causeless jealousy. That looked like a 'constitutional' 
 defect in the family blood ; but I thought the man must know his 
 own business best, and took him at his word, and on the same plan 
 I had very fair success with his son also. But enough — only pray 
 write to me again on this matter that we may compare notes. I 
 cannot tell you the relief to me to find a man like minded ; and 
 therefore write, when you have a spare five minutes, on any matter. 
 You are one by whose confidence I feel honored, and I do not use 
 that word lightly. 
 
 '" There is much more in your letter I must answer another day." 
 
 TO REV. F. D. MAURICE. 
 
 Farley Court, March, 1856. 
 
 " .... I enjoy your sermons weekly very much, and a 
 good deal which you say in them, hits me very hard. What glib 
 cruelty and nonsense I have talked in past times ! If I wanted a 
 proof of the ' corruption of human nature,' I could find no plainer 
 
Calvinism. 237 
 
 one than the way in which really amiable and thoughtful people 
 take up with doctrines which outrage their own reason and morality, 
 simply because they find them ready-made to their hands ; and 
 now it seems as if the second-hand creed was actually conquering. 
 I go into no middle-class house, religious or irreligious, without 
 finding their whole religious library composed of the very school 
 
 which we are fighting against — Adam Clarke, C , S , etc. 
 
 And what hope would one have, if one did not know that under- 
 neath all this lay the strangest unrest in, and dissatisfaction with, 
 and disbelief in it all. I wish I could have some talk with you ; 
 for unless I can get from you some of your moderate and charitable 
 and two-sided notions, I shall begin to regard Calvin as a child of 
 the Devil, and Calvinism as the upas tree, which Satan planted in 
 the Lord's garden at the Reformation to poison all with its shade. 
 The influence of Calvinism abroad seems to me to have been uni- 
 formly ruinous, destructive equally of political and moral life, a 
 blot and a scandal on the Reformation ; and now that it has at last 
 got the upper hand in England, can we say much more for it ? 
 
 TO JOHN BULLAE, ESQ. 
 
 1856. 
 
 " . . . . Since I saw you I have felt a great deal. A dear 
 friend has suddenly lost a wife, who also was very dear to us. I was 
 on the spot and saw all ; and it was very dreadful, in spite of all the 
 perfect hope behind. God help us, what cobwebs we all are ; 
 why should He not sweep us away, as He does better than us ? 
 It is a very searching thought. . . . How such moments as 
 these draw men near each other ! Mrs. Kingsley last night just 
 escaped a horrible accident, from the fall of a horse. I felt her 
 danger draw me nearer to every one whom I esteemed, by shock- 
 ing me with the fearful possibility of loneliness — though only for a 
 time at worst — still loneliness, and very dreadful." 
 
 Among the letters of this year, he was deeply touched by the 
 following from a naval officer_, dated H.M.S. "St. George," off 
 Hong Kong : 
 
 " Among the many blessings for which I have had to thank God 
 this night, the most special has been for the impressions produced 
 by your noble sermon of ' Westward Ho ! ' Some months ago I 
 read it for the first time, then sailed on a long cruize, and now on 
 returning have read it again with prayer that has been answered, 
 for God's blessing has gone with it. I feel as I never felt before, 
 that Protestantism is the religion of this Ufe especially, and that I 
 have been heeding the future to the neglect of the living present. 
 Many a day of late, thinking of you, I have gone on deck to my 
 
238 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 duty and seen God, where theoretically only I have been in the 
 habit of looking for Him, on the sea, and in the clouds, and faces 
 of men ; and the Holy Spirit descending, has stirred my pulses 
 with the sense of universal love prevailing, above, around, and 
 beneath. 
 
 " ' O Uncreate, unseen, and undefined, source of all light, and 
 fountain of ail mind, lurks there in all the wide expanse, one spot 
 — above, around, beneath, where Thou art not ? ' I am able to 
 speak of God and of religion with less of the humiliating hesita- 
 tion that I am accustomed to, and trust that He will give rae that 
 manliness that will enable me so to talk of His workings, which, 
 alas ! we are in the habit of practically ignoring. Accept then, ni)'- 
 dear sir, this tribute to your own manly, plain, and practical preach- 
 ing. Doubtlessly it has found an echo far and wide ; to ' roll from 
 Boul to soul, and grow for ever, and for ever ! ' 
 
 " May God raise up for us many such teachers, and long preserve 
 you in all your faculties of heart and head, to testify of Him, and 
 prepare the world for the coming of Christ. 
 
 " Sir Michael Seymour has morning prayers, daily, in his own 
 ship — an almost solitary instance in the navy ; but as the admiral 
 sets the example, may we not hope that the good old habit of those 
 days when ' first, above all things,' it was provided ' that God be 
 duly served twice every day,' is returning ? 
 
 • Once the welcome light has broken, 
 Who shall say 
 What the unimagined glories 
 
 Of the day, 
 What the evil that shall perish 
 
 In its ray ? 
 jVid the dawning tongue and pen, 
 Aid it hopes of honest men ; 
 Aid it paper — -aid it type — 
 Aid it for the hour is ripe ; 
 And our earnest must not slacken 
 
 Into play, 
 Men of thought and men of action 
 Clear the way ! ' 
 
 " Ever, I pray so to continue, I remain, my dear sir, 
 
 " Your grateful brother in the faith, 
 
 " R. N." 
 
 " P. S. — As a nautical man I must take the liberty of pointing 
 out one little nautical error, and only one. You describe the 
 cable of the ' Rose ' as rattling through the hawse-hole, forgetting 
 
A Sailor s Testimony. 239 
 
 that then (and for 230 years afterwards) hemp cables alone were 
 used, in which there is little rattle, as any one who has been com- 
 pelled to work them will testify. Yet, on second thought, you are 
 not far out, for before letting go hemp cables you get a range up 
 before the bilts, which portion runs out rapidly enough ; but it is 
 not done now with chain. You would have made a first-rate 
 sailor, sir ! " 
 
 This was one among the many letters which he received about 
 his novel of " Westward Ho ! " The writer some years afterwards 
 made himself known to him as Captain Alston, of H.M.S. "St. 
 George," and a strong personal attachment was formed between 
 the two men who had so much in common ; and up to Captain 
 Alston's lamented death, which occurred a short time before that of 
 his friend, he consulted Mr. Kingsley on all points connected with 
 his noble work, which was latterly on board the Reformatory Train- 
 ing Ships on the Thames and the Clyde. After his first visit to 
 Eversley, Captain Alston writes : 
 
 " It Goes not pay, my dear Mr. Kingsley, to stay with you. I 
 don't know when I felt so miserable as I did yesterday. Positively 
 I thought incipient heart-breaking had commenced ; it felt very like 
 it — chokiness and all that, in the train going up. I thought I should 
 shake it off after dinner, but could not. My pipe made me worse, 
 for it reminded me only of your snuggery, your arm-chair, your 
 talk, and your kindness. The more I feel kindness the more 
 incapable I am of thanking people for it to their face. In the 
 land of the hereafter we shall know each other. Then soul will 
 come to soul, and you will know how much 1 care for you ; the red 
 Indian spirit won't let him write the proper word (or perhaps it is 
 from those old hard hearts, the sons of Odin, one inherits this re- 
 serve), and I will put it down to race, and bide that time, and say 
 no more about it. 
 
 " Salute all in the two houses for me, and old S., and take a 
 Dieu vous garde from 
 
 " A. H. Alston." ' 
 
 To a friend at; Sheffield, he wrote on the subject of Trades 
 Unions : 
 
 " If these trade unions are to be allowed to exist, they can only 
 exist on the ground of being not only organs for combination, but 
 for keeping the combination men within the law. If they will not 
 disprove that such outrages have been committed by union men ; 
 
240 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 if they will not, in honor to their own class, be the first to drag 
 such hounds to justice ; if they will do nothing to free themselves 
 from the old stigma that from 1820-48, they have themselves 
 notoriously engaged in such outrages and murders — then let them 
 be put down by law as inca])able morally as politico-economically. 
 With you I have defended the right of combination among the 
 workmen, in hope that they would become wiser than of yore. 
 But if they continue* to murder, I see nothing for them but the just 
 judgment of public opinion which will sweep them away, and I fear 
 inaugurate a reign of tyranny and of capital. I and others have 
 been seeing with dread the growing inclination of the governing 
 classes to put down these trades unions, &c., by strong measures. 
 What am I to say when I see the working men themselves, in the 
 face of this danger, justifying the measures of those who wish to be 
 hard on them ? I have seen enough of trade unions to suspect 
 that the biggest rogues and the loudest charlatans are the men 
 who lead or mislead t'le honest working men ; but if the honest 
 working men tl:^emselves make no move towards detecting and 
 exposing the authors of such outrages, they must suffer with their 
 blind and base leaders. If they fancy they are too sti'ong for the 
 classes above them, that they can defy the laws of England and the 
 instincts of humanity, then they will find themselves mistaken, 
 even if they have to be taught their folly by a second Bristol riots 
 or a second Peterloo." 
 
 In March, 1856, among many other letters about his books 
 came one from a perfect stranger, as he called himself, dated from 
 Cambridge, saying, he felt compelled after reading the "Sermons 
 for the Times," to express his own deep debt of gratitude : 
 
 " I immediately took them to a friend, whose remorse for a past 
 course of sin has often led him to the very verge of suicide, and he 
 has just been to me with a heart full of grateful delight, and told 
 me that the sermon on ' Salvation ' has made him a completely new 
 creature. I have ventured to trespass on your time, because I 
 cannot help thinking that a minister of God must have sore trials 
 to bear, and bitter disappointments, and the experience that he has 
 planted, not altogether in vain, the good seed, cannot but be con- 
 soling." 
 
 In writing to another stranger who had made full confession of 
 his doubts and difficulties to him, Mr. Kingsley says : 
 
 " Your experiences interested me deeply, and confirm my own. 
 An atheist I never was ; but in ni}' early life I wandered through 
 many doubts and vain attempts to explain to myself the riddle of 
 
Off for Rest. 241 
 
 life and this world, till I found that no explanation was so complete 
 as the one which one learnt at one's mother's knee. Complete 
 nothing can be on this side of the grave, on which St. Paul himself 
 said, that he only saw through a glass darkly ; but complete enough 
 to give comfort to the weary hearts of my poor laboring folk, and 
 
 to mine also, which is weary enough at times I am 
 
 much pleased to hear what you say about your mother. Believe 
 me, the good old-fashioned Church-folk, when they were good, were 
 nearer the truth than either Exeter-Halhte or Puseyite " 
 
 With spring his thoughts turned to fishing ; and one April morn- 
 ing when the south-westerly wind wafted certain well-known sounds 
 from the Camp, the South-Western Railway, and Heckfield Place, 
 to the little Rectory, these lines were written and put into his 
 wife's hand : 
 
 Oh blessed drums of Aldershot ! 
 
 Oh blessed south-west train ! 
 Oh blessed, blessed Speaker' s clock, 
 
 All prophesying rain ! 
 
 Oh blessed yaffil, laughing loud ! 
 
 Oh blessed falling glass ! 
 Oh blessed fan of cold grey cloud ! 
 
 Oh blessed smelling grass ! 
 
 Oh bless'd southwind that toots his horn 
 
 Through every hole and crack ! 
 I'm off at eight to-morrow morn, 
 
 To bring such fishes back ! 
 
 April I, 1856. 
 
 to tom hughes, esq. 
 
 Farley Court. 
 
 "When can you come and see us ? We return to Eversley on 
 Easter Monday ; all that week swallowed up in confirmations, 
 leastwise till Thursday ; and just coming home is a confused time ; 
 but if you can't come any other time you must e'en come then ; 
 for come you must. This ' gracious rain ' will put the fish all right 
 in a week, and we might run to Farnham or elsewhere, for a day 
 (more I can't spare), to see what a large march-brown, and a red or 
 a golden palmer would do. I have great hopes of fishing this spring, 
 and am organizing a series of ' leaves ' from everybody round. 
 I think I can get eight or nine leaves for day's fishing, and eight or 
 nine days is more than I can take, for half of them are sure to be 
 16 
 
242 Charles Kiitgsley. 
 
 bright, or calm, or morning frosts, or something catawompous and 
 miiltificative. How do you stand towards ' Rev. Popham ' (as the 
 tradesmen would call him) ? I have the promise of fishing, and a 
 bed with ' Rev. John,' and would ask for the fishing if you would 
 come too. But it wouldn't be worth while if we couldn't also do 
 Kennet, or Lambourne at Newbury, in our way back. When does 
 your new Duke give up Donnington ? or is it of any use to get a 
 day out of the club on the big river ? They oftered me one (least- 
 wise the secretary did). Is there aught to be killed in those tracks ? 
 Next Wotton. I have ' taken the lunars ' (as the middies say) of 
 Wotton on the big map of Surrey, and find it on the Blackwater 
 rail, at such distance that I could leave my house at seven, and see 
 the ghost of the author of ' Sylva ' (delightful old gentleman, too, 
 to see) by nine. Therefore I could get there and back in a day 
 and meet you. The fishing seems a chain of pondicules or pond- 
 lets, fed by a chalk spring out of Leith Hill. As a geologist, I know 
 what that ought to be. Leith Hill is 900 feet ; highest chalk point, 
 save Inkpen Beacon, south of Hungerford. Valley of Holmesdale, 
 say 500 — a good fall, and on chalk now and then, when with a 
 gentle ripple and a clear burning sun, fish yield themselves to the 
 embraces of a little saucy march-brown, or a minnow, and a fat 
 black alder, or again a real yellow sally (which ain't yellow, but 
 orange legs and lemon body, if you can get them). That's the 
 sport ; to throw your fly, and let it sink (never draw it), and in 
 half a minute take it out gently to see if aught's at the end of it, 
 and if so, hit him as if you loved him, and hold on. Therefore let's 
 go to Wotton ; but only for one day. You must come home with 
 nie in the evening, per Blackwater rail ; my dogcart will meet us 
 at the stadon, and we will start early next morning — whither ? / 
 think, to my happy fishing-ground. We will fish both streams ; and, 
 oh, my goodness ! — leastwise if we have a sou'wester — all's in that 
 blessed sound. Shelley was an ass when he wrote his ode to the 
 south-west wind. He didn't know what the dear old Zephyros was 
 good for ; who does, but we the heirs of all creation, masters of 
 '■ water the mother of all things ? ' 
 
 "As for going to J. Paine, this is my ipsedavit. Paine Esquire's 
 fishing was good when it was Paine Esquire's ; but since it has 
 become clubbate, clubbified, or beclubbed, it is as a man might 
 say, by too-many-respectable-of-the-town-of-Farnham-gents-continu- 
 ally-and-with-thumping-brass-and-other-minnows-becoopered. 
 
 " Given a strong May fly about two days on, and a warm sou'- 
 wester with gleams, you might do the gun-trick, for there are M. 
 fishes ; but don't you desire that you may obtain the said combina- 
 tion of your planets ? Wheeler at Troyle only allows one rod, and 
 has not enough for two. So / think the happy fishing-ground will 
 be the place. 
 
 " What a lot of nonsense I have writ ! and all about nothing ; 
 
A Fishing Trip. 243 
 
 for I shall see you, my dear old fellow, on the 26th, d.v. But I like 
 
 writing to you, and that's the truth ; you are so jolly ; and most 
 
 people want to make me wiser when they write, as if 1 hadn't found 
 
 out with Solomon, that all is vanity and vexation. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 " Enclosed is the portrait of the gentleman who told Thomas 
 Hughes that he would hsh at Wotton on Whitmonday, totally for- 
 getting that it was the club day, and he had the club sermon to 
 preach, and the club dinner to eat. 1 am an ass, that I am, as the 
 parson remarked. But Whit Tuesday I can go ; therefore, O 
 friend, forgive, and correct the consequences of my exceeding 
 stupidity, and try to fix Whit-Toosday. Now. If you can come 
 early on Friday, you'll come in for my tithe luncheon, and be in- 
 troduced to some of my jolly yeomen. If you can be here Mon- 
 day, you'll see the club, and dine wi' em — oh that you would ! 
 They would enjoy it so — and then we could start to Wotton simul- 
 taneous next morning. 
 
 " The Saturday fishing stands ; but this is a black planet for it. 
 However, it'll change before then, and how the fish will feed when 
 the change comes. If you get free, get a few sized stone flies, 
 darkish color, fine lot of yellow about the tail ; also half-a-dozen 
 smallest governors, but with pale partridge wing, and pale honey- 
 colored tail ; pheasant wings and orange tails are only fit for cock- 
 neys to catch dace with at Hampton Court. Mind what I say, 
 I'll change off a brace of either from you for any flies of mine you 
 like ; also bring me (and I will pay thee) i lb. avoirdups. of 
 Skinner's best Bristol birdseye. You mind that last, or I'll send 
 you back for it. Do you her ? 
 
 " Opes opens. The glass has stopped going up, and is thinking 
 about going down. Wind has chopt from N.N.W. to E.N.E. f^ith 
 the sun which ain't as good as against ; but may indicate a break 
 after two or three days of going round with the sun, and fine 
 weather) evins grant ! for I'm froze. — Coughing in limbo, and 
 every soul in the parish in the flenzies. Handkerchers is riz on 
 the market I guess, this last month. 
 
 " Mind your March browns — certain till the black alder comes 
 out, which he won't here for three weeks, unless we have a sudden 
 change." 
 
 TO REV. F. D. MAURICE. 
 (Who had sent a Pamphlet on the Sabbath question.) 
 
 EVERSLEY, Wednesday, July, 1856. 
 
 " I have read through your pamphlet forthwith, and with very 
 great delight. I cannot conceive why you should fancy that I 
 should not agree with it ; for I agree with every word. I feel with 
 you that the only ground on which Sunday amusements can be 
 
244 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 really defended, is as a carrying out of the divineness of the sab- 
 bath, and not as a relaxation of it ; but I won't put in bad words 
 to you what you have put in infinitely better ones. And as I do 
 not see how to lay down the ground of the sabbath better than 
 you have done, so I do not see how to dogmatize about prac- 
 tical applications any farther than the hints you have given. I 
 have often fancied I should like to see the great useless naves 
 and aisles of our cathedrals turned into museums and winter 
 gardens, where people might take their Sunday walks, and yet 
 attend service ; but such a plan could only grow up of itself, 
 round a different service than ours, or at least round a service in- 
 terpreted and commented on by very different preaching ; and till 
 the Tartarus and Elysium superstition, which lies as really at the 
 bottom of this question as at the bottom of all, is settled, I see 
 no hope for that. It is you yourself who made me feel, in that 
 pamphlet, how the Tartarus question comes in here, too, by a few 
 lines towards the bottom of p. 15, ending, *a cast-away.' Those 
 lines have made me see more than I ever did, the dignity of work 
 and rest, and their analogy with God's work and rest — so justify- 
 ing all that Parker, Emerson, or Carlyle have said about it, by 
 putting it on a ground which they deny. Yet if the problem of 
 human existence be to escape the impending torture — cui bono ? 
 Who need care for rest, or work either, save to keep the body alive 
 till the soul is saved ? Till that doctrine vanishes no one will feel 
 any real analogy between his life and God's life, and will be as 
 selfish and covetous in his work, and as epicurean in his rest, as 
 men are now. 
 
 " It was their ignorance of this dark superstition, I suppose, which 
 enabled the old Jews to keep their sabbath (as they seem to have 
 done from the few hints we have) as a day of 'rejoicing before the 
 Lord,' in attempts more or less successful to consecrate to Him 
 the simple enjoyments of life — in feasting, singing, and dancing. 
 ' In the midst go the damsels playing with the timbrels.' But this 
 would be absurd here, and therefore I suppose it is, that the all- 
 wise Book keeps the practical details so in the background, leaving 
 each future nation to actualise the sabbath according to its own 
 genius. I think what you have said on that quite admirable. 
 
 " Nevertheless, we (after we are dead and alive for evermore) 
 shall see that conception carried out on earth. 
 
 In mighty lands beyond the sea, 
 While honor falls to such as thee. 
 From hearts of heroes yet unborn, 
 
 " For, my dear master, though the solution of this, and many 
 another problem which you have started, remains for our descend- 
 ants, yet you must not grow sad, or think that you have not done 
 
Work for the Future. 245 
 
 and are not still doing, a mighty work, in pointing out the la\ys by 
 which alone they can be solved. You are like a man surveying a 
 tropic forest, which he can only do by hewing his path yard by 
 yard, unable to see a rood before him ; other men will follow him, 
 till, and plant, and build, while he dies in faith, not having received 
 the promises. And you will look down from heaven upon this na- 
 tion working on under the new spiritual impulse which you have 
 given it, and which will assuredly conquer, just as Captain Sturt 
 will look down on that glorious Australian empire to-be, which he 
 rescued out of the realm of Hades and the blank useless unknown, 
 at the expense of his health, his eyesight, and his life. As Charles 
 Mansfield, perhaps, may look down on that Paraguay which will 
 surely reaHse some day his highest dreams of its capabilities, and 
 through him too ; for his book (light though it seem) will not be 
 forgotten, and other men will carry out the conception, which he, 
 perhaps, could not have done from over-conscientiousness, and 
 worship of too lofty an ideal. I can see, too, more and more, 
 why, as you seem to lament, you are shut out so strangely from 
 sympathy with flowers and beetles that you might have sympathy 
 with men. And are they not of more value than many beetles ? 
 Of the evangelical phraseology one word is true, that ' an immor- 
 tal soul' (if people only knew what an immortal soul meant !) is of 
 more value than all the material universe. And I can understand 
 why there should be men like you, to whom it is said, ' Thou shalt 
 not be tempted to waste thy time over the visible world, because 
 thy calling is to work out that spiritual moral world, of which man 
 can learn just nothing from the visible world — which he can only 
 learn from his own soul, and the souls of other men.' 
 
 " My dear master, I have long ago found out how little I can 
 discover about God's absolute love, or absolute righteousness, from 
 a universe in which everything is eternally eating everything else — 
 infinite cunning and shift (in the good sense). Infinite creative 
 fancy it does reveal ; but nothing else, unless interpreted by moral 
 laws which are in oneself already, and in which one has often to 
 trust against all appearances, and cry out of the lowest deep (as I 
 have had to do) — Thou art not Siva the destroyer. Thou art not 
 even Ahriman and Ormuzd in one. And yet, if Thou art not, 
 why does Thy universe seem to say that Thou art ? Art Thou a 
 ' Deus quidam Deceptor,' after all ? — No. There is something in 
 me — which not nature, but Thou must have taught me — which 
 cries and will cry : Though Thou slay me, as Thou hast slain world 
 on world already — though 1 and all this glorious race of men go 
 down to Hades with the ichthyosaurs and the mammoths, yet will 
 I trust in Thee. Though St. Peter's words be fulfilled (as they 
 may to-morrow by the simplest physical laws) and the elements 
 melt with fervent heat, and the earth and all the works therein be 
 burned up — yet I know that my Redeemer, He who will justify 
 
246 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 me, and make me right, and deliver me out of the grasp of nature, 
 and proclaim my dominion over nature, liveth, and will stand, at 
 the latter day upon the earth, and in some flesh or other I shall 
 see God, see Him for myself as a one and accountable moral being 
 for ever. But beetles and zoophytes never whispered that to me. 
 Any more than the study of nature did to * * * * or to Cuvier 
 himself It can teach no moral theology. It may unteach it, if 
 the roots of moral theology be not already healthy and deep in the 
 mind. I hinted that in ' Glaucus ' : but I would do no more, be- 
 cause many readers mejin by ' moral ' and ' theology ' something 
 quite different from what you and I do, and would have interpreted 
 it into a mere iteration of the old lie that science is dangerous to 
 orthodoxy. 
 
 "But I won't talk of myself, save to say that I sometimes envy 
 you, who are not distracted from work at the really human truths, 
 by the number of joints in a grub's legs. I have been longing to 
 hear from you ; and I ought to have written to you, but had noth- 
 ing to say. My life runs on here in a very simple, easy way, what 
 with the parish and Mrs. Kingsley, and the children, and a little 
 literary work, in which I am trying to express in a new form the 
 ideas which I have got from you, and which I have been trying to 
 translate into all languages, from ' The Saint's Tragedy' to ' Glau- 
 cus.' I have no other work on earth, and want none. 
 
 to tom hughks, esq. 
 
 eversley, 1856. 
 "My Dear Old Lad, — 
 
 " Froude cannot go with us ; so are you willing to go to Snow- 
 don ? Killarney is finer, I know, and there are saumons ; but there 
 are saumons in Snowdon — I know where, and we may have them 
 in August if we be canny. I'll show you a rock where you are 
 sure of one. And I want to go there, for several reasons ; but 
 Killarney is very tempting ; only, as I get old, somehow, I don't 
 like new places ; I like to thumb over the same book, and trot over 
 the same bog, and feel 'homey' wherever I be. 
 
 " Now, if so be as we go to Snowdon, there is our tracks, &c. 
 Buy the two sheets of the Ordnance Maps (I'll go share in pence), 
 which comprises the country from Aber and Bangor north, to Port 
 Madoc, and Festiuiog south. Consider, behold, and perpend ; 
 then send 'em on to me, in the coat pocket of one Hughes, Esq., 
 from a Saturday night to a Monday morning, and we will talk it 
 out. My plan would be this — 
 
 There is no inn in Snowdon which is not awful dear, 
 Excepting Pen-y-gwrydd (you can't pronounce it, dear), 
 Which siandeth in the meeting of noble valleys three. 
 One is the vale of Gwynant, so well beloved by me, 
 
Tom Taylor in the Fishing Party. 247 
 
 One goes to Capel-Curig, and I can't mind its name, 
 
 And one it is Llanberris Pass, which all men knows the same. 
 
 Between which radiations vast mountains does arise, 
 
 As full of tarns as sieves of holes, in which big fish will rise, 
 
 That is, just one day in the year, if you be there, my boy, 
 
 About ten o'clock at night, and then I wish you joy. 
 
 Now to this Pen-y-gwrydd inn I purposeth to write. 
 
 (Axing thy post town out of Froude, for I can't mind it quite). 
 
 And to engage a room or two, for let us say a week, 
 
 For fear of gents, and Manichees, and reading parties meek, 
 
 And there to live like fighting-cocks at almost a bob a day, 
 
 And arterwards toward the sea make tracks and cut away. 
 
 All for to catch the salmon bold in Aberglaslyn pool. 
 
 And work the flats in Traeth-Mawr, and will, or I'm a fooL 
 
 And that's my game, which, if you like, respond to me by post ; 
 
 But I fear it will not last, my son, a thirteen days at most. 
 
 Flies is no object ; I can tell some three or four will do. 
 
 And John Jones, Clerk, he knows the rest, and ties and sells 'em too. 
 
 Besides of which I have no more to say, leastwise just now, 
 
 And so, goes to my children's school and umbly makes my bow. 
 
 "C. K." 
 
 TO THE SAME. 
 
 EVERSLEY, 1856. 
 
 '■'■ Of all men on earth I should like to have Tom Taylor for a 
 third. Entreat him to make it possible, and come and be a sal- 
 vidge man with us ; and tell him I can show him views of the big 
 stone work which no mortal cockney knows, because, though the 
 whole earth is given to the children of men, none but we jolly 
 fishers get the plums and raisins of it, by the rivers which run among 
 the hills, and the lakes which sit a-top thereof. Tell him I'll show' 
 him such a view from Craig-y-Rhaidyr of Snowdon from the sole of 
 his foot to the crown of his head, as tourist never saw% nor will see, 
 'case why, he can't find it ; and I will show him the original mouth 
 of the pit, which is Llyn Dulyn, and the lightning lake, where the 
 white syenite is blasted into shivers, which make you shiver, if you 
 be sentimental— but /only think of the trouts— which the last I 
 saw killed in Llyn Melch was 3^ pounds, and we'll kill his wife and 
 family ; and crow-berry and desolate Alpine plants grow thereby, 
 and we will sleep among them, like love among the roses, Thomas. 
 And oh, what won't we do, except break our necks? and I'll make 
 Tom Taylor come down over Craig-y-Rhaidyr, which is 700 feet of 
 syenite, the most glorious climb I know, and the original short-cut 
 to Ludlow at Festiniog ; but wouldn't do on a hot day, or a dark 
 night. 
 
 " I think you ought to come to me Saturday night, Strettel will 
 
248 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 be here ; but I'll get )'ou a bed in the village. We should go to 
 Reading by the 5.30 train, which will get us to Wolverhampton, 
 8.35, and there wait for the Holyhead mail at 12.44, which will 
 drop us at Bangor at 5 in the morning. There we can either go 
 on by coach to Pen-y-Wynod, or walk on in the cool of the morn- 
 ing, fishing as we go, and send our traps by coach, to be dropped 
 for us. Pray bring a couple of dozen moderate lake-sized hooks, 
 to tie flies on, for I am out of hooks, except the very biggest size, 
 salmon-peel size, in fact. 
 
 "You'll be pleased to hear that I got a fishing at Lady Mild- 
 may's famous Warnborough preserve last night — the day was B. B. 
 B., burning, baking, and boiling, and as still as glass, so I did not 
 tackle-to till 5.30 — and between that and nine I grassed twenty fish, 
 weighing twenty-two pounds, besides losing a brace more whoppers. 
 Biggest brace killed, three pounds and two pounds — a dead bright 
 calm, and a clear stream — in fifteen minutes I had three fish, two of 
 three pounds and one of two pounds, but lost one of them after a 
 long fight. Not so shady, Tom, for alt on shorm-fly a?id caperer. 
 
 " Mind and don't get those flies too small. A size larger than 
 what I said would be no harm, but I don't mind small hooks, if a 
 big fly be tied thereon — see what a difference a wise man and a fool 
 may make. (Here was a sketch of two flies — 'wise men's fly,' and 
 'cockney maiden's fly.') Let's have lots for our money, say I, in 
 flies, as in all things. Why do fish take your caperer, spite of his 
 ugliness, but because he looks the fattest one they ever saw yet ? 
 Think over these things 
 
 " Poor dear Charles's * book has come at last. I think it perfect. 
 Tell Ludlow he was quite right in altering as little as possible, and 
 that I am to review it in ' Eraser's.' The 'Saturday' has already 
 got a review in hand." 
 
 At last the happy day in August was fixed, and the following 
 invitation sent before the three friends started for Snowdonia : 
 
 THE INVITATION. 
 
 Come away with me, Tom, 
 Term and talk is done ; 
 My poor lads are reaping, 
 Busy every one. 
 Curates mind the parish, 
 Sweepers mind the Court, 
 We'll away to Snowdon 
 For our ten days' sport, 
 Fish the August evening 
 Till the eve is past, 
 
 ' Letters from Paraguay, by Charles Blachford Mansfield.' ' 
 
The Invitation. 249 
 
 Whoop like boys at pounders 
 Fairly played and grassed. 
 When they cease to dimple, 
 Lunge, and swerve, and leap. 
 Then up over Siabod, 
 Choose our nest, and sleep. 
 Up a thoiisand feet, Tom, 
 Round the lion's head. 
 Find soft stones to leeward 
 And make up our bed. 
 Eat our bread and bacon, 
 Smoke the pipe of peace, 
 And, ere we be drowsy, 
 Give our boots a grease. 
 Homer's heroes did so. 
 Why not such as we ? 
 What are sheets and servants ? 
 Superfluity. 
 
 Pray for wives and children 
 Safe in slumber curled. 
 Then to chat till midnight 
 O'er this babbling world. 
 Of the workmen's college, 
 Of the price of grain. 
 Of the tree of knowledge. 
 Of the chance of rain ; 
 If Sir A. goes Romeward, 
 If Miss B. sings true. 
 If the fleet comes homeward. 
 If the mare will do, — 
 Anything and everything — 
 Up there in the sky 
 Angels understand us, 
 And no *' saints " are by. 
 Down, and bathe at day-dawn. 
 Tramp from lake to lake. 
 Washing brain and heart clean 
 Every step we take. 
 Leave to Robert Browning 
 Beggars, fleas, and vines ; 
 Leave to mournful Ruskin 
 Popish Apennines, 
 Dirty Stones of Venice 
 And his Gas-lamps Seven ; 
 We've the stones of Snowdon 
 And the lamps of heaven. 
 
250 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 Where' s the mighty credit 
 
 In admiring Alps ? 
 
 Any goose sees " glory " 
 
 In their " snowy scalps." 
 
 Leave such signs and wonders 
 
 For the dullard brain, 
 
 As aesthetic brandy, 
 
 Opium and cayenne ; 
 
 Give me Bramshill common 
 
 (St. John's harriers by), 
 
 Or the vale of Windsor, 
 
 England's golden eye. 
 
 Show me life and progress, 
 
 Beauty, health, and man ; 
 
 Houses fair, trim gardens, 
 
 Turn where'er I can. 
 
 Or, if bored with " High Art," 
 
 And such popish stuff. 
 
 One's poor ear need airing, 
 
 Snowdon's high enough. 
 
 While we find God's signet 
 
 Fresh on English ground. 
 
 Why go gallivanting 
 
 With the nations round ? 
 
 Though we try no ventures 
 
 Desperate or strange ; 
 
 Feed on common-places 
 
 In a narrow range ; 
 
 Never sought for Franklin 
 
 Round the frozen Capes : 
 
 Even, with Macdougall,* 
 
 Bagged our brace of apes ; 
 
 Never had our chance, Tom, 
 
 In that black Redan ; 
 
 Can't avenge poor Brereton 
 
 Out in Sakarran ; 
 
 Tho' we earn our bread, Tom, 
 
 By the dirty pen. 
 
 What we can we will be» 
 
 Honest Englishmen. 
 
 Do the work that's nearest. 
 
 Though it's dull at whiles, 
 
 Helping, when we meet them. 
 
 Lame dogs over stiles ; 
 
 * Bishop of Labuan. 
 
Snow'donia. 251 
 
 See in every hedgerow 
 Marks of angels' feet, 
 Epics in each pebble 
 Underneath our feet ; 
 Once a year, like schoolboys, 
 Robin-Hooding go, 
 Leaving fops and fogies 
 A thousand feet below. 
 
 On the nth of August they started, and in the train he writes 
 home. 
 
 "A glorious day. • Snowdonia magnificent. The sensation of 
 going through the tubular bridge very awfiil and instructive. The 
 sound of it, the finest bass note I have ever heard. Anglesey, an 
 ugly wild flat place, like Torridge Moors, with great dunes of blown 
 sand along the coast, fit for those weird old Druids " 
 
 Pen-y-gwryd. 
 
 " I have had, as far as scenery is concerned, the finest day I ever 
 had. We started for Edno at 10, but did not find it till 2, because 
 we mistook the directions, and walked from 10 till 1.30 over a 
 Steinerer Maar, a sea of syenite and metamorphic slate which 
 baffles all description, 2,000 ft. above Gwynant, ribs and peaks 
 and walls of rock leaping up and rushing down, average 50 to 100 
 ft., covered with fir, club moss, crowberry and bearberry, and ling, 
 of course. Over these we had to scramble up and down, beating 
 for Edno lake as you would beat for a partridge, but in vain. All 
 we found was one old cock grouse, who went off" hollowing ' Cock- 
 cock-what-a-shame cock-cock ' till we were fairly beat. In despair 
 we made, not a dash, but a crawl, at Moel Meirch ('Margaret's 
 Peak,' some pathetic story I suppose), which rises about 100 ft. 
 above the stony sea, a smooth pyramid of sandy-pink syenite. 
 Hughes got up first, by a crack, for the walls are like china, and 
 gave a who-whoop ; there was Edno half a mile beyond, and. only 
 a valley as deep as from Finchampstead church to the river to 
 cross, besides a few climbs of 50 ft. So there we got, and eat our 
 hard boiled eggs and drank our beer, and then set to, and caught 
 just nothing. The fish, always sulky and capricious, would not 
 stir. But the delight of being there again, 2,200 ft. up, out of the 
 sound of aught but the rush of wind and water and the whistle of 
 the sheep (which is just like a penny whistle ill-blown), and finding 
 oneself at home there I Every rock, even the steps of slate and 
 
 footholds of grass which and I used to use, just the same. 
 
 Unchanged for ever. It is an awful thought. Soon we found out 
 why the fish wouldn't rise. The cloud which had been hanging on 
 
252 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 Snowdon, lowered. Hebog and Cnicht caught it. It began to 
 roll up from the sea in great cabbage-headed masses, grew as dark 
 as twihght. The wind rolled the lake into foam ; we staggered 
 back to an old cave, where we shall sleep, please God, ere we 
 come home, and then the cloud lowered, the lake racing along in 
 fantastic flakes and heaps of white steam hiding everything 50 
 yards off one minute, then leaving all clear and sharp-cut pink and 
 green. While out of it came a rain of marbles and Minie bullets 
 — a rain which searches, and drenches, and drills. Luckily I had 
 on a flannel shirt. We waited as long as we dared, and then 
 steered home by compass, for we could not see 50 yards, except 
 great rows of giants in the fog, sitting humped up side by side, like 
 the ghosts of the sons of Anak staring into the bogs. So home we 
 went, floundering through morass and scrambling up and down the 
 giants, which were crags 50 to 100 feet high, for we dared not pick 
 our road for fear of losing our bearings by compass. And we were 
 wet — oh, were we not wet ? but, as a make-weight, we found the 
 ' Grass of Parnassus ' in plenty, and as we coasted the vale of 
 Gwynant, 1,500 ft. up, the sight of Snowdon, sometimes through 
 great gaps of cloud, sometimes altogether hidden, the lights upon 
 that glorious vista of Gwynant and Dinas, right down to Hebog — 
 the flakes of cloud rushing up the vale of Gwynant far below us — 
 no tongue can describe.it. I could see Froude's fir-wood, and 
 home close, quite plain from Moel Meirch. It looked as if you 
 could have sent a stone into it, but it was four miles off. I have 
 got for you grass of Parnassus ; Alpine club-moss ; ladies' mantle ; 
 ivy-leaved campanula ; beech fern ; A. Oreopteris (sweet fern). 
 
 " The great butterwort is out of flower (as is the globe flower), 
 but it stars every bog with its shiny yellow-green stars of leaves. 
 Good bye. I am up at half-past three for Gwynant, which is full 
 of salmon. 
 
 " P.S. — I have just got your dear letter. Tell Rose that I am 
 drying all the plants I can for her. . . . Tell Maurice I saw 
 a grouse and a water-ouzel — lots of these last. . . ." 
 
 When the brief holiday came to an end, the three friends were 
 asked by the landlord of the inn, at Pen-y-gwryd, to write their 
 names in his visitors' book. The following verses were speedily 
 composed, and though the autographs have been cut out of the 
 book by some tourist the lines were preserved : 
 
 TOM TAYLOR. 
 I came to Pen-y-gwryd with colors armed and pencils, 
 But found no use whatever for any such utensils ; 
 So in default of them I took to using knives and forks. 
 And made successful drawings — of Mrs. Owen' s corks. 
 
Visitors Book at Pen-y-gwryd. 253 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 I came to Pen-y-gwryd in frantic hopes of slaying 
 
 Grilse, Salmon, 3 lb. red-fleshed Trout, and what else there's no saying; 
 But bitter cold and lashing rain, and black nor'eastern skies, sir. 
 Drove me from fish to botany, a sadder man and wiser. 
 
 TOM HUGHES. 
 I came to Pen-y-gwryd a larking with my betters, 
 A mad wag and a mad poet, both of them men of letters j 
 Which two ungrateful parties after all the care I've took 
 Of them, make me write verses in Henry Owen's book. 
 
 T. T. 
 We've been mist-soak'd on Snowdon, mist-soak'd on Glyder Vawr, 
 We've been wet through on an average every day three times an hour ; 
 We've walk'd the upper leathers from the soles of our balmorals ; 
 And as sketchers and as fishers with the weather have had our quarrels. 
 
 C. K. 
 
 But think just of the plants which stuff 'd our box, (old Yarrel's gift,) 
 And of those which might have stuff'd it if the clouds had given a lift : 
 Of tramping bogs, and climbing cliffs, and shoving down stone fences 
 For Spiderwort, Saussurea, and Woodsia ilvensis. 
 
 T. H. 
 
 Oh my dear namesake's breeches, you never see the like. 
 He burst them all so shameful a crossing of a dyke. 
 But Mrs. Owen patch'd them as careful as a mother. 
 With flannel of three colors — she hadn't got no other. 
 
 T. T. 
 
 But can we say enough of those legs of mountain muttons, 
 
 And that onion sauce lies on our souls, for it made of us three gluttons ? 
 
 And the Dublin stout is genuine, and so's the Burton beer ; 
 
 And the apple tarts they've won our hearts, and think of soufflets here ! 
 
 C. K. 
 
 Resembling that old woman that never could be quiet. 
 Though victuals (says the child's song) and drink formed all their diet ; 
 My love for plants and scrambling shared empire with my dinner, 
 And who says it wasn't good must be a most fastidious sinner. 
 
 T. H. 
 
 Now all I've got to say is, you can't be better treated ; 
 
 Order pancakes and you'll find they're the best you ever eated. 
 
 If you scramble o'er the mountains you should bring an ordnance map ; 
 
 I endorse all as previous gents have said about the tap. 
 
254 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 T. T. 
 
 Pen-y-gwryd, when wet and worn has kept a warm fireside for us, 
 ~-^ Socks, boots, and never-mention-ems, Mrs. Owen still has dried for us ; 
 With host and hostess, fare and bill so pleased we are that going. 
 We feel for all their kindness, 'tis we not they are Owen ! 
 
 T. H. T. T. C. K. 
 
 Nos Ires in uno juncti hos fesimus versiculos ; 
 Tomas piscator pisces qui non cepi sed pisciculos, 
 Tomas sciagraphus, sketches qui non feci nisi ridiculos, 
 Herbarius Carolus montes qui lustravi perpendiculos. 
 
 T. H. 
 
 There's big trout I hear in Edno, likewise in Gwynant lake, 
 And the governor and black alder are the flies that they will take. 
 Also the cockabundy, but I can only say. 
 If you think to catch big fishes I only Hope you may. 
 
 T. T. 
 
 I have come in for more of mountain gloom than mountain glory. 
 But I've seen old Snowdon rear his head with storm-tossed mist wreaths ^ 
 I stood in the fight of mountain winds upon Bwlch-Cwm-y-Llan, 
 And I go back an unsketching but a better minded man, 
 
 C. K. 
 
 And I too have another debt to pay another way, 
 
 For Kindness shown by these good souls to one who's far away. 
 
 Even to this old colly dog who tracked the mountains o'er. 
 
 For one who seeks strange birds and flowers on far Australia's shore. 
 
 In the course of the autumn several American friends came and 
 went : one from the Southern States, thus recalls his visit and the 
 Rectory life at Eversley in 1856 : 
 
 " . . . It is your own fault if Eversley does no more seem to 
 me a name. When I think of Mrs. Kingsley and of you I seem to 
 myself to be sitting with you still in those quaint old rooms. Still 
 Maurice comes by with an insect or a flower, or just a general 
 wonder and life in his eyes — still I hear the merry laugh of the little 
 Princess, and see Dandy lying lazy, smiling and winking in the sun ; 
 and I fill my olive-wood pipe, and saunter in and out of the aroma- 
 tic old study and lounge, a new man and a happier one, on the 
 sloping green lawn, under the good old fir-trees. And so I talk on 
 as if I were with friends long known, and known long to be 
 cherished much. All of which is wholly your fault and Mrs. Kings- 
 ley's. ... If your are not too busy, I am sure you will write 
 
Preface to Taulers Sermons. 255 
 
 and teU me how the novel advances (Two Years Ago ! ), and how 
 Eversley in all its regions is. . . ." 
 
 to francis russell, esq, 
 
 Eversley, 1856. 
 
 " I am horror-struck. Mrs. Kingsley declares I have never 
 
 answered your letter The perpetual variety of work 
 
 which I have been in must be my excuse if I am guilty. To-day, 
 however, I have no excuse of work, being idle, from having been 
 rolled into a pancake yesterday by a horse, who lay on me for five 
 pleasant minutes at the bottom of a ditch. We were delighted with 
 the Parnassia, and astonished at your knack of drying. I never saw 
 flowers dried so well. As for the vivarium, everything and all 
 information, is to be got from a man named A. Lloyd, 21, Portland 
 Road. But if your friend be at Edinburgh, an hour's work at low 
 tide at the back of Musselburgh pier will give him all that is wanted, 
 and the hints in ' Glaucus ' ought to be enough as to preserving 
 them alive. I have no news to tell you. I work in the parish and 
 write, and seldom get out to kill a great pike or two. Such an 
 autumn I never remember. All our summer gardens are still un- 
 touched by frost, and the country looks as it did in June. 
 
 " What do you think of the peace prospects ? France bankrupt ; 
 the Emperor's life not worth two years' purchase. Russia bullying 
 as badly as ever, and Italy at a dead-lock. I give the peace two 
 years to live. Will it live one } Ought it to live one ? " 
 
 Mr. Kingsley having been asked to write a preface to Tauler's 
 Life, now writes to Miss Winkworth. 
 
 Eversley, August 8, 1856. 
 
 " I shall be most happy to write the preface to Tauler's Sermons. 
 Believe me, I have no fear of Pantheism in Tauler. I shall be 
 delighted to do all I can to spread your translation. Believe me, 
 you will be doing a good work ; may it prosper ! I need not say, 
 remember me most affectionately to Chevalier Bunsen, and thank 
 him (ought I not to thank you too ?) for the ' Signs of the Times,' 
 
 which has taught me much You will be glad to hear, 
 
 I am sure, that your ' Theologia ' is being valued by every one to 
 whom I have recommended it, and I have more hope of Tauler, 
 because, as I suppose, he is more like the teaching (in form) to 
 which the many have been accustomed, and which they can under- 
 stand. I would certainly leave out the Romanist passages ; I am 
 sure that they are really only excrescences, which have nothing to 
 do with the real bone and muscle of his or any man's soul ; and if 
 you do not omit them, your chance of a hearing is gone 
 
256 
 
 Charles Kiitgsley. 
 
 My hope is that the Evangelicals will read Tauler, even though they 
 may shrink from the ' Theologia.' " 
 
 The preface was written with great diflfidence. Like the preface 
 to the " Theologia," it goes down into the deep things of God, and 
 is worthy of its subject — especially the passages on the Mystics. 
 
 .'' .^ m 
 
 
 THE GREAT FIR-TREES ON THE RECTORY LAWN AT EVERSLEY. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The Father in his Home — An Atmosphere of Joy — The Out-door Nursery — 
 Life on the Mount — Fear and Falsehood — The Training of Love — Favorites 
 and Friends in the House, in the Stable, and on the Lawn. 
 
 " Cheerfulness or joyousness," said Jean Paul, in his ' Levana, 
 or the Doctrine of Education,' " is the heaven under which every- 
 thing but poison thrives. All new-born creatures require warmth, 
 and what then is warmth to the human chicken but happiness ? 
 One has but to give them play-room by taking away what may be 
 painful, and their powers shoot up of themselves. The joyousness 
 of children j Should they have anything else ? I can endure a 
 melancholy man, but not a melancholy child ! " * 
 
 And with this atmosphere of joyousness the parents tried to sur- 
 round the children at the Rectory, and that not only as a means of 
 present enjoyment, but as a tonic to strengthen the yoimg crea- 
 tures to meet the inevitable trials of the future. We must pause a 
 moment in the midst of the father's work and letters ; we have seen 
 him in his church and parish, and now must see him in his home, 
 where his children had the best of everything ; the sunniest and 
 largest rooms indoors, and because the Rectory was on low ground, 
 — the churchyard six feet above the living rooms, and the ground 
 sloping upwards on three sides, — he built them a hut for an out- 
 door nursery, on the " Mount," where they kept books, toys, and 
 tea-things, spending long happy days on the highest and loveliest 
 point of moorland in the glebe, a real bit of primaeval forest ; and 
 there he would join them when his parish work was done, bringing 
 them some fresh treasure picked up in his walk, a choice wild 
 flower or fern, or rare beetle, sometimes a lizard or a field-mouse ; 
 ever waking up their sense of wonder, calling out their powers of 
 observation, and teaching them lessons out of God's great green 
 book, without their knowing they were learning. 
 
 And then the Sundays, the hardest day of the week to him, were 
 bright to the children, who began the day with decking the graves 
 
 * " Levana, or the Doctrine of Education," chap. 2. 
 17 
 
258 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 in the dear churchyard, an example which the poor people learnt 
 to follow, so that before Morning Service it looked like a flower 
 garden ; and when his day's work was done, however weary he 
 might be, there was always the Sunday walk, a stroll on the moor, 
 and some fresh object of natural beauty pointed out at every step. 
 Indoors, the Sunday picture books were brought out. Each child 
 had its own, and chose its subject for the father to draw, either 
 some Bible story, or bird, beast, or flower mentioned in Scripture. 
 Happy Sundays ! never associated with gloom or restrictions, but 
 with God's works as well as His word, and with sermons that never 
 wearied. 
 
 Punishment was a word little known in his house. Corporal 
 punishment was never allowed. His own childish experience of 
 the sense of degradation and unhealthy fear it produced, of the 
 antagonism it called out between a child and its parents, a pupil 
 and its teachers, gave him a horror of it. It had other evils, too, 
 he considered, besides degrading both parties concerned. " More 
 than half the lying of children," he said, "is, I believe, the result 
 of fear, and the fear of punishment." On these grounds he made 
 it a rule (from which he never departed,) not to take a child, sus- 
 pected of a fault, at unawares, by sudden question or hasty accu- 
 sation, the stronger thus taking an unfair advantage of the weaker 
 and defenceless creature, who, in the mere confusion of the mo- 
 ment, might be tempted to deny or equivocate. " Do we not pray 
 daily, ' Lord, confound me not,' and shall we dare to confound our 
 own children by sudden accusation, suspicious anger, making them 
 give evidence against themselves, when we don't allow a criminal 
 to do that in a court of law ? The finer the nature the more easily 
 is it confounded, whether it be of child, dog, or horse. It breaks 
 all confidence between parent and child." " Do not train a child," 
 he said to a friend, " as men train a horse, by letting anger and 
 punishment be t\\Q first announcement of his having sinned. If 
 you do, you induce two bad habits ; first, the boy regards his 
 parent with a kind of blind dread, as a being who may be offended 
 by actions which to hwi are innocent, and whose wrath he expects 
 to fall upon him any moment in his most pure and unselfish happi- 
 ness. Alas ! for such a childhood ! EtSws Xeyw ! Next, and worst 
 still, the boy learns not to fear sin, but the punishment of it, and 
 thus he learns to lie. At every first fault, and offence too, teach 
 
The Father in His Home. 259 
 
 him the principle which makes it sinful — illustrate it by a familiar 
 parable — and then, if he sins again it will be with his eyes open ! " 
 He was careful, too, not to confuse or " confound " his children 
 by a multiplicity of small rules. Certain broad, distinct laws of 
 conduct were laid down. " It is difficult enough to keep the Ten 
 Commandments," he would say, " without making an eleventh in 
 every direction." This, combined with his equable rule, gave them 
 a sense of utter confidence and perfect freedom with him. They 
 knew what they were about and where to find him, for he had 
 no "moods" with them, and if they had, he could be pitiful and 
 patient. 
 
 Like a brave man as he was, he kept his feelings of depression, 
 and those dark hours of wrestling with doubt and disappointment 
 and anxiety, which must come to every thinking, feeling human 
 being, within the sanctuary of his own heart, unveiled only to one 
 on earth, and to his Father in Heaven. And when he came out of 
 his study, and met his children and guestg at breakfast, he would 
 greet them with bright courtesy and that cheerful disengaged tem- 
 per acquired by strict self-discipline, which enabled him to enter 
 into all their interests, and the joy and playfulness of the moment. 
 The family gatherings were the brightest hours in the day, lit up 
 as they were with his marvellous humor. " I wonder," he would 
 say, " if there is so much laughing in any other home in England 
 as in ours." He became a light-hearted boy once more in the 
 presence of his children, and still more remarkably so in that of 
 his aged mother, when he saw her face clouded with depression 
 during her later years, which were spent under his roof. He 
 brought sunshine into her room whenever he entered it, as well as 
 the strong spiritual consolation which she needed, and received in 
 his daily ministrations by her bedside morning and evening. 
 
 The griefs of children were to him most piteous. "A child over 
 a broken toy is a sight I cannot bear," and when nursery griefs and 
 broken toys were taken to the study, he was never too busy to 
 mend the toy and dry the tears. He held with Jean Paul Richter 
 again, that children have their " days and hours of rain," days 
 when "the child's quicksilver" falls rapidly before the storms and 
 cold weather of circumstances, and "parents should not consider 
 or take much notice, either for anxiety or sermons," * lightly 
 
 * •' Levana," chap. 8. 
 
26o Charles Kingsley. 
 
 passing over these variations of temperature, except where they 
 are symptoms of coming illness. And here his knowledge of 
 physiology and that delicate organization of brain, which had 
 given him many a sad experience in his own childhood, made him 
 keen to watch and detect such symptoms. Weariness at lessons, 
 and sudden fits of temper or obstinacy, he detected, as often 
 springing from physical causes, and not to be treated hastily as 
 moral, far less spiritual delinquencies, being merely, perhaps, 
 phases of depression, which pass over with change of occupation, 
 air and scene, and the temporary cessation of all brain work. 
 
 Justice and mercy, and that rigid self-control, which kept him 
 fi-om speaking a hasty word or harboring a mean suspicion, com- 
 bined with a divine tenderness, were his governing principles in all 
 his home relationships. It has been said of Sir William Napier's 
 expression of countenance, in words that perfectly describe Charles 
 Kingsley, " This tenderness was never so marked as when he was 
 looking at or talking with little children. At such times the ex- 
 pression which came over his face was wonderfully beautiful and 
 touching. Towards these little creatures he had an eager way of 
 stretching out his hands, as if to touch them, but with a hesitation 
 arising from the evident dread of handling them too roughly. The 
 same sort of feeling, too, he manifested in a minor degree, towards 
 small animals, little dogs, kittens and birds." * 
 
 And he respected as well as loved his children, from the early 
 days when " Heaven lay about them in their infancy," and he 
 hung with reverent and yet passionate wonder over the baby in its 
 cradle, to grown-up years when he looked upon them as friends 
 and equals. Home was to them so real a thing that it seemed in 
 a way as if it must be eternal. And when his eldest son, in 
 America, heard of the father's death, and of another which then 
 seemed imminent, and foresaw the break up of the home, he stood 
 as one astonished, only to say, in the bitterness of his soul : 
 
 " I feel as if a huge ship had broken up piece by piece, plank by 
 plank, and we children were left clinging to one strong spar alone 
 — God ! . . , . Ah, how many shoals and quicksands of 
 life he piloted me through, by his wonderful love, knowledge, and 
 endurance — that great father of ours, the dust of whose shoes we 
 are not worthy to kiss." .... 
 
 * Life of Sir W. Napier. 
 
Father and Son, 261 
 
 Nearly two years have passed since that bitter day, and his son, 
 now at home once more, adds his memories to the many in this 
 book of memories. 
 
 " ' Perfect love casteth out all fear,' was the motto on which my 
 father based his theory of bringing up his children ; and this theory 
 he put in practice from their babyhood till when he left them as 
 men and women. From this, and from the interest he took in all 
 their pursuits, their pleasures, trials, and even the petty details of 
 their everyday life, there sprang up a ' friendship ' between father 
 and children that increased in intensity and depth with years. 
 
 " To speak for myself, and yet I know full well I speak for all, 
 he was the best friend — the, only true friend I ever had. At once 
 he was the most fatherly and the most unfatherly of fathers — fatherly 
 in that he was our intimate friend, and our self-constituted adviser ; 
 unfatherly in that our feeling for him lacked that fear and restraint 
 that make boys call their father ' the governor.' 
 
 " I remember him as essentially the same to all of us always : 
 utterly unchanged and unchanging since the time that he used to 
 draw Sunday pictures for us to the time when he treated us as men 
 and women of the world. 
 
 "Ours was the only household I ever saw in which there was no 
 favoritism. It seemed as if in each of our different characters he 
 took an equal pride, while he fully recognized their different traits 
 of good or evil ; for, instead of having one code of social, moral, 
 and physical laws laid down for one and all of us, each child became 
 a separate study for him ; and its little ' diseases au moral,^ as he 
 called them, were treated differently according to each different 
 temperament. 
 
 The time above all others in which he opened out his heart to us, 
 I think, was walking over on Sunday evenings to the services held 
 in the little school-room at Bramshill. 
 
 " I can see him now, on one of those many summer evenmgs, as 
 he strode out of the back garden-gate with a sorrowful ' No ! go 
 home. Sweep ! ' to the retriever that had followed us stealthily 
 down the walk, and who now stood with an ear cocked and one 
 paw up, hoping against hope, that he might be allowed to come 
 on. I can feel him striding by me in the narrow path, while from 
 the bright sky and the look of the country he drank in nature, till 
 his eye lit up, his chest expanded, his step grew elastic, and he 
 was a boy again with me. I can hear him tell me, at the bottom 
 of the field, of a heavy fall out hunting over the fence into the 
 meadow, and his ringings laugh at the recollection of his own mis- 
 hap. His cheery ' Good afternoon ' to the cottager at the corner; 
 the ' Well-done, boy,' and grim smile of approval, with which he 
 greeted a jump over the gate at the top of the hill, on which he 
 
262 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 sits a moment to take in the long sweeps of purple heather run- 
 ning down to the yellow corn land — the brown roof of the Rectory 
 bursting up among its trees — the long flats of the little valley, with 
 its greens and cricketers. ' For cricket,' he used to say, ' is better 
 than beer, and the poor lads don't get a chance to play on week- 
 day : but remember you do.' 
 
 " And then the walk on over the moor, chatting gaily of the 
 fox's earth hard by, the green tiger-beetle that whirred from under 
 our feet, the nightjar (goatsucker) that fluttered up from a sandy 
 place in the path, and swooped madly away among the fir trees, 
 while ever and anon some word would strike a deeper chord, and a 
 few words would put something that mayhap had been an old 
 stumbling-block, into an entirely new and true light. 
 
 " All his deepest teaching, his strongest influence was, in a 
 way, of the negative kind, inasmuch as there were no long lectures, 
 no pithy arguments, but in his own life he showed, spoke, and 
 lived his doctrines, so that his utter unselfishness, his genial tender-" 
 ness towards their mother and themselves, gave the children an 
 example that could not be passed by unnoticed, however unworthily 
 followed. 
 
 " The only thing that he really required of us was reverence and 
 respect for people older than ourselves, which was also one of the 
 most strongly mai'ked traits in his own character, and one which 
 made him entirely ignore himself and his own superiority, in most 
 cases, in speaking to men older than he was. 
 
 " This required reverence, however, on our part, never created 
 any feeling of restraint when with him ; too true a friendship ex- 
 isted, and perhaps the brightest picture of the past that I look back 
 to no ; — that we can all look back to is — not the eager look of 
 delight with which he used to hail any of our little successes — not 
 any special case of approval, but it is the drawing-room at Eversley 
 in the evenings when we were all at home and by ourselves. There 
 he sat, with one hand in mother's, forgetting his own hard work and 
 worry in leading our fun and frolic, with a kindly smile on his lips, 
 and a loving light in that bright grey eye that made us feel that, in 
 the broadest sense of the word, he was our father." 
 
 "To see him with you and the children," said a friend, "was 
 to know what the man was. 1 made that remark when the chil- 
 dren were young, and how tenfold more was this the case when 
 they grew up around him." 
 
 But to speak of his home without mentioning his love of animals 
 would be to leave the picture incomplete. His dog and his horse 
 were his friends, and they knew it, and understood his voice and 
 eye. He was a perfect horseman, and never lost his temper with 
 
Love of all God s Creahtres. 263 
 
 his horse, talking to and reasoning with it if it shied or bolted, as if 
 it had been a rational being, knowing that, from the fine organiza- 
 tion of the animal, a horse, like a child, will get confused by panic 
 fear, which is only increased by punishment. His dog Dandy, a 
 fine Scotch terrier, was his companion in all his parish walks, at- 
 tended at the cottage lectures and school lessons, and was his and 
 the children's friend for thirteen years. He lies buried under the 
 great fir trees on the Rectory lawn, with this inscription on his 
 gravestone, " Fideli Fideles," and close by " Sweep," a magnificent 
 black retriever, and " Victor," a favorite Teckel, given to him by 
 the Queen, with which he sat up during the two last suffering nights 
 of the little creature's life. Cats, too, were a continual delight to 
 him ; the stable had always its white cat, and the house its black 
 or tabby, and he never tired of watching their graceful movements. 
 His love of animals was strengthened by his behef in their future 
 state — a belief which he held in common with John Wesley, and 
 many other remarkable men. On the lawn dwelt a family of natter 
 jacks (running toads), who lived on from year to year in the same 
 hole in the green bank, which the scythe was never allowed to 
 approach. He had two little friends in a pair of sand wasps, who 
 lived in a crack of the window in his dressing-room, one of which 
 he had saved from drowning in a hand-basin, taking it tenderly out 
 into the sunshine to dry ; and every spring he would look out 
 eagerly for them or their children, who came out of, or returned to 
 the same crack. The little fly-catcher, who built its nest every 
 year under his bedroom window, was a constant joy to him. He had 
 also a favorite slow-worm in the churchyard which his parishioners 
 were warned not to kill, from the mistaken idea prevalent in Ever- 
 sley that slow-worms were poisonous. All these tastes he encouraged 
 in his children, teaching them to love and handle gently without 
 disgust all living things, toads, frogs, beetles, as works and wonders 
 from the hand of a Living God. His guests were surprised one 
 morning at breakfast when his little girl ran up to the open window 
 of the dining-room holding a long repulsive-looking worm in her 
 hand. " Oh ! daddy, look at this delightful worm." He had but 
 one aversion which he could never conquer — to a spider, and it 
 was of himself he spoke in ' Glaucus,' after saying " that every one 
 seems to have his antipathic animal ; — T know one bred from his 
 childhood to zoology by land and sea, and bold in asserting, and 
 
264 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 honest in feeling, that all without exception is beautiful, who yet 
 cannot, after handling, and petting, and examining all day long 
 every uncouth and venomous beast, avoid a paroxysm of horror at 
 the sight of the common house-spider ! " 
 
 But, after all, a bird, he often said, was to him the most won- 
 derful of God's creations ; he watched for the arrival of the birds of 
 passage every spring with a strange longing, and seemed less restless 
 after the swallow had appeared at Eversley. His eyes would fill 
 with tears at each fresh arrival, and again each autumn as he 
 grieved over their departure. He knew their every note, and was 
 never tired of watching their character and habits. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 1857- 
 Aged 38. 
 
 " Two Years Ago " — The Crowded Church — Unquiet Sundays — Letters to Mr. 
 Bullar — Dr. Rigg — Mr. Tom Hughes' Pietists and Ovftoc; — Letter from a Naval 
 Chaplain — Indian Mutiny — The Romance of Real Life. 
 
 The year 1857 opened brightly on Charles Kingsley, for it found 
 him, for the first time for three years, in his own home for the 
 winter at Eversle)', with his wife and his three children. 
 
 " I am writing nothing now ; but taking breath, and working in 
 the parish — never better than I am at present ; with many bless- 
 ings, and, awful confession for mortal man, no sorrows ! I some- 
 times think there must be terrible arrears of sorrow to be paid off 
 by me — that I may be as other men are ! God help me in 
 that day ! " 
 
 He writes in January to his friend Mr. Hughes : — 
 
 "The book is done ('Two Years Ago') ; the last proof going 
 through the press now, and I know you will like it. ... I am 
 better off now than I have been for years ! God be thanked, and 
 God grant, too, that I may not require to be taken down by some 
 terrible trouble, I often fancy I shall be. If I am, I shall deserve 
 it, as much as any man who ever lived. I say so now — ^justifying 
 God beforehand, lest I should not have faith and patience enough 
 to justify Him when the punishment comes. . . . Many 
 thanks for your wholesome letter — the rightest letter I have had 
 for many a day. It has taught me a great deal, dear old man ; 
 and you are nearer to God than I am, I see well. . . ." 
 
 The " terrible trouble " came, — but not in the shape of personal 
 grief or domestic affliction ; and, till the awful news from India 
 burst upon England, all went well. He was made this year a Fel- 
 low of the Linnean Society, which had been one of the ambitions 
 of his life. Two visits from his dear friend Max Muller (soon to be 
 more nearly related to him), refreshed his spirit. Mr. Chadwick, 
 
266 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 with whose kind assistance he was hard at work on sanitary and 
 educational subjects, came to discuss these questions with him, 
 and a strange medley of visitors proposed themselves, and were 
 -made welcome, at the Rectory. One day, a Unitarian minister, — 
 clergymen of the Church of England, Dissenters, Americans — all 
 came on missions of their own, and opened their hearts to him as 
 they could to no other man. And on the lawn, under the old fir 
 trees on long summer days, he and his guests discussed all things 
 in heaven and earth. 
 
 Sunday after Sunday he had the keen delight of seeing Crimean 
 officers from Aldershot and Sandhurst in his congregation. Among 
 others one who had been dangerously wounded in the Redan, at 
 Sevastopol, and who, when lying between life and death at Scutari, 
 had read "Yeast," and determined, if he ever came back alive, "to 
 go and hear the clergyman preach who could give such a picture 
 of a hunting scene as the one in the opening chapter." One Sun- 
 day he came — while still on crutches — a stranger to Mr. Kingsley, 
 but soon to become a friend, a constant attendant at church, and 
 always a welcome guest at the Rectory early Sunday dinner. 
 
 Each day the post brought some letter either of thanks for his 
 books or asking counsel. He preached a series of sermons on the 
 Creed, and one, by request of a member of the congregation who 
 wrote anonymously, on the Intermediate and Future State, when 
 he ventured to speak more jilainiy than he had yet done in the pul- 
 pit on the subject so near his heart. The little church was often full 
 of strangers, and one Sunday, when twelve carriages were standing 
 in and outside the stable-yard, the sexton was heard to say, he 
 could not think why there was " such flitting to and fro to our 
 church on Sundays." Having heard the same preaching for fifteen 
 years himself, he could not tell what the wonder of it was. To the 
 rector this notoriety was simply painful : " I cannot bear having 
 my place turned into a fair on Sundays, and all this talking after 
 church." So to avoid the greetings of acquaintances and the ob- 
 servation of strangers in the churchyard, he had a little back gate 
 made into his garden, and escaped after service, through the ves- 
 try door. His whole soul and energy were thrown so intensely into 
 the services of his church, that when they were over he found 
 quiet essential to help him to calm down from the excitement of 
 his own earnestness. 
 
Self-denial. 267 
 
 In the summer the news of the Indian mutiny came, which ab- 
 sorbed and depressed him ; and some friends, knowing how hard- 
 worked and sad he was, invited him to go with them to the Man- 
 chester Exhibition, then open, with all its glorious pictures : but 
 when the day came he could not make up his mind to leave a poor 
 sick man, who he felt would miss his daily visits. With his keen 
 love of art, it cost him a pang to give up the sight of such a collec- 
 tion of pictures as might never again come together in England 
 during his lifetime ; but he said he could not have enjoyed them 
 while a parishioner was counting on seeing him. This triliing in- 
 cident is mentioned to show how thorough and unselfish he was iu 
 his parish work, which in this case could so easily have been passed 
 over for three days to any neighboring clergyman. 
 
 He seldom went to London ; and to a friend who pressed him 
 to come up and hear one of his own songs finely sung there, he 
 refused. " I love home and green fields more and more, and 
 never lust either after Babylon or the Continent. . ." 
 
 TO JOHN BULLAR, ESQ, 
 
 EVERSLEY, Jamiary 27, 1857. 
 
 "Your theory of speaking is all true. My defect was the same 
 as your friend's, but mine came from an under jaw contracted by 
 calomel, and nerves ruined by croup and brain fever in childhood. 
 That prevented my opening my mouth ; that gave me a wrong use 
 of the diaphragm muscles, till I got to speak inspiring, and never 
 to fully inflate my lungs ; and that brought on the last and worst 
 (yet most easily cured) spasm of the tongue. All the while, I could 
 speak, not only plain but stentorially, while boxing, rowing, hunt- 
 ing, skating, and doing anything which compelled deep inspira- 
 tions. . . ." 
 
 " Matthew xxii. 30, has been to me always a comfort. I am so 
 well and really married on earth, that I should be exceedingly 
 sorry to be married again in heaven ; and it would be very need- 
 less. All I can say is, if I do not love my wife, body and soul, as 
 well there as I do here, then there is neither resurrection of my 
 body nor of my soul, but of some other, and I shall not be I. 
 Therefore, whatsoever the passage means, it can't mean what 
 monks make it. Ten years ago I asked in 'Yeast' the question 
 which my favorite old monk legends (from which I have learnt 
 volumes) forced on me, ' Who told you that the angelic life was 
 single ? ' and I have found no answer yet. . . .''" 
 
 
 Vf 
 
 .1 //. 
 
268 Charles Kings ley, 
 
 March 19, 1857. 
 
 " Many thanks for your favorable opinion of the book ('Two 
 Years Ago') ; but I fear you take Tom Thurnall for a better man 
 than he was, and must beg you not to pare my maji to suit your 
 own favorable conception ; but consider that that is the sort of man 
 I want to draw, and you must take him as you find him. My experi- 
 ence is, that men of his character (like all strong men till God's grace 
 takes full possession of them) are weak upon one point — every thing 
 can they stand but that ; and the more they restrain themselves from 
 prudential motives, the more sudden and violent is the temptation 
 when it comes. I have indicated as delicately as I could the world- 
 wide fact, which all know and all ignore ; had I not done so, Thur- 
 nall would have been a mere chimera fit only for a young lady's 
 novel. 
 
 " I feel deeply the change in one's imagination during the last 
 twenty years. As a child I never could distinguish dreams from 
 imaginations, imaginations from waking impressions ; and was often 
 thought to be romancing when I was relating a real impression. 
 In ill health from overwork about 16 to 18, I had spectral illusions 
 often (one as clear as any of Nicolai's), accompanied with frightful 
 nervous excitability, and inability to settle to any work, though 
 always working at something in a fierce, desultory way. At twenty 
 I found out tobacco. The spectres vanished ; the power of dull 
 application arose ; and for the first time in my life, 1 began to be 
 master of my own brain. 
 
 " Now, I am in general the most prosaic and matter-of-fact of 
 parsons. I cannot dream if I try. I go to my brain as to a store- 
 house or carpenter's shop, from which I take out coolly what I 
 want, and put it into the best shape I can. The German mode of 
 thought, feeling, and writing, such as you find in Jean Paul or Novalis, 
 lies behind me, as 'boy's love' belonging to an era 'when the 
 spirits of the prophets' were not yet 'subject to the prophets.' 
 Whether this be right or wrong, I know not ; but I confess the 
 fact; — and if w€ ever get a week together, I fear that you will think 
 me a most dull and frivolous fellow, who cares for nothing but to 
 romp with your children, and pick flowers, and study the weather 
 usque ad nauseam. 
 
 "But here lies the difference between us. Your work is utterly 
 of the head ; and you go for amusement to fancy, to imagination, 
 to metaphysic. My work, whether parish or writing, lies just in the 
 sphere wherein you play ; and if 1 played in that sphere too, I 
 should go mad, or soften my brain, like poor Southey. So when I 
 play, I think about nothing ; ride, fish, chat with the farmers over 
 the crops, examine beetles and worms, and forget that I have a 
 heart as much as I can. But I won't bore you more about 
 myself" 
 
Mrs. Ga'skeir s Life of Charlotte Bronte. 269 
 
 TO REV. DR. RIGG. 
 
 EvERSLEY, April 5, 1857. 
 
 " I have to thank you for an able and candid review of my writ- 
 ings in the ' London Quarterly Review.' I am sorry to differ from 
 you, but I take this opi)ortunity of assuring you that our differences 
 are far fewer than you fancy, and that you would, I think, find me 
 less unorthodox than you will have made your readers take me to be. 
 
 "But one statement I must energetically contradict — that I am 
 in anywise in theology a follower of Mr. Thomas Carlyle. I have 
 pointed out in my works certain points on which, in past years, he 
 has done good service ; but I am at a loss to conceive why my 
 having done so should make any man think that I agree with his 
 theology. This hasty assumption has led you to suppose that he is 
 the 'mystic teacher' to whom I alluded in my review of Vaughan's 
 ' M3^stics,' a notion only equalled in wrongness by that of some 
 people that I meant Mr. Urquhart. It has also led you into the 
 
 mistake that I sympathise with his attack on Howard 
 
 If you wish to see whether I am a Pantheist or not, n)ayT beg you 
 to peruse pp. 243-247 of vol. iii. of 'Two Years Ago,' on which a 
 Baptist review well remarked, that whatever I was, a Pantheist I 
 was not." 
 
 This correspondence led to a personal acquaintance and warm 
 friendship between Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Rigg, now the respected 
 head of the Wesleyan Training College, Horseferry Road, London. 
 
 TO MRS. GASKELL. 
 
 St. Leonard's, May 14, 1857. 
 
 " Let me renew our long-interrupted acquaintance by compli- 
 menting you on poor Miss Bronte's Life. You have had a delicate 
 and a great work to do, and you have done it admirably. Be sure 
 that the book will do good. It will shame literary people into 
 some stronger belief that a simple, virtuous, practical home life is 
 consistent with high imaginative genius ; and it will shame, too, 
 the prudery of a not over cleanly, though carefully white-washed 
 age, into believing that purity is now (as in all ages till now) quite 
 compatible with the knowledge of evil. I confess that the book 
 has made me ashamed of myself. ' Jane P2yre ' I hardly looked 
 into, very seldom reading a work of fiction — yours, indeed, and 
 Thackeray's * are the only ones I care to open. 'Shirley' dis- 
 
 * Of Thackeray's " Vanity Fair " his estimate was very high. In a letter 
 to liis wife ill 1850 he says, " I can read nothing but ' Vanity Fair,' over and 
 over again, whicli fills me with delight, wonder, and humility. I would sooner 
 have drawn Ravvdon Crawley than all the folks I ever drew." 
 
270 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 gubted nae at the opening : and I gave up the writer and her books 
 with the notion that she was a person who hked coarseness. How 
 I misjudged her ! and how thankful I am that I never put a Avord 
 of my misconceptions into print, or recorded my misjudgments of 
 one who is a whole heaven above me. 
 
 " Well have you done your work, and given us the picture of a 
 valiant woman made perfect by sufferings. I shall now read care- 
 fully and lovingly every word she has written, especially those 
 poems, which ought not to have fallen dead as they did, and 
 which seem to be (from a review in the current Fraser), of re- 
 markable strength and purity. I must add that Mrs. Kingsley 
 agrees fully with all I have said, and bids me tell you that she is 
 more intensely interested in the book than in almost any which she 
 has ever read." 
 
 TO TOM HUGHES, ESQ, 
 
 EVERSLEY, ytme 12, 1857. 
 
 " Eight and thirty years old am I this day, Tummas ; whereof 
 twenty-two were spent in pain, in woe, and vanitie ; and sixteen 
 in very great happiness, such as few men deserve, and I don't 
 deserve at all. And now I feel like old Jacob, ' with my staff I 
 passed over Jordan, and now I am become two bands' — for why? 
 I actually couldn't get home from Hastings except in two relays, 
 what with servants, tutor, and governess. Well, Tom, God has 
 been very good to me ; and I can't help feeding a hope that I may 
 fight a good fight yet before I die, and get something done. I've 
 done little enough yet. The best work ever I've done has been 
 my plain parish work, and that I've done miserably ill, cowardly 
 and idly of late, and bullying and second-hand dogmatic of old ; 
 but perhaps I shall get training enough to go into the fight well before 
 1 die ; and if not, I trust one's not going to be idle up there, Tom. 
 Surely as long as there's a devil or devils, even an ass or asses, 
 in the universe, one will have to turn out to the reveille now and 
 then, wherever one is, and satisfy one's ^v^aos 'rage' or 'pluck,' 
 which Plato averreth (for why, he'd have been a wraxling man, and 
 ^therefore was a philosopher, and the king of 'em) to be the root of 
 all virtue. VVhy not, Tom ? Mayn't we? 
 
 " Now to business. Tommy, which is fish. O that I could go to 
 Lambourne Monday ! But I preach in town Sunday, and have 
 three good fellows a dying in my parish, so that I must be at home 
 Monday afternoon. But oh if you take Donnington Priory, won't 
 I immortalise you in verse and prose ? Oh the bliss ! I think the 
 boys will catch o. The fish will be glutted with the fly, and atten- 
 dant Naiads pitying, holding basins under their noses : mortal 
 aldermanic they were Wednesday here. I caught a fairish lot on 
 the Caperer, which they took as a relish to the heavy fly ] but the 
 
On Tom Brown. 271 
 
 moment they were ashore the Mayflies came up. Oh a Dover 
 steamer in a chopping sea was cleanly to it. Poor carnal parties ! 
 Why shouldn't they tuck while they can ? Mayflies come to them 
 at Whitsuntide, as club-feasts do to the clods, to give them one 
 jolly blow out in the year, and it's a 'pleasure to look at them. 
 That's why good fishing days always fall on Sundays, Tom, to give 
 the poor fish a good day's appetite (dinner always ready), and 
 nobody to catch them while they're enjoying it. 
 
 " Also make a note of this. A party widi doubtful h's, and 
 commercial demeanor, appears on Wednesday on our little stream, 
 and kills awfully. I'hrows a beautiful line, and catches more than 
 I have in a day for this two years here ; fly, a little green drake, 
 with a ridiculous tufted bright yellow wing, like nothing as ever 
 was. Stood aghast ; went home and dreamed all the spiders' webs 
 by the stream were full of thousands of them, the most beautiful 
 yellow ephemerce with green peacock-tail heads. Oh the beauty 
 of them ; and wasn't I riled when I found it was all for fancy ? 
 "But won't I ' realoirioize,' as the Scots parsons say, those little 
 fellows next year, and apply them to the part affected ? " 
 
 EvERSLEY, 1857. 
 " I have often been minded to write to you about ' Tom Brown,' 
 so here goes. I have puffed it everywhere I went, but I soon 
 found how true the adage is that good wine needs no bush, for 
 every one had read it already, and from every one, from the fine 
 lady on her throne, to the red-coat on his cock-horse, and the 
 school-boy on his forrum (as our Irish brethren call it), I have 
 heard. but one word, and that is, that it is the jolliest book they 
 ever read. Among a knot of red-coats at the cover-side, some 
 very fast fellow said, ' If I had had such a book in my boyhood, I 
 should have been a better man now ! ' and more than one capped 
 his sentiment frankly. Now isn't it a comfort to your old bones 
 to have writtten such a book, and a comfort to see that fellows 
 are in a humor to take it in ? So far from finding men of our 
 rank in a bad vein, or sighing over the times and prospects of the 
 rising generation, I can't help thinking they are very teachable, 
 humble, honest fellows, who want to know what's right, and if they 
 don't go and do it, still think the worse of themselves therefore. I. 
 remark now, that with hounds, and in fast company, I never hear 
 an oath, and that, too, is a sign of self-restraint. Moreover, drink- 
 ing is gone out, and, good God, what a blessing ! I have good 
 • hopes, and better of our class, than of the class below. They 
 are effeminate, and that makes them sensual. Pietists of all ages 
 (George Fox, my dear friend, among the worst), never made a 
 greater mistake (and ihey have made many), than in fancying 
 that by keeping down manly Ovjjlo^, which Plato saith is the root 
 of all virtue, they could keep down sensuality. They were dear 
 
272 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 good old fools. However, the day of ' Pietism ' is gone, and 
 ' Tom Brown ' is a heavy stone in its grave. ' Him no get up 
 again after that,' as the niggers say of a buried obi-man. I am 
 trying to polish the poems : but Maurice's holidays make me idle. 
 Povvles' school has been most successful for him ; he has come 
 home healthier and jollier than ever he was in his life, and is 
 truly a noble boy. 
 
 " Sell your last coat and buy a spoon. I have a spoon of huge 
 size (Fariow his make). I killed forty pounds weight of pike, &c., ■ 
 on it the other day, at Strathfieldsaye, to the astonishment and 
 
 delight of , who cut small jokes on ' a spoon at each end,' &c., 
 
 but altered his note, when he saw the melancholies coming ashore, 
 one every ten minutes, and would try his own hand. I have 
 killed heaps of big pike round with it. I tried it in Lord Eversley's 
 lakes on Monday, when the fish wouldn't have even his fly. Ca- 
 pricious party is Jaques. Next day killed a seven pounder at 
 Hurst. 1 am going again to the Speaker's, for he wants his jack 
 killed down, and has hurt his leg so that he can't do it, wherefore 
 he has sent for me. Ain't I a slaved party; ill-used by aristocrats, 
 and compelled to fish in waters where his last was eleven pounds, 
 and whei^e he has had them out of twenty-four and eighteen?" 
 
 During the course of the year a letter arrived from a chaplain 
 of a Queen's ship on the Nova Scotia station, who, after apolo- 
 gizing for the liberty he w4s taking in writing to thank him for his 
 books, adds — 
 
 " I found on our arrival here (Halifax) that an edition of ' Two 
 Years Ago,' published at Boston, was to be had ; but no one seemed 
 to know it. My purpose in writing to you is partly for encourage- 
 ment in the preaching of views to which I am becoming the more 
 and more attached, and partly to tell you how much your books 
 are hked by naval men. I could, also, tell you of good resulting 
 from the reading of them. For example, I know one instance of 
 an officer, who is a man of cultivated mind, and yet he told me 
 that until he had read ' Two Years Ago,' he had never said his 
 prayers (for years past) except when in trouble. It would fill up 
 this letter altogether, were I to tell you of all the praises I hear 
 from every one of my mess-mates who have read this book. I con- 
 sider it a duty to get them all to read it, and ' Westward Ho ! ' ; as 
 I believe, both are calculated to make men better. I have got 
 them both for the sick quarters, and hope to have them generally 
 read by the ship's company as well 
 
 " About sailors. I have always found that they came willingly 
 to church. My preaching since I have read your ' Sermons for the 
 Times,' speaks more of love than ever ; I always held the same 
 
Sailors and " Two Years Ago!' 273 
 
 opinions, but was afraid of the preaching of them ; now, however, 
 that 1 find one whom I beheve to be both wise and good not afraid, 
 I do not see why I should be so either. 
 
 " I have a bible class for the men. which I tried in the ' cock- 
 pit ' and failed ; on the main-deck, and failed ; and at last, taking 
 a lesson from ' Two Years Ago,' I resolved to go to the men instead 
 of expecting them to come to me — and thus, I have at last suc- 
 ceeded. My plan was the following : — I went to the fore-capstan, 
 round which the men smoke, and laying my book down thereon, I 
 said I was come to read a chapter for them, and that those who 
 did not wish to be present, might move ' aft ' — and that, so far from 
 wishing to interrupt their smoking time (evening) it was my special 
 desire that they should continue smoking, their attention being all 
 I wanted. I have this class now regularly on Thursday evenings, 
 and a more attentive or orderly audience could not be seen ; the 
 men are beginning to feel an interest in it and congregate there 
 some time before the hour arrives. I wish you could see them, 
 such fine manly handsome fellows. I know it is doing good. It 
 might at first sight be supposed that the time, place, and circum- 
 stances would be calculated to lower my position ; but so far from 
 that, the men know that I must be in earnest, and they are more 
 gentle and respectful than ever. I need hardly say that I preach 
 love to them as the great inducement, and agree with you that no 
 other plan should be tried .... From the ' Sermons of the 
 Times,' I have learnt much, and now have clearer ideas on many 
 of the subjects " 
 
 After some particularly bitter newspaper attacks, a friend writes 
 to him to tell him the* effect " Two Years Ago " had had on a dis- 
 tinguished member of one of our universities, who had had no settled 
 faith for years. 
 
 " I write for your soul's comfort in your noble and much tra- 
 duced work in God's service. Poor dear * * * attributed his 
 being convinced of sin, and driven to seek Christ the Lord and 
 Savior, to your last book, especially that fearful account of Elsley 
 Vavasour's chase across the mountain, and Tom Thurnall's expe- 
 rience in the Russian dungeon. He had always said to me that he 
 never could understand what was meant by the sense of sin as 
 spoken of in the Bible, and by Maurice in his Theological Essays. 
 But one night, about six weeks before his death, when he awoke in 
 pain and darkness in the middle of the night, the remembrance of 
 that terrible isolation which you had described in these passages 
 came upon him in awful horror, and drove him to seek help from 
 God. No one who knew * * * before that time and after it 
 could fail to see how great the change was that was wrought in him. 
 18 
 
2 74 Charles King shy. 
 
 He only spoke of it to me once, and as I knew how distasteful to 
 him was all self-analysis at least to others, I never re-opened the 
 matter, but after his death 1 found he had said the same thing 
 |-Q * * *_ Now, my dear Kingsley, I trust this will be some com- 
 fort to you in the midst of all this foolish calumny. As I said, I 
 meant to have written of this to Mrs. Kingsley. I know how she 
 would prize such a fact in connection with such a man." 
 
 TO REV. GEORGE HENSLOWE. 
 
 [Who had written to hun as to the possibility of a sense of humor in the 
 
 Creator.] 
 
 EvERSLEY, Sept. II, 1857. 
 
 " I cannot see how your notions can be gainsayed, save by those 
 who have a lurking belief that God is the Devil, after all — a sort of 
 unjust and exacting Zeus, against whom they would rebel if they 
 had Prometheus' courage : but not having that, must flatter him 
 instead. 
 
 " The matter presents itself to me thus. I see humor in animals, 
 e.g., a crab and a monkey, a parrot, a crow. I don't find this the 
 result of a low organization. In each of these four cases the animal 
 is of the highest belonging to this class. Well ; there the fact is ; 
 if I see it, God must see it also, or I must have more insight than 
 God into God's own works. Q. E. Abs. 
 
 " Then comes a deeper question. God sees it : but is. He 
 affected by it ? I think we could give no answer to this, save on 
 the ground of a Son of God, who is that image of the father in 
 whom man is created. 
 
 " If the New Testament be true, we have a right to say of 
 humor, as of all other universally human faculties — Hominus est 
 = Ergo Christi est = P2rgo Dei est. 
 
 " I must accept this in its fulness, to whatever seemiiigly startling 
 and dangerous result it may lead me, or my theology and my 
 anthropology part company, and then, being philosophically unable 
 to turn Manichee (whether Calvinist or Romanist), the modern 
 Pantheism would be the only alternative ; from which homeless 
 and bottomless pit of immoral and unphilosophical private judg- 
 ment may God deliver us and all mankind. And you will see that 
 into that Pantheism men will rush more and more till they learn to 
 face the plain statement of the creed, ' And He was made man,' 
 and the Catholic belief, that as the Son of man, He sits now cV 
 (tois) ovpavoh, and on the very throne of God. Face the seemingly 
 coarse anthropomorphism of the Old Testament, and believe that the 
 New Testament so far from narrowing it, widens and deepens it. 
 
 " This is my only hope and stay, while I see,.belief and practice 
 alike rocking and reeling to decay. May God keep it alive in me 
 and in you, recollecting always that to do the simple right thing 
 
The Mutiny in India. 275 
 
 which hes at our feet, is better than to have ascended into the third 
 heaven, and to have all yvwo-ts and all mysteries. 
 
 " You sign yourself by a very noble name. Are you a son of 
 that good and wise man to whose lectures about Chara and Nitella I 
 have listened in Quy-fen eighteen years ago ? I shall be happy to 
 hear from you again." 
 
 He gave many lectures in the diocese this autumn for Mechanics' 
 Institutes, and among others his " Thoughts in a Gravel Pit," and 
 one on " Chaucer," also a long promised one at Bristol on " Great 
 Cities, their Influence for Good and Evil." * 
 
 He was just now engaged on a volume of poems for publication, 
 and they had been advertised by Messrs. Parker for Christmas. 
 But while preparing them for the press he was asked to write an 
 article on Sanitary reform. This work, and the terrible depression 
 produced on his mind by the Indian mutiny, prevented his being 
 able to get them ready in time. The agony of his mind as the 
 details from India poured in, though he had no relatives or per- 
 sonal friends engaged in the mutiny, was terrible, and he writes to 
 Mr. Bullar: — 
 
 "... Do not talk to me about India, and the future of India, 
 till you can explain the past — the past six months. O Bullar, no 
 man knows, or shall know, what thoughts they have cost me, 
 
 Meanwhile, I feel as if I could dogmatise no more. 
 
 I dare say you are right and I wrong. I have no heart, at least, to 
 continue any argument, while my brain is filled with images fresh 
 out of hell and the shambles. Show me what security I have that 
 my wife, my children, should not suffer, from some unexpected 
 outbreak of devils, what other wives and children have suffered, 
 and then 1 shall sleep quiet, without longing that they were safe 
 out of a world where such things are possible 
 
 " You may think me sinful for having such thoughts. My experi- 
 ence is, that when they come, one must face them, do battle with 
 them deliberately, be patient if they worst one for a while. For by 
 all such things men live, in these is the life of the spirit. Only by 
 going down into hell can one rise again the third day. I have been 
 in hell many times in my life ; therefore, perhaps, have I had some 
 small power of influencing human hearts. But I never have looked 
 hell so close in the face as I have been doing of late. Wherefore 
 I hope thereby to get fresh power to rise, and to lift others heaven- 
 ward. But the power has not come yet And 
 
 * Published in the " Miscellanies." 
 
276 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 I can only cry, ' O Lord, in Thee have I trusted, let me never be 
 confounded. Wherefore should the wicked say, where is now his 
 God?' 
 
 " But while I write now, and while 1 fret most, there comes to 
 me an inner voice, saying — What matter if thou art confounded. 
 God is not. Only believe firmly that God is at least as good as 
 thou, with thy ' finite reason,' canst conceive ; and He will make 
 thee at last able to conceive how good He is, and thou shalt have 
 the one perfect blessing of seeing God. 
 
 " You will say I am inconsistent. So I am ; and so, if read 
 honestly, are David's Psalms. Yet that very inconsistency is what 
 brings them home to every human heart for ever. The words of a 
 man in real doubt and real darkness, crying for light, and not cry- 
 ing in vain. As I trust I shall not. God bless you." 
 
 to george brimley, esq. 
 
 eversley, 1857. 
 " Dear Brimley, 
 
 " Your letter has much comforted me ; for your disapproval is 
 really to me a serious thing, from what I know of your critical 
 powers ; while my own hopeless inability to judge of the goodness 
 or badness of anything I write makes me more and more modest 
 about my own ' ccsthesis.' That word ' masque ' I will omit here- 
 after. The truth is, that I have drawn, modelled in clay, and pic- 
 ture fancied, so much in past years, that I have got unconsciously 
 into the slang — for slang it is — and I am faulty therein. 
 
 " About the melodrama on the Glyder, I quite agree with you 
 that some folks will carp. There was a cantankerous lady (I heard 
 who she was, but forget — why not ?) who attacked me fiercely on 
 that score, anent ' Westward Ho ! ' She knew not that the one 
 point which infuriated her most, viz., the masts and sails and people 
 looking red-hot against a black background instead of vice versa, 
 when Amyas is struck blind, was copied from the experience of a 
 near relative who was struck senseless by a flash of lightning, and 
 squinted and had weak eyes for years after. So much for the re- 
 ward which one gets for copying nature ! 
 
 " In the Glyder scene I have copied nature most carefully, 
 having surveyed every yard of the ground this summer. The vision 
 of Snowdon towering and wet against the background of blue flame, 
 appearing and disappearing every nroment, was given me by Froude, 
 who lived there three years, and saw it, and detailed it carefully, 
 begging me to put it in ! But why go on justifying ? I don't think 
 the deerstalkers of Park Lane and Belgravia will sneer, because 
 they see such things in their field-sports, and are dehghted when 
 such men as Maxwell or St. John, or perhaps I — for they have told 
 me so often — can put them into words for them ; but the true 
 
Nature s Melodrama. 277 
 
 snubbers are the cockneys who write for the press, and who judge 
 of the universe from the experiences of the London suburbs, or a 
 summer's watering-place trip. I have seen as awful sights here at 
 the breaking up of a long drought; and what I wanted to do was 
 boldly to defy criticism on that very point, calling the chapter 
 'Nature's Melodrama,' and showing, meanwhile, that the ' melo- 
 dramatic element ' was a false, and morbid, and cowardly one, by 
 bringing in Naylor and Wynd, thinking the very same horrors capi- 
 tal fun. I would not have taken Elsley there if I had not taken 
 them there also, as a wholesome foil to his madness. 
 
 " Claude and Sabina are altogether imaginary. Ever since 
 ' Yeast,' I have been playing with them as two dolls, setting them 
 to say and do all the pretty iia'ive things any one else is too re- 
 spectable to be sent about, till 1 know them as well as I know you. 
 I have half-a-dozen pet people of that kind, whom I make talk and 
 walk with me on the moors, and when I am at my parish work ; 
 and charming company they all are, only they get more and more 
 wilful, being ' spoilt children,' and I cannot answer for any despe- 
 rate aberration of theirs, either in doctrine or practice, from hour 
 to hour. Like all the rest of human hfe, the best things which I 
 get out of them are too good to be told. So nobody will ever know 
 them, save a little of the outside. Writing novels is a farce and a 
 sham. If any man could write the simple life of a circle of five 
 miles round his own house, as he knew, and could in many cases 
 swear it to be, at that moment, no one would believe it ; and least 
 of all would those beHeve it who did believe it. Do you ask the 
 meaning of the paradox ? 
 
 " Those who know best that the facts are true, or might be true, 
 would be those most interested in declaring them impossible. 
 When any man or woman calls anything 'over-drawn,' try them, if 
 you can, by the argument — 
 
 " ' Now, confess. Have you not seen, and perhaps done, 
 stranger things ? ' And in proportion to their honesty and genial- 
 ity they will answer, ' Yes.' 
 
 " I have never found this fail, with people who were human, and 
 were capable of having any ' history ' at all." 
 
CHAPTER XVIIL 
 
 1858. 
 Aged 39. 
 
 Eversley Work — Diphtheria — Lectures and Sermons at Aldershot — Blessing the 
 Colors of the 22nd Regiment — Staff College — Advanced Thinkers — Poems 
 and Santa Maura — Letter from Dr. Monsell — Letters to Dr. Monsell, Dean 
 Stanley, &c. — Letter from Captain Congreve — Birth of his Son Granville — 
 Second Visit to Yorkshire. 
 
 This was a year of severe work and anxiety, for he could not 
 afford a curate. Diphtheria, then a new disease in England, ap- 
 peared in the neighborhood, and was very fatal. It created a 
 panic, and to him it was a new enemy to be hated, and fought 
 against, as it was his wont to hate and fight against every form of 
 disease, and especially those which he suspected to come from 
 malaria, and other preventable causes. Its prevalence among 
 children, and cases in his own parish, affected and excited him, 
 and he took counsel with medical men, as to how to meet the 
 earliest symptoms of the new foe. When it reached Eversley, 
 some might have smiled at seeing him, going in and out of the cot- 
 tages with great bottles of gargle under his arm, and teaching the 
 people — men, women, and children, to gargle their throats, as a 
 preventive ; but to him it was terrible grim earnest, acting as he 
 did on Thomas- Carlyle's principle, "Wheresoever thou findest 
 disorder, there is thy eternal enemy ; attack him swiftly, subdue 
 him, make order of him." 
 
 His work for the Hants and Wilts Education Society, to which 
 he had bound himself to give so many lectures annually, in lieu of 
 subscription, was heavy : he lectured on local geology, on Chau- 
 cer, on Jack of Newbury, and Flodden Field, and on the Days of 
 the Week ; in those days seldom repeating the same lecture. The 
 position of Eversley with rtigard to Chobham, Aldershot, and 
 Sandhurst, brought him more and more in contact with military 
 men, and widened his sphere of influence. The society of soldiers 
 
The Soldier Spirit. 279 
 
 as a class was congenial to him. He inherited much of the soldier 
 spirit, as he inherited soldier blood ; and the few of-his direct an- 
 cestors' portraits that have survived the wreck of his family, are all 
 of men .in uniform, including, with others of earlier date, General 
 Kingsley, Governor of Fort William, colonel of the 20th Regiment, 
 who fought at the battle of Minden ; and among the family papers 
 there are commissions with the signature of the reigning authori- 
 ties. He had himself, at one time, thought of the army as a pro- 
 fession, and had spent much time as a boy in drawing plans of 
 fortifications ; and after he took holy orders it was a constant occu- 
 pation to him, in all his walks and rides, to be planning fortifications. 
 There is scarcely a hill-side within twenty miles of Eversley, the 
 strong and weak points of which in attack and defence during 
 a possible invasion, he has not gone over with as great an intensity 
 of thought and interest as if the enemy were really at hand ; and 
 no soldier could have read and re-read Hannibal's campaigns. 
 Creasy' s Sixteen decisive battles, the records of Sir Charles Na- 
 pier's Indian warfare, or Sir William's magnificent history of the 
 Peninsular War, with keener appreciation, his poet's imagination 
 enabling him to fill up the picture and realize the scene, where his 
 knowledge of mere mihtary detail failed. Hence the honor he 
 esteemed it to be allowed to preach to the troops at Aldershot, 
 and to lecture to military men there and at Woolwich. His eyes 
 would kindle and fill with tears as he recalled the impression made 
 on him on Whit Sunday, 1858, by the sound heard for the first 
 time, and never to be forgotten, of the clank of the officers' swords 
 and spurs, and the regular tramp of the men as they marched into 
 church, stirring him like the sound of a trumpet. He lectured this 
 year, too, to the troops in the camp on Cortez, He was also 
 asked by Mrs. William Napier to bless the new colors which she 
 l^resented to her father's old regiment, the 22nd, of which Sir 
 Charles Napier himself had spoken when he, as its distinguished 
 colonel, presented colors to the ist battalion some years 
 before : 
 
 " That brave regiment which won the battle of Meanee — won 
 the battle of Hydrabad — won Scinde for England ; . . . . 
 the regiment which stood by the King of England at Dettingen, 
 stood by the celebrated Lord Peterborough at Barcelona; and 
 into the arms of whose grenadiers the immortal Wolfe fell on the 
 
28o Charles Kings ley. 
 
 heights of Abraham. Well may I exult in the command of such a 
 regiment," (Life of Sir Charles Napier.) 
 
 After the ceremony, Mrs. Napier went round the ranks, among 
 which were many old veterans who had survived from the great 
 Indian ba,ttles, in which her father commanded them in the field, 
 and introduced Mr. Kingsley to them. That too was a red letter 
 in his calendar, as he called it. He camped out a night this sum- 
 mer with the Guards on Cove Common. His sermons in camp 
 brought many officers over to Eversley Church, and led to the 
 formation of friendships which were very dear to him. During the 
 earlier years of the Staff College, Sandhurst, of which his valued 
 friend General William Napier was commandant, he was often 
 invited to mess, and was received with a marked respect, which did 
 as much honor to his hosts as to their guest. That he never 
 shrunk from showing his colors, the following reminiscence from 
 one who was present will testify : — 
 
 " We had among us one or two so-called ' advanced thinkers,' 
 men who were inclined to ridicule religion somewhat. I remem- 
 ber once the conversation at mess took that direction, and Mr. 
 Kingsley stopped it at once and forever in the pleasantest, and at 
 the same time most effectual manner, by pointing out how unmanly 
 and ungenerous it was to endeavor to weaken a faith which was a 
 trusted support to one's friends. He said it was impossible to use 
 arguments of this kind without causing pain to some, and even if a 
 jnan could hope to produce conviction, it could only be by taking 
 from his convert much of the present joy of his life. Would any brave 
 man desire to do that for the mere sake of a rhetorical triumph ? 
 There was the regular little apology, ' Forgot for a moment that 
 there was a clergyman at the table,' &c. 
 
 " ' All right, never mind, but you must not apologize on that 
 ground. We are paid to fight those arguments as you soldiers are 
 to do another sort of fighting, and if a clergyman is worth his salt, 
 you will always find him ready to try a fall with you. Besides, it is 
 better for your friends, if they are to have the poison, to have the 
 antidote in the same spoon.' " 
 
 Early this year his poems were published, and among them 
 "Santa Maura," which had a powerful effect on thoughtful people ; 
 the story being so little known. 
 
 " I am delighted," he says to Mr. Maurice, "that you are satis- 
 fied with ' St, Maura.' Nothing: which 1 ever wrote came so out 
 
St Mattra. 281 
 
 of the depths of my soul as that, or caused me during writing (it 
 was all done in a day and a night) a poetic fervor such as I never 
 felt before or since. It seemed to me a sort of inspiration which I 
 could not resist ; and the way to do it came before me clearly and 
 instantly, as nothing else ever has done. To embody the highest 
 spiritual nobleness in the greatest possible simplicity of a young 
 village girl, and exhibit the martyr element, not only free from 
 that celibate element which is so jumbled up with it in the old 
 myths ; but brought out and brightened by marriage love. That 
 story, as it stands in the Acta SS., has always been my experimen- 
 tiiin criicis of the false connection between martyrdom and celibacy. 
 
 But enough of this selfish prosing I have no novel 
 
 in my head just now. I have said my say for the time, and I want 
 to sit down and become a learner, not a teacher, for I am chiefly 
 impressed with my own i)rofound ignorance and hasty assumption 
 on every possible subject." 
 
 The volume of poems led to his first communication with Dr. 
 Monsell, who writes : — 
 
 GuLVAL Vicarage, Penzance, April 14, 1858. 
 " Rev. and dear Sir, 
 
 " I have read with wondrous delight your beautiful book of 
 poetry just come out, and thank you most sincerely for a great 
 deal of it as a source of very pure pleasure, and a great deal of it 
 as very deep and earnest teaching in holy things. One poem 
 especially I thank God for, that entitled ' St. Maura.' I could 
 wish that sent out into the world by itself, as a little tract, to be 
 slipt into the hands of the suffering, or of those who are sometimes 
 in the midst of great blessings disposed to make too much of the 
 little trials they are called on to endure. It would strengthen and 
 brace up to high endeavors and endurings many who now little 
 dream of what real endurance for the love of Christ means. I 
 know it was so with me the other day. I had heard from home of 
 some parish vexations, which pained me far more than any earthly 
 ill should do. I took uj) that dear book, read that one poem for 
 the first time aloud to my wife and children, and as I laid it down 
 with tears in my eyes, could smile through those tears at any little 
 cross I had to bear for my dear Master's sake. What it has done 
 for me 1 am sure it will do for thousands, and therefore I have 
 ventured to tell you how God has blessed it to me. 
 
 " May He strengthen and bless you in your noble endeavors to 
 glorify Him and benefit your race is the sincere prayer of one who 
 has been much benefited by your writings. 
 
 "Yours most faithfully, 
 
 "John S. B. Monsell. 
 
 " (Vicar of Egham.)" 
 
282 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 The answer is characteristic : — 
 
 EvERSLEY, April 2, 1858. 
 <' My Dear Sir, 
 
 " Your letter gave me the most lively pleasure, and all the 
 more lively, because it came from you, whose spiritual poems have 
 been a delight and comfort in a time of anxiety to my dear wife. 
 
 " Would to God that I could be the persons that 1 can conceive. 
 If you wish to pray against a burden and temptation, pray against 
 that awful gift (for it is a purely involuntary gift) of imagination, 
 which alternately flatters and torments its possessor, — flatters him 
 by making him fancy that he possesses the virtues which he can 
 imagine in others ; torments him, because it makes him feel in him- 
 self a capacity for every imaginable form of vice. Yet if it be a 
 gift of God's (and it cannot be a gift of the devil's) it must bring 
 some good, and perhaps the good is the capacity for sympathy 
 Avith blackguards, ' publicans and sinners,' as we now euphemize 
 them in sermons, trying, as usual, to avoid the tremendous mean- 
 ing of the words by borrowing from an old English translation. 
 To see into the inner life of these ; to know their disease, not from 
 books, but from inward and scientific anatomy, imagination may 
 help a man. If it does that for me I. shall not regret it ; though it 
 is, selfishly speaking, the most humiliating and tormenting of all 
 talents. 
 
 " God be with you and yours, 
 
 " C. KiNGSLEY." 
 
 TO REV. ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, 
 
 EvERSLEY, April 10, 1858, 
 *' My Dear Stanley, — 
 
 " I must write and tell you the perfect pleasure with which I 
 have read your three lectures on Ecclesiastical History, which that 
 excellent fellow, Edward Egerton, lent me. 
 
 '' It is a comfort in this dreary world to read anything so rational 
 and fair, so genial and human ; and if those Oxford youths are 
 not the better men for such talk, they deserve the pool of Hela. 
 
 " What you say about learning ecclesiastical history by biography 
 is most true. I owe all I really know about the history of Christi- 
 anity (ante Tridentine), to thumbing and re-thumbing a copy of 
 ' Surius' Actse Sanctorum.' In that book I found out for the first 
 time in my life ' what they were all about,' But you have, from 
 your greater knowledge, and wider view, a spirit of hope about it 
 all, which sadly fails me at times ; and therefore your lectures 
 have done me good ; and I thank you for them, as for personal 
 and private consolation which I sorely wanted. God bless you 
 and prosper you and your words," 
 
Sunday Aiimsements. 283 
 
 Among the many pleasant friendships formed at this time, which 
 sprung out of the Eversley Church services, was that of Captain 
 Congreve, who thus recalls those Sundays : — 
 
 " It was in the spring of 1858 that Capt., now Colonel, Jebb, of 
 the 67th, and I first began to go to Eversley Church. We used to 
 walk over on Sunday mornings after breakfast, and then have 
 some bread and cheese at the little public house in the village after 
 church. 
 
 " There we discussed with our host, the parson and the village 
 generally, and I remember his amusing us very much once, when 
 referring to some cricket to be played in the afternoon, by saying, 
 'Eh, Faason, he doan't objec' — not ee — as loik as not 'e'll coom 
 and look on, and ee do tell '-em as its a deal better to 'ave a bit 
 o' elthy play o' a Sunday evenin' than to be a-larkin' 'ere and 
 a-larkin there hall hover the place a-courtin' and a-drinkin' hale.' 
 
 "Mr. Kingsley soon observed the two new faces in his church, 
 and spoke to us one Sunday after service. From that time I think 
 we were pretty constant guests at your Sunday luncheon-table. 1 
 shall never forget the genial, happy, unreserved intercourse of 
 those Sunday afternoons, and I never strolled home to mess with- 
 out feeUng that I had come away wiser and better from the con- 
 tact with that clear and kindly mind. He essentially loved men 
 and manly pursuits, and perhaps liked soldiers, as being a class 
 among whom manly feeling and many virtues were cultivated. 
 
 " The Staff College was then in its infancy, and had perhaps 
 gathered together a few of the best educated, hardest working, and 
 most ambitious young men in the service. 
 
 " Mr. Kingsley was very soon a welcome and an honored guest 
 at our mess. He entered into our studies, popularised our geol- 
 ogy, and was an able critic on questions of military history. Not 
 only that, however, — head work needs physical relaxation. He 
 told us the best meets of the hounds, the nearest cut to the cover, 
 the best trout streams, and the home of the largest pike. Many 
 an hour have I spent pleasantly and profitably on the College 
 lakes with him. Every fly that lit on the boat-side, every bit of 
 weed that we fished up, every note of wood-bird, was suggestive of 
 some pretty bit of information on the habits, and growth, and 
 breeding of the thousand unnoticed forms of hfe around. 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " W. Congreve." 
 
 His youngest son, Grenville Arthur, for whom, in the course of 
 time, "The Waterbabies " and "Madame How" were written, 
 was born this spring, and named after his godfather. Dean Stanley, 
 
284 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 and Sir Richard Grenvil, one of the heroes of "Westward Ho !" 
 from whom Mrs. Kingsley's family claimed descent. 
 
 A new novel was now projected on the subject of the Pilgrimage 
 of Grace, which made it necessary for him to go into Yorkshire for 
 a few days to identify places and names. This was his only holi- 
 day for the year, and thanks to the kindness of his friend, Mr. (now 
 the Rt. Hon.) E. Forster, and Mr. Morrison, of Malham, it was a 
 very charming one, combining antiquities, manufactures, scenery, 
 and fishing, with the facts he had to make out. The novel was 
 partly written, but never finished. 
 
 BuRLEY, Wharfside, July, 1858. 
 
 " At a most delicious place, and enjoying good society and a 
 good library, with some very valuable books. . . . . Tell 
 the children I have just seen — oh ! I don't know what I hav'nt 
 seen — the largest water-wheel in England, making light summer 
 over-coats for the Yankees and Germans. I am in a state of 
 bewilderment — such machinery as no tongue can describe, about 
 three acres of mills and a whole village of people, looking healthy, 
 rosy, and happy ; such a charming half-time school for the children, 
 library for the men, &c. Tell R. I saw the wool as it came off 
 the sheep's back in Leicestershire, followed it till it was turned 
 into an 'alpaca' coat, and I don't care to see conjuring or magic 
 after that. The country is glorious '* 
 
 " We had a delighftul day at Bolton yesterday, and saw the Abbey. 
 Tell R. I jumped over the Strid where young Romilly was drowned. 
 Make her learn Wordsworth's ballad on it, ' What is good for a 
 bootless bene' ? " 
 
 After his return home a lady of an old Roman Catholic family 
 sent him through a mutual friend some curious facts for his book, 
 but expressed her fears that his strong Protestant sympathies would 
 prevent his doing justice to her co-religionists. He thus acknowl- 
 edges her help in a letter to Mr. C. Kegan Paul : — 
 
 . EvERSLEY, October, 1858. 
 
 " Will you thank Mrs. * * * * most heartily from me for all she has 
 found out for me. The Merlin's prophecy about Aske is invaluable. 
 The Miltons I don't know of, and would gladly know. The York 
 documents about the Pilgrimage of Grace have got, I hear, to 
 Durham, at least there are none to be found in the Chapter Library 
 at York. 
 
yustice to the Catholics. 285 
 
 " But let her understand — if it be any comfort to her — that I shall 
 in this book do the northern Catholics ample justice ; that Robert 
 and Christopher Aske, both good Romanists, are my heroes, and 
 Robert the Rebel my special hero. I can't withdraw what I said 
 in ' Westward Ho,' because it is true. Romanism under the Jesuits 
 became a different thing from what it had been before. Of course 
 Mrs. * * * * does not know that, and why should she ? 
 
 " But I fear she will be as angry as ever, though really she is 
 most merciful and liberal, at my treatment of the monks. I love 
 the old Catholic Laity : I did full justice to their behavior at the 
 Armida juncture; but I know too much of those shavelings, and 
 the worst is, I know, as Wolsey knew, and every one knew, things 
 one dare'nt tell the world, much less a woman. So judgment must 
 go by default, as I cannot plead, for decency's sake. Stilt, tell her 
 that had I been born and bred a Yorkshire Catholic, I should 
 probably — unless I had been a coward — have fought to the last 
 drop at Robert Aske's side. But this philosophy only gives one a 
 habit of feeling for every one, without feeling with them, and I can 
 now love Robert Aske, though I think him as wrong as man can be, 
 who is a good man and true." 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 1859. 
 
 Aged 40. 
 
 Sanitary Work — First Sermon at Buckingham Palace — Queen's Chaplaincy — 
 First Visit to Windsor — Letter to an Atheist — Correspondence with Artists — 
 Charles Bennett — Ladies' Sanitary Association — Letter from John Stuart 
 Mill. 
 
 As years went on he devoted time, thought, and influence more and 
 more to Sanitary science ; the laws of health, and the enfranchise- 
 ment of men's bodies from disease and dirt, and their inevitable 
 consequences of sin, misery, and physical if not spiritual death, 
 became more important in his eyes than any Political reforms. He 
 lectured at the different institutes in the diocese of Winchester on 
 the laws of health, rather than on literary and scientific matters, 
 and attended the first public meeting in Willis's Rooms of the 
 Ladies' National Sanitary Association, where he made a speech 
 that was afterwards published under the title of " The Massacre of 
 the Innocents." 
 
 This year, 1859, '^^^^ ^^"^ altogether important one to him. On 
 Palm Sunday he preaclied for the first time before the Queen and 
 the Prinee Consort at Buckingham Palace, and was shortly after- 
 wards made one of Her Majesty's chaplains in ordinary. He now 
 took his turn as Queen's Chaplain in the services at the Chapel 
 Royal, St. James's, and preached in the autumn before the Court 
 in the private chapel at Windsor Castle. On this occasion he had 
 the honor of being presented to the Queen and the Prince Consort, 
 and to the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, then staying at 
 Windsor, and from that hour to his dying day he received marks of 
 Royal kindness and condescension, the memory of which will be an 
 heirloom to his children. To a man of his fine imagination and 
 deep loyalty, who had sounded the depths of society, and whose 
 increasing popularity as an author, and power as a preacher, had 
 given him a large acquaintance with all ranks, this new phase in 
 
Marriage of Max Muller. 287 
 
 his life seemed to come just to complete the cycle of his experi- 
 ences. Bat while its result was, in a certain sense, to estabUsh his 
 position and enlarge his influence, on his own character it had a 
 humbling rather than exalting effect. From this time there was a 
 marked difference in the tone of the public press, religious and 
 otherwise, towards him : and though he still waged war as hereto- 
 fore against bigotry, ignorance, and intolerance, and was himself 
 unchanged, the attacks on him from outside were less frequent and 
 less bitter. 
 
 The events of this year, uninteresting to the outside world, but 
 each important to himself in giving color to his daily life and leav- 
 ing its own mark on his heart and imagination, are soon told. 
 He sent his eldest son to Wellington College, which had opened in 
 the winter, and where the scheme of education, due much to the 
 wise influence of the Prince Consort, was more consonant to his 
 own views for his son, being of a wider and more modern character 
 than that of the older and more venerable public schools. He was 
 present at the marriage of his friend Max Muller and a beloved 
 niece,* who spent the first week of their married life at P>ersley 
 Rectory; and he preached them their wedding sermon, giving them 
 their first communion in his own church. Dean Stanley (then 
 Canon of Christ Church, Oxford) paid his first visit to Eversley. 
 His acquaintance with Lord Cranworth and with Lord Carnarvon, 
 to whom he became more and more attached as time went on, was 
 made this year. In the autumn, with his wife, he spent a few days 
 with Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson in the Isle of Wight, but having no 
 curate, his holiday was short, and more than once he broke down 
 from overwork ; the excitement too of the Sundays, and his full 
 cliurch, overpowered him. He shrunk from the bustle of London, 
 refused all sermons there, and withdrew from politics. 
 
 " I have not been to town," he said, "for more than two days in 
 the last nine months. I see no chance of preaching there, 1 am 
 liappy to say, for a long time, save next Sunday, when 1 preach to 
 the Queen. As for politics, I heed them not. The only i)olitician 
 now living is the Lord of all ; and He has principle and principles ; 
 
 * The G. to whom the lines were written beginning — 
 " A hasty jest I once let fall, 
 As jests are wont to be, untrue." — To G., "Poems," p. 236. 
 
288 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 whoever has not. It is a fearful lookout when God has to govern 
 a nation because it cannot govern itself. ....", 
 
 Notwithstanding fair prospects and outward distinction, he clung 
 more and more passionately to his country home — the "far off 
 look," and longing for rest and reality, and for the unfolding of 
 the mystery of life grew stronger upon him, and he said more fre- 
 quently to his wife " How blessed it will be when it is all over ! " 
 With his children, however, he was always bright and merry. To 
 his friend, Mr. Tom Hughes, he writes this summer, on the 12th 
 of June : — 
 
 " This is my fortieth birthday. What a long life I have lived ! 
 and silly fellows that review me say that I can never have known 
 ill-health or sorrow. I have known enough to make me feel very 
 old — happy as I am now ; and I am very happy " 
 
 A correspondence with an intelligent artizan, an avowed atheist, 
 and editor of an atheist newspaper in one of the manufacturing 
 towns in the north, is unfortunately lost, with the exception of Mr. 
 Kingsley's last letter, in answer to one telling him that his corre- 
 spondent had in common with his class read " Alton Locke," 
 " Yeast," and " Hypatia," with interest, from " their freshness of 
 thought and honesty, which seemed to place them above the fac- 
 tions of creed, while breathing the same spirit of Christian kind- 
 ness which Fenelon and Dr. Arnold practised." " Such perusal," 
 he added, " makes us better men." 
 
 EvERSLEY, January 15, 1859. 
 " My Dear Sir, 
 
 " I should have answered so frank and manly a letter before, 
 but my father's sudden and severe illness called me away from 
 home. I hope that you and your friends will not always remain 
 Atheists. . . . It is a barren, heartless, hopeless creed, as a 
 creed — though a man may live long in it without being heartless 
 or hopeless himself. Still, he will never be the man he ought to 
 have been ; and therefore it is bad for him and not good. But 
 what I want to say to you is this, and I do want to say it. What- 
 ever doubt or doctrinal Atheism you and your friends may have, 
 don't fall into moral Atheism. Don't forget the Eternal Goodness, 
 whatever name you may call it. I call it God. Or if you even 
 deny an Eternal Goodness, don't forget or neglect such goodness 
 as you find in yourselves— not an honest, a manly, a loving, a 
 
An Illustrated Pilgrini s Progress. 289 
 
 generous, a patient feeling. For your own sakes, if not for God's 
 sake, keep alive in you the sense of what is, and you know to be, 
 good, noble, and beautiful. I don't mean beautiful in 'art,' but 
 beautiful in morals. If you will keep that moral sense — that sense 
 of the beauty of goodness, and of man's absolute duty to be good, 
 then all will be as God wills, and all will come right at last. But 
 if you lose that — if you begin to say, ' Why should not I be quar- 
 relsome and revengeful ? why should I not be conceited and inso- 
 lent ? why should 1 not be selfish and grasping ? then you will be 
 Atheists indeed, and what to say to you 1 shall not know. But 
 from your letter, and from the very look of your handwriting, I 
 augur better things ; and even hope that you will not think me im- 
 pertinent if I send you a volume of my own Sermons to think over 
 manfully and fairly. It seems to me (but I may flatter myself) 
 that you cannot like, as you say you do, my books, and yet be 
 what I call moral Atheists. 
 
 " Mind, if there is anything in this letter which offends you, don't 
 take fire, but write and ask me (if you think it worth while) what I 
 mean. In looking it through I see several things which (owing to 
 the perversion of religious phrases in these days) you may mis- 
 understand, and take your friend for your foe. 
 
 " At all events, I am, yours faithfully, 
 
 "Charles Kingsley." 
 
 Artists now often consulted him, and among them Charles Henry 
 Bennett, a man full of genius, then struggling with poverty and the 
 needs of a large young family, who began by illustrating children's 
 books, then went on the staff of " Punch," and died a few years 
 since, greatly regretted. His letters, followed by a visit to Evers- 
 ley, led to Mr, Kingsley's offering to write him a preface to an 
 Illustrated Pilgrim's Progress, for which he had some difficulty in 
 getting a publisher, but on this offer Messrs. Longman undertook 
 to bring out the work at once. 
 
 TO CHARLES H. BENNETT, ESQ. 
 
 EVERSLEY, January 23, 1859. 
 _ " . . . I feel as deeply as you our want of a fitting illustra- 
 tion of the great Puritan Epic, and agree in every word which you 
 say about past attempts. Your own plan is certainly the right one, 
 only in trying for imaginative freedom, do not lose sight of beauty 
 of foini. I am, in taste, a strong classicist, contrary to the reign- 
 ing school of Ruskin, Pugin, and the pre-Raphaelites, and wait 
 quietly for the world to come round to me again. But it is per- 
 fectly possible to combine Greek health and accuracy of form, with 
 19 
 
290 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 German freedom of imagination, even with German grotesqueness. 
 I say Greek and German {i.e., fifteenth and sixteenth century 
 German) because those two are the only two root-schools in the 
 world. I know no such combination of both as in Kaulbach. His 
 illustrations of Reinecke Fuchs are in my eyes the finest designs 
 (save those of three or four great Italians of the sixteenth century), 
 which the world has ever seen. Any man desiring to do an endur- 
 ing work, must study, copy, and surpass them. 
 
 " Now in Bunyan there is a strong German (Albert Durer) ele- 
 ment which you must express, viz., ist, a tendency to the gro- 
 tesque in imagination ; 2nd, a tendency to spiritual portraiture of 
 the highest kind, in which an ideal character is brought out, not by 
 abstracting all individual traits (the Academy plan), but by throw- 
 ing in strong individual traits drawn from common life. This, in- 
 deed, has been the manner of the highest masters, both in poetry 
 and painting, e.g., Shakespeare and Dante, and the portraits, and 
 even heroic figures of Leonardo, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Sebas- 
 tian del Piombo, Bronzino, the two latter with Titian, the triumvi- 
 rate of portrait-painting. You find the same in Correggio. He 
 never idealises, i.e., abstracts in a portrait, seldom in any place. 
 You would know the glorious ' Venus ' of the National Gallery if 
 you met her in the street. So this element you have a full right to 
 employ. 
 
 " But there is another, of which Bunyan, as a Puritan tinker, 
 was not conscious, though he had it in his heart, that is, classic 
 grace and purity of form. He had it in his heart, as much as 
 Spenser. His women, his Mr. Greatheart, his Faithful, his shep- 
 herds, can only be truly represented in a lofty and delicate outline, 
 otherwise the ideal beauty which lifts them into a supernatural and 
 eternal world is lost, and they become mere good folks of the seven- 
 teenth century. Some illustrators, feeling this, have tried to me- 
 dievalize them — silly fellows. What has Bunyan to do with the 
 Middle Age ? He writes for all ages, he is full of an eternal 
 humanity, and that eternal humanity can only be represented by 
 something of the eternal form which you find in Greek statues. I 
 don't mean that you are to Grecianize their dress, any more than 
 niedievalize it. No. And here comes an important question. 
 
 " Truly to illustrate a poem, you must put the visions on paper 
 as they appeared to the mind of the seer himself Now we know 
 that Bunyan saw these people in his mind's eye, as dressed in the 
 garb of his own century. It is very graceful, and I should keep to 
 it, not only for historic truth's sake, but because in no other way 
 can you express Bunyan' s leading idea, that the same supernatural 
 world which was close to old prophets and ma.rtyrs, was close to . 
 him ; that the devil who whispered in the ears of Judas, whispered 
 in the ears of a cavalier over his dice, or a Presbyterian minister in 
 his Geneva gown. Take these hints as meant, kindly." 
 
Illustrati?tg Pilgi-ims Progress. 291 
 
 St. Leonard's, April i, 1859. 
 
 " I saw Longman the other day hunting his hounds,- and we had 
 a talk about you and the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' 1 shall be ready for 
 you some time this summer. Do you know the old cuts of the 
 ' Pelerinage de I'homme,' from which Bunyan took his idea ? They 
 have been lately republished. I will show them to you when you 
 come down to me. 
 
 " I like your heads well. I really have had no time to write to 
 you before, having been half insane with parish work and confirma- 
 tion classes. I think Mr. Worldly Wiseman excellent, and ' the 
 Lust of the Eye,' ditto. ' Mr. Grij^eman ' is too handsome. I 
 think you want a more sharp, comprest, and cruel lip. But the 
 general shape of the face is good. It is very like Alva, who was a 
 cruel man, and a rigid pedant. 
 
 '' I think you must have more smirk about Smoothman's face ; 
 and should certainly shave him, all but a very neat little imperial. 
 The ' Lust of the Flesh,' is hardly animal enough. I have gene- 
 rally seen with strong animal passion, a tendency to high cheek- 
 bone ; but only in a dark woman. Yours may stand for a blonde 
 type ; but even then I should prefer a lower forehead. I should 
 take the 'Pride of Life' for an older woman, and a much stouter 
 one. Give her very full features and bust. As it is, your ' Pride 
 of Life ' has more animal passion than the ' Lust of the Flesh ; ' in- 
 deed, beyond that of vacuity, she has not much. She would be 
 gad-about and vain enough, but not pompous and magnificent. 
 Besides, she is a low type, and you should have the highest you 
 can get. You see I criticise freely. I liked your ' Vanity Fair ' 
 sketches (in words) very much. Embody them in lines, and you 
 will indeed do well. Do you know Walker's 'Analysis of Female 
 Beauty?' It is a valuable book, and has much which would help 
 any man." 
 
 In July Mr. Kingsley attended the first meeting of the Ladies' 
 Sanitary Association at Willis's Rooms, and made the following re- 
 markable speech : — 
 
 " Let me say one thing to the ladies who are interested in this 
 matter. Have they really seriously considered what they are 
 about to do in carrying out their own plans ? Are they aware that 
 if their Society really succeeds they will produce a very serious, 
 some would think a very dangerous, change in the state of this 
 nation ? Are they aware that they would probably save the lives 
 of some thirty or forty per cent, of the children who are born in 
 England, and that therefore they would cause the subjects of 
 Queen Victoria to increase at a very far more rapid rate than they 
 do now ? And are they aware that some very wise men inform us 
 
292 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 that England is already over-peopled, and that it is an exceedingly- 
 puzzling question where we shall soon be able to find work or food 
 for our masses, so rapidly do they increase already, in spite of the 
 thirty or forty per cent, kind Nature carries off yearly before they 
 are five years old ? Have they considered what they are to do 
 with all those children whom they are going to save alive ? That 
 has to be thought of; and if they really do believe, with political 
 economists now, that over-population is a possibility to a country 
 which has the greatest colonial empire that the world has ever 
 seen, then I think they had better stop in their course and let the 
 children die, as they have been dying. 
 
 " But if, on the other hand, it seems to them, as I confess it does 
 to me, that the most precious thing in the world is a human being, 
 that the lowest, and poorest, and most degraded of human beings 
 is better than all the dumb animals in the world ; that there is an 
 infinite, priceless capability in that creature, degraded as it may be 
 — a capability of virtue, and of social and industrial use, which, if 
 it is taken in time, may be developed up to a pitch, of which at 
 first sight the child gives no hint whatsoever ; if they believe 
 again, that of all races upon earth now, probably the English race 
 is the finest, and that it gives not the slightest sign whatever 
 of exhaustion ; that it seems to be on the whole a young race, and to 
 have very great capabilities in it which have not yet been developed, 
 and above all, the most marvellous capability of adapting itself to 
 every sort of climate, and every form of life that any nation, except 
 the old Roman, ever had in the world : if they consider with me 
 that it is worth the while of political economists and social philos- 
 ophers to look at the map, and see that about four-fifths of the 
 globe cannot be said as yet to be in anywise inhabitated or culti- 
 vated, or in the state in which men could make it, by any fair sup- 
 ply of pojnilation and industry and human intellect : — then, 
 perhaps, they may think with me that it is a duty, one of the 
 noblest of duties, to help the increase of the English race as much 
 as possible, and to see that every child that is born into this great 
 nation of England be developed to the highest pitch to which we 
 can develop him, in physical strength and in beauty, as Avell as in 
 intellect and in virtue.' And then, in that light, it does seem to 
 me, that this Association — small now, but 1 do hope some day to 
 become great, and to become the mother Association of many and 
 valuable children — is one of the noblest, most right-minded, 
 straight-forward, and p-ractical conceptions that I have come 
 across for some years. 
 
 " We all know the difficulties of Sanitary Legislation. One 
 looks at them at times almost with despair. I have my own rea- 
 sons, with which I will not trouble this meeting, for looking on 
 them with more despair tlian ever ; not on account of the govern- 
 ment of the time, or any possible government that could come to 
 
Women and Sajtitary Reform. 293 
 
 England, but on account of the peculiar class of persons in whom 
 the ownership of the small houses has become more and more 
 vested, and who are becoming more and more, I had almost said, 
 the arbiters of the popular opinion, and of every election of parlia- 
 ment. However, that is no business of mine here ; that must be 
 settled somewhere else : and a fearfully long time, it seems to me, 
 it will be before it is settled. But, in the mean time, what legisla- 
 tion cannot do, I believe private help, and, above all, woman's 
 help, can do even better. It can do this ; it can not only improve 
 the condition of the working-man ; I am not speaking of working- 
 men just at this time, I am speaking of the middle classes, of the 
 man who owns the house in which the working-man lives. I am 
 speaking, too, of the wealthy tradesman ; I am speaking, it is a sad 
 thing to have to say, of our own class as well as of others. Sani- 
 tary Reform, as it is called, or, in plain English, the art of health, 
 is so very recent a discovery, as all true physical science is, that 
 we ourselves and our own class know very little about it, and prac- 
 tice it veiy ill. And this Society, I do hope, will bear in mind 
 that it is not simply to affect the working-man, not only to go into 
 the foul alley ; but it is to go to the door of the farmer, to the door 
 of the shopkeeper, aye, to the door of ladies and gentlemen of the 
 same rank as ourselves. Women can do in that work what men 
 cannot do. Private correspondence, private conversation, private 
 example, may do what no legislation can do. I am struck more 
 and more with the amount of disease and death I see around me 
 in all classes, which no sanitary legislation whatsoever could touch, 
 unless you had a complete house-to-house visitation of a govern- 
 ment officer, with powers to enter every house, to drain and venti- 
 late it, and not only that, but to regulate the clothes and the diet of 
 every inhabitant, and that among all ranks. I can conceive of 
 nothing short of that, which would be absurd and impossible and 
 most harmful, which would stop the present amount of disease and 
 death which I see around me, Avithout some such private exertion 
 on the part of women, above all of mothers, as 1 do hope will 
 spring from this Institution more and more. 
 
 " I see this, that three persons out of four are utterly unaware 
 of the general causes of their own ill health, and of the ill health 
 of their children. They talk of their ' afflictions,' and their ' mis- 
 fortunes ; ' and, if they be pious people, they talk of ' the will of 
 Ood,' and of ' the visitation of God.' I do not like to trench upon 
 those matters, but when I read in my Book and in your Book that 
 ' it is not the will of our Father in heaven that one of these little 
 ones should perish,' it has come to my mind sometimes with very 
 great strength, that that may have a physical appUcation as well as 
 a spiritual one, and that the Father in heaven who does not wish 
 the child's soul to die may possibly have created that child's body 
 for the purpose of its not dying except in a good old age. Not 
 
294 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 only in the lower class, but in the middle class, when one sees an 
 unhealthy family, then in three cases out of four, if one takes time, 
 trouble, and care enough, one can, with the help of the doctor who 
 has been attending them, run the evil home to a very different 
 cause than the will of God ; and that is, to a stupid neglect, a 
 stupid ignorance, or what is just as bad, a stupid indulgence. 
 
 " Now, I do believe that if those tracts which you are publish- 
 ing, which 1 have read, and of which I cannot speak too highly, 
 are spread over the length and breadth of the land, and if women, 
 clergymen's wives, the wives of manufacturers and of great em- 
 ployers, district visitors and school mistresses, have these books 
 put into their hands, and are persuaded to spread them, and to 
 enforce them, by their own example and by their own counsel, 
 then in the course of a few years, this system being thoroughly 
 carried out, you would see a sensible and large increase in the rate 
 of population. 
 
 " VVhen you have saved your children alive, then you must settle 
 what to do with them. But a hving dog is better than a dead 
 lion ; I would rather have the living child, and let it take its 
 chance, than let it return to God — wasted. Oh ! it is a distressing 
 thing to see children die. God gives the most beautiful and 
 precious thing that earth can have, and we just take it and cast it 
 away ; we cast our pearls upon the dunghill, and leave them. A 
 dying child is to me one of the most dreadful sights in the world. 
 A dying man, a man dying on the field of battle, that is a small 
 sight ; he has taken his chance ; he has had his excitement, he 
 has had his glory, if that will be any consolation to him ; if he is a 
 wise man, he has the feeling that he is doing his duty by his coun- 
 try, or by his King, or by his Queen. It does not horrify or shock 
 me to see a man dying in a good old age, even though it be pain- 
 ful at the last, as it too often is. But it does shock me, it does 
 make me feel that the world is indeed out of joint, to see a child 
 die. I believe it to be a priceless boon to the child to have lived 
 for a week, or a. day ; but oh, what has God given to this thank- 
 less earth, and what has the earth thrown away, in nine cases out 
 of ten, from its own neglect and carelessness ? What that boy 
 might have been, what he might have done as an Englishman, if 
 he could have lived and grown up healthy and strong ! I entreat 
 you to bear this in mind, that it is not as if our lower classes or our 
 micidle classes were not worth saving ; bear in mind that the physi- 
 cal beauty and strength and intellectual power of the middle 
 classes, — the shopkeeping class, the farming class, the working 
 class — whenever you give them a fair chance, whenever you give 
 them fair food and air, and physical education of any kind, prove 
 them to be the finest race in Europe. Not merely the aristocracy, 
 splendid race as they are : but down and down and down to the 
 lowest laboring man, to the navigator ; — why there is not such a 
 
Wasted Lives. 295 
 
 body of men in Europe as our navigators, and no body of men 
 perhaps have had a worse chance of growing to be what they are ; 
 and yet see what they have done. See the magnificent men they 
 become in spite of all that is against them, all that is drawing them 
 back, all that is tending to give them rickets and consumption, and 
 all the miserable diseases which children contract ; see what men 
 they are, and then conceive what they might be. 
 
 " It has been said, again, that there are no more beautiful races 
 of women in Europe than the wives and daughters of our London 
 shopkeepers, and yet there are few races of people who lead a life 
 more in opposition to all rules of hygiene. But in spite of all that, 
 so wonderful is the vitality of the English race, that they are what 
 they are ; and therefore we have the finest material to work upon 
 that people evef had. And therefore, again, we have the less 
 excuse if we do allow Enghsh people to grow up puny, stunted, 
 and diseased. 
 
 " Let me refer again to that word that I used : death — the 
 amount of death. I really believe there are hundreds of good and 
 kind people who would take up this subject with their whole heart 
 and soul if they were aware of the magnitude of the evil. Lord 
 Shaftesbury told you just now that there were one hundred thou- 
 sand preventable deaths in England every )'^ear. So it is. We 
 talk of the loss of human life in war. We are the fools of smoke 
 and noise ; because there are cannon-balls and gunpowder, and 
 red coats, and because it costs a great deal of money, and makes a 
 great deal of noise in the papers, we think, What so terrible as 
 war ? I will tell you what is ten times, and ten thousand times, 
 more terrible than war, and that is — outraged nature. War, we 
 are discovering now, is the clumsiest and most expensive of all 
 games ; we are finding that if you wish to commit an act of 
 cruelty or folly, the most expensive act that you can commit is to 
 contrive to shoot your fellow-men in war. So it seems ; but Na- 
 ture, insidious, inexpensive, silent, sends no roar of cannon, no 
 glitter of arms to do her work ; she gives no warning note of 
 preparation ; she has no protocol, nor any diplomatic advances, 
 whereby she warns her enemy that war is coming. Silently, I say, 
 and insidiously she goes forth ; no — she does not even go forth, 
 she does not step out of her path, but quietly, by the very same 
 laws by which she makes alive, she puts to death. By the very 
 same laws by which every blade of grass grows, and every insect 
 springs to life in the sunbeam, she kills, and kills, and kills, and is 
 never tired of killing, till she has taught man the terrible lesson he 
 is so slow to learn, that nature is only conquered by obeying her. 
 
 "And bear in mind one thing more. Man has his courtesies of 
 war, and his chivalries of war : he does not strike the unarmed 
 inan ; he spares the woman and the child. But Nature is fierce 
 when she is offended, as she is bounteous and kind when she is 
 
296 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 obeyed. She spares neither woman nor child. She has no pity : 
 for some awful, but most good reason, she is not allowed to have 
 any pity. Silently she strikes the slee|)ing child, with as little 
 remorse as she would strike the strong man, with the musket or 
 the pickaxe in his hand. Ah, would to God that some man had 
 the pictorial eloquence to put before the mothers of England the 
 mass of preventable suffering, the mass of preventable agony of 
 mind and body, which exists in England year after year ! And 
 would that some man had the logical eloquence to make 
 them understand that it is in their power, in the power of the 
 mothers and wives of the higher class, I will not say to stop it 
 all, — God only knows that, — but to stop, as I believe, three- 
 fourths of it. 
 
 " It is in the power, I believe, of an)^ woman«in this room to 
 save three or four lives, human lives, during the next six months. 
 It is in your power, ladies, and it is so easy. You might save 
 several lives apiece, if you choose, without, I believe, interfering 
 with your daily business, or with your daily pleasure, or, if you 
 choose, with your daily frivolities, in any way whatsoever. Let me 
 ask, then, those who are here, and who have not yet laid these 
 things to heart : Will you let this meeting to-day be a mere pass- 
 ing matter of two or three hours' interest, which you shall go away 
 and forget for the next book or the next amusement ? Or will 
 you be in earnest ? Will you learn — I say it openly — from the 
 noble chairman*, how easy it is to be earnest in life ; how every 
 one of you, amid all the artificial complications of English society 
 in the nineteenth century, can find a work to do, and a noble 
 work to do, chivalrous work to do, — just as chivalrous as if you 
 lived in any old fairy land, such as Spenser talked of in his ' Faery 
 Queen ; ' how you can be as true a knight-errant, or lady-errant in 
 the present century, as if you had lived far away in the dark ages 
 of violence and rapine ? Will you, I ask, learn this ? Will you 
 learn to be in earnest, and use the position, and the station, and 
 the talent that God has given you, to save alive those who should 
 live ? And will you remember that it is not the will of your 
 Father that is in heaven that one little one that plays in the kennel 
 outside should perish, either in body or in soul ? " 
 
 Mr. Kingsley's work was incessant, and the letters now printed 
 give a most inadequate idea of the labor of his life, of the calls on his 
 sympathy, and of the different attitudes in v/hich he had to put his 
 mind according to the variety of subjects on which he was asked 
 for counsel, or called upon to do battle ; but as Bishop Forbes 
 
 * The Eaii of Shaftesbury. 
 
Letter from John Stuart Mill. 297 
 
 beautifully says of Professor James D. Forbes in words which truly 
 picture Mr. Kingsley, especially in the concluding sentence, 
 
 " I never saw in any man such fearlessness in the path of duty. 
 The one question with him was ' Is it right ? ' No dread of con- 
 sequences, and consequences often bitterly felt by him, and wound- 
 ing his sensitive nature, ever prevented him from doing that to 
 which conscience prompted. His sense of right amounted to 
 chivalry." 
 
 But he seldom returned from speech or lecture without showing 
 that so much life had actually gone out of him — not only from the 
 strain of brain and heart, but from the painful sense of antagonism 
 which his startling mode of stating things called out in his hearers, 
 and of which he was keenly conscious at the time. 
 
 The following letter from Mr. Mill was in answer to one from 
 Mr. Kingsley thanking him for the gift of his " Dissertations and 
 Discussions," and also for the work on " Liberty," which he says, 
 " affected me in making me a clearer-headed, braver-minded man 
 on the spot." 
 
 MR. JOHN STUART MILL TO REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY, 
 
 Saint Veren, near Avignon, Atig. 6, 1859. 
 
 " Your letter of July 5 reached me long after its date, while 
 wandering in search of health in the Pyrenees. Allow me, while 
 expressing the great pleasure it gave me, to say that its humility, as 
 it respects yourself, seems to me as much beyond the mark as tlie 
 deference expressed towards me exceeds anything I have the 
 smallest title to. 
 
 '■'■ Laudari a laudato^ or by any other viro^ has never been very 
 much of an object with me. But to be told by a man who is him- 
 self one of the good influences of the age, and whose sincerity I 
 cannot doubt, that anything 1 have written makes him feel able to 
 be a still better influence, is both an encouragement and a reward 
 — the greatest 1 can look for, now that a still greater has been 
 taken from me by death. 
 
 " Far from having read none of your books, I have read them 
 nearly all, and hope to read all of them. I have found in them an 
 earnest endeavor towards many of the objects I myself have at 
 heart ; and even when I differed from you it has never been with- 
 out great interest and sympathy. There are few men between 
 whom and myself any nearer approximation in opinion could be 
 more agreeable to me, and that you should look forward to it gives 
 me a pleasure I could not forbear to express." 
 
298 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 TO FREDERIC SHIELDS, ESQ. 
 
 EVERSLEY, Nov. 29, 1859. 
 
 ''Your letter is sensible and pertinent to the matter in hand, 
 and I tell you at once what I can. I think that you much over- 
 rate the disuse of armor in Bunyan's day. When the 'Pilgrim's 
 Progress' was written it was much gone out, but in Bunyan's 
 boyhood he must have seen everywhere old armor hanging up in 
 every gentleman or burgher's house (he would to his dying day), 
 which had been worn and used by the generation before him. Al- 
 lowing, as we must, in every human being for the reverence for 
 early impressions, I think his mind would have pictured to him 
 simply the Elizabethan and James I.'s armor, which he saw hang- 
 ing in all noble houses, and in which he may have, as a boy, seen 
 gentlemen joust, for tilting was not extinct in his boyhood. As 
 for this co-existing with slop breeches (what we now call knicker- 
 bockers are nothing else), I think you will find, as now, that 
 country fashions changed slowlier than town. The puffed trunk- 
 hose of 1 5 80- 1 600 co-existed with the finest cap-a-pied armor of 
 proof. They gradually in the country, where they were ill made, 
 became slops, i. e., knickerbockers. By that time almost loose and 
 short cavalier breeks had superseded them in the court — but what 
 matter? The change is far less than that during 1815-1855. The 
 anachronism of putting complete armor by the side of one drest 
 as Christian is in the frontispiece of the original edition of the 
 ' Pilgrim's Progress' is far less than putting you by the side of a 
 Life-Guard's officer in 1855 ; far less, again, than putting a clod 
 of my parish, drest as he would have been in A. D, iioo, in smock 
 frock and leather gaiters, by the side of you or me. Therefore 
 use without fear the beautiful armor of the later years of Elizabeth 
 and the beginning of James I., and all will be right, and shock 
 nobody. As for shields, I should use the same tune. Shields 
 were common among serving men in James I. There are several 
 in the Tower, fitted with a pistol to be fired from the inside, and a 
 long spike. All are round. I believe that ' sword and buckler 
 play' was a common thing among the country folk in Bunyan's 
 time. Give your man, therefore, a ciicular shield, such as he 
 would have seen in his boyhood, or even later, among the retainers 
 of noble houses. As for the cruelties practised on Faithful, — for 
 the sake of humanity don't talk of that. The Puritans were very 
 cruel in the North American colonies ; horribly cruel, though no- 
 where else. But in Bunyan's time the pages of Morland, and 
 others, show us that in Piedmont, not to mention the Thirty 
 Years' War in Germany, horrors were being transacted which no 
 pen can describe nor pencil draw. Dear old Oliver Cromwell 
 stopped them in Piedmont, when he told the Pope that unless they 
 were stopped English cannon should be heard at the gates of the 
 
Revivals and Revivalists. 299 
 
 Vatican. But no cruelty to man or woman that you dare draw 
 can equal what was going on on the Continent from Papist to 
 Protestant during Runyan's lifetime. 
 
 '' I have now told you all I can. I am very unwell, and forbid 
 to work. Therefore I cannot tell you more, but what I send I 
 send with all good wishes to any man who will be true to art and 
 to his author." 
 
 TO LORD ROBERT MONTAGU. 
 
 EVERSLEY, July 7, 1859. 
 
 " As to revivals I don't wonder at revivahsts taking to drink. 
 Calvinism has become so unreal — so afraid of itself — so apolo- 
 getic about its own peculiar doctrines, on which alone it stands, 
 that revivals now must be windy flarings up in the socket of the 
 dying candle. All revivals of religion which I ever read of, which 
 produced a permanent effect, owed their strength to the introduc- 
 tion of some new element, derived from the actual modern con- 
 sciousness, and explaining some fresh facts in or round man ; e.g., 
 the revivals of the Franciscans and Dominicans — those of the 
 Reformation and of Wesley. 
 
 " We may see such things ere we die. At present revivals are 
 mere threshings of the old chaff, to see if a grain of corn be still 
 there." 
 
 TO , ESQ. 
 
 EvERSLEY, March i6, 1859. 
 
 " I wish you would give me the chapter and page in which Swe- 
 denborg handles your text (Matt. xxii. 24-28). There are many 
 noble and beautiful things in that text-book of his, and I should 
 like to see what he makes of so puzzling a passage. It seems to 
 me that we must look at it from the stand-point of the Sadducees, 
 and therefore of our Lord as condescending to them. It is a 
 hideous case in itself. .... I conceive the Jews had no 
 higher notion than this of the relation of the sexes. Perhaps no 
 eastern people ever had. The conception of a love-match belongs 
 to our Teutonic race, and was our heritage (so Tacitus says with 
 awe and astonishment) when we were heathens in the German 
 forests. You will find nothing of it in Scripture, after the first 
 chapter of Genesis, save a glimpse thereof (but only a glimpse) in 
 St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. To me, who believe the 
 Gospel of St. John, and believe therefore that Jesus Christ, the 
 Word of God, was the light and life of my German forefathers, 
 as well as of the Jews, there is nothing strange in this. I only 
 say, Christ has taught us something about wedlock, which He did 
 not teach the Jews ; that He taught it is proved by its fruits, for 
 
300 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 what has produced more of nobleness, more of practical good, in 
 the human race, than the chivalrous idea of wedlock, which our 
 Teutonic race holds, and which the Romance or Popish races of 
 Europe have never to this day grasped with any firm hold ? 
 Therefore all I can say about the text is . . . (about mar- 
 riage in the world to come) that it has nought to do with me and 
 my wife. I know that if iuimortality is to include in my case 
 identity of person, I shall feel to her for ever what I feel now. 
 That feeling may be developed in ways which I do not expect ; it 
 may have provided for it forms of expression very different from 
 any which are among the holiest sacraments of life ; of that I take 
 no care. The union I believe to be as eternal as my own soul. 
 I have no rule to say in what other pairs of lovers it may or may 
 not be eternal. I leave all in the hands of a good God ; and can 
 so far trust His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, as to be sure that 
 He knew the best method of ])rotesting against the old Jewish 
 error (which Popish casuists still formally assert) that the first end 
 of marriage is the procreation of children, and thereby laid the 
 true foundation for the emancipation of woman. 
 
 " Let neither Swedenborg, nor any other man, argue you out of 
 the scientific canon, that to understand the spirit of Scripture, or 
 any other words, you must first understand the letter. If the spirit 
 is to be found anywhere, it is to be found by putting yourself in the 
 place of the fisteners, and seeing what the words would have meant 
 to them. Then take that meaning as an instance (possibly a lower 
 one) of an universal spiritual law, true for all men, and may God 
 give you wisdom for the process of induction by which that law is 
 to be discovered." 
 
 The next letter, on the Eternity of Marriage, written some years 
 before, may fitly come in here with scattered extracts on the same 
 subject. 
 
 " . . . In heaven they neither marry nor are given in mar- 
 riage, but are as the angels of God ! — And how are the angels of 
 God in heaven ? Is there no love among them ? If the law which 
 makes two beings unite themselves, and crave to unite themselves, 
 in body, soul, and spirit, be the law of earth — of pure humanity^ 
 if, so far from being established by the Fall, this law has been the 
 one from which the Fall has made mankind deflect most in every 
 possible way ; if the restoration of purity and the restoration of 
 this law are synonymous ; if love be of the Spirit — the vastest and 
 simplest exercise of will of which we can conceive — then why 
 should not this law hold in the spiritual world as well as in the 
 natural ? In heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage ; 
 but is not marriage the mere approximation to a unity which shall 
 
Eternity of Marriage. 301 
 
 be perfect in heaven ? Read what Milton says of angels' love in 
 Books VI. and VII. and take comfort. What if many have been 
 alone on earth ? may they not find their kindred spirit in heaven, 
 and be united to it by a tie still deeper than marriage ? And shall 
 we not be re-united in heaven by that still deeper tie ? Surely on 
 earth God has loved, Christ the Lord has loved — some more than 
 others — why should we not do the same in heaven, and yet love 
 all? Here the natural body can but strive to express its love — 
 its desire of union. Will not one of the properties of the spiritual 
 body be, that it will be able to express that which the natural body 
 only tries to express ? Is this a sensual view of heaven ? then are 
 the two last chapters of the Revelation most sensual. They tell, 
 not onl)^ of the perfection of humanity, with all its joys and wishes 
 and properties, but of matter ! They tell of trees, and fruit, and 
 rivers — of gold and gems, and all beautiful and glorious material 
 things. Isaiah tells of beasts and birds and little children in that 
 new earth. Who shall say that the number of living beings is filled 
 up? Why is heaven to be one vast lazy retrospect ? Why is not 
 eternity to have action and change, yet both, like God's, compati- 
 ble with rest and immutabihty ? This earth is but one minor planet 
 of a minor system : are there no more worlds ? Will there not be 
 incident and action springing from these when the fate of this world 
 is decided? Has the Evil Spirit touched this alone? Is it not 
 self-conceit which makes us think the redemption of this earth the 
 one event of eternity? The same feeling (sensuality, which is self- 
 love) prompted men of old to fancy that this globe was the centre 
 of the universe. 
 
 "These are matters too high for us, therefore we will leave them 
 alone ; but is flatly denying their existence and possibility leaving 
 them alone ? No ! it is intruding into them more conceitedly, 
 insolently, and sensually than speculating on them by the carnal 
 understanding — like the Mystics, Platonists, and Gnostics. Calvin 
 was a more conceited mystic than Henry More. It is more humble, 
 more rational, to believe the possibility of all things than to doubt 
 the possibility of one thing. Reason is the deadly fire, not only of 
 mysticism and creduhty, but of unbelief and bigotry ! . . . . 
 
 " And what if earthly love seems so delicious that all change in 
 it would seem a change for the worse ? Shall we repine ? What 
 does reason (and faith, which is reason exercised on the invisible) 
 require of us, but to conclude that, if there is change, there will be 
 something better there? Here are two truths — 
 
 " ist. Body is that which expresses the spirit to which it is joined ; 
 therefore, the more perfectly spiritual the body, the better it will 
 express the spirit joined to it. 
 
 " 2nd. The expression of love produces happiness ; therefore, 
 the more perfect the expression the greater the happiness ! And, 
 therefore, bliss greater than any we can know here awaits us in 
 
302 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 heaven. And does not the course of nature point to this ? What 
 else is the meaning of the gradual increase of love on earth ? What 
 else is the meaning of old age ? when the bodily powers die, while 
 the love increases. What does that point to, but to a restoration 
 of the body when mortality is swallowed up of life ? Is not that 
 mortality of the body sent us mercifully by God, to teach us that 
 our love is spiritual, and therefore will be able to express itself in any 
 state of existence ? to wean our hearts that we may learn to look 
 for more perfect bliss in the perfect body ? . . . . Do not 
 these thoughts take away from all earthly bliss the poisoning 
 thought, ' all this must end ? ' Ay, end ! but only end so gradually 
 that we shall not miss it, and the less perfect union on earth shall 
 be replaced in heaven by perfect and spiritual bliss and union, in- 
 conceivable because perfect ! 
 
 ' Do I undervalue earthly bliss ? No ! I enhance it when I 
 make it the sacrament of a higher union ! Will not these thoughts 
 give more exquisite delight, will it not tear off the thorn from every 
 rose and sweeten every nectar cup to perfect security of blessed- 
 ness, in this life, to feel that there is more in store for us — that all 
 expressions of love here are but dim shadows of a union which shall 
 be perfect, if we will but work here, so as to work out our salva- 
 tion ! 
 
 " My views of second marriage are peculiar. 1 consider that it 
 is allowed for the hardness of men's hearts, but from the beginning 
 it was not so, and will not be so, some day, when the might of love 
 becomes generally appreciated ! perhaps that will never be, till the 
 earth is renewed." 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 i860. 
 Aged 41. 
 
 Professorship of Modern History— Death of his Father and of Mrs. Anthony 
 Froude— Planting the Churchyard— Visit to Ireland— First Salmon killed— 
 Wet Summer— Sermon on Weather— Letter from Sir Charles Lyell— Corre- 
 spondence— Residence in Cambridge— Inaugural Lecture in the Senate House 
 — Visits to Barton Hall — Letter from Sir Charles Bunbury. 
 
 The Regius professorship of Modern History at Cambridge had 
 not been filled up since the resignation of Sir James Stephen, and 
 some of Mr. Kingsley's friends wished to see him in the vacant 
 chair. It was mentioned to Lord Palmerston, then Prime Minister. 
 On the 9th of May he received a letter from Lord Palmerston ask- 
 ing him if he was willing to undertake the duties of the post ; he 
 accepted with extreme diffidence, and went up to the University in 
 the spring to take his M.A. degree, which he had not been able to 
 afford as yet. Dr. Whewell, who was then Master of Trinity, re- 
 ceived him most kindly. Having been one of those who had dis- 
 approved most emphatically of "Alton Locke" when it was first 
 published, his generosity on this occasion, and his steady friendship 
 from that time up to the date of his own death in 1866, laid the 
 new Professor under a deep debt of gratitude. The feelings with 
 which he re-visited Cambridge are told in a letter to his wife from 
 Trinity Lodge. 
 
 Trinity, Cambridge, May 22, i860. 
 
 " . , . It is like a dream. Most beautiful — and London 
 buildings having been the only ones I have seen for years, I am 
 struck with the sharpness and richness of the stone work, and the 
 exquisite clearness of the atmosj^here. My windows look into 
 Trinity Walks — the finest green walks in England, now full of flags 
 and tents for a tulip show. I had a pleasant party of men to meet 
 me last night. After breakfast I go to Magdalene, then to the 
 Senate House ; after luncheon to this flower show, then to dinner 
 in hall at Magdalene ; and back as early as I can All 
 
304 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 this is so very awful and humbling to me. I cannot bear to think 
 of my own unworthiness " 
 
 His experience of life this year was new, varied, and often very 
 sad. His father, to whom he had ever been the most dutiful and 
 devoted son, died early in the winter, and from that hour till her 
 death in 1873, the care of his widowed mother was one of his first 
 and most nobly fulfilled duties. He writes to his old college friend, 
 the Rev. James Montagu, from Chelsea rectory in February : 
 
 " . . . Forgive me for my silence, for I and my brothers are 
 now wearily watching my father's death-bed — long and lingering. 
 Miserable to see life prolonged when all that makes it worth having 
 (physically) is gone, and never to know from day to day whether 
 the end is to come in six hours or six weeks. But he is all right 
 and safe, and death for him would be a pure and simple blessing. 
 
 " James Montagu, never pray for a long life. Better die in the 
 flower of one's age, than go through what I have seen him go 
 through in the last few days. I shall come to you at Shoeburyness ; 
 but when, God knows." 
 
 The epitaph he wrote over his father's grave in Brompton 
 Cemetery speaks his appreciation of that father. 
 
 " Here lies 
 
 All that was mortal 
 
 of 
 
 Charles Kingsley, 
 
 Formerly of Battramsley House, in the New Forest, Hants, 
 
 And lately of St. Luke's Rectory, Chelsea. 
 
 Endowed by God with many noble gifts of mind and body, 
 
 He preserved through all vicissitudes of fortune 
 
 A loving heart and stainless honour ; 
 
 And having won in all his various Cures 
 
 The respect and affection of his people, 
 
 And ruled the Parish of Chelsea well and wisely 
 
 For more than twenty years, 
 
 He died peacefully in the fear of God and in the faith of Christ 
 
 On the 29th of February, i860, 
 
 Aged 78 years, 
 
 With many friends, and not an enemy on earth ; 
 
 Leaving to his children as a precious heritage 
 
 The example of a Gentleman and a Christian," 
 
 To Mr. Maurice he writes — 
 
The Eversley Churchyard. 305 
 
 Chelsea, March, i860. 
 
 " I have been so hunted backwards and forwards to Eversley 
 and hither, upon trying business at both places, that I have not had 
 time to thank you for your kind and comforting letter. My poor 
 dear mother broke down frightfully for a day or two after the fune- 
 ral ; but the necessity of exertion is keeping her up now. is 
 
 here, as a ministering angel, doing everything for her, and we hope 
 in a week or two to get her down to her quiet little cottage at 
 Eversley, to end her days with us. Ah, Mr. Maurice, such times 
 as these bring conviction of sin with them. How every wrong 
 word and deed toward that good old man, and every sorrow. I 
 caused him, rise up in judgment against one, and how one feels 
 that right doing does not atone for wrong doing. I have this com- 
 fort, that he died loving me, and satisfied with me and my small suc- 
 cess, and happy in his children, as he said again and again. But if 
 death — at least the death of a rational human being — be not an 
 ugly damnable solecism, even in a good old age, then I know not 
 what is. I shall see and hear you, please God, Sunday afternoon. 
 Remember me." 
 
 He was called away from Chelsea to be present at the enlarge- 
 ment and consecration of his churchyard at Eversley, and to meet 
 his bishop (Dr. Sumner), whose coming, as he had never been in 
 Eversley before, was a great event. The new ground gave the 
 Rector the opportunity of planting the whole with evergreens, for 
 it had long been his wish to make his churchyard an arboretum, 
 and gradually to gather together rare shrubs and trees, so that it 
 should be truly a Gottesacker in a double sense. He writes to 
 his wife, then at Chelsea : 
 
 Eversley, March 10. 
 
 " . . .1 can understand your being unhappy leaving us and this 
 delicious place again. It does look too blessed for a man to spend 
 his life in. I have been making it blessed-er in the last thirty hours, 
 with a good will ; for I and B. (his churchwarden) have been work- 
 ing with our own hands, as hard as the four men we have got on. 
 We have planted all the shrubs in the churchyard. We have grav- 
 elled the new path with tine gravel, and edged it with turf; we 
 have levelled, delved, planned, and plotted ; and pressed into the 
 
 service that most cockney of good fellows , making him work 
 
 like a horse, in carrying water. M. is trimming up unsightly 
 graves, and we shall be all right and ready for the Bishop by 
 Monday 
 
 " Altogether I am delighted at the result and feel better, thanks 
 to two days' hard work with pick and spade, than I have done for 
 20 
 
3o6 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 a fortnight. So never mind about me. . . . But I cannot bear 
 working and planning at improvements without you ; it seems but 
 half a life ; and I am leaving everything I can (considering the 
 bishop on Monday) to be done after you come back. Oh ! when 
 shall we settle down here in peace and see the spring come on ? 
 Patience, though. — It wants three weeks to spring, and we may, by 
 God's blessing, get back here in time to see the spring unfold 
 around us, and all mend and thrive. After all, how few troubles 
 we have ! for God gives with one hand, if He takes away with the 
 
 other I found a new competitor for the corner of the 
 
 new ground, just under our great fir tree, which I had always 
 marked out for you and ine, in dear old Bannister (his churchwar- 
 den, a farmer), who had been telling M. that he wanted to be 
 buried close to me. So I have kept a corner for ourselves ; and 
 
 then he comes at our feet, and by our side insists on lying. 
 
 Be it so. If we could see the children grown up, and the History * 
 written, what do I need, or you either below?" 
 
 The vacant space by the side of his own proposed grave was 
 soon to have a tenant he little dreamt of, for in the spring an- 
 other heavy sorrow came — and one to whom he had been more 
 than a brother in some of the most important circumstances of her 
 life for the last sixteen years, his wife's sister, Charlotte, wife of 
 Anthony Froude, was laid there under the shade of the fir trees 
 she loved so well. Her grave was to him during the remainder of 
 his own life a sacred spot, where he would go almost daily to 
 commune in spirit with the dead, where flowers were always kept 
 blooming, and where on the Sunday morning he would himself su- 
 perintend the decorations — the cross and wreaths of choice flowers 
 placed by loving hands upon it. 
 
 Death was very busy that year among those he loved, and before 
 twelve months were over three of those who stood around that grave, 
 a brother, a nephew, and a friend, John Ashley Warre, Charles 
 Grenfell, and Mr. John Parker, were all called away into the un- 
 seen world. 
 
 The latter, publisher, of West Strand, London, who had been 
 ■fellow student with Charles Kingsley, at King's College, London, 
 and with whom he had renewed his old intimacy at the publication 
 of the '■ Saint's Tragedy," was a constant visitor at the Rectory, 
 
 * Before his appointment at Cambridge he had begun a " School History of 
 England," of which only the three first chapters were written. 
 
The Fuhcre. 307 
 
 At Mr. Parker's house in London he had met the very best liter- 
 ary society whenever he had an evening to spare away from home, 
 and his death made a great gap in the knot of remarkable men who 
 had gathered round him. In a letter to one of these, Mr. Skel- 
 ton, Mr. Kingsley thus speaks of him : — 
 
 "I trust if you come to London you will take courage to come 
 forty miles further to Eversley. You will meet there, not only for 
 your own sake but for John Parker's, a most cordial welcome. 
 Before our window lies the grave of one whom he adored, my 
 wife's favorite sister. He was at her funeral. The next funeral 
 which her widowed husband and I attended was his : Froude 
 nursed him like a brother till the moment of death. His was 
 a great soul in a pigmy body ; and those who know how I loved 
 him, know what a calumny it is to say that I preach ' muscular 
 Christianity.' " 
 
 TO JOHN BULLAR, ESQ. 
 
 Eversley, i860. 
 
 " I am getting all right now, by dint of much riding with my 
 boy, who is home for Easter. Riding has a specific effect on me, 
 both on body and mind, and I hardly know how I should keep 
 well without it. I hope you have not suffered, like me, with this 
 gale. Two of the prettiest trees on my lawn (and I have some 
 very pretty ones) came down with a crash this morning; and I have 
 had the melancholy pleasure and exercise of dismembering ancient 
 friends. When spring is coming, I cannot guess. My hope is that 
 this gale will 'blow the weather out,' as sailors say; and that we 
 shall have a sudden turn to thunder, heat, and rain. I have seen 
 this happen several times, just at this season. 
 
 " I am utterly astonished at your courage in letting your wife go 
 to Egypt. I have just let mine go to Devonshire without me, 
 to nurse a sick sister, and I feel like a cat without its skin." 
 
 After he had taken his M.A. degree he writes from the north to 
 his wife — 
 
 " I have been thinking and praying a good deal over my future 
 life. A new era has opened for me : I feel much older, anxious, 
 and full of responsibility ; but more cheerful and settled than I 
 have done for a long time. All that book writing and struggling 
 is over, and a settled position and work is before me. Would that 
 it were done, the children settled in life, and kindly death near to 
 set one off again with a new start somewhere else. I should like 
 the only epitaph on our tomb to be Thekla's : 
 
 " ' We have lived and loved, 
 We live and love.' " 
 
3o8 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 No book was written this year, his spare time being given to the 
 preparation of his Inaugural Lecture at Cambridge, and the course 
 of Lectures which was to follow it. By command of the Prince 
 Consort, he preached the annual sermon for the Trinity House, of 
 which H.R. H. was then Master. He preached also at Whitehall, 
 Windsor Castle, and St. James's. He was made chaplain to the 
 Civil Service Volunteers ; he lectured at Warminster and Bury St. 
 Edmund's. A few weeks' rest in Ireland with Mr. Fronde, helped 
 him greatly in preparing for his career in Cambridge, and at Mark- 
 ree Castle he killed his first salmon, a new and long coveted 
 experience in life. 
 
 Markree Castle, Sligo, July 4, i860. 
 
 ". . . . I have done the deed at last — killed a real actual 
 live salmon, over five pounds weight, and lost a whopper from 
 light hooking. Here they. are by hundreds, and just as easy to 
 catch as trout ; and if the wind would get out of the north, I could 
 catch fifty pounds of them in a day. This place is full of glory — 
 very lovely, and well kept up. 
 
 "But I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that 
 hundred miles of horrible country. I don't believe they are our 
 fault. I believe there are not only many more of them than of 
 old, but that they are happier, better, more comfortably fed and 
 lodged under our rule than they ever were. But to see white 
 chimpanzees is dreadful ; if they were black, one would not feel it 
 so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as 
 white as ours. Tell Rose I will get her plants. 1 have got the 
 great Butterwort already; very fine. . . .", 
 
 July 5- 
 " I had magnificent sport this morning — five salmon killed (big- 
 gest, seven pounds), and another huge fellow ran right away to sea, 
 carrying me after him waist deep in water, and was lost, after 
 running 200 yards, by fouling a ship's hawser ! There is nothing 
 like it. The excitement is maddening, and the exertion very 
 severe. I am going to sleep for two hours, having been up at 
 four " 
 
 The summer of i860 was a very wet one. Rain fell almost in- 
 cessantly for three months. The farmers were frightened, and the 
 clergy all over the country began to use the prayer against rain. 
 The cholera had long been threatening England, and Mr. Kings- 
 ley's knowledge of physical and sanitary science had told him how 
 beneficial this heavy rain was — a gift from God at that particular 
 
Sir Charles Lyell and the Rain Question. 309 
 
 moment to ward off the enemy wliich was at hand, by cleansing 
 drains and sweeping away refuse, and giving the poor an abundance 
 of sweet clean water. It was a notable fact that while ignorant 
 people were crying out against the rain, the chemists complained 
 that there was so little illness they had nothing to do, and the 
 medical men pronounced it to be a very healthy season. The 
 parishioners of Eversley, however, remonstrated with him for not 
 using the prayer for fine weather, and he answered them by preach- 
 ing a sermon on Matth. vii. 9-1 1, which provoked much discussion, 
 and was pubHshed under the title of " Why should we pray for fair 
 weather ? " 
 
 On this subject Sir Charles Lyell writes to Mr. Kingsley : — 
 
 London, Septetnbe)- 23, i860. 
 
 " On my return from the Continent, I find here your excellent 
 sermon on the prayer for rain, sent to me, I presume, by your di- 
 rection, and for which 1 return you many thanks. Two weeks 
 ago, I happened to remark to a stranger, who was sitting next me 
 at a table d'hote at Rudoldstadt in Thuringia, that I feared the 
 rains must have been doing a great deal of mischief. He turned 
 out to be a scientific man from Berlin, and replied, ' I should think 
 they were much needed to replenish the springs, after three years 
 of drought' 
 
 " 1 immediately felt that I had made an idle and thoughtless 
 speech. Some thirty years ago I was told at Bonn of two proces- 
 sions of peasants, who had climbed to the top of the Peter's Berg, 
 one composed of vine-dressers, who were intending to return 
 thanks for sunshine, and pray for its continuance : the others from 
 a corn district, wanting the drought to cease and the rain to fall. 
 Each were eager to get possession of the shrine of St. Peter's 
 Chapel before the other, to secure the saint's good offices, so they 
 came to blows with fists and sticks, much to the amusement of the 
 Protestant heretics at Bonn, who, I hope, did not by such prayers 
 as you allude to, commit the same solecism, occasionally, only less 
 coarsely carried out into action." 
 
 In the following winter Mr. Kingsley writes from Eversley to Sir 
 Charles Bunbury on the same topic. 
 
 "The frost here is intense and continuous. The result, the per- 
 fect health of everybody. Of course, sufficient food and firing are 
 required. But much that I have seen of late years (and this frost 
 i/iter alia) proves to me that the most ' genial ' weather is not the 
 healthiest. 
 
3 TO Charles Kings ley. 
 
 " I have been called names, as though I had been a really selfish 
 and cruel man, for a foolish ' Ode to the North-East Wind.' If my 
 cockney critics had been country parsons, they would have been 
 more merciful, when they saw me, as I have been more than once, 
 utterly ill from attendmg increasing sick cases during a soft south- 
 west November of rain and roses ; and then, released by a hard 
 frost, my visits stopped in a few days by the joyful answer, 'Thank 
 God, we are getting all well now, in this beautiful seasonable 
 weather.' 'Seasonable weather' — that expression has taught me 
 much. In the heart of the English laborer and farmer^ unsophisti- 
 cated by any belief that the Virgin Mary or the saints can coax the 
 Higher Powers into sending them a shower or a sunbeam, if they 
 be sufficiently coaxed and flattered themselves — into their hearts 
 and minds has sunk a deep belief that God is just and wise, and 
 orders all things well, according to a 'law which cannot be broken.' 
 A certain sermon of mine about the rains, which shocked the clergy 
 of all denominations, pleased deeply, thank God, my own laborers 
 and farmers. They first thanked me heartily for it, and begged for 
 copies of it. I then began to see (what I ought to have seen long 
 before) that the belief in a good and just God is the foundation, if 
 not of a scientific habit of mind, still of a habit of mind into which 
 science can fall, and seed, and bring forth fruit in good ground. I 
 learnt from that to solve a ])uzzle which had long disturbed me — 
 why the French philosophers of the last century, denying and 
 scoffing at much which I hold true and dear, had still been not only 
 men of science, but men who did good work in their time. They 
 believed, even Voltaire, in a good God — at least they said, ' If God 
 is at all, He is good, just, and wise.' That thought enabled them 
 at once to face scientific fact, and to testify against cruelty, oppres- 
 sion, ignorance, and all the works of darkness wherever they found 
 them. And so I learnt to thank God for men who seemed not to 
 believe in Him, and to value more and more the moral instincts of 
 men, as a deeper and more practical theology than their dogmas 
 about God. Excuse this tirade. But you are one of the few per- 
 sons to whom I can speak my whole heart. . 
 
 " Meanwhile, you would exceedingly oblige me by telling me 
 where the geology of Palestine is described. I cannot get trust- 
 worthy information about it. Lynch and the man who went some 
 years ago to look for coal, tell me very little ; and though Lord 
 Lindsay has some hints about the volcanic appearances north of 
 the Lake Tiberias, he tells one nothing about the age and super- 
 position of the beds. It seems strange that so httle should be 
 known about one of the most remarkable volcanic districts of the 
 world. The age of the normal limestones ; of the bitumen beds of 
 the Dead Sea ; of the Edomite mountains ; and of the recent (?) 
 volcanic rocks of the north, all ought to be known by some one or 
 other. But most who have gone have wasted their time in looking 
 
Inaugural Lecture at Cambridge. 311 
 
 for the ' Cities of the Plain,' instead of collecting sound physical 
 facts. Some have been afraid, it seemed to me, of looking at the 
 physical facts too closely, for fear of coming to some ' rationalist ' 
 conclusion." 
 
 In the autumn the new Professor went up to Cambridge. " It is 
 with a feeling of awe, almost of fear, that I find myself in such a 
 place on such an errand," he said when he delivered his Inaugural 
 Lecture * in the crowded Senate House on the 12th of November. 
 He had an enthusiastic welcome from the undergraduates, and 
 the lecture, which was published under the title of "The Limits of 
 Exact Science applied to History," was listened to with profound 
 attention, and most kindly received by all ranks in the university. 
 He now settled in Cambridge with his family till Christmas, and 
 began his' first course of lectures, eventually published as "The 
 Roman and the Teuton," to a class of upwards of one hundred 
 undergraduates, and during the nine years of his professorship his 
 class was one of the best attended in the university. His residence 
 in Cambridge enabled him to cultivate one of the most valuable 
 friendships of his life, that of Sir Charles Fox Bunbury, of Barton 
 Hall, Suffolk, at whose house, rich in itself with works of art, and 
 with a museum and arboretum, in which he delighted, he had the 
 rare pleasure of meeting, year by year, men distinguished in science, 
 in literature, and in society. There he first met Sir Charles Lyell, 
 Sir Edmund Head, Dr. Joseph Hooker, and Sir Louis Mallet, and 
 renewed his friendship with Lord Arthur Harvey (now Bishop of 
 Bath and Wells), and his happy days at Barton, which became a 
 second home to himself and his family, were a constant refresh- 
 ment to his spirit. 
 
 " I cannot understand," he says, with characteristic modesty, in 
 a letter to Sir Charles, after one of his first visits to him, "the kind 
 words which you use about my visit to you. That you should 
 speak so kindly of a poor stammering superficial person hke me, 
 shows me only that there are more good and kind and tolerant 
 people in the world than I looked for, and I knew there were 
 many . . , ." 
 
 The friendship he so dearly prized was mutual. But Sir Charles's 
 
 * The Inaugural Lecture is now incorporated with the new edition of the 
 '* Roman and the Teuton," with a preface by Max Miiller. (Macmillan.) 
 
312 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 generous appreciation must be told in his own words in a letter to 
 Mrs. Kingsley. 
 
 Barton, October i8, 1875. 
 
 "I have lost in him," he says, "an invaluable friend ; one whom 
 for many years past I have truly loved and revered, and who has 
 left a blank, that, for me, can never be filled up. I scarcely ever 
 was in his company without learning something from him. Much 
 as I like and admire his writings — to many of which I return again 
 and again with fresh pleasure — his conversation was much more 
 delightful than his books. I have very seldom, if ever, known a 
 man whose talk was so charming, so rich in matter, so various, 
 so easy and unassuming, so instructive and so free from dogmatism. 
 Sensibility, humor, wisdom, were most happily blended in it. Many 
 a long conversation I have enjoyed with him, and the remembrance 
 of them will always be precious to me ; but I continually regret 
 that my memory could not retain more of what I heard from him. 
 Our talk often turned upon subjects of natural science, in which 
 he delighted, and of which his knowledge vvas extensive and sound. 
 He more than once said to me that, if circumstances had allowed 
 him leisure, botany, and natural history in general, would have 
 been his favorite studies. We passed many hours (delightful to 
 me) in examining together my botanical collections, and discussing 
 the questions which they suggested. His remarks were always 
 instructive and valuable. He had not, indeed, had leisure to 
 prosecute those elaborate researches, or to acquire that vast knowl- 
 edge of details, which belong to the great masters of science ; 
 but his knowledge was by no means superficial. He had mastered 
 the leading principles and great outlines of scientific natural his- 
 tory, in its principal branches ; and the large generalizations in 
 which he delighted, were based on a well-directed study of facts, 
 both in books and in nature. 
 
 " He had the true naturalist's eye for quick and acute observa- 
 tion ; the philosopher's love of large views and general principles; 
 the poet's faculty of throwing a glow of light upon the objects 
 which he wished to illustrate. This combination of powers gave 
 a peculiar charm to his descriptions of natural objects, as is well 
 exemplified in his West Indian book and in many parts of his 
 essays, especially in ' From Ocean to Sea,' ' My Winter Garden,' 
 and ' Chalk Stream Studies.' I think it a great loss to science that 
 he was not able to carry out a plan which, as he told me, he had 
 formed ; — that of writing the Natural History of his own district, 
 the district of the Bagshot sands. He would have made of it a 
 work of remarkable interest. 
 
 " Another quality of Mr. Kingsley, by which I was particularly 
 struck in the course of our discussions on these subjects, was his 
 
Mr. Kiiigsleys Modesty. 313 
 
 remarkable modesty, indeed humility. He never dogmatized ; 
 never put himself forward as an authority ; was always ready to 
 welcome any suggestion from a fellow-laBorer ; and indeed always 
 seemed more anxious to learn than to teach. I have been tempted 
 to dwell, perhaps too long, on one aspect only of his character and 
 genius ; but I iDelieve you wish to have my impression of him in 
 this point of view. His higher qualities are indeed more generally 
 known, through his writings, and I will not attempt to expatiate on 
 a theme, to which more justice may be done by others. I can 
 safely say that he was one of the best men I have known ; his 
 conversation was not only agreeable, but had a constant tendency 
 to make one wiser and better ; and when it was directed to spe- 
 cially religious topics, his tone of feeling and thought appeared to 
 me both elevating and comforting. I shall ever feel grateful for 
 having been allowed to enjoy the friendship of such a man. 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " My Dear Mrs. Kingsley, 
 
 " Ever yours affectionately, 
 
 "Charles J. F. Bunbury." 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 1861— 1862. 
 Aged 42-43. 
 
 Cambridge — Lectures to the Prince of Wales — Essays and Reviews — Letters to 
 Dr. Stanley — Bishop of Winchester — Tracts for Priests and People — Death of 
 the Prince Consort — Letter to Sir C. Bunbury — The Water-babies — Installa- 
 tion Ode at Cambridge — Visit to Scotland — British Association — Lord Dun- 
 dreary. 
 
 " The longer I live, the more certain 1 am," said Sir T. Fowell 
 Buxton, " that the great difference between men, the feeble and 
 the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is energy and invin- 
 cible determination — a purpose once fixed, and then death or vic- 
 tory. That quality will do anything that can be done in this 
 world ; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities, will 
 make a two-legged creature a man without it." 
 
 It was this very invincible determination and energy which car- 
 ried Charles Kingsley through work, and sometimes a distracting 
 confusion of different works, and which preserved his often weary 
 body and exhausted brain from breaking down entirely : but more 
 than this, it was his child-like faith in God which kept him not only 
 free from the irritability so common to all highly-strung natures, 
 but cheerful and brave under every circumstance. 
 
 The weight of responsibility that pressed heavily on him during 
 this year was added to by the duty and honor of giving private lec- 
 tures to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, who had just left Oxford, 
 and kept the usual terms at Cambridge during 1861. On the 2nd 
 of January, Mr. Kingsley received through the Prince's tutor, Mr. 
 Herbert Fisher, a message from the Prince Consort on the subject 
 of his son's studies, informing him how they had been conducted at 
 Oxford — how a special class had been formed there for instruction 
 in Modern History, which instruction had been carried up to the 
 reign of William III. — what book had been used, &c., and request- 
 ing the Cambridge Professor to consult Dr. Whewell, then Master 
 of Trinity, as to the undergraduates who should attend with the 
 Prince. To this Mr. Kingsley rephed : 
 
Lectures to the Prince of Wales. 3 1 5 
 
 EvERSLEY Rectory, January 2, 1871. 
 
 " Do me the kindness to inform the Prince Consort that his 
 wishes are, of course, commands to me. ' 
 
 "I shall have great pleasure in following out the excellent 
 method sketched for me in your letter, and in putting myself into 
 Dr. Whewell's hands as to the formation of a special class for His 
 Royal Highness. 
 
 '' Any information which you can give me I shall most thank- 
 fully accept and use. 1 i)ut myself entirely into your hands, both 
 as the expounder of the Prince Consort's wishes, and as the Prince 
 of Wales's tutor The responsibility is too solemn and too sudden 
 for me to act in any way upon my own private judgment in 
 the matter. 
 
 " The first question which I have to ask is — up to what year in 
 the i8th century I ought to extend my lectures?" 
 
 The class was accordingly formed, and the names selected by 
 the Rev. W. Mathison, senior Tutor of Trinity, subject to Dr. 
 Whewell's approval, were sent in to the Professor.* 
 
 Early hi February the Pnnce of Wales settled at Madingley, and 
 rode in three times a week to Mr. Kingsley's house, for lectures, 
 twice with the class, and every Saturday to go through a resume of 
 the week's work alone. 
 
 During the course of the academical year the Professor carried 
 the class up to the reign of George IV. ; and at the end of each 
 term he set questions for the Prince, which were always most satis- 
 factorily answered. Throughout this year the sense of responsi- 
 bihty which would otherwise have been overpowering, was relieved 
 not only by the intense interest of the work, in which he was 
 allowed perfect freedom of sjjeech, but by the attention, courtesy, 
 and intelligence of his Royal pupil, whose kindness to him then 
 and in after-life, made him not only H.R.H.'s loyal, but his most 
 attached servant. 
 
 But the year ended sadly, and his intercourse with the Prince of 
 Wales was brought to an abrupt termination by the death of the 
 
 * Mr. Lee Warner, of St. John's College, lately head of Rugby School. Mr. 
 Stuart, Rugby, of St. John's. Mr. Main, of St. John's, the best mathemalLi n 
 of his year, in his third year. Mr. Cay, of Caius College, a freshman, who had 
 just obtained an open scholarship. Lord John Hervey, Trinity. Hon. C. 
 Lyttleton, Trinity. Mr. Hamilton, Trinity. Mr. C. Wood, son of Right 
 Hon. Sir Charles Wood. Hon. Henry Strutt, Trinity. Mr. A. W. Elliott, 
 freshman of Trinity. And later in the year, Mr. George Howard, of Trinity. 
 
3i6 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 Prince Consort, which threw a gloom all over England, and was 
 felt as a deep personal grief, as well as a national loss, by every one 
 who had had the privilege of coming in personal contact with His 
 Royal Highness. 
 
 Mr. Kingsley's professional duties with the Prince of Wales 
 obliged him to keep all the terms at Cambridge, only returning to 
 Eversley for the long vacation; and as his curate was in deacon's 
 orders, his friend, the Rev. Septimus Hansard (now Rector of 
 Bethnal Green), kindly consented to live at the Rectory during his 
 absence, to take the lead in the Sunday services, and superintend 
 the parish work. His able assistance relieved the Rector's anxiety, 
 while it strengthened their mutual friendship. 
 
 About this period " Essays and Reviews " came out, and the 
 following letter shows Mr. Kingsley's impression of the attitude of 
 Cambridge at the publication : 
 
 TO REV. ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY. 
 
 CAMBRroOE, February 19, 1861. 
 
 " Cambridge lies in magnificent repose, and shaking lazy ears 
 stares at her more nervous elder sister and asks what it is all 
 about. 
 
 " She will not persecute the authors of the Essays ; and what is 
 more, any scraps of the Simeonite party, now moribund here, who 
 try to get up a persecution, will be let alone — and left to ])ersecute 
 on their own hook. That is the Cambridge danger. Cool indif- 
 ferentism : not to the doctrines, but to the means of fighting for 
 them. 
 
 " The atmosphere is the most liberal (save ' Bohemia') which I 
 ever lived in. And it is a liberality (not like that of Bohemia, of 
 want of principle or creed), but of real scholarly largeness and 
 lovingness between men who disagree. We 'live and let live' here, 
 I find, to my delight. But with that" will come the feeling — in which, 
 I confess, I share — what the plague had these men to do, starting 
 a guerilla raid into the enemy's country, on their own responsibility ? 
 We are no more answerable for them, than for Garibaldi. If they 
 fail, they must pay the penalty. They did not ask us — they called 
 no synod of the Broad Church — consulted no mass of scholars, as 
 to what could or could not be done just now. They go and levy 
 war on their own account, and each man on his own account. 
 Each one of us might make himself res])onsible for one essay. But 
 being published together, one does become responsible for all or 
 none; and that I won't be, nor any man in Cambridge. I would 
 not even be responsible for * * * 's Article, much as I trust and 
 
Cafnbridge and the Essays. 317 
 
 respect him. The world, mind, does take one as all, and all as one. 
 The * Essays and Reviews ' are one book in the mind of the world, 
 and if they were not meant to be, they should not have been pub- 
 lished in one volume. This is what Cambridge (and I) feel, as far 
 as I can ascertain. 
 
 " Next. There is little or nothing, says Cambridge, in that book 
 which we have not all of us been through already. Doubts, denials, 
 destructions — we have faced them till we are tired of them. But 
 we have faced them in silence, hoping to find a positive solution. 
 Here comes a book which states all the old doubts and difficulties, 
 and gives us nothing instead. Here are men still pulling down, 
 with far weaker hands than the Germans, from whom they borrow, 
 and building up nothing instead: So we will preserve a stoic calm. 
 We wish them all well. We will see fair play for them, according 
 to the forms of English law and public opinion. But they must 
 fight their own battle. We cannot be responsible for other men's 
 campaigns. 
 
 " This, I think, is the feeling of Cambridge. I do not expect, 
 from what I hear, that you will have any manifesto against Essays 
 and Reviews. *** of *** and *** may get up something, and 
 cowards and trimmers may sign it, for fear of committing them- 
 selves ; but I think they will win little but wind by their movement, 
 and that ' they may bottle if it will help them.' 
 
 TO THE LORD BISHOP -OF WINCHESTER, 
 
 (Dr. Sumner.) 
 
 eversley, 1s61. 
 " My Lord, 
 
 "1 have received a circular from the venerable the arch- 
 deacon, asking me to sign an address to your lordship in reference 
 to the ' Essays and Reviews,' of miserable notoriet}'. That address 
 I declined to sign upon a question of archidiaconai jurisdiction. 
 I begged that the letter might be sent to the archdeacon. I 
 hope that your lordship will do me the honor of perusing it, if it be 
 sent on to )'-ou. But in justice to your lordship, and to myself, I 
 nnist tell you what I thought myself bound not to tell the arch- 
 deacon in his official cai^acity. I should be sorry that you should 
 think that I agreed with a book whose publication I have deeply 
 deplored, and have more reason to deplore every day. 
 
 '• I deplore it first, for itself; second, for the storm which I saw 
 it would raise. For itself. With the exception of Dr. Temple's 
 essay, in which I can see nothing heterodox, be his theory right or 
 wrong, all the essays deny but do not affirm. 
 
 " The doubts and puzzles which they raise afresh have passed 
 through the mind of every thinking man in the last twenty-five years, 
 
3 1 8 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 and it pained me much to see them re-stated — in one or two cases 
 very offensively — without any help to a practical solution. I con- 
 fess to having thrust the book away in disgust, as saying once again, 
 very weakly, what I had long put out of sight and mind, in the 
 practical realities of parish work. If I may intrude my own doings 
 on your lordship, when my new curate came back to me after ordi- 
 nation, having heard your lordship's allusion to these 'Essays and 
 Reviews,' and asked me whether he should read them, I told him 
 * By no means. They will disturb your mind with questions which 
 you are too young to solve. Stick to the old truths and the old 
 paths, and learn their divineness by sick-beds and in every-day 
 work, and do not darken your mind with intellectual puzzles, which 
 may breed disbelief, but can never breed vital religion, or practical 
 usefulness.' As for my own opinions, my lord, they are sufficiently 
 known. The volumes of sermons which I have published are, I 
 am sure, a sufficient guarantee to you as they are to the public, 
 that I keep to the orthodox faith, and the orthodox forraulte, without 
 tormenting my soul, or my hearers, with fruitless argument on 
 things which we shall never know, save by taking our Bible in hand 
 like little children, and obeying it. Next, I deplore the publication 
 of these Esb.iys from the storm which I saw they would raise. As 
 a fact, they are being sold now by hundreds, where one copy would 
 have been sold ; and therefore thousands of brains are being put 
 into'an unwholesome ferment, instead of one here and there. The 
 effect at the Universities will be very bad ; for young men are only 
 too glad to fly off on intellectual disquisitions, from the plain 
 requirements' of Christian faith and duty, and therefore I could 
 have wished that the book had been passed by in silence, as what 
 it is, a very weak and inconsiderable book. But it is too late. 
 That my curates, and my parish, shall be kept clear, if I can do it, 
 of all fruitless and unwholesome speculations, and taught to believe 
 in the plain doctrines of the Prayer-book and Articles, and act up 
 to them, I promise you with all my heart." 
 
 In the spring a set of " Tracts for Priests and People " were 
 brought out under the superintendence of Mr. Maurice. Mr. 
 Kingsley was asked to write, but his time was absorbed witk parish 
 work and Cambridge lectures. 
 
 The American war, which was occupying general attention, 
 decided the Professor to take the History of America as the sub- 
 ject of his lectures for 1862. 
 
 The correspondence of the year, of which little has been recov- 
 ered, closes with a letter to Sir Charles Bunbury, written on his 
 return to Eversley, in that time of general mourning in which all 
 England shared. 
 
The American Qitestion. 319 
 
 EVERSLEY, December 31, 1861. 
 
 "... As for the American question, on which you do me 
 the honor to ask my opinion, I have thought of nothing else for 
 some time ; for I cannot see how I can be a Professor of past 
 Modern History without the most careful study of the history which 
 is enacting itself around me. But 1 can come to no conclusion, 
 save that to which all England seems to have come — that the war 
 will be a gain_ to us. So strongly do I feel the importance of this 
 crisis, that I mean to give as my public lectures, next October 
 term, the History of the American States ; and most thankful to you 
 should I be, if you could recommend me any books throwing light 
 on it, particularly on the little known period (strange to say), from 
 1815 to the present time. 
 
 " As for the death of the Prince Consort, I can say nothing. 
 Words fail me utterly. What little I could say, I put into a sermon 
 for my own parishioners, which I will send you if you will allow 
 
 me I need not say how \ve regretted not being able 
 
 to accept your kind invitation. But the heavy work of last term, 
 and the frightful catastrophe [Prince Consort's death J with which 
 it ended, sent us all home to rest, if rest is possible, when, on 
 coming home, one finds fresh arrears of work waiting for one, 
 which ought to have been finished off months since. The feel- 
 ing of being always behind hand, do what one will, is second only 
 in torment to that of debt. 
 
 " I long to find myself once again talking over with you ' the 
 stones which tell no lies.' " 
 
 The opening of 1862 found him once more settled at Eversley, 
 and enjoying the return to parish work after the heavy duties 
 and responsibilities of such a year at Cambridge as cou'ld never 
 come again. 
 
 His mind was particularly vigorous this year, and the refresh- 
 ment of visits with his wife to the Grange in the winter, and to 
 Scotland in the summer, giving him change of thought and scene, 
 prepared him for returning to his professorial work in the 
 autumn, and to his controversy on the Cotton Famine with Lan- 
 cashire mill-owners and millionaires. 
 
 TO CAPTAIN ALSTON, R.N. 
 
 Eversley, March 20, 1862. 
 "As for the Workmen's Club, Mrs. Kingsley has sent you a list 
 of books which she recommends. The best periodical for them is 
 certainly Norman McLeod's ' Good Words,' which is quite admira- 
 ble, and has now a very large circulation — 70,000, 1 believe. I 
 
320 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 do not think that I would give them Carlyle yet. If I did, it would 
 be ' Past and Present.' And yet, things have so mended since it 
 was written that that would be unfair. The 'French Revolution' 
 is the book, if they would only understand it. 
 
 " I am not the man to give you any practical suggestions as to 
 the working of such a club. But if when you come to London, you 
 choose call on my dear friend Tom Hughes (Tom Brown), he would 
 give you many admirable hints learnt from experience. 
 
 "I am truly thankful to hear tliat I have helped to make a 
 churchman of you. The longer I live, the more I find the Church 
 of England the most rational, liberal, and practical form which 
 Christianity has yet assumed ; and dread as much seeing it assimi- 
 lated to dissent, as to Popery. Strange to say, Thomas Carlyle 
 now says that the Church of England is the most rational thing he 
 sees now going, and that it is the duty of every wise man to support 
 it to the uttermost." 
 
 Sitting at breakfast at the rectory one spring morning this year, 
 ihe father was reminded of an old promise, " Rose, Maurice, and 
 Mary- have got their book, and baby must have his." He made 
 no answer, but got up at once and went into his study, locking the 
 door. In half an hour he returned with the story of little Tom. 
 This was the first chapter of " The Water-babies," written off without 
 a correction. The rest of the book, which appeared monthly in 
 "Macmillan's Magazine," was composed with the same quickness 
 and ease as the first chapter — if indeed what was so purely an inspi- 
 ration could be called composing, for the whole thing seemed to 
 flow naturally out of his brain and heart, lightening both of a 
 burden without exhausting either ; and the copy went up to the 
 printer's with scarcely a flaw. He was quite unprepared for the 
 sensation it would make. 
 
 Nothing helped the books and sermons more than the silence 
 and solitude of a few days' fisliing. The Water-babies, especially, 
 have the freshness and fragra'ice of the sea breeze and the river- 
 side in almost every page. 
 
 In the summer the Duke of Devonshire was installed at Cam- 
 bridge as Chancellor of the University, of which he had been so 
 distinguished a member, taking the place of the lamented Prince 
 Consort; and the Professor of Modern History, as in duty bound, 
 wrote an installation ode, which, being set to music by Sir William 
 Sterndale Bennett, gave him the acquaintance and friendship of 
 one of the first English musicians. 
 
Catching Salmon. 321 
 
 In August, with his wife and his eldest boy Maurice, he went to 
 Scotland for a month's holiday, whence he writes 
 
 TO HIS MOTHER. 
 
 MuRTHLEY Castle, Angicst, 1862. 
 
 " Here we are in this delicious place, full of beautiful walks and 
 plantations — with Birnam. Wood opposite my window as 1 write — 
 only all the wood having gone to Dunsinane in Macbeth's time, 
 
 the hill alone is left We had reels last night, Lord 
 
 John Manners and Sir Hugh Cairns both dancing All 
 
 that is said of the grandeur of the Tay I quite agree in. I never 
 saw such a river, though there are very few salmon up. I got into 
 one huge fish yesterday ; but he shook his head and shook out the 
 hook very soon. Maurice caught a good sea trout of 2f lbs., which 
 delighted him. Monday we start for Inveraray, via Balloch, Loch 
 Lomond, and Tarbet." 
 
 Inveraray Castle, Augu^^t 21. 
 
 "The loveliest spot I ever savv — large lawns and enormous tim- 
 ber on the shores of a salt-water loch, with moor and mountain 
 before and behind. I gat myself up this morning at four for sal- 
 mon, yesterday I could kill none ; water too low. To-day the first 
 cast I hooked a ten pounder, and the hook broke ! The river is 
 swarming ; they are flopping and smacking about the water every- 
 where ; but rh, dear I why did Heaven make midges ? " 
 
 The visit to Inveraray was one of the bright memories and green 
 spots of his life, always looked back upon by himself and those who 
 were with him with gratitude, combining as it did not only beauti- 
 ful scenery, but intellectual, scientific, and spiritual communings 
 on the highest, holiest themes. Such holidays were few and far be- 
 tween in his life of labor, and when they came he could give him- 
 self up to them, " thanks," as he would say, 
 
 "to my blessed habit of intensity, which has been my greatest help 
 in life. 1 go at what I am about as if there was nothing else in the 
 world for the time being. That's the secret of all hard-working 
 men ; but most of them can't carry it into their amusements. 
 Luckily for me, I can stop from all work, at short notice, and turn 
 head over heels in the sight of all creation for a spell." 
 
 The British Association met at Cambridge on the ist October. 
 It was the first he had ever attended. The Zoological and Geo- 
 logical sections were those which naturally attracted him, and the 
 
 21 
 
322 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 acquaintances he made, the distinguished men lie now met, (among 
 them, the lamented Beete Jukes, and Lucas Barrett, who was 
 drowned in the survey of the Jamaica coral reefs the next year,) 
 made this an era in his life, and gave a fresh impetus to his scien- 
 tific studies. While attending Section D, he was present at the 
 famous tournament between Professor Owen and Professor Hux- 
 ley on the- Hippocampus question, which led to his writing a little 
 squib for circulation among his friends. As it will be new to many 
 it is given at length. 
 
 SPEECH OF LORD DUNDREARY IN SECTION D, ON FRIDAY LAST, 
 ON THE GREAT HIPPOCAMPUS QUESTION. 
 
 Cambridge, October, 1861. 
 
 " Mr. President and Gentlemen, I mean ladies and Mr. Presi- 
 dent, 1 am sure that all ladies and gentlemen will see the matter 
 just as I do ; and I am sure we're all very much obliged to these 
 scientific gentlemen for quarrelling — no — I don't mean that, that 
 wouldn't be charitable, and it's a sin to steal a pin : but I mean 
 for letting us hear them quarrel, and so eloquently, too ; though, 
 of course, we don't understand what is the matter, and which is in 
 the right ; but of course we were very much delighted, and, I may 
 say, quite interested, to find that we had all hippopotamuses in 
 our brains. Of course they're right, you know, because seeing's 
 believing. 
 
 " Certainly, I never felt one in mine ; but perhaps it's dead, and 
 so didn't stir, and then of course, it don't count, you know. A dead 
 dog is as good as a live lion. Stop — no. A live lion is as good 
 as a dead dog — no, that won't do again. There's a mistake some- 
 where. What was I saying ? Oh, hippopotamuses. Well, I say, 
 ]Derhaps mine's dead. They say hippopotamuses feed on water. 
 No, I don't think that, because teetotallers feed on water, and they 
 are always lean ; and the hippo's fat, at least in the Zoo. Live in 
 water, it must be; and there's none in my brain. There was when 
 I was a baby, .my aunt says ; but they tapped me ; so I suppose 
 ^ the hippopotamus died of drought. No — stop. It wasn't a hip- 
 popotamus after all, it was hip — hip — not hip, hip, hurrah, you 
 know, that comes after dinner, and the section hasn't dined, at 
 least since last night, and the Cambridge wine is very good, I will 
 say that. No. 1 recollect now. Hippocampus it was. Hippo- 
 campus, a sea-horse ; 1 learnt that at Eton ; hippos, sea, and cam- 
 pus, a horse — no — campus a sea, and hippos, a horse, that's right. 
 Only campus ain't a sea, it's a field, I know that ; Campus Martins 
 — I was swished for that at Eton — ought to be again, 1 believe, if 
 every dog had his day. But at least it's a sea-hoi;se, I know that, 
 
Lord Dundreary. 323 
 
 because I saw one alive at Malta with the regiment, and it i-ang a 
 bell. No ; it was a canary that rang a bell ;- but this had a tail 
 like a monkey, and made a noise like a bell. I dare say you won't 
 believe me; but 'pon honor I'm speaking truth — noblesse oblige, 
 you know ; and it hadn't been taught at all, and perha])s if it had it 
 wouldn't have learnt : but it did, and it was in a monkey's tail. No, 
 stop, it must have been in its head, because it was in its brain ; and 
 everyone has brains in his head, unless he's a skeleton ; and it 
 curled its tail round things like a monkey, that I know, for I saw it 
 with my own eyes. That was Professor Rolleston's theory, you 
 know. It was Professor Huxley said it was in his tail — not Mr. 
 Huxley's, of course, but the ape's : only apes have no tails, so I 
 don't quite see that. And then the other gentleman who got up 
 last, Mr. Flower, you know, he said that it was all over the ape, 
 everywhere. All over hippocampuses, from head to foot, poor 
 beast, like a dog all over ticks ! I wonder why they don't rub blue- 
 stone mto the back of its neck, as one does to a pointer. Well, 
 then. Where was I? Oh! and Professor Owen said it wasn't in 
 apes at all : but only in the order bimana, that's you and me. 
 VVell, he knows best. And 'they all know best too, for they are 
 monstrous clever fellows. So one must be right, and all the rest 
 wrong, or else one of them wrong, and all the rest right — you see 
 that? I wonder why they don't toss up about it. If they took a 
 half-crown now, or a shilling, or even a fourpenny-piece would do, 
 if they magnified it, and tost heads and tails, or Newmarket, if they 
 wanted to be quite sure, why then there couldn't be any dispute 
 among gentlemen after that, - of course. Well, then, about men 
 being apes, I say, why shouldn't it be the other way, and the apes 
 be men ? do you see ? Because then they might have as many 
 hippocampuses in their brains as they liked, or hippopotamuses 
 either, indeed. I should be glad indeed if it was so, if it was only 
 for my aunt's sake ; for she says that her clergyman says, that if 
 anybody ever finds a hippopotamus in a monkey's head, nothing 
 will save her great, great, great — I can't say how great, you see — 
 it's awful to think of — quite enormous grandfather from having been 
 a monkey too ; and then what is to become of her precious soul ? 
 So, for my aunt's sake, I should be very glad if it could be settled 
 that way, really ; and I am sure the scientific gentlemen will take 
 it into consideration, because they are gentlemen, as every one 
 knows, and would not hurt a lady's feelings. The man who would 
 strike a woman, you know — everybody knows that, it's in Shake- 
 speare. And besides, the niggers say that monkeys are men, only 
 they won't work for fear of being made to talk ; no, won't talk for 
 fear of being made to work ; that's it (right for once, as I live !) 
 and put their hands over their eyes at night for fear of seeing the 
 old gentleman — and I'm sure that's just like a reasonable creature, 
 1 used to when I was a little boy ; and you see the niggers have 
 
324 Chaides Kings ley. 
 
 lived among them for thousands of years, and are monstrous Uke 
 them, too, d'ye see/and so they must know best; and then it 
 would be all right. 
 
 "Well, then, about a gulf Professor Huxley says there's a gulf 
 between a man and an ape. I'm sure I'm glad of it, especially if 
 the ape bit; and Professor Owen says there ain't. What? am I 
 wrong, eh ? Of course. Yes — beg a thousand pardons, really now. 
 Of course — Professor Owen says there is, and Professor Huxley 
 says there ain't. Well, a fellow can't recollect everything. But I 
 say, if there's a gulf, the ape might get over it and bite one after 
 all. I know Quintus Curtius jumped over a gulf at Eton — that is, 
 certainly, he jumped in : but that was his fault, you see : if he'd 
 put in more powder he might have cleared it, and then there would 
 have been no gulf between him and an ape. But that don't matter 
 so much, because Professor Huxley said the gulf was bridged over 
 by a structure. Now I am sure I don't wish to be personal, espe- 
 cially after the very handsome way in which Professor Huxley has 
 drunk all our healths. Stop — no. It's we that ought to drink his 
 health, I'm sure, Highland honors and all ; but at the same time I 
 should have been obliged to him if he'd told us a little more about 
 this structure, especially considering what nasty mischievous things 
 apes are. Tore one of my coat tails off at the Zoological the other 
 day. He ought^no, I don't say that, because it would seem like 
 dictation, I don't like that; never could do it at school — wrote it 
 down all wrong — got swished — hate dictation : — but I might humbly 
 express that Professor Huxley might have told us a little, you see, 
 about that structure. Was it wood ? W^as it iron ? Was it silver 
 and gold, like London Bridge when Lady Lee danced over it, be- 
 fore it was washed away by a man with a pipe in his mouth ? No, 
 stop, I say — That can't be. A man with a pipe in his mouth wash 
 away a bridge? Why a fellow can't work hard with a pipe in his 
 mouth — everybody knows that — much less wash away a whole 
 bridge. No, it's quite absurd — quite. Only I say, I should like 
 to know something about this structure, if it was only to quiet my 
 aunt. And then, if Professor Huxley can see the structure, why 
 can't Professor Owen ? It can't be invisible, you know, unless it 
 was painted invisible green, like Ben Hall's new bridge at Chelsea: 
 only you can see that of course, for you have to pa)^ now when 
 you go over, so I suppose the green ain't the right color. But 
 that's another reason why I want them to toss up — toss up, you 
 see, whether they saw it or not, or which of them should see it, or 
 something of that kind, I'm sure that's the only way to settle ; and 
 — oh, by-the-bye, as I said before — only I didn't, but I ought to 
 have — if either of the gentlemen havn't half-a-crown about them, 
 why a two-shilling-piece might do ; though I never carry then) my- 
 self, for fear of giving one to a keeper ; and then he sets you down 
 for a screw, you know. Because, you see, I see, I don't quite see, 
 
A New Volume of Sermons. 325 
 
 and no offence to honorable members — learned and eloquent 
 gentlemen, I mean; and though I don't wish to dictate, I don't 
 quite think ladies and gentlemen quite see either. You see that? " 
 
 (The noble lord, who had expressed so acurately the general 
 sense of the meeting, sat down amid loud applause.) 
 
 The cotton famine in the North, which occurred now, roused 
 many thoughts and feelings in his mind and heart, and led to a 
 correspondence in the " Times " and elsewhere. 
 
 A new volume of sermons, " Town and Country Sermons," had 
 recently been published. They were dedicated to his " most kind 
 and faithful friend," the Dean of Windsor,* and contained several 
 preached at Windsor and at Whitehall, with some of the deepest 
 and most characteristic of his Eversley sermons — particularly "The 
 Rock of Ages," " The Wrath of Love," " Pardon and Peace," and 
 one most important one on the Athanasian Creed, called " The 
 Knowledge of God." 
 
 * The Hon. and Very Rev. Gerald Wellesley. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 1863. 
 Aged 44. 
 
 Fellow of the Geological Society — Work at Cambridge — Prince of Wales's Wed- 
 ' ding — Wellington College Chapel and Museum— Letter from Dr. Benson — 
 Lecture at Wellington— Letters to Sir Charles Lyell, Prof Huxley, Charles 
 Darwin, James A. Froude, &c. — Whitchurch Still-life — Toads in Holes — 
 D.C.L. Degree at Oxford — Bishop Colenso — Sermons on the Pentateuch^ 
 The Water-babies — Failing, Health. 
 
 Professor Kingsley had this year the honor of adding three 
 letters to his name by being made a Fellow of the Geological 
 Society. He was proposed by his kind friend Sir Charles Bun- 
 bury, and seconded by Sir Charles Lyell. " To belong to the 
 Geological Society," he says in a letter to the former, "has long 
 been an ambition of mine, but I feel how little I know, and how 
 unworthy I am to mix with the really great men who belong to it. 
 So strongly do I feel this, that if you told me plainly that 1 had no 
 right to expect such an honor, I should placidly acquiesce in what 
 I already feel to be true." The F.G.S. came as a counter- 
 balance to his rejection at Oxford for the distinction of D.C.L., 
 Avhich his friends there proposed to confer on him. 
 
 The year was spent almost entirely at Eversley, for he found 
 the salary of his JProfessorship did not admit of his keeping two 
 houses and of moving his family backwards and forwards to 
 Cambridge. He was therefore forced to part with his Cambridge 
 house, and to go up twice a year merely, for the time required for 
 his lectures (twelve to sixteen in number), and again at the exami- 
 nation of his class for degrees. He deeply regretted this necessity, 
 as it prevented his knowing the men in his class personally, which 
 he had made a point of doing during the first two years of his resi- 
 dence, when they came to his house, and many charming evenings 
 were spent in easy intercourse between the Professor and his pupils, 
 who met them on equal terms. From the first he made it one of 
 his most important duties to do what he could to bridge over a 
 
The Royal Wedding. 327 
 
 gulf which in his own day had been a vefy wide one between Dons 
 and Students. That he had succeeded in doing this was proved 
 by members of his class, writing to consult him after they left 
 Cambridge on their studies, their ]wofessions, and their religious 
 difficulties, in a way that showed their perfect confidence in his 
 sympathy ; and had circumstances allowed of his residing at Cam- 
 bridge, his personal influence would have been still greater. 
 We now return to his correspondence. 
 
 TO REV. E. PITCAIRN CAMPBELL. 
 
 EVERSLEY, March 12, 1863. 
 
 "We are just from the Royal Wedding — at least so I believe. 
 We had (so 1 seem to remember) excellent places. Mrs. Kingsley 
 in the temporary gallery in the choir. I in the household gallery, 
 both within 15 yards of what, I am inclined to think, was really the 
 Prince and Princess. But I can't swear to it. I am not at all sure 
 that 1 did not fall asleep in the dear old chapel, with the banners 
 and stalls fresh in my mind, and dream and dream of Edward the 
 Fourth's time. At least, I saw live Knights of the Garter (myths 
 to me till then). I saw real Princesses with diamond crowns, and 
 trains, and fairies holding them up. 1 saw — what did I not see ? 
 And only began to believe my eyes, when I met at the dejeuner 
 certain of the knights whom I knew, clothed and in their right 
 mind, like other folk ; and of the damsels and fairies many, who, I 
 believe, were also flesh and blood, for they talked and ate with me, 
 and vanished not away. 
 
 "But seriously, one real thing I did see, and felt too — the serious 
 grace and reverent dignity of my dear young Master, whose manner 
 was perfect. And one other real thing — the Queen's sad face. 
 
 I cannot tell you how auspicious I consider this 
 
 event, or how happy it has made the little knot of us, the Prince's 
 household,* who love him because we know him. I hear nothing 
 but golden reports of the Princess from those who have known her 
 long. I look forward to some opportunity of judging for myself" 
 
 His time this year was divided between his parish work and the 
 study of science, and in corresponding with scientific men. Mr. 
 Darwin's " Origin of Species " and his book on the " Fertilization 
 of Orchids," had opened a new world to him, and made all that he 
 saw around him, if possible, even more full of divine significance 
 than before. Wellington College was a continual interest to him. 
 He lectured to the boys, and helped them to start a Museum. He 
 
 * Mr. Kingsley had recently been made one of the Prhice's chaplains. 
 
J 
 
 28 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 felt bound to do all he coifld for Wellington College, not only be- 
 cause his own son was there, and from his warm friendship with Dr. 
 Benson, then head-master ; but because he looked upon the place 
 as a memorial of the great Prince under whose fostering care it had 
 risen into importance, as well as of the great Duke whose name it 
 bore. The boys were continually at the Rectory, and Mr. Kingsley 
 was always present at their great days, whether for the speeches or 
 their athletic sports. 
 
 Mr. Kingsley's Lecture on Natural History may well be prefaced 
 by a letter from Dr. Benson, characteristic ahke of the writer and 
 his subject. 
 
 The Chancery, Lincoln, Sunday, July 11, 1875. 
 
 "My dear Mrs. Kingsley, 
 
 " . . . . There was a bold sketch of Mr. Kingsley in the 
 Spectator in his squire-like aspect, and I think it was true. But I 
 know that an equally true sketch might be made of him as a parish 
 priest, who would have delighted George Herbert. The gentle, 
 warm frankness with which he talked on a summer Sunday among 
 the grassy and flowery graves. — The happy peace in which he 
 walked, chatting, over to Bramshill chapel-school, and, after reading 
 the evening service, preached in his surplice with a chair-back for 
 his pulpit, on the deeps of the Athanasian Creed ; and, after thank- 
 ing God for words that brought such truths so near, bade the villagers 
 mark that the yQ.\y Creed which laid such stress on faith, told them 
 that ' they who did good would go into everlasting life.' — His strid- 
 ing across the ploughed field to ask a young ploughman in the dis- 
 tance why he had not been at church on Sunday, and ending his 
 talk with ' Now, you know, John, your wife don't want you lounging 
 in bed half a Sunday morning. You get up and come to church, 
 and let her get your Sunday dinner and make the house tidy, and 
 then you mind your child in the afternoon while she comes to 
 church.' These, and many other scenes, are brightly before me. 
 His never remitted visits to sick and helpless, his knowledge of 
 their every malady, and every change of their hopes and fears ; the 
 sternness and the gentleness which he alternated so easily with 
 foolish people ; the great respectfulness of his tone to old folks, 
 made the rectory and church at Eversley the centre of the life of 
 the men as well as their children and wives. Gipsies on Hartford- 
 bridge flats have told me they considered Eversley their parish 
 church wherever they went, and for his own parishioners, ' every 
 man jack of them,' as he said, was a steady church-goer. But it 
 was no wonder, for I never heard sermons with which more pains 
 had been taken than those which be made for his poor people. 
 There was so much, such deep teaching, conveyed in words that 
 
Lectures to Boys. 329 
 
 were so plain. One on the conversion of St. Paul, and one on the 
 Church, I shall never forget. The awe and reverence of his manner 
 of celebrating the service was striking to any one who knew only 
 his novels. Strangers several times asked me, who saw him at 
 service in our own school-chapel, who it was who was so rapt in 
 manner, who bowed so low at the Gloria and the name of Jesus 
 Christ ; and so I too was surprised when he asked me, before 
 preaching in his church, to use only the Invocation of the Trinity ; 
 and when I observed that he celebrated the communion in the east- 
 ward position. This he loyally gave up on the Purchas judgment, 
 ' because I mind the law,' but told me with what regret he discon- 
 tinued what from his ordination he had always done, believing it 
 the simple direction of the Prayer Book. 
 
 "An amusing incident happened once, which, I daresay, he 
 never heard of A sub -editor, of a famous rehgious paper, once 
 attended a chapel service at Welhngton, when Mr. Kingsley 
 preached, and then withdrew his son's name from our list, and pre- 
 pared a leading article upon a supposed head-master, whose doc- 
 trine and manner were so ' high.' 
 
 "What always struck me in him was the care and pains which 
 he took with all that he undertook. Nothing was hurried, or 
 slurred, or dashing. 'I can tell you, Pve spared no trouble upon 
 it,' he said, when we thanked him for the beautiful sermon on 
 ' Wisdom and her seven pillars,' wlaich he made for one of our 
 days.* 
 
 " In the readiest and yet most modest way he helped us wonder- 
 fully. His presence looking on, helped our games into shape when 
 we began with fifty raw little boys, and our football exploits, twelve 
 years after, were as dear to him as to his son ; ' the Kingsley ' 
 steeple-chase was the event of the year. But in far higher ways 
 he helped us. He wrote an admirable paper for us, which was 
 widely circulated, on School Museums ; he prevailed on the Royal 
 College of Surgeons, on Lady Franklin, and other friends, to 
 present the boys with many exquisite natural history specimens, 
 and started all our collections. 
 
 " His lectures (of which I trust some of his notes exist) on 
 natural history, and two on geology, were some of the most bril- 
 liant things I ever heard. Facts and theories, and speculations, 
 and imaginations of what had been and might be, simply riveted 
 the attention of 200 or 300 boys for an hour and a half or two 
 hours, and many good proverbs of life sparkled among these. 
 Their great effect was that they roused so nuich interest. At the 
 same time his classification of facts such as the radiation of plants 
 (Heather for instance) from geographical centres, gave substantial 
 grounds for the work which he encouraged. ' Let us make a be- 
 
 * Published in " Discipline and other Sermons." 
 
;^^o Charles Kingsley. 
 
 ginning by knowing one little thing well, and getting roused as to 
 what else is to be known.' 
 
 " Nothing was more delightful too, to our boys, than the way in 
 which he would come and make a little speech at the end of other 
 occasional winter lectures, Mr. Lowne's or Mr. Henslow's, or 
 about balloons, or, above all, when, at the close of a lecture 
 of Mr. Barnes's, he harangued us in pure Dorset dialect, to the sur- 
 prise and delight of the Dorsetshire poet. 
 
 " In our many happy talks we scarcely ever agreed in our esti- 
 mate of niediceval character or literature, but I learnt much from 
 him. When even St. PJernard was not appreciated by him, it is 
 not surprising that much of the life of those centuries was repul- 
 sive, and its religious practice ' pure Buddhism,' as he used to say. 
 At the same time, I never shall forget how he turned over on 
 a person who was declaiming against ' idolatry.' ' Let me tell you, 
 sir,' (he said with that forcible stammer), ' that if you had had 
 a chance you would have done the same, and worse. The first 
 idols were black stones, meteoric stones. And if you'd been a 
 poor naked fellow, scratching up the ground with your nails, when a 
 great lump of pyrites had suddenly half buried itself in the ground 
 within three yards of you, with a horrid noise and smell, don't you 
 think you'd have gone down on your knees to it, and begged it not 
 to do it again, and smoothed it and oiled it, and anything else ?' 
 
 " Greek life and feeling was dear to him in itself, and usually he 
 was penetrated with thankfulness that it formed so large a part of 
 education. 
 
 " ' From that and from the Bible, boys learn what must be learnt 
 among the grandest moral and spiritual reproofs of what is base. 
 Nothing so fearful as to leave curiosity unslaked to help itself.' 
 At other times he doubted. Still, if I measure rightly, he doubted 
 only when he was so possessed with the forest ardor, that he said, 
 'All politics, all discussions, all philosophies of Europe, are so in- 
 finitely little in comparison with those trees out there in the West 
 Indies. Don't you think the brain is a fungoid growth? O ! if I 
 could only find an artist to paint a tree as I see it ! ' In mention- 
 ing last this keen enjoyment of his in the earth as it is, I seem to 
 have inverted the due order : but I see it as a solid, truthful back- 
 ground in his soul of all the tenderness and lovingness, and spiritual 
 strength in which he walked about ' convinced,' as a friend once 
 said to me of him, ' that, as a man and as a priest, he had got the 
 devil under, and that it was his bounden duty to keep him there.' " 
 
 LF.CTURF. AT WELLINGTON COLLEGE. 
 yinie 25, 1S63. 
 
 " Young Gentlemen, 
 
 " your head-master. Dr. Benson, has done me the honor of 
 asking me to say a little to you to-night about the Museum which 
 
The Art of Learning. 331 
 
 is in contemplation, connected with this College, and how far you 
 yourselves can help it. 
 
 " I assure 'you I do so gladly. Anything which brings me in 
 contact Avith the boys of Wellington College, much more of help- 
 ing forward their improvement in the slightest degree, I shall 
 always look upon as a very great pleasure, and a very serious duty. 
 
 '• I.et me tell you, then, what I think you may do for the 
 Museum, and how you may improve yourselves by doing it, with- 
 out interfering with your regular work. Of course, that must 
 never be interfered with. You are sent here to work. All of you 
 here, I suppose, depend for your success in life on your own exer- 
 tions. None of you are born (luckily for you) with a silver spoon 
 in your mouths, to eat flapdoodle at other people's expense, and 
 live in luxury and idleness. Work you must, and I don't doubt 
 that work you will, and let nothing interfere with your work. 
 
 " The first thing for a boy to learn, after obedience and moral- 
 ity, is a habit of observation. A habit of using your eyes. It 
 matters little what you use them on, provided you do use them. 
 
 " They say knowledge is power, and so it is. But only the 
 knowledge which you get^^by observation. Many a man is very 
 learned in books, and has read for years and years, and yet he is 
 useless. He knows about all. sorts of things but he can't do them. 
 When you set him to do w^ork, he makes a mess of it. He is what 
 is called a pedant : because he has not used his eyes and ears. 
 He has lived in books. He knows nothing of the world about 
 him, or of men and their ways, and therefore, he. is left behind in 
 the race of life by many a shrewd fellow who is not half as book- 
 learned as he : but who is a shrewd fellow — who keeps his eyes 
 open — who is always picking up new facts, and turning them to 
 some particular use. 
 
 " Now, I don't mean to undervalue book-learning. No man 
 less. All ought to have some of it, and the time which you spend 
 here on it is not a whit too long ; but the great use of a public- 
 school education to you, is, not so much to teach you things as to 
 teach you how to learn. To give you the noble art of learning, 
 wliich you can use for yourselves in afterdife on any matter to 
 which you choose to turn your mind. And what does the art of 
 learning consist in? First and foremost, in the art of observing. 
 That is, the boy who uses his e)'es best on his book, and observes 
 the words and letters of his lesson most accurately and carefully, 
 that is the boy who learns his lesson best, 1 presume. 
 
 " You know, as well as I, how one fellow will sit staring at his 
 book for an hour without knowing a word about it, while another 
 will learn the thing in a quarter of an hour, and why ? Because 
 one has actually not seen the words. He has been thinking of 
 something else, looking out of the window, repeating the words to 
 himself like a parrot. The other fellow has simply, as we say, 
 
332 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 ' looked sharp.' He has looked at the lesson with his whole mind, 
 seen it, and seen into it, and therefore knows all about it. 
 
 " Therefore, I say, that everything which helps a boy's powers 
 of observation helps his power of learning ; and I know from ex- 
 perience that nothing helps that so much as the study of the 
 world about you, and especially of natural history. To be accus- 
 tomed to watch for curious objects, to know in a moment when 
 you have come on anything new — which is observation. To be 
 quick at seeing when things are like, and when unlike — which is 
 classification. All that must, and I well know does, help to make 
 a boy shrevyd, earnest, accurate, ready for whatever may happen. 
 When we were little and good, a long time ago, we used to have 
 a jolly old book called ' Evenings at Home,' in which was a great 
 story called Eyes and No Eyes, and that story was of more use to 
 me than any dozen other stories I ever read. 
 
 " A regular old-fashioned formal story it is, but a right good one, 
 and thus it begins : — 
 
 " ' Well, Robert, where have you been walking this afternoon ? ' 
 said Mr. Andrews, to one of his pupils, at the close of a holiday. 
 Oh, Robert had been to Broom Heath, and round to Campmount, 
 and home through the meadows. But it was very dull, he hardly 
 saw a single person. He had rather by half have gone by the 
 turnpike road. 
 
 " But where is William ? 
 
 " Oh, William started with him, but he was so tedious, always 
 stopping to look at this thing and that, that he would rather walk 
 alone, and so went on. 
 
 " Presently in comes Master William, dressed no doubt as we 
 wretched boys used to be forty years ago, frill collar, and tight 
 skeleton monkey jacket, and tight trousers buttoned over it, and 
 not down to his ankles — a pair of low shoes — which always came 
 off if stept into heavy ground — and terribly dirty and wet he is, 
 but he never had such a pleasant walk in his life, and has brought 
 home a handkerchief full of curiosities. 
 
 " He has got a piece of mistletoe, and wants to know what it is, 
 and seen a woodpecker and a wheat-ear, and got strange flowers 
 off the heath," and hunted a peewit because he thought its wing was 
 broken, till of course it led him into a bog and wet he got ; but he 
 did not mind, for in the bog he fell in with" an old man cuttmg 
 turf, who told him all about turf cutting, and gave him an adder ; 
 and then he went up a hill, and saw a grand prospect, and wanted 
 to go again and make out the geography of the county by Carey's 
 old county map — which was our only map in those days ; and be- 
 cause the place was called Campmount, he looked for a Roman 
 camp and found one ; and then he went to the ruin, and saw 
 twenty things more, and so on, and so on, till he had brought home 
 curiosities enough and thoughts enough to last him a week. 
 
Eyes and No Eyes. 2)2)o 
 
 "Whereon Mr. Andrews, who seems a sensible old gentleman 
 enough, tells him all about his curiosities ; and then it turns out 
 that Master William has been over exactly the same ground as 
 Master Robert, who saw nothing at all. 
 
 " Whereon says Mr. Andrews, wisel}- enough in his solemn, old- 
 fashioned way, ' So it is. One man walks through the world with 
 his eyes open, and another with them shut ; and upon this difference 
 depends all the superiority of knowledge which one acquires over 
 the other. 1 have known sailors who have been in all the quarters 
 of the world, and could tell you nothing but the signs of the tippling 
 houses, and the price and quality of the liquor. On the other hand, 
 Franklin could not cross the Channel without making observations 
 useful to mankind. While many a vacant thoughtless person is 
 whirled througli Europe without gaining a single idea worth cross- 
 ing the street for, the observing eye and inquiring mind find matter 
 of improvement and delight in every ramble. Do you then, William, 
 continue to make use of your eyes ; and ,you, Robert, learn that 
 eyes were given you to use.' 
 
 "And when I read that story as a little boy, I said to myself, I 
 will be Mr. Eyes ; I will not be Mr. No Eyes, and Mr. Eyes I have 
 tried to be ever since ; and Mr. Eyes, I advise you, every one of 
 you, to be, if you wish to be happy and successful. 
 
 "Ah, my dear boys, if you knew the idle, vacant, useless hfe 
 which too many young men lead when their day's work is done, 
 and done spiritlessly, and therefore done ill, having nothing to fall 
 back on but the theatre, or billiards, or the gossip at their club, or 
 if they be out in a hot country, everlasting pale ale ; and con- 
 tinually tempted to sin, and shame, and ruin by their own idleness, 
 while they miss opportunities of making valuable discoveries, of 
 distinguishing themselves, and helping themselves forward in life ; 
 then you would make it a duty to get a habit of observing, no 
 matter what you observe, and of having at least some healthy and 
 rational pursuit with which to fill up your leisure hours. 
 
 " The study of natural history, of antiquities, of geography, of 
 chemistry, any study which will occupy your minds, may be the 
 means, whether out on some foreign station, or home here at work 
 in London, of keeping you out of temptation and misery, of which, 
 thank Ood, you as yet know nothing. 
 
 " I am happy to hear that there are many of you who don't need 
 this advice, some who are working well at chemistry, some who 
 have already begun to use your eyes, and to make collections of 
 plants, insects, and birds' eggs. 
 
 " That is good as far as it goes. As for bird-nesting, I think it a 
 manly and excellent pursuit;* no one has worked harder at it 
 
 * lie never allowed his own boys to take nests, or more than one, or at most 
 two eggs out of a nest where there were several, so that the mother bird might 
 not miss them. 
 
334 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 than I, when I was young, or should hke better to go bird-nesting 
 now, if I was not getting rather too stiff and heavy to bark up to a 
 hawk's nest. 
 
 " But see. Because every boy collects for himself, there is a great 
 deal of unnecessary destruction of eggs, especially of the small soft- 
 billed birds, which are easiest got, and are the very ones which 
 ought to be spared, on account of their great usefulness to the 
 farmer in destroying insects ; and next — Pray, where will nine-tenths 
 of those eggs be seen a few days hence?, smashed, and in the dust- 
 hole, and so of the insects and plants. 
 
 "Now it seems to me, that if fellows were collecting for a Col- 
 lege Museum, instead of every one for himself, it would save a great 
 deal of waste, and save the things themselves likewise. 
 
 " As for a fellow hking to say, 'I have got this, and 1 will keep 
 It to myself, I like to have a better collection than any one else,' 
 that is natural enough ; but like a great many natural things, rather 
 a low feeling, if you will excuse my saying so. Which is better, to 
 keep a thing to yourselves, locked up in your own drawers, or to 
 put them into the common stock, for the pleasure of every one ? 
 and which is really more honor to you, to be able to say to two or 
 three of your friends, ' I have got an egg which you have not,' or to 
 have the ^gg^ or whatever else it may be, in a public collection, to 
 be seen by every one, by boys, years hence, after you are grown up ? 
 For myself, I can't think of a better way of keeping up a corporate 
 feeling in the college, and binding the different generations, as they 
 succeed each other, together in one, than a museum of this kind, 
 in which boys should see the names of those who have gone before 
 them, as having presented this or that curious object. 
 
 " So strongly do I feel it, that I have asked Dr. Benson's leave 
 to give two prizes every year. One for the most rare and curious 
 thing of any kind — whether in natural history, geology, antiquities, 
 or anything else fit for a museum, which has been bond fide found 
 by the boy himself; and' a second prize for the most curious thing 
 contributed by a boy, never mind how he has got it, provided only 
 that he has not bought it, for against that there are objections. 
 That would give the boys with plenty of money a chance which the 
 others had not. 
 
 " But there are so many of you who have relations abroad, or in the 
 country, that you will be able to obtain from them rare and curious 
 objects which you could not collect yourselves, and I advise you 
 to turn sturdy beggars, and get hold (by all fair means) of anything 
 and everything worth putting in the Museum, and out of which you 
 can coax or beg anybody whatsoever, old or young. 
 ' • ' And, mind, you will have help. I myself am ready to give as 
 many curious things as I can, out of my own collection ; and if 
 this Museum had been started ten or twenty years ago, I could 
 have given 3^ou a great deal more, but my collections have been 
 
Holidays and hozv to Employ Them. 335 
 
 too much and often spoilt and broken, and at last the remnant 
 given away in despair, just because I had no museum to ]xit them 
 in. If there had been one where I was at school, 1 could have 
 saved for it hundreds of different things which are now in dust- 
 holes in half-a-dozen counties, and also should have had the heart 
 to collect many things which I have let pass me, simply because 
 I did not care to keep them, having nowhere to put them, and so 
 it will be with you. 
 
 " I only mention myself as an example of what I have been 
 saying. But it is not to me merely that you must look for help. I 
 am happy to say that you will be helped by many (I believe) real 
 men of science, who will send the Museum such things as are wanted 
 to start it well. To start it well with ' Typical Forms,' by which 
 you can arrange and classify what you find. They will as it were 
 stake out the ground for you, and you must fill up the gaps, and I 
 don't doubt you will do it, and well. 
 
 " I am sure you can, if you will see now here is an opportunity 
 of making a beginning — during the next vacation. 
 
 " Dr. Benson has said that he will be ready to receive contribu- 
 tions from scientific men after the holidays. But he has guaranteed 
 for you in return, that some of you, at least, will begin collecting 
 for the museum during the holidays. 
 
 " What can you do better ? I am sure your holidays would be 
 much happier for it. I don't think boys' holidays are in general so 
 very happy. Mine used to be : but why ? Because the moment 
 I got hoiue, I went on with the same work in which I employed 
 every half-holiday : natural history and geology. But many boys 
 seem to me in the holidays very much like Jack when he is paid 
 oft" at Portsmouth. He is suddenly free from the discipline of ship- 
 board. He has plenty of money in his pocket, and he sets to, to 
 have a lark, and makes a fool of himself till his money is spent ; and 
 then he is very poor, and sick, and seedy, and cross, and disgusted 
 with himself, and longs to get a fresh ship and go to work again — 
 as a great man}- fellows, I suspect, long for the holidays to be 
 over. They suddenly change the regular discipline of work for 
 complete idleness, and after the first burst is over, they get very 
 often tired, and stupid, and cross, because they have nothing to do, 
 except eating fruit and tormenting their sisters. 
 
 " How much belter for them to have something to do like this. 
 Something which will not tire their minds, because it is quite differ- 
 ent from their school work, and therefore a true amusement, which 
 lets them cut the muses for awhile ; and something, too, which 
 they can take a pride in, because it is done of their own free will, 
 and they can look forward to putting their gains in the Museum 
 when they come back, and saying, ' This is my holiday work, this 
 is what I have won for the College since I have been away.' 
 
 " Take this hint for your holidays, and take it too for after-life. 
 
^7,6 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 For I am sure if you get up an interest for this Museum here, you 
 will not lose it when you go away. 
 
 " Many of you will go abroad, perhaps spend much of your lives 
 abroad, and I am sure you will use the oi^portunities you will then 
 have to enrich the Museum of the College, and be its benefactors 
 each according to your powers throughout your lives. 
 
 "But there is one interest, young gentlemen, which I have more ■ 
 at heart even than the interest of Wellington College, much as I 
 love it, for its own sake and for the sake of that great Prince be- 
 neath whose fostering shadow it grew up, and to whom this College, 
 like me myself, owes more than we shall either of us ever repay ; 
 yet there is an interest which I have still more at heart, and that is 
 the interest of Science herself. 
 
 " Ah, that I could make you understand what an interest that is. 
 The interest of the health, the wealth, the wisdom of generations 
 yet unborn. Ah, that I could make you understand what a noble 
 thing it is to be men of science ; rich with a sound learning' which 
 man can neither give nor take away ; useful to thousands whom 
 you have never seen, but who may be blessing your name hundreds 
 of years after you are mouldering in the grave, the equals and the 
 companions of the noblest and the most powerful. Taking a rank 
 higher than even Queen Victoria herself can give, by right of that 
 knowledge which is power. 
 
 "But I must not expect you to see that yet. All I can do is to 
 hope that my fancy may be fulfilled hereafter, that this Museum 
 may be the starting point of a school of scientific men, few it may 
 be in number, but strong, because bound together by common 
 affection for their College, and their Museum, and each other. Scat- 
 tered perhaps over the world, but communicating their discoveries 
 to each other without jealousy or dispute, and sending home their 
 prizes to enrich the stores of their old Museum, and to teach the 
 generations of lads who will be learning here, while they are grown 
 men, doing the work of men over the world. 
 
 " Ah, that it might so happen. Ah, that even one great man of 
 science might be bred up in these halls, one man who should 
 discover a great truth, or do a great deed for the benefit of his 
 fellow men. ' 
 
 " If this College and Museum could produce but one master of 
 natural knowledge, like Murchison or Lyell, Owen or Huxley, 
 Faraday or Grove, or even one great discoverer, like Ross, or 
 Sturt, or Speke, who has just solved the mystery of ages, the 
 mystery after which Lucan makes Julius Ceesar long, as the highest 
 summit of his ambition : to leave others to conquer nations, while 
 he himself sought for the hidden sources of the Nile. Or, if it ever 
 should produce one man able and learned enough to do such a 
 deed as that of my friend Clements Markham, who penetrated, in 
 the face of danger and death, the trackless forests of the Andes, to 
 
Darivin Conquering. ^2)1 
 
 bring home thence the plants of Peruvian bark, which, transplanted 
 into Hindostan, will save the lives of tens of thousands — English and 
 Hindoos — then, young gentlemen, all the trouble, all the care, 
 which shall have been spent on this Museum — I had almost said, 
 upon this whole College, will have been well repaid." 
 
 TO SIR CHARLES LYELL, F.G.S., ETC., ETC, 
 
 EvERSLEY, April 28, 1863. 
 " My dear Sir Charles, 
 
 " I have at last got through your big book* — big in all senses, 
 for it is as full as an egg, and as pregnant. But I have read specially 
 the chapter on the Analogy of Language and Natural History, and 
 am delighted. I had no suspicion that so complete a case could 
 be made out. And it does not seem to me a mere ' illustration ' of 
 the deceptive kind used in Scotch sermons, whereby * * * * used 
 to make anything prove anything else ; but a real analogue, of the 
 same inductive method applied to a set of facts homologous, though 
 distinct. 
 
 " I am very anxious to see a Museum established at the Welling- 
 ton College, for training the boys in the knowledge of nature, and 
 in the pursuits of natural science. As most of the boys go abroad 
 in after-life, it seems to open a ^reat door for your scheme, of hav- 
 ing educated gentlemen-naturalists spread abroad, and in commu- 
 nication with each other and with the societies at home, and I shall 
 soon go shamelessly a-begging for typical forms of every kind, the 
 intermediate gaps to be filled up by the boys themselves." 
 
 TO rev.' F. D. MAURICE. 
 
 " I am very busy working out points of Natural Theology, by the 
 strange light of Huxley, Darwin, and Lyell. I think I shall come 
 to something worth having before I have done. But I am not go- 
 ing to reach into fruit this seven years, for this reason : The state 
 of the scientific mind is most curious ; Darwin is conquering every-- 
 where, and rushing in Hke a flood, by the mere force of truth and fact. 
 The one or two who hold out are forced to try all sorts of subter- 
 fuges as to fact, or else by evoking the odium theologicum 
 
 "But they find that now they have got rid of an interfering God 
 — a master-magician, as I call it — they have to choose between the 
 absolute empire of accident, and a living, immanent, ever-working 
 God. 
 
 " Grove's truly great mind has seized the latter alternative al- 
 ready, on the side of chemistry. Ansted, in his Rede Lecture, 
 is feeling for it in geology ; and so is Lyell ; and I, in my small 
 
 * "Antiquity of Man." 
 22 
 
^^8 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 way of zoology, am urging it on Huxley, Rolleston, and Bates, who 
 has just discovered facts about certain butterflies in the valley of 
 the Amazon, which have tilled me, and, I trust, others, with utter 
 astonishment and awe. Verily, God is great, or else there is no 
 God at all. 
 
 " That mystery of generation has been felt in all ages to be the 
 crux, the meeting point of heaven and earth, of God or no God ; 
 and it is being felt so now more intensely than ever. All turns on 
 
 it So does human thought come round again in cycles 
 
 to the same pomt ; but, thank (-od, each time with more and 
 sounder knowledge. All will be ?ll, if we will but remember 
 what is written : ' He that believeth will not make haste.' 
 
 " But I ought to say, that by far the best forward step in Natural 
 Theology has been made by an American, Dr. Asa Gray,* who 
 has said better than I can all that I want to say. 1 send you his 
 pamphlet, entreating you to read it, especially pp. 28-49, which 
 are in my eyes unanswerable. 
 
 "A passage between me and * * * * (we are most intimate and 
 confidential, though more utterly ojjposed in thought than he is to 
 the general rehgious or other public), may amuse you. He says 
 somewhere, ' the ape's brain is almost exactly like the man's, and 
 so is his throat. See, then, what enormously different results may 
 be produced by the sHghtest difference in structure ! ' I tell him, 
 'not a bit ; you are putting the cart before the horse, like the rest 
 of the world. If you won't believe my great new doctrine (which, 
 by the bye, is as. old as the Greeks), that souls secrete their bodies, 
 
 as snails do shells, you will remain in outer darkness 
 
 I know an ape's brain and throat are almost exactly like a mart's — 
 and what does that prove ? That the ape is a fool and a muff, who 
 has tools very nearly as good as a man's, and yet can't use thetii, 
 while the man can do the most wonderful thing with to'ols ve^-y 
 little better than an ape's. 
 
 " ' If men had had ape's bodies they would have got on very 
 tolerably with them, because they had men's souls to work the 
 bodies with. While an ape's soul in a man's body would be only 
 a rather more filthy nuisance than he is now. You fancy that the 
 axe uses the workman, I say that the workman uses the axe, and 
 that though he can work rather better with a good tool than a bad 
 one, the great point is, what sort of workman is he — an ape-soul or 
 a human soul ? ' 
 
 * When in America, in 1874, Mr. Kingsley had the happiness of making ac- 
 quaintance with Professor Asa Gray, who among many other botanical works 
 had lately published his admirable little book for the young on "Climbing 
 Plants." In an important work just published in Boston (1876) on Darwinism, 
 the Professor has made quotations from Mr. Kingsley's " Westminster Ser- 
 mons." 
 
Letters to Htixley and Darwin. 339 
 
 " Whereby you may perceive tliat I am not going astray into 
 materialism as yet." 
 
 TO PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 
 
 EVERSLEY, June 28, 1863. 
 
 " Don't take the trouble to answer this. In re great toes of apes 
 and men. Have you ever remarked the variableness of the hallux 
 in our race ? 
 
 " The old Greek is remarkable for a small hallux and large second 
 toe, reaching beyond it, and t'.At is held (and rightly) as the most 
 perfect form of the human foot. But in all modern Indo-Gothic 
 races is it the same ? In all children which I have seen (and I 
 have watched carefully) the hallux is far larger and longer in propor- 
 tion .to the other toes than in the Greek statues. This is not caused 
 (as conunonly supposed) by wearing shoes, for it holds in the Irish 
 children who have never worn them, 
 
 " Now surely such a variation m the size of the hallux gives 
 probability at least to your deductions from its great variability in 
 the apes. 
 
 " Science owes you the honor of having demonstrated that the 
 hind hand of the apes is not a hand, but a true foot. Think over 
 what I have said." 
 
 TO CHARLES DARWIN, ESQ., F.R.S., &C. 
 
 EVERSLEY, June 14, 1863. 
 
 " Ihave been reading with delight and instruction your paper on 
 climbing plants. 
 
 "Your explanation of an old puzzle of mine — Lathyrus Nissoha 
 — is a master-piece. Nothing can be more conclusive. That of 
 the -filament at the petiole-end of the bean is equally satisfactory. 
 
 " Ah, that I could begin to study nature anew, now that you 
 have made it to me a live thing, not a dead collection of names. 
 But my work lies elsewhere now. Your work, nevertheless, hejps 
 mine at every turn. It is better that the division of labor should 
 be complete, and that each man should do only one thing, while 
 he looks on, as he finds time, at what others are doing, and so 
 gets laws from other sciences which he can apply, as I do, to my 
 own." 
 
 TO H, BATES, ESQ., F.R.S. 
 
 EVERSLEY, 1863. 
 
 " There is no pliysical cause discovered by the microscope why 
 ova should develope each according to its kind. To a philosopher, 
 a hen bringing forth a crocodile would not be so wonderful, as 
 the hundred thousands of hens never bringing forth any thing but 
 hens. 
 
340 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 " To talk of its being done by laws impressed on matter, is to use 
 mere words. How can a law be impressed on matter? Is it in 
 the matter? Is it impressed thereon as a seal on wax? Or even 
 as a polar arrangement of parts on a solid ? If so. it is discoverable 
 by the microscope. But if 'it' were found, that would not be a 
 Law, but only a present and temporary phenomenon — an arrange- 
 ment or formation of particles for the time being — not the Law or 
 formative cause thereof; and we should be just as far from the 
 ' causa causativa ' of the development as ever. I hope I am not 
 boring you by all this. You will see whither it is tending ; and it 
 is the result of long and painful thought, in which I have been try- 
 ing to bring my little logic and metaphysic to bear — not on physical 
 science herself, for she stands on her own ground, microscope in 
 hand, and will allow no intruder, however venerable ; but on the 
 nomenclature of physical science, which is to me painfully confused, 
 from a want in our scientific men of that logical training by which 
 things are rightly named, though they cannot be discovered thereby. 
 And this common metaphor of 'a Law imprest on matter' is one 
 which must be regarded merely as a metaphor, and an approxima- 
 tive symbol, useless for accurate science, or we shall get into hor- 
 rible confusions of speech and thought about material causes and 
 their limits, especially now when Darwin, &c., on one hand, and 
 Lyell, &c., on another, have shown us what an enormous amount 
 of the world's work is done by causes strictly material. 
 
 " For myself, I agree with Dr. Asa Gray, in his admirable pam- 
 phlet on Darwin, that the tendency of physical science is ' not 
 towards the omnipotence of Matter, but to the omnipotence of 
 Spirit. And I am inclined to regard the development of an ovum 
 according to kind as the result of a strictly immaterial and spiritual 
 agency." .... 
 
 We now turn from science to fishing, and venture to insert, for 
 those who never met him in his genial merry moods, a letter or 
 tw6 written in the joy of his heart when for a short moment all 
 care was cast away, and he became a boy again. 
 
 TO J. A. FROUDE, ESQ. 
 
 White Hart, Whitchurch, May 27, 1863. 
 
 '■'• And is this the way you expect to get fishing when you want 
 it, axing for it with fierce imi^ortunity, and then running away, and 
 leaving your disconsolate partner to terrify himself into fiddlestrings 
 with fancying what was the matter? .... Well .... 
 but you have lost a lovely day's fishing. The first was not much, 
 owing to the furious rain ; but yesterday I went up the side stream 
 in the Park, and after the rain it was charming. They took first a 
 
Toads in a Hole. 341 
 
 little black gnat, and then settled to a red palmer and the conquer- 
 ing turkey-brown, with which we killed so many here before. My 
 beloved black alder they did not care for — for why ? She was not 
 out. The stream was not as good as when we fished it last, owing 
 to extreme drought. But I kept seven brace of good fish, and 
 threw in twelve. None over \\ lb. though. After two came a 
 ferocious storm, and chop of wind to W., and after that I did noth- 
 ing. Oh ! I wish you had been with me ; but if you will be good 
 you shall come down week after next, and Mrs. Alder will be out 
 then, and perhaps a few drakes on the lower shallow, and oh, won't 
 we pitch into the fish ? Lord P. is gone to Bath, and Lady P. to 
 High Clere So I am going home by mid-day train." 
 
 TO REV. E. PITCAIRN CAMPBELL. 
 
 EVERSLEY, May 29, 1863. 
 
 " By the strangest coincidence, Sir Charles Bunbury, a great 
 geologist and botanist, and I were talking over this very evening 
 Sir Alex. Gordon Gumming' s toads in a hole. I promised him to 
 write to Sir A. on the strength of his kind messages to me, for 
 further information ; and behold, on coming home from a dinner- 
 party at General Napier's, your letter anent them ! Verily, great 
 things are in these toads' insides, or so strange a coincidence would 
 not have happened. 
 
 " Now, I say to you what I said to him. Toads are rum brutes. 
 Like all batrachians, they breathe through their skins, as well as 
 through their lungs. The instinct (as I have often proved) of the 
 little beggars an inch long, fresh from water and tadpoledom, is to 
 creep foolishly into the dirtiest hole they can find, in old walls, etc., 
 where 99 out of a 100 are eaten by rats and beetles, as I hold — or 
 else the world would have been toadied to utter disgust and horror 
 long ago. Some of these may get down into cracks in rocks, and 
 never get back. The holes may be silted up by mud and sand. 
 The toad may exist and grow in that hole for Heaven knows how 
 long, I dare say for centuries, for I don't think he would want food 
 to grow ; oxygen and water he must have, but a very little would do. 
 
 " Accorduigly, all the cases of toads in a hole which I have in- 
 vestigated have been either in old walls or limestone rocks, which 
 are porous as a sponge, absorb water and air, and give them out 
 slowly, but enough to keep a cold-blooded batrachian alive. 
 
 " Now, Sir Alex. Gordon Cumming's toads have puzzled me. I 
 have read all that he has written, and thought over it, comparing 
 it with all I know, and I think I know almost every case on record, 
 and I am confounded. Will you ask him for me what is the nature 
 of this conglomerate in which the toads are ? 
 
 " I said to-night I would not believe in toads anywhere but in 
 limestone or chalk, i.e., in strongly hydraulic strata. Sir Charles 
 
342 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 Bunbury corrected me, by saying that certain volcanic rocks, 
 amygdaloid basalts, were as full of holes as limestone, and as 
 strongly hydraulic, and so toads might live in them. 
 
 ''If Sir A. G. C. would send us a piece of the rock in which the 
 toads lie, we could tell him more. But that the toads are contem- 
 poraneous with the rock, or have got there any way save through 
 cracks now filled up, and so overlooked in the blasting and 
 cutting, is, I believe, impossible, and cannot be — though God 
 alone knows what cannot be — and so I wait for further information. 
 
 "Oh, that I could accept Sir Alexander's most kind invitation, 
 and come and see the toads myself, let alone killing the salmon ! 
 But I cannot. 
 
 "We must send up one of our F.G.S.'s to see into the mat- 
 ter 
 
 '•'Your flies are to me wonderful. I will try them on Itchen 
 next week. But I have been killing well in burning sun, and 
 water as clear as air, on flies which are to them as bumble bees." 
 
 In the summer of this year the Prince and Princess of Wales 
 honored the Oxford Commemoration with their presence, and ac- 
 cording to custom His Royal Highness sent in previously the 
 names of those on whom he wished the University to bestow the 
 honorary degree of D.C.L. Among those names was that of 
 Charles Kingsley, who was one of the Prince's private chaplains. 
 He had several warm friends in the University, among others 
 Dean Stanley (then Canon of Christ Church), Max Miiller, &c., 
 who would have gladly seen this honor conferred on him ; but 
 among the extreme High Church party there were dissentient 
 voices; and the Professor of Hebrew took the lead in opposing 
 the degree on the ground of Mr. Kingsley' s published works, 
 especially "Hypatia," which he considered " ^« hmnoral book" 
 and one calculated to encourage young men in profligacy and false 
 doctrine — the very charge, in fact, that twelve years before had 
 been brought -against " Yeast " by an Oxford graduate of the same 
 party. If the vote in Convocation had been carried in Mr. Kings- 
 ley's favor, it would have been anything but unanimous, and a 
 threat being made of a " non placet " in the theatre at the time of 
 conferring the degree, his friends considerately advised him to re- 
 tire ; and he, in order to avoid disturbing the peace of the Univer- 
 sity on such an auspicious occasion, as considerately followed their 
 advice. The following year some of his Oxford friends chival- 
 rously offered to propose his name again for a distinction which he 
 
Colenso mid the Pentateuch. 343 
 
 would have valued as much as any man living ; but he declined, 
 saying that "it was an honor that must be given, not fought for," 
 and that till the imputation of immorality was withdrawn from his 
 book " Hypatia," he could not even in prospect accept the offer. 
 
 In 1866 Bishop Wilberforce, then Bishop of Oxford, wrote to ask 
 him to preach one of a course of sermons in the University in 
 Lent, but he declined that honor too on the same grounds as the 
 degree. 
 
 " I do not deny," he says in a letter to Dean Stanley, "a great 
 
 hankering for years past, after an Oxford D.C.L But 
 
 all these things are right, and come with a reason, and a purpose, 
 and a meaning ; and he who grumbles at them or at worse, be- 
 lieveth not (for the time being at least) in the Living God." 
 
 Again, to one who would have liked to see honor upon honor 
 showered upon him — " Pray, pray take what God does not send as 
 
 wi^/good for us, and trust Him to send us what is good " 
 
 And so, when a disappointment was over, he would root out the 
 memory of it before it had time to rankle in his mind and sow any 
 seed of envy or malice. He lived on a high level, and to keep 
 there he knew that he must crush down the unforgiving spirit 
 which springs from egotism in the hearts of less noble men. 
 Coupled with this, too, was not only his intense faith in the govern- 
 ment of God, as shown in the smallest as well as the most impor- 
 tant events of life, and in His education of His creatures, by each 
 and every one of these events, but a deep sense of his own unwor- 
 thiness, which made him content (a word he loved) with what he 
 had already as all too good for him. 
 
 Bishop Colenso' s work on the Pentateuch had lately appeared 
 and was the topic of general discussion, which led to his preaching 
 a series of sermons * on the subject to his own people at Eversley. 
 In a litter to Mr. Maurice, he said, in reference to the one on the 
 Credibility of the Plagues of Egypt and of miracles in general : — 
 
 " All this talk about the Pentateuch is making me feel its unique 
 value and divineness so much more than ever 1 did, that I burn to 
 say something worth hearing about it, and I cannot help hoping 
 that what I say may be listened to by some of those who know 
 that I shrink from no lengths in physical science I 
 
 * " Sermons ou the Pentateuch.'" Macmillan. 
 
344 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 am sure that science and the creeds will shake hands at last, if only 
 people will leave both alone, and I pray that by God's grace per- 
 chance I may help them to do so. 
 
 "My only fear is that people will fancy me a verbal inspiration- 
 monger, which, as you know, I am not ; and that I shall, in due 
 time, suffer the fate of m-ost who see both sides, and be considered 
 by both a hypocrite and a traitor." .... 
 
 TO REV. F. D. MAURICE. 
 
 September i8, 1863. 
 
 " I am very anxious to know what you think of Stanley's 
 ' Lectures on the Jewish Church.' I have read them with the 
 greatest pleasure and comfort, and look on the book as the best 
 antidote to Colenso which I have yet seen, because it fights him 
 on his own ground, and yet ignore? him and his negative form of 
 thought. 
 
 " I think the book will give comfort to thousands, and make 
 them take up their Bibles once more with heart and hope. I do 
 
 trust that you feel as I do about it I have been so 
 
 ' run about ' with parish work and confirmation work, that I have 
 neglected to tell you how deeply I feel your approval of my ser- 
 mons. 1 do hope and trust that they may do a little good. I find 
 that the Aldershot and Sandhurst mustachios come to hear these 
 discourses of mine every Sunday — and my heart goes out to them 
 in great yearnings. Dear fellows — when I see them in the pews, 
 and the smock frocks in the open seats, I feel as if I was not quite 
 useless in the world, and that I was beginning to fulfil the one idea 
 of my life, to tell Esau that he has a birthright as well as Jacob. I 
 do feel very deeply the truth which John Mill has set forth in a one- 
 sided way in his new book on Liberty — pp. 88-90, I think, about 
 the past morahty of Christendom having taken a somewhat abject 
 tone, and requiring, as a complement, the old Pagan virtues, which 
 our forefathers learnt from Plutarch's Lives, and of which the 
 memory still lingers in our classical education. I do not believe, 
 of course, that the want really exists ; but that it has been created, 
 principally by the celibate misanthropy of the patristic and mediae- 
 val church. But I have to preach the divineness of the whole 
 manhood, and am content to be called a Muscular Christian, or 
 any other impertinent name, by men who little dream of the weak- 
 ness of character, sickness of body, and misery of mind, by which 
 I have bought what little I know of the human heart. However, 
 there is no good in talking about oneself. 
 
 " I am so obliged to you for your kindness to our Maurice. I 
 hope you were satisfied with your godson. He is a very good boy, 
 and makes us very happy." 
 
The Waterbabies. 345 
 
 The " Waterbabies " came out this year, dedicated " To my 
 youngest son, Grenville Arthur, and to all other good httle boys : " 
 
 '* Come read me my riddle, each good little man, 
 If you camiot read it, no grown ujj folk can." 
 
 The " renvoi," in the first edition, was suppressed in the second, 
 lest it should be misunderstood and give needless offence : — 
 
 " Hence unbelieving Sadducees, 
 And less believing Pharisees, 
 With dull conventionalities ; 
 And leave a country muse at ease 
 To play at leap-frog, if she please. 
 With children and realities." 
 
 Perhaps it was the last book, except his West Indian one, " At 
 Last," that he wrote with any real ease, and which was purely a 
 labor of love, for his brain was getting fatigued, his health fluc- 
 tuated, and the work of the Professorship, which was a constant 
 weight on his mind, wore him sadly. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Aged 45, 46. 
 
 Illness — Controversy with Dr. Newman — Apologia — Journey to the South of 
 France — Biarritz — Pau — An Earthquake — Narbonne — Sermons in London 
 and at Windsor — Enclosure of Eversley Common — University Sermons at 
 Cambridge — -Mr. John Stuart Mill's London Committee — Letter on the Trinity 
 — Letter on Subscription — Luther and Deraonology — Visit of Queen Emma 
 of the Sandwich Islands to Eversley Rectory and Wellington College — The 
 Mammoth on Ivory — Death of King Leopold — Lines written at Windsor 
 Castle. 
 
 The severe illness and great physical depression with which this 
 year began were a bad preparation for the storm of controversy 
 which burst upon Mr. Kingsley, and which eventually produced 
 Dr. Newman's famous " Apologia pro vita sua." That controversy 
 is before the world, and no allusion would be made to it in these 
 pages, but^rom the fear that silence might be misconstrued into a 
 tacit acknowledgment of defeat on the main question. This fact, 
 however, may be mentioned, that information conveyed to Mr. 
 Kingsley that Dr. Newman was in bad health, depressed, and 
 averse from polemical discussion, coupled with Dr. Newman's own 
 words in the early part of the correspondence, in which he seemed 
 to deprecate controversy, appealed irresistibly to Mr. Kingsley' s 
 consideration, and put him to a great disadvantage in the issue. 
 Still throughout there were many who held with him — among them 
 some personal- friends in the Roman Catholic Church. Many 
 private letters, too, of generous sympathy from strangers came to 
 cheer him on — some from laymen — some from clergymen — some 
 even from workingmen, who having come in contact with the teach- 
 ing of Roman Catholic priests, knew the truth of Mr. Kingsley's 
 statements. Last but not least, a pamphlet was published by the 
 Rev. Frederick Meyrick, entkled, "But is not Kingsley right after 
 all ?" This pamphlet was never answered. 
 
 For the right understanding of this controversy, it cannot be too 
 
Going to Spain with Mr. Fro^cde. 2>A7' 
 
 strongly insisted upon, that it was for truth and truth only that Mr. 
 Kingsley craved and had fought. The main point at issue was not 
 the personal integrity of Dr. Newman, but the question Avhether 
 the Roman Catholic priesthood are encouraged or discouraged to 
 pursue "Truth for its own -sake." While no one more fully ac- 
 knowledged the genius and power of his opponent than Mr. Kings- 
 ley himself, or was more ready to confess that he had " crossed 
 swords with one who was too strong for him," yet he always felt that 
 the general position which he had taken up against the policy of 
 the Roman Catholic Church, remained unshaken. 
 
 " It was his righteous indignation," says Dean Stanle)', " against 
 what seemed to him the gloriiication of a tortuous and ambiguous 
 policy, which betrayed him into the only personal controversy in 
 which he was ever entangled, and in which, matched in unequal 
 conflict with the most subtle and dexterous controversialist of 
 modern times, it is not surprising that for the moment he was 
 apparently worsted, whatever we may think of the ultimate issues 
 that were raised in the struggle, and whatever may be the total 
 results of our experiences, before and after, on the main question 
 over which the combat was fought — on the relation of the human 
 conscience to truth or to authority." 
 
 For more than a year past Mr. Kingsley had been suffering from 
 chronic illness increased by overwork of brain, and a thorough 
 rest and change of air had long been seriously urged upon him by 
 his kind friend, Sir James Clarke. At this moment, Mr. Froude, 
 who was going to Spain to look over MSS. in connection with his 
 Historical work, invited him to go with him, to which he answers : — 
 
 " This is too delightful. I had meant to offer myself to you, but 
 my courage failed; but when you propose what can I do but ac- 
 cept ? . . , I am ready, for my part, not only to go to Mad- 
 rid, but on by mail to Alicant, and then by steamer to Gibraltar, 
 via Carthagena and Malaga, coming home by sea. I have always 
 felt that one good sea voyage would add ten years to my life. All 
 my friends say, go, but I must not be the least burden to you. 
 Remember that I can amuse myself in any hedge, with plants and 
 insects and a cigar, and that you may leave me anywhere, any 
 long, certain that I shall be .busy and happy. I cannot say how 
 the thought of going has put fresh life into me." 
 
 On the 23rd of March he started with Mr. Froude for Spain, but 
 being ill at Biarritz he did not go over the border. It was his first 
 
348 ' Charles Kings ley. 
 
 visit to France, of which his impressions are given in his letters to 
 
 his wife and children. 
 
 Paris, Sunday^ Marcli 25, 3 P.M. 
 
 "We. went this morning to the Madeleine, where a grand cere- 
 mony was going on, consisting of a high priest brushing people with 
 a handkerchief, as far as I could see. Next, to Notre Dame, 
 where old women were adoring the Sacrament in a ' tombeau ' 
 dressed up with cloth and darkness, two argand burners throwing 
 light on it above, and over it a fold of white drapery exactly in the 
 form of the sacrificial vitta on the Greek vases, from which it is 
 probably unconsciously derived. For the rest, they are all as busy 
 and gay to-day as on any other. We met John Lubbock in the 
 street going off to examine the new bone-caves in Dordogne. . . ." 
 
 Biarritz, April, 1864. 
 " The Basques speak a lingo utterly different from all European 
 languages, which has no analogue, and must have come from a dif- 
 ferent stock from our ancestors. The women are very pretty — 
 brown, aquiline, with low foreheads, and have a quaint fashion of 
 doing up their back hair in a gaudy silk handkerchief, which is 
 cunningly twisted till one great triangular tail stands out stiff behind 
 the left ear. This is a great art. The old ones tie their whole 
 heads up in the handkerchief and look very pretty, but browner 
 than apes from wearing no bonnets. 
 
 " I am quite in love with these Frenchmen. They are so charm- 
 ingly civil and agreeable. You can talk to any and all classes 
 as equals. But, alas ! I have fallen among English at the table 
 d'hote. ... 
 
 " . , , After breakfast we generally lounge the rocks till one. 
 1 have found some gigantic skate purses, which must belong to a 
 ray twenty feet broad ; then luncheon ; then lounge again, sitting 
 about on benches and rocks, watching the grey lizards ( I haven't 
 seen any green ones yet), and smoking penny Government cigars, 
 which are very good ; then table d'hote at six Yester- 
 day we hired a carriage and went to the bar of the Adour, and saw 
 the place where Hope carried the Guards across and made a bridge 
 of boats in the face of 15,000 French. When one sees such things 
 — and I shall see more — who dare sneer at ' old Peninsular offi- 
 cers?' To-day 1 was looking through the glass at the Rhune 
 mountain, which Soult entrenched from top to bottom, and AVell- 
 ington stormed, yard by yard, with 20,000 men, before he could 
 cross the Bidassoa ; and to have taken that mountain seemed a 
 deed of old giants. Behind it were peaks of everlasting snow, 
 gleaming white in the glorious sun, and beneath it the shore of St. 
 Sebastian and Fontarabia, and then the Spanish hills, fading away 
 to the right into infinite space along the Biscayan shore. I shall 
 
To his Youngest Boy. 349 
 
 go and sit there the whole afternoon. We drove through Landes 
 yesterday, too, and saw the pme trees hacked for turpentme, and 
 a little pot hung to each, with clear turpentine running in, and in 
 the tops of the young trees great social nests of the pitzocampo 
 moth-caterpillar, of which I have got some silk, but dared not open 
 the nest, for their hairs are deadly poison, as the old Romans 
 knew. 
 
 TO HIS YOUNGEST BOY. 
 
 Pau. 
 " My dear little Man, 
 
 " I was quite delighted to get a letter from you so nicely 
 written. Yesterday I went by the railway to a most beautiful 
 place, where I am staying now. A town with an old castle, hun- 
 dreds of years old, where the great King Henry IV. of France was 
 born, and his cradle is there still, made of a huge tortoiseshell. 
 Underneath the castle are beautiful walks and woods — all green, 
 as if it was summer, and roses and flowers, and birds, singing — but 
 different from our English birds. But it is quite summer here be- 
 cause it is so far south. Under the castle, by the river, are frogs 
 that make a noise like a rattle, and frogs that bark like toy-dogs, 
 and frogs that climb u]> trees, and even up the window-panes — 
 they have suckers on their feet, and are quite green like a leaf. 
 Far away, before the castle, are the great mountains, ten thousand 
 feet high, covered with snow, and the clouds crawling about their 
 tops. I am going to see them to-morrow, and when I come back 
 I will tell you. But I have been out to-night, and all the frogs are 
 croaking still, and making a horrid noise. Mind and be a good 
 boy and give Baba my love. Tell George I am coming back with 
 a great beard and shall frighten him out of his wits. There is a 
 vulture here in the inn, but he is a little Egyptian vulture, not like 
 the great vulture I saw at Bayonne. Ask mother to show you his 
 picture in the beginning of the bird book. He is called Neophra 
 Egyptiacus, and is an ugly fellow, who eats dead horses and sheep. 
 There is his picture. 
 
 " Your own Daddy, 
 
 "C. Kingsley." 
 
 " I have taken quite a new turn, and my nerve and strength 
 have come back, from three days in the Pyrenees. What I have 
 seen I cannot tell you. Things unspeakable and full of glory. 
 Mountains whose herbage is box, for mil.es and thousands of feet, 
 then enormous silver firs and beech, up to the eternal snow. We 
 went up to Eaux-Chaudes — a gigantic I^ynmouth, with rivers break- 
 ing out of limestone caverns hundreds of feet over our heads. 
 There we were told that we must take horses and guides up to the 
 Plateau of Bioux Artigues, to see the Pic du Midi, which we had 
 been seeing for twenty-eight miles. We wouldn't, and drove up to 
 
350 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 Gabas to lounge. Cane and I found the mountain air so jolly 
 that we lounged on for an hour — luckily up the right valley, and 
 behold, after rochers moutonnes, and moraines, showing the enor- 
 mous glaciers which are extinct, we came to a down, which we 
 knew by inspiration was the Plateau. We had had a good deal of 
 snow going up, but a good road cut through it for timber carts. 
 We climbed three hundred feet of easy down, and there it was 
 right in front, nine thousand feet high, with the winter snow at the 
 base — the eternal snow holding on b)'' claws and teeth where it 
 could above. I could have looked for hours. I could not speak. 
 I cannot understand it yet. Right and left were other eternal 
 snow-peaks ; but very horrible. Great white sheets with black 
 points mingling with the clouds, of a dreariness to haunt one's 
 dreams. I don't like snow mountains. 
 
 " The Pic above is jolly, and sunlit and honest. The flowers 
 were not all out — only in every meadow below gentiana verna, of 
 the most heavenly azure, and huge oxslips : but I have got some 
 beautiful things — a primrose, or auricula, among others. To-day we 
 saw Eaux-Bonnes — the rival place, which the Empress is bedizening 
 with roads and fancy trees and streets at an enormous cost : two great 
 eternal snow-peaks there, but not so striking. Butterflies glorious, 
 even now. The common one, the great Camberwell beauty 
 (almost extinct in England), a huge black butterfly with white 
 edge ; we couldn't catch one. The day before yesterday, at Eaux- 
 Chaudes, two bears were fired at, and a wolf seen. With every 
 flock of sheep and girls are one or two enormous mastiffs, which 
 could eat one, and do bark nastily. But when the childi'en call 
 them and introduce them to you formally, they stand to be patted, 
 and eat out of your hand ; they are great darlings, and necessary 
 against bear and wolf. So we did everything without the least 
 mishap — nay, with glory — for the folk were astonished at our get- 
 ting to the Plateau on our own hook. The Mossoos can't walk, 
 you see, and think it an awful thing. A Wellington College boy 
 would trot there in three-quarters of an hour. Last night, ^our 
 comble^ we (or rather I) did something extra — a dear little sucking 
 earthquake, went off crash — bang, just under my bed. I thought 
 something had. fallen in the room below, though I wondered why 
 it hove my bed right up. Got out of bed, hearing a woman 
 scream, and hearing no more, guessed it, and went to bed. It 
 shook the whole house and village ; but no one minded. They 
 said they had lots of young earthquakes there, but they went off 
 before they had time to grow. I^ucky for the place. It was a very 
 queer sensation, and made a most awful noise." 
 
 Narbonne. 
 
 "We were yesterday at Carcassonne, a fortified place, where 
 walls were built by Roman, Visigoth, Mussulman, Romane (?.^. 
 
Carcassonne and Nismes. 351 
 
 Albigense) and then by French kings. Such a remnant of the old 
 tmies as I have dreamed of — now being all restored by M. VioUet- 
 le-Duc, at the expense of Government — with its wonderful church 
 of St. Nazaire, where Roman Corinthian capitals are used by the 
 romance people — 9-10 century. We went down into real dun- 
 geons of the Inquisition, and saw real chains and torture rings, 
 and breathed more freely when we came up into the air, and the 
 guide pointed to the Pyrenees and said ' // 7i y a point de demons 
 liV 
 
 " I shall never forget that place. Narbonne is very curious, 
 once the old Roman capital, then the Albigense. Towers, Ca- 
 thedral, Archbishop's palace — all wonderful. Whole quarries of 
 Roman remains. The walls, built by Francis I., who demolished 
 the old Roman and Gothic walls, are a museum of antiquities in 
 themselves. If you want to have a souvenir of Narbonne, read in 
 my lectures Sidonius's account of Theodoric the Visigoth (not 
 Dietrich the Amal) and his court here. His palace is long gone. 
 It probably stood where the Archbishop's palace does now — oppo- 
 site my window . . . ." 
 
 Nismes. 
 
 ". . . . But what a country they have made of it, these 
 brave French ! For one hundred miles yesterday, what had been 
 poor limestone plain was a garden. A scrap or two I saw of the 
 original vegetation a donkey would have starved on. But they 
 have cleared it all off for ages, ever since the Roman times, and it 
 is one sea of vines, with olive, fig, and mulberry planted among 
 them. Where there is a hill it is exactly like the photographs of 
 the Holy Land and Nazareth — limestone walls with nothing but 
 vineyards and grey olives planted in them, and raised stone paths 
 about them. The only green thing — for the soil is red, and the 
 vines are only sproutmg — is here and there a field of the Roman 
 plant, lucerne, as high as one's knee already. I came by Beziers, 
 where the Inquisitor cried, ' Kill them all, God will know his own,' 
 and they shut them into the Madelaine and killed them all — 
 CathoUcs as well as Albigenses, till there was not a soul alive in 
 Beziers, and the bones are there to this day. 
 
 " But this land is beautiful — as they say, ' Si Dieu venait encore 
 sur la teri'Cy il vicndrait deinenrer a Beziers,^ and, indeed it is just 
 like, as I have said, the Holy Land. Then we came to immense 
 fiats — still in vine and olive, and then X.<» sand hills, and then upon 
 the tideless shore broke the blue Mediterranean, with the long 
 lateen sails, as in pictures. It was a wonderful feeling to a scholar 
 to see the 'schoolboy's sea' for the first time, and so perfectly, in 
 a glory of sunshine and blue ripple. We ran literally througli it for 
 miles between Agde and Cette — tall asphodel growing on the sand 
 hills, and great white iris and vines " 
 
352 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 " My first impression of the Pont du Gard was one of simple 
 fear. ' It was so high that it was dreadful,' as Ezekiel says. Then 
 I said, again and again, ' A great people and a strong. There 
 hath been none like before them, nor shall be again, for many 
 generations.' As, after fifteen miles of the sea of mulberry, olive, 
 and vine, dreary from its very artificial perfection, we turned the 
 corner of the limestone glen, and over the deep blue rock- pool, 
 saw that thing hanging between earth and heaven, the blue sky 
 and green woods showing through its bright yellow arches, and all 
 to carry a cubic yard of water to Nismes, twenty miles off, for 
 public baths and sham sea-fights {^ ?iau-Tnaelicas') in the amphi- 
 theatre, which even Charlemagne, when he burnt the Moors out 
 of it, could not destroy. — Then I felt the brute greatness of that Ro- 
 man people ; and an awe fell upon me as it may have fallen on poor 
 Croc, the Rook, king of the Alemans — but that is a long story, — • 
 when he came down and tried to destroy this city of the seven hills, 
 and ended in being shown about in an iron cage as The Rook. But 
 I doubt not when he and his wild Alemans came down to the Pont 
 du Gard they said it was the work of dwarfs — of the devil? We 
 walked up to the top, through groves of Ilex, Smilax, and Coronella 
 (the first time I have seen it growing), and then we walked across 
 on the top. A false step, and one was a hundred feet down, but 
 that is not my line. Still, if any one is giddy, he had better not 
 try it. The masonry is wonderful, and instead of employing the 
 mountain limestone of the hills, they have brought the most splen- 
 did Bath oolite from the hills opposite. There are the marks cut 
 by the old fellows — horse-hoofs, hatchets, initials, &c., as fresh as 
 paint. The Emperor has had it all repaired from the same quarries, 
 stone for stone. Now, after 1600 years, they are going to bring 
 the same water into Nismes by it " 
 
 " I stopped at Nismes, and begin again at Avignon. We saw 
 to-day the most wonderful Roman remains. I have brought back 
 a little book of photographs. But the remarkable thing was the 
 Roman ladies' baths in a fountain bursting up out of the rock, 
 where, under colonnades, they walked about, in or out of the water 
 as they chose. All is standing, and could be used to-morrow, if 
 the prudery of the priests allowed it. Honor to those Romans — 
 with all their sins, they were the cleanest people the world has ever 
 seen. But to tell you all I saw at Nismes would take a book. 
 
 Perhaps it will make one some day Good-bye. I 
 
 shall write again to-morrow from this, the most wonderful place I 
 have yet seen." 
 
 Avignon, Sunday. 
 
 "We are still here under the shadow of that terrible fortress 
 which the Holy Fathers of mankind erected to show men their idea 
 of paternity. A dreadful dungeon on a rock. The vastest pile of 
 
To his Youngest Datcghter. 353 
 
 stone I ever saw. Men asked for bread, and they gave a stone, 
 most literally. T have seen La Tour de la Glaci^re, famous for its 
 horrors of 1793, but did not care to enter. The sight here are the 
 walls — very nearly perfect, and being all restored by VioUet-le-Duc, 
 under government " 
 
 to his youngest daughter. 
 
 Biarritz. 
 " My Darling Mary, 
 
 " I am going to write you a long letter about all sorts of things. 
 And first, this place is full of the prettiest children I ever saw, very 
 like English, but with dark hair and eyes, and none of them look 
 poor or ragged ; but so nicely dressed, with striped stockings, which 
 they knit themselves, and Basque shoes, made of canvas, worked 
 with red and purple worsted. There is a little girl here six years 
 old, a chemist's daughter, who knits all her own woollen stockings. 
 Mrs. * * * * has given her Mademoiselle Lih, and she has learnt 
 it all by heart, and we have great fun making her say it. All the 
 children go to a school kept by nuns ; and I am sure the poor nuns 
 are very kind to them, for they laugh and romp it seems to me all 
 day long. In summer most of them wear no shoes or stockings, 
 for they do not want them ; but in winter they are wrapped up 
 warm ; and I have not seen one ragged child or tramp, or any one 
 who looks miserable. They never wear any bonnets. The Httle 
 babies wear a white cap, and the children a woollen cap with 
 pretty colors, and the girls a smart handkerchief on their back hair, 
 and the boys and men wear blue and scarlet caps Hke Scotchmen, 
 just the shape of mushrooms, and a red sash. 
 
 "The oxen here are quite yellow, and so gentle and wise, the 
 men make them do exactly what they like. I will draw you an ox 
 cart when I come home. The banks here are covered with enor- 
 mous canes, as high as the eaves of our house. They tie one of 
 these to a fir pole, and make a huge long rod, and then go and sit 
 on the rocks and fish for doradas, which are fish with gilt heads. 
 There is an old gentleman in a scarlet blouse and blue mushroom 
 just gone down to fish and I am going to look at him. There are 
 the most lovely sweet smelling purple pinks on the rocks here, and 
 the woods are full of asphodel, great lilies, four feet high, with white 
 and purple flowers. I saw the wood yesterday where the dreadful 
 fight was between the French and English — and over the place 
 where all the brave men lay buried grew one great flower-bed of 
 asphodel. So they ' slept in the meads of asphodel,' like the old 
 Greek heroes in Homer. There were great 'lords and ladies,' 
 (arums) there, growing in the bank, twice as big as ours, and not 
 red, but white and primrose — most beautiful. But you cannot 
 think how beautiful the commons are, they are like flower gardens, 
 golden with furze, and white with potentilla, and crimson with 
 
 23 
 
354 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 sweet smelling Daphne, and blue with the most wonderful blue 
 flower which grows everywhere. I have dried them all. 
 
 " Tell your darling mother I am quite well, and will write to her 
 to-morrow. Tell her I met last night at dinner a Comtesse de M. 
 {7iee D — ), the most charming old Scotch Frenchwoman, with snow- 
 white powdered hair, and I drew her portrait for her. There, that 
 is all I have to say. Tell Grenville they have made a tunnel under 
 the battle-field, for the railroad to go into Spain, and that on the 
 top of the tunnel there is a shaft, and a huge wheel, to pump air 
 into the tunnel, and that I will bring him home a scarlet Basque 
 cap, and you and Rose Basque shoes .... 
 
 " Your Own Daddy." 
 
 He now returned to work and letters, and writes to Mr. 
 Maurice — 
 
 ^ EVERSLEY, Friday. 
 
 ■ " I have just read your letter to the Bishop of London. You 
 have struck at the root of the matter in every page. For me, I am 
 startled by hearing a man talk of the eternity of hell-fire, who be- 
 lieves the Athanasian Creed, that there is but one Eternal. If so, 
 then this fire is the fire of God — yea, is God himself, whom the 
 Scriptures formally identify with that fire. But if so, it must be a 
 fire of purification, not of mere useless torment ; it must be a 
 spiritual and not a physical fire, and its eternity must be a good, a 
 blessed, an ever useful one ; and amenable 'to the laws which God 
 has revealed concerning the rest of his attributes, and especially to 
 the great law 'when the wicked man turneth he shall save his soul 
 alive.' This eternal law no metaphors of fire and brimstone can 
 abrogate. But I have much more to say on all this ; only I am 
 not well enough to formalise it ; so I must content myself, as I 
 have for some time past, with preaching Him whom you bid me 
 preach, sure that if I can show people His light, that of itself will 
 dissipate their darkness. 
 
 " I am come back (from France) better, but not well, and un- 
 able to take any mental exertion." 
 
 Before going abroad he had given a lecture at Aldershot Camp 
 on the " Study of History," and preached at Whitehall for the Con- 
 sumptive Hospital, and on his return had preached one of his finest 
 Eversley sermons, " Ezekiel's Vision," before the Queen at Wind- 
 sor Castle, and a remarkable one on "the Wages of Sin is Death," 
 at the Chapel Royal, St. James's. Those who accused him of 
 preaching a "soft" gospel and an "indulgent" God, would have 
 believed otherwise if they had been present and had heard his 
 
University Sermons on David. 355 
 
 burning words, and watched the fiery earnestness with which then 
 and always he addressed a London congregation. 
 
 This year the proposal for the enclosure of Eversley Common 
 land was decided on, and was a real distress to him. He regretted 
 it not only from a mere jesthetic point of view, feeling that if it 
 were carried out the characteristic beauty of the parish he loved so 
 well would be gone : but for the sake of the poor man who kept 
 his geese and cut his turf at his own will ; the loss too of the 
 cricket ground where the men and boys had played for years, 
 vexed him. " Eversley will no longer be the same Eversley to 
 me." It was a wound to his heart which never healed. 
 
 He was busy in the autumn preparing his university sermons on 
 David, having been selected as one of the preachers at Cambridge 
 for 1865, and in a letter to Mr. Maurice he speaks of his work : 
 
 " I have read with delight your words in ' Macmillan ' on the 
 Pope's letter. I am sure that you are right, and that the most im- 
 portant lesson to be drawn from it is the one which you point out. It 
 is that longing for unity which he has outraged — the aspiration which 
 is working, I verily believe, in all thinking hearts, which one thrusts 
 away fiercely at times as impossible and a phantom, and finds one- 
 self at once so much meaner, more worldly, more careless of every- 
 thing worth having, that one has to go back again to the old 
 dream. 
 
 " But what I feel you have taught me, and which is invaluable to 
 me in writing these University sermons, from which God send me 
 good deliverance, is, that we need not make the unity from doctrines 
 or systems, but preach the fact that the unity is made by and in the 
 perpetual government of the Living Christ. 
 
 " And I do see, that the mediaeval clergy preached that, con- 
 fusedly of course, but with a clearness and strength to which neither 
 we nor the modern Papists have attained. They preach their own 
 kingdom, we a scheme of salvation. From both I take refuge 
 more and more where you have taught me to go — to the plain words 
 of Scripture, as interpreting the facts about me. 
 
 " Wish me well through these sermons. They lie heavy on my 
 sinful soul." 
 
 When the Christmas vacation was over he went up to Cambridge 
 to give these sermons. St. Mary's was crowded with undergradu- 
 ates long before the services began, and he felt the responsibility a 
 heavy one. The subject chosen was "David," and the series was 
 published under that title. 
 
356 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 The letters of 1865 that have been recovered are few. He was 
 so broken in strength, that to get through the duties of his professor- 
 ship and his parish was as much, nay, more than he could manage, 
 and in the summer he was forced to leave home with his family 
 for three months' rest, and settle quietly on the coast of Norfolk. 
 
 TO TOM HUGHES, ESQ. 
 
 EVERSLEY, J/rtJ 21, 1865. 
 
 " I have delayed writing to you. First, I have had a tragedy on 
 hand ; next, I wanted to tell you the end of it. Henry Erskine, as 
 you I suppose know, is dead at the age of forty-nine. We buried 
 him to-day ; the father hardly cold in the ground. His death is to 
 me a great sorrow — a gap in my life which I feel and cannot fill. A 
 nobler, honester, kindlier man never lived, or one more regretted 
 by men of all kinds who knew his private worth. Such a death as 
 his draws one closer to the men of our own age whom one has still 
 left, and among others to you. 
 
 " I am delighted to see you on Mill's committee at Maurice's 
 side. You have done a good deal of good work, but never better 
 than that. I wish I were a Westminster elector for the time, that 
 I might work for him and with you. I am much struck with his 
 committee-list in to-day's 'Times,' so many men of different opinions 
 and classes, whom one knew and valued for different things, finding 
 
 a common cause in Mill, R C , and Holyoake, side by side. 
 
 I do hope you will succeed. I am just writing to Mill at Avignon 
 anent this noble book of his on Sir W. Hamilton, and shall tell him 
 of many things which ought to please him. I answered your good 
 friend as kindly as I could, but as I have had to answer dozens — 
 that the doctors forbid my preaching. I gave my necessary White- 
 hall sermon to the Consumptive Hospital as to an old and dear 
 friend ; but I have refused all others. I am getting better after 
 fifteen months of illness, and I hope to be of some use again some 
 day ; a sadder and a wiser man, the former, at least, I grow every 
 year. I catch a trout now and tlien out of my ponds (I am too 
 weak for a da3''s fishing, and the doctors have absolutely forbidden 
 me my salmon). I have had one or two this year, of three and two 
 pounds, and a brace to-day, near one pound each, so I am not left 
 troutless " 
 
 TO REV. F. D. MAURICE. 
 
 EvERSLEY, May i8. 
 
 " Youl letter comforted me, for (strange as it may seem for me 
 to say so) the only thing I really care for — the only thing which 
 gives me comfort — is theology, in the strict sense ; though God 
 
The -Doctrine of the Trinity. 357 
 
 knows I know little enough about it. I wish one thing — that you 
 would define for me what you mean by being ' baptised into a name.' 
 The preposition in its transcendental sense puzzles me, and others 
 likewise. I sometimes seem to grasp it, and sometimes again lose 
 it, from the very unrealistic turn of mind which 1 have in common 
 with this generation. I want your definition (or translation of the 
 formula into words of this generation) that I may tell them some- 
 what as to what you mean. 
 
 " As to the Trinity I do understand you. You first taught me 
 that the doctrine was a live thing, and not a mere formula to be 
 swallowed by the undigesting reason, and from the time that I learnt 
 from you that a Father meant a real Father, a Son a real Son, and 
 a Holy Spirit a real Spirit, who was really good and holy, I have 
 been able to draw all sorts of practical lessons from it in the pulpit, 
 and ground all my morality, and a great deal of my natural philoso- 
 phy upon it, and shall do so more. The procession of the Spirit 
 from the Father and the Son, for instance, is most practically im- 
 portant to me. If the Spirit proceeds only from the Father, the 
 whole theorem of the Trinity, as well as its practical results, fall 
 to pieces to my mind. I don't mean that good men in the Greek 
 Church are not better than I. On the contrary, I believe that 
 every good man therein believes in the procession from both Father 
 and Son, whether he thinks that he does or not. But in this case, 
 as in others, one has extreme difficulty in remembering, and still 
 more in making others understand, that a man may believe the 
 facts which the doctrine connotes without believing the doctrine, 
 just as he may believe that a horse is a horse, for every practical 
 purpose, though he may have been mistaught to call it a cow. It 
 is this slavery to formulas — this mistaking of words for conceptions, 
 and then again of conceptions for the facts, which seems our present 
 curse ; and how much of it do we not owe to the Calvinists, who 
 laid again on our necks the yoke of conceptions which we were 
 bursting at the Reformation, because neither we nor our fathers 
 could bear it. It was this which made me reject Mansell and 
 Hamilton's 'The Absolute' and 'The Infinite,' and say, 'If these 
 men's arguments are good for anything, they prove that either i. 
 God is not The Absolute and The Infinite, as they assert He is ; or, 
 2. That there is no God.' What they are meant to prove really 
 being, that we cannot conceive what we cannot conceive, which is 
 not new, though true ; and also in Mansell' s, case, that though we 
 cannot conceive an ^''^conditional God, we can easily enough con- 
 ceive an ///-conditioned one, which, again, though true, is not new. 
 It was therefore with great comfort that I found Mill, in his chap- 
 ter iv., take exactly the same line against those words ; only, of 
 course, with infinitely more force and clearness. 
 
 " I am taking a regular course of metaphysic, and so forth, as a 
 tonic after the long debauchery of fiction-writing. I say to you, 
 
358 Charles Kmgsley. 
 
 once for all, Have patience with me, and 1 will pay thee — not all, 
 but a little, and I know you will not take me by the throat. If you 
 did, you Avould break my heart ; which could be much more easily 
 broken than peo[)le think. If a man is intensely in earnest after 
 truth, be it what it may, and also intensely disgusted with his own 
 laziness, worldliness, and sensuality, his heart is not difficult to 
 break. 
 
 " Poor Spring Rice ! * That was a noble gentleman, and had 
 he had health, might have been a noble statesman. I never met a 
 more single eye. ' I^ook to the single eye in others,' he once said 
 to me, ' I judge of every man by the first question I ask him. 
 Has he an ar7'iere pensee or not ? Does he answer what he knows, 
 simply, or what he "thinks will do?" If the former, he is my 
 friend henceforth ; if the latter, he is nothing to me.' 
 
 "I don't quite understand one point in your letter. You say, 
 'The Articles were not intended to bind men's thoughts or con- 
 sciences ! ' Now, I can't help feeling that when they assert a 
 proposition, e.g., the Trinity, they assert that that and nothing 
 else on that matter is true, and so bind thought ; and that they 
 require me to swear that I believe it so, and so bind my con- 
 science. 
 
 " In the case where they condemn an error, it seems to me quite 
 different. There they proscribe one form of thought, and leave all 
 others open by implication, binding neither thought nor conscience. 
 Thus the Tract XC. argument was quite fair — if its mithor could 
 have used it fairly. The Romish doctrine of Purgatory is false ; 
 but denying that does not forbid me to believe other doctrines of 
 Purgatory to be true, and to speculate freely on the future state. 
 So that what you say applies clearly (to me) to the cases in which 
 the Articles deny. It applies also to all cases in which the Articles 
 do not affirm, e.g., endless torture. 
 
 " Also to all in which it uses words without defining them, e.g., 
 the Article on Predestination, which I sign in what I conceive to 
 be the literal sense not only of it, but of the corresponding passage 
 in St, Paul, without believing one word of the Calvinistic theory, or 
 that St. Paul was speaking of the future state at all. 
 
 " But how does your theorem apply where the Articles not only 
 assert, but define ? That I want to understand. 
 
 " For myself, I can sign the Articles in their literal sense toto 
 corde, and subscription is no bondage to me, and so I am sure can 
 you. But all I demand is, that, in signing the Articles, I shall be 
 understood to sign them and nothing more ; that I do not sign any- 
 thing beyond the words, and demand the right to put my construc- 
 tion on the words, answerable only to God and my conscience, 
 and refusing to accept any sense of the words, however popular 
 
 The late Right Honoiable Stephen Sprmg Rice. 
 
Subscription to the Articles. 359 
 
 and venerable, unless I choose. In practice^ Gorham and Pusey 
 both do this, and nothing else, whenever it suits them. I demand 
 that I shall have just the same liberty as they, and no more. 
 
 " But the world at large uses a very powerful, though worthless, 
 argument. Lord **** answered, when I asked him why the 
 Articles had not defined inspiration, ' Because they never expected 
 that men would arise heretics enough to deny it ! ' I had to reply 
 — and I think convinced him — that that line of thought would de- 
 stroy all worth in formula, by making signing mean, ' I sign the 
 XXXIX. Articles, and as many more as the Church has forgotten 
 to, or may have need to, put in.' 
 
 " But the mob, whose superstitions are the very cosmogony of 
 their creed, would think that argument conclusive, and say, — of 
 course, you are expected to believe, over and above, such things as 
 endless torture, verbal dictation, &c., which are more of the es- 
 sence of Christianity than the creeds themselves, or the Being of a 
 God. 
 
 "Meanwhile, each would make a reservation — the ' Evangelical' 
 of the Calvinist School would say in his heart — and of course 
 (though I daren't say so) every man is expected to believe conver- 
 sion, even though not mentioned ; and the Romanist, of course 
 every man must believe in the Pope, though not mentioned ; and 
 the reigning superstition, not the formulfe actually signed, becomes 
 the test of faith. 
 
 " But how we are to better this by doing away with subscription, 
 I don't see yet. 
 
 "As long as the Articles stand, and a:s long as they are in- 
 terpreted by lawyers ofily, who will ask sternly, ' Is it in the 
 bond ? ' and nothing else, I see hope for freedom and safety, if 
 subscription was done away, every man would either teach what 
 was right in his own eyes — which would be somewhat confus- 
 ing — or he would have to be controlled by a body, not of written 
 words, but of thinking men. From whom may my Lord deliver 
 me ! 
 
 " For as soon as any body of men, however venerable, have the 
 power given them to dictate to me what I shall think and preach, 
 I shall answer — my compact with the Church of England is over. 
 I swore to the Articles, and not to you. I have preached my 
 
 last sermon for you There is my living, give it to 
 
 whom you will; I wipe off the dust of my feet against you, and go 
 free. 
 
 " And therefore I do 7wt care for the * * * * and ** ** trying to 
 make the Articles a tyranny, by making them talk popular super- 
 stition, because I have faith sufficient in the honesty and dialectic of 
 an English lay lawyer to protect me against their devices ; and, for 
 the sake of freedom, cannot cast in my lot with * * * *, dearly as I 
 love him. 
 
360 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 " Now, do tell me whether this seems to you sense or non- 
 sense, . . ." 
 
 That his mind was deeply exercised at times, the following ex- 
 tract in a letter to Mr. Maurice shows : — 
 
 " I feel a capacity of drifting to sea in me which makes me cling 
 nervously to any little anchor, like subscription. I feel glad of 
 aught that says to me, ' You must teach this and nothing else ; you 
 must not run riot in your own dreams !',..." 
 
 This may be a comfort to troubled souls when they remember the 
 calm assured faith with which he faced life and death, and when 
 standing on the very threshold of the next world, was heard repeat- 
 ing again and again, " It is all right — all under rule." Perhaps his 
 dearly loved George Fox's words best express the habitual attitude 
 of his heart and mind for thirty years. " And I saw that there was 
 an Ocean of Darkness and Death : but an infinite Ocean of Light 
 and Love flowed over the Ocean of Darkness : and in that I saw 
 the infinite Love of God." — (George Foo<^ s Joicrnal.) 
 
 TO REV. F. D. MAURICE. 
 
 EvERSLEY, Saturday. 
 
 " Many thanks for your letter. I am very sorry I differ from you 
 about Savonarola. It seems to me that his protest for the kingdom 
 of God and against sin was little worth, and came to nought, just 
 because it was from the merely negative inhuman monks' stand- 
 point of the 13th century ; that he would at best have got the world 
 back to St. Bernard's time, to begin all over again, and end just 
 where Savonarola had found them. Centuries of teaching such as 
 his had ended in leaving Italy a hell on earth ; new medicine was 
 needed, which no monk could give. A similar case, it seems to me, 
 is that of the poor Port-royahsts. They tried to habilitate the monk- 
 ideal of righteousness. They were civilized off the face of the earth, 
 as was poor Savonarola, by men worse than themselves, but more 
 humane, with wider (though shallower) notions of what man and the 
 universe meant. 
 
 " As for Luther, I am very sorry to seem disrespectful to him, 
 but the outcome of his demonology was, that many a poor woman 
 died in shame and torture in Protestant Germany, just because 
 Luther had given his sanction to the old /?>, and he needs excusing 
 solely for that. I do not undervalue his protest against man's true 
 and real spiritual enemies. I excuse his protest against certain 
 
Queen Emma at Eversley. 361 
 
 fancied enemies, Vv'hich were not spiritual at all, but carnal, phan- 
 toms of the brain, and suffered to do carnal and material harm. 
 Ever since the 4th century had this carnal counterfeit of the true 
 demonology been interweaving itself with Christianity. It had cost 
 the lives of thousands. It is so horrible a matter that I (who have 
 studied it largely) cannot speak of it calmly, and do not wish to. 
 And of its effects on physical science I say nothing here, disas- 
 trously retarding as it has been, and therefore costing thousands of 
 lives more, and preventing tne sick from being properly treated, or 
 sanitary precautions taken. But of this more when 1 have the very 
 great pleasure of becoming your guest." 
 
 In the autumn Queen Emma of the Sandwich Islands came on a 
 visit of two days to Eversley Rectory. King Kamehameha, her 
 husband, had read Mr. Kingsley's books and she was anxious to 
 know him. She also wished to combine with her visit to Eversley 
 one to the Wellington College, of which she had heard much, and 
 where it was said if her little son had hved, he would have been 
 sent for his education. It was a great pleasure to Mr. Kingsley to 
 take Queen Emma to the college, and to point out to her all the 
 arrangements made by the wise and good Prince, of whom she had 
 heard so much, to make it a first-rate modern school, and which 
 were so admirably carried out by the Head Master. Dr. Benson 
 took her all over it, and into its beautiful chapel and museum. 
 After seeing the boys at dinner in hall, and tasting their pudding 
 at the high table, she asked for a half-holiday for them, upon which 
 Ponsonby, then head of the school, called for three cheers for 
 Queen Emma ; and as they resounded through the dining hall at 
 the granting of her request, she was startled almost to terror, for it 
 was the first time in her life that she had heard the cheers of English 
 public school boys. She went on the playground, and for the first 
 time saw a game of cricket, examined the bats, balls, wickets, and 
 pads, looking into everything with her own peculiar intelligence. 
 After dinner at Eversley Rectory, she drove over again to Welling- 
 ton to be present at the evening choral service in chapel, fol- 
 lowed the musical notes of each hymn and chant, and was struck, as 
 every one was, by the reverent behavior of the boys. In driving 
 back to the Rectory that night, she said, " It is so strange to me to 
 be staying with you and to see Mr. Kingsley. My husband read 
 your husband's ' VVaterbabies ' to our little Prince." Queen Emma 
 wrote soon after an autograph letter to Dr. Benson, which \ya3 
 
362 Charles Kingsley, 
 
 read aloud to the boys, expressing her deep gratification with her 
 visit to WelHngton College. At the same time she wrote to Mr. 
 Kingsley : — 
 
 November 3, 1865. 
 
 " I have the pleasure to fulfil my promise of sending you a Book 
 of Common Prayer in Hawaiian, together with a preface written by 
 the Translator of the former, Kamehameha IV., my late husband, 
 and king of our islands, and a portrait of myself which will, I hope, 
 sometimes remind you of one who has learnt to esteem you and 
 Mrs. Kingsley, as friends in whose welfare and happiness she will 
 always feel the greatest interest. Please remember me kindly to 
 your daughters, 
 
 "And believe me to be, 
 
 " My dear Mr. Kingsley, 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " Emma." 
 
 On the 9th of November, he went, by royal command, to stay at 
 Windsor Castle, and on the following day, while preaching before 
 the Court, a telegram came to the Queen to announce the death 
 of Leopold, King of the Belgians. Mr. Kingsley had been asked 
 to write a few lines in the album of the Crown Princess of Prussia, 
 and with his mind full of this great European event, wrote the fol- 
 lowing Impromptu, which is inserted here by the kind permission 
 of her Imperial Highness : 
 
 November 10, 1865. 
 " A king is dead ! Another master mind 
 
 Is summoned from the world-wide council-hall 
 Ah for some seer, to say what lurks behind — 
 To read the mystic writing on the wall ! 
 
 " Be still, fond man : nor ask thy fate to know. 
 Face bravely what each God-sent moment brings. 
 Above thee rules in love, through weal and woe, 
 GuidiQg ihy kings and thee, the King of kings. 
 
 " C. Kingsley." 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 1866— 1867. 
 Aged 47 — 48. 
 
 Cambridge — Death of Dr. Whewell — The American Professorship — Monotonous 
 Life of the Country Laboring Class — Penn); Readings — Strange Correspond- 
 ents — Life ot Bewick— Letters to Max Miiller — The Jews in Cornwall — The 
 Meteor Shower- -Letter to Professor Adams — The House of Lords — A Father's 
 Education of his Son — " Eraser's Magazine" — Bird Life, Wood Wrens — ■ 
 Names and Places — Darwinism— Beauty of Color, its Influence and Attrac- 
 tions—Flat-Fish — Ice Problems — St. Andrews and British Association — Aber- 
 geldie Castle — Rules for Stammerers. 
 
 While the Professor was giving his usual course of lectures in 
 the Lent term of 1866 at Cambridge, a great blow fell upon the 
 University in the death of Dr. Whev/ell, Master of Trinity, and he 
 writes home : 
 
 " I am sorry to say Whewell is beaten by his terrible foe. It is 
 only a question of hours now. The feeling here is deep and solemn. 
 JVFen say he was the leader in progress and reform, when such were 
 a persecuted minority. He was the regenerator of Trinity ; he is 
 connected with every step forward that the University has made 
 for years past. 
 
 "Yes. He was a very great man : and men here feel the awful 
 suddenness of it. He never was better or pleasanter than on the 
 Thursday, when I dined there, and he was asking me for my ' dear 
 wife.' His manner with women was always charming. He was 
 very kind to me, and I was very fond of him. 
 
 " Whewell is dead ! I spoke a few solemn words to the lads 
 before lecture, telling them what a mighty spirit had passed away, 
 what he had been to Cambridge and science, and how his example 
 ought to show them that they were in a place where nothing was 
 required for the most si)lendid success, but love of knowledge and 
 indomitable energy. They heard me with very deep attention. 
 
 He is to be buried in the College Chapel, Saturday 
 
 I am up to the eyes in work, sending round my Harvard ad- 
 dress." . . . 
 
364 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 The Plarvard address alluded to here was on the subject of an 
 American Professorship, which had been proposed for Cambridge. 
 The following letter to Sir Charles Lyell explains its object : 
 
 Barton Hall, February 18, 1866. 
 
 " I take the liberty of enclosing a broadsheet which I have just 
 issued at Cambridge. It expresses, I am happy to say, the opinions 
 of all the most educated Cambridge men, on the subject of the 
 proposed American Lectureship, to be founded by a Mr. Yates 
 Thompson, of Liverpool, and supplied by the authorities of Har- 
 vard College, United States. If any of your many American friends 
 are interested in the matter, you would perhaps kindly show them 
 this broadsheet." 
 
 THE AMERICAN LECTURESHIP. ' 
 
 " I trust that it will not be considered impertinent, if I, as Pro- 
 fessor of Modern History, address a few words on this matter to the 
 Masters of Art in this University. 
 
 '■'■ My own wish is, that the proposal be accepted, as frankly as it 
 has been made. 
 
 " Harvard University — an offshoot, practically, of our own Uni- 
 versity — is a body so distinguished, that any proposition coming 
 from it deserves our most respectful consideration ; and an offer 
 of this kind, on their part, is to be looked on as a ver}'- graceful 
 compliment. 
 
 " The objections are obvious ; but after looking them through 
 fairly, as they suggested themselves to me, 1 must say that they are 
 fully met by Mr. Thompson's own conditions ; by the Vice-Chan- 
 cellor's veto, and by the clause empowering either University to put 
 an end to the Lectureship when they like. 
 
 " But they are best met by the character^of Harvard University 
 itself. Its rulers, learned and high-minded gentlemen, painfully 
 aware of our general ignorance about them, and honorably anxious 
 to prove themselves (what they are) our equals in civilization, will 
 take care to send us the very best man whom they can find. And 
 more than one person suggests himself to my mind, whom if they 
 chose (as they would be very likely to choose) I should gladly 
 welcome as my own instructor in the history of his country. 
 
 " When I did myself the honor of lecturing in this University on 
 the History of the United States, I became painfully aware how 
 little was known, and how little, then, could be known, on the 
 subject. This great want has been since supplied by a large addi- 
 tion to the University Library of American literature. I think it 
 most important that it should be still further removed by the resi- 
 dence among us of an American gentleman. 
 
The American Lectureship at Cambridge. 365 
 
 "If there should be, in any minds, the fear that this University- 
 should be 'Americanized,' or 'democratized,' they should remem- 
 ber, that this proposal comes from the representatives of that class 
 in America, which regards England with most love and respect; 
 which feels itself in increasing danger of being swamped by the 
 lower elements of a vast democracy ; which has, of late years, 
 withdrawn more and more from public life, in order to preserve its 
 own purity and self-respect ; which now holds out the right hand 
 of fellowship to us, as to one of the most conservative bodies in 
 this country, because it feels itself a conservative element in its 
 own country, and looks to us for just recognition in that character. 
 It is morally impossible that such men should go out of their way, 
 to become propagandists of those very revolutionary principles, 
 against which they are honorably struggling at home. 
 
 "And if there be (as there is) an attempt going on just now to 
 ' Americanize ' England, on the part of certain Englishmen, no 
 better defence against such a scheme can be devised, than to teach 
 the educated young men of England as much as possible about 
 America ; to let them hear the truth from worthy American lips ; 
 and judge for themselves. 
 
 " But I deprecate the introducing into this question any notions 
 drawn from general American politics, or manners. We have no 
 
 more right to judge of Harvard by our notions of the ' ■ 
 
 ,' or the ' Black Republican ' pulpit, than Harvard would have 
 
 to judge of Cambridge by Reynolds's 'Mysteries of London,' or, 
 
 ' — '■ .' It is simply a question between two dignified and 
 
 learned bodies. Let it remain as such. There are as great differ- 
 ences of civilization, rank, learning, opinions, manners, in America, 
 as in England ; and if we are not yet convinced of that fact, it 
 will be good for us that a highly-educated American gentleman 
 should come hither and prove it. 
 
 " Of the general importance of the scheme, of the great necessity 
 that our young men should know as much as possible of a country 
 destined to be the greatest in the world, I shall say little. 1 shall 
 only ask — If in the second century before the Christian era the 
 Romans had offered to send a lecturer to Athens, that he might 
 tell Greek gentlemen of what manner of men this new Italian 
 power was composed, what were their laws and customs, their 
 intentions, and their notion of their own duty and destiny — would 
 Athens have been wise or foolish in accepting the offer? 
 
 "May I, in conclusion, allude to one argument, which would of 
 course have no weight with the University in a question of right and 
 wrong, but which may have weight in one, like the present, of 
 expediency ? 
 
 " If we decline this offer, I fear that we shall give offence, not of 
 course to gentlemen like the rulers of Harvard, but to thousands 
 who care as little for Harvard as they do for our own Cambridge. 
 
366 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 A sensitive people like the Americans, instinct with national feel- 
 ing, among whom news is spread far more rajjidly than in England, 
 will be but too likely to take uj) om^ refusal as a national insult. 
 The lower portion of the American press will be but too likely to 
 misrepresent and vilify our motives ; and a fresh soreness between 
 us and Americans may be caused (by no real fault of our own) at 
 the very time when we should be doing all in our power to promote 
 mutual good will and good understanding, 
 
 " C. KlNGSLEY. [ 
 "February 9, 1866." 
 
 The offer was finally rejected by vote of the Senate, to the great 
 regret of many leading men in the University, 
 
 The death of Dr. Whewell, the appointment of Mr. Maurice to 
 the chair of Moral Philosophy, the discussion of the American 
 Professorship, and the happiness of having his eldest son an under- 
 graduate of Trinity, made this a year of no ordinary interest, as far 
 as Cambridge was con*cerned, to the Professor. 
 
 His yearly residences at Cambridge gave him not only the 
 advantage of associating with scholars and men of mark in the 
 University, but of paying visits in the neighborhood to houses where 
 good pictures and charming society refreshed and helped him 
 through the toil of his professional work — to Wimpole, to Ampthill 
 Park, and other country houses, where he and his were always 
 made welcome. While staying at Ampthill he first saw the pictures 
 at Woburn Abbey and Haynes Park, which were of deep interest 
 to him, and in reference to this time Mr. George Howard writes 
 from Naworth Castle in 1876 : 
 
 " Once I went over the picture gallery at Woburn with him, it 
 was a great treat to me, as his talk over the historical portraits was 
 dehghtful. He then made a remark which has since seemed to me 
 quite a key to the criticism of historical portraits : 'That it was for- 
 merly the habit of portrait painters to flatter their sitters by making 
 them as like the reigning king or queen as they could.' . . . " 
 
 During his heavy parish work, which was done single-handed 
 the greater part of this year, he was raore^than ever struck by the 
 monotonous, coloness life of the English laborer, varied only by 
 the yearly benefit-club day, and evenings at the public-house. The 
 absence of all pleasure from their lives weighed heavily on his 
 heart, more especially in the case of the poor hard-worked wives 
 
Parish Labors. 2)^'] 
 
 and mothers who, if respectable, were excluded from even the poor 
 amusements of the men ; and for their sake, as well as for his men 
 and boys, he began a series of Penny Readings, which now have 
 become so common. It was characteristic of his chivalrous spirit 
 that at the first meeting, when the school-room was crowded with 
 men and boys, he made an appeal to them for their wives and 
 mothers, dwelling on the life of toil they led, and saying how 
 anxious he should be to give them a share in this amusement, which 
 they so sorely needed. It was therefore arranged that, while the 
 men and boys paid their pennies, the widows and poor overbur- 
 dened mothers should have free tickets. 
 
 These meetings, in which his parishioners would kindly help him, 
 occurred once a fortnight, and though set on foot for the poor, 
 brought all classes pleasantly together during the autumn and winter 
 nights ; they had music (the best that could be got), the best 
 poetry, the most heroic stories. Sometimes he would give simple 
 lectures on health ; accounts of his own travels ; and latterly ex- 
 tracts from his eldest son's letters from abroad, in which stories 
 expressly for the Penny Readings at home were not forgotten. 
 Village concerts, too, were given, got up by his daughter and son, 
 in which friends from London helped for his sake ; and the sight of 
 the well-lighted and decorated room to people who saw nothing at 
 home from one year's end to another but a farthing dip candle, 
 was a pleasure in itself ; the poor mothers were gratified at seeing 
 their sons in Sunday garments step up on the platform to help in 
 choruses and part songs, while the young men gained in self-re- 
 spect and refinement, by the share they took in the preparation as 
 well as the performance. " It was to him most curious," he used 
 to say, " to watch the effect of music upon the poor people — ui)on, 
 alas ! seemingly unimpressionable drudges, in whom one would 
 expect to find no appreciation for refined sound ; " but yet who 
 would walk two miles to the village schoolroom on a wet night and 
 sit in rapt attention the whole evening, " showing their approba- 
 tion of good music, not by noisy applause, but by a kindling face 
 and eye during the piece, and a low hum of approbation after, that 
 hinted at a deep musical under-current below that rugged exterior." 
 Penny Readings are common now, but in his own immediate 
 neighborhood the Rector of Eversley took the lead in inaugurating 
 these pleasant gatherings. 
 
o 
 
 68 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 His literary work this year consisted in two lectures on Science 
 and Superstition* at the Royal Institution. He preached for the 
 first time in one of the Great Nave services at Westminster Abbey,f 
 for the Bishop of London's Fund; to the boys of Wellington Col- 
 lege ; to the Queen at Clifden ; and his usual Chapel Royal 
 sermons. In the little congregation at Eversley for some of the 
 summer months, many distinguished men might be numbered ; 
 among them were Sir George Hamilton Seymour and General Sir 
 Wm. Codrington. 
 
 The correspondence was, as usual, of a varied and singular 
 character. One day there came a long letter from a I^ondon news- 
 paper reporter, who, in return for some kindly, cheering words, 
 revealed the inner life of Bohemia with wonderful vividness, and 
 ended, " I have written you a very long and tedious letter, Mr. 
 Kingsley, and were I writing to an ordinary man, I should be mad 
 to address him at this length and in this vein. But j/<7« understand 
 things, and I am almost certain that you will understand me and 
 my long-windedness. Thank you again. Think gently of Bohemia 
 and its free I^ances." .... 
 
 Another from Brighton, thanking him for " Alton Locke," signed 
 " A Chartist and Cabman." 
 
 Again, from a man who had lived abroad, and only signed him- 
 self " One who can never forget you," who had accidentally read 
 " Alton Locke " "in a time of overhelming misery " — " You were 
 the means of saving me from ruin and destruction, to which I was 
 fast drifting." 
 
 From South Australia, 1867, a barrister writes, thanking him for 
 his " Sermons for the Times," " Pentateuch," and " Good News," 
 telling him how they were read frequently by the special magistrate, 
 by his brother barrister, and by himself, in remote places, where 
 they have no Church clergymen, and the Bishop appoints laymen 
 to read sermons. "I could not," he says, " write as a stranger to 
 a man who has so honestly spoken to me of my life and its duties, 
 presented for the first time in the light in which you portray 
 them." .... 
 
 Letters came from China, from the heart of Africa, from the 
 other side of the Rocky Mountains — all telling the same tale. 
 
 * Since republished in " Health and Education." 
 
 •j- Th^se sermons have since appeared in a volume, " The Water of Life." 
 
A Grateful Beneficiary. 369 
 
 One or two found their way to " Charles Kingsley, England," 
 many were without any signature — simple outpourings of loving 
 hearts, neither written from egotism or from the desire of getting 
 an autograph in return. One, also anonymous, dated Glasgow, 
 May II, 1867, is so touching in itself and so significant of Mr. 
 Kingsley's daily acts of mercy unknown to all but himself and 
 those who received them, that it must be given entire : 
 
 "Charles Kingsley, 
 
 " My dear friend, permit me to engage your kind attention for 
 a little. 1 often remember you and ' the kindness of God,' which 
 you showed towards me some years ago. You found me in the 
 way near Hartly Row, a poor, homeless, friendless, penniless 
 stranger. God sent you as an angel of mercy to me, a very un- 
 ■worthy creature. You were, indeed, like the good Samaritan to 
 me. You took me to the Lamb Inn, and there, for your sake, I 
 was very hospitably cared for. On the walls of a room in that inn 
 1 wrote a prayer, which came from the very depths of my heart. 
 It was for you, that the Father of the fatherless would make you 
 most glad with His countenance for ever. That prayer I have 
 often breathed since then. 
 
 " I was not aware, till afterwards, that you were the author of so 
 many books, and a person of so great note. I rejoice in your hon- 
 orable fame." 
 
 These letters, and many a strange communication that he re- 
 ceived, not only cheered him in his work, but gave him fresh 
 knowledge of human nature in all its varied aspects that few men 
 have, and deepened his own humanity. He little thought they 
 were treasured up, to give others some small insight into his great 
 work, by one who feels it is no treachery to disclose them now, or 
 to mention what he never alluded to in his lifetime ! 
 
 TO MR. T. DIXON. 
 
 EvERSLEY, October 27, 1866. 
 
 " The volumes of Bewick are come, and may I beg you to give to 
 the Misses Bewick the enclosed letter of thanks. 
 
 " I am delighted with the new vignettes — all showing the genius 
 which shines from every touch of the truly great man's hand. Of 
 course, as the happy possessor of a Newcastle copy of 1809, in 
 Avhich my father literally brought me up, I prefer the old, untouched 
 plates for softness, richness, and clearness. But we cannot expect 
 everything to last ; and the volumes which have been sent to me 
 24 
 
370 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 are very valuable as memorials of Bewick, as well as proofs of the 
 kindness of people whom I know not, yet respect. 
 
 " I do not quite understand the end of your letter, in which you 
 are kind enough to compliment me for following Carlyle's advice 
 about one 'sadly tried.' I have followed the sage of Chelsea's 
 teaching, about my noble friend, ex-Governor Eyre of Jamaica. I 
 have been cursed for it, as if I had been a dog, who had never stood 
 up for the working man when all the world was hounding him (the 
 working man) down in 1848-9, and imperilled my own prospects 
 in life in behalf of freedom and justice. Now, men insult me 
 because I stand up for a man whom I believe ill-used, calumniated, 
 and hunted to death by fanatics. If you mean Mr. Eyre in what 
 you say, you indeed will give me pleasui"e, because I shall see that 
 one more ' man of the people ' has common sense to appreciate a 
 brave and good man, doing his best under terrible difficulties : but 
 if not, I know that 1 am right." 
 
 to the misses bewick. 
 
 " My dear Toadies, 
 
 " 1 received with great pleasure the present of your father's 
 works in two volumes. The old edition of 1804 is fresher and 
 richer in the printing of the wood-cuts, but this is very interesting 
 to me and to my children, as containing so many new vignettes 
 which the old edition wants, and which all show the genius which 
 always accompanied his hand. 
 
 " Ladies, it is a great boon from God to have had a great father. 
 And I had no idea what a noble specimen of an Englishman he was, 
 till you did me the honor of sending me his ' Life.' The wisdom, 
 justice, moderation, and energy of his character impressed me with 
 a moral reverence for him, even greater than that which I already 
 felt for his artistic honor. Happy are the daughters who have 
 sprung from such a man, and who will meet him again in heaven. 
 " I am, my dear I^adies, 
 
 " Your obliged Servant, 
 
 " Charles Kingsley." 
 
 to the same. 
 
 April ^ 1867. 
 
 " Mrs. Kingsley and I have to thank you very rriuch for your 
 most valuable present of your father's handwriting, and the sketch 
 acompanying it. I shall treasure them and pass them on as heir- 
 looms to my eldest son, who has been brought up on your father's 
 books, and is going out some day as a naturalist and a settler. 
 
 " But, my dear madam, you must not speak of my approving 
 your father's labors, you must speak of me as one who has been 
 you father's loving, reverent pupil, as was my father before me. 
 
yews Tin and yews Houses. 371 
 
 " When your father's book of birds first came out, my father, 
 then a young hunting squire, in the New Poorest, Hampshire, saw 
 the book in London, and bought at once the beautiful old copy 
 which has been the text-book of my boyhood. He, a sportsman 
 and field naturalist, loved it and carried it with him up and down 
 in days when no scientific knowledge could be had, from 1805-1820, 
 and when he was laughed at in the New Forest for having bought 
 a book about '■ dicky birdies,' till his fellow squires borrowing his 
 copy, agreed that it was the most clever book they had ever seen, 
 and a revelation to them, who had had these phenomena under 
 their eyes all their lives and never noticed them. 
 
 " That my father should have introduced into the south of Eng- 
 land; first, your father's book, and have known his great pupil, 
 Yarrell, in person, is to me a great pleasure. Yarrell and my father 
 were friends from youth till death, and if my father had been alive 
 now he would have joined me in respect and affection for the 
 daughters of the great and wise Bewick." 
 
 TO PROFESSOR MAX MtJLLER. 
 
 EvERSLEY, November i6, 1866. 
 " Dearest Max, 
 
 " Story, bless you, I have none to tell you, save that in Corn- 
 wall these same old stories, of Jews' tin and Jews' houses, got from 
 the miners, filled my young brains with unhistoric nonsense, like 
 ]Vlara-zion, the bitterness of Zion ; which town the old folk, I can't 
 tell why, call Market Jew still. 
 
 " That the Jews came to Cornwall as slaves after the destruction 
 of Jei-usalem is possible and probable enough, but I know of no 
 evidence. That the old smelting works, and the tin found in them 
 was immemorially called Jews' tin and Jews' houses is well known ; 
 also that they are of an awful antiquity. Market Jew, as a town, is a 
 xidMXQ you must explain. That is a.U. I put it in ' Yeast,' into the 
 mouth of a Cornish ex-miner. But I am glad you are taking the 
 matter up, and working Carew, Polwhele, and Borlase. I should 
 exi)ect you to find the root of the myths in that fruitful mother of 
 wind eggs, the sixteenth century. 
 
 " My dear Max, what great things have happened for Germany, 
 and what great men your Prussians have shown themselves. Much 
 as 1 was wroth with them about Schleswig-Holstein, I can only see 
 in this last campaign a great necessary move for the physical 
 safety of every North German household, and the honor of every 
 North German woman. To allow the possibility of a second 
 1807-1812 to remain, when it could be averted by any amount of 
 fighting, were sin and shame, and had I been a Prussian I would 
 have gone down to Sadowa as a sacred duty to wife and child and 
 fatherland. 
 
 " I am reading much German now, and shall need to ask you 
 
2)"] 2 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 questions, specially about the reaction from 1815-1820, and the 
 alleged treachery of the princes in not granting constitutions. 
 
 '■'• Meanwhile, tell me if Gervinus, whom I am studying on that 
 matter, is worthy of credit, and recommend me a good author, 
 specially one who has thought before he wrote, and, not like 
 Gervinus, thought in writing, to the perplexing of himself and 
 reader." .... 
 
 The great meteor shower of November, 1866, was naturally of 
 intense and, as he said himself, awful interest to him. In trembHng 
 excitement he paced up and down the church-yard, where he had 
 a greater sweep of horizon than elsewhere, long before the time 
 arrived, and when the shower began called his wife and children 
 out of their beds to watch with him. He preached upon the great 
 spectacle in his own church and at the Chapel Royal. 
 
 TO PROFESSOR ADAMS. 
 
 EvERSLEY, November 14, 1866. 
 
 "The Jinns* (according to the Mussulman theory of meteors) 
 must have had a warm time of it about i a.m. this morning, and the 
 Eastern peoples (if the star shower was visible to them) must be 
 congratulating themselves that (unless the angels are very bad 
 shots) there is a very fair chance of the devil being killed at last. 
 
 " What I saw may at least amuse you. I presume any local 
 observations have value, however small. 
 
 " I saw the first meteor about 11.50, i.e., as soon as the head of 
 Eeo rose above our rather high horizon. From that time the star 
 rain increased till about i a.m., and diminished till about 2.30, 
 when very few passed. They went on, 1 am told, till 5.30 this 
 morning. I saw no increase or diminution in the size of the me- 
 teors from beginning to end. Some of them were larger and more 
 brilliant than common shooting stars, but not many. The most 
 brilliant appeared of a reddish color, their tails green and bluish. 
 They all proceeded from the one point in Teo, only one other star 
 (as far as I saw) fell at right angles. to their course, from the zenith 
 to the north. I was struck by the fact that they all proceeded in 
 quasi-straight lines without any of that wavering and uncertainty 
 of direction so common in meteors. Any large number became 
 visible only about the zenith, or in falling towards the western 
 horizon. 
 
 * The Jinns or second order of spirits are supposed by the Mussulman to be 
 many of them kiUed by shooting stars, hurled at them from heaven ; wherefore, 
 the Arabs, when they see a shooting star, often exclaim, " May God transfix 
 the enemy of the faith 1" — Notes to Lane's " Thousand and One Nights." 
 
The Star Shower. ■^'■jt^ 
 
 " But the most striking and (to me) awful phenomenon was the 
 point of departure in Leo, where, again and again, meteors appeared 
 and hung for a moment, their tail so much foreshortened as to be 
 wholly or almost wholly unseen. These must have been coming 
 straight at us. Surely some may have struck our planet ? 
 
 " The seeming generation of these magnificent objects out of a 
 point of nonentity and void, was to me the most beautiful and strik- 
 ing sky phenomenon which I ever witnessed. Yet the actual facts 
 of their course are far more wonderful and awful than even that 
 appearance. I tried to picture to myself the thought and feelings 
 of a mediaeval observer, however rational or cool-headed he might 
 have been, in presence of that star shower ; and when I thought 
 of the terror with which he had a right to regard it, and the fantastic 
 explanation which he had a right to put upon it, I thanked your 
 astronomers for having ' delivered us by science from one more 
 object of dz-ead.' 
 
 " I ought to say that there was here (in North Hants) no sign 
 of an Aurora Borealis, which is said to have accompanied tlie star 
 shower in certain cases. 
 
 " By-the-bye, what a lecture one might have given (illustrated by 
 nature's own diagrams) on the prospective of parallel lines and the 
 meaning of a vanishing point." 
 
 TO PROFESSOR LORIMER OF EDINBURGH. 
 
 EvERSLEY, December 17, i866. 
 
 " I received some months since (and I hope duly acknowledged) 
 your book on 'The Constitutionalism of the Future.' 
 
 " I laid it by for study, when 1 should have time to do it justice. 
 I now write to express my great pleasure, both in the matter and 
 the manner of it. The views which you put forth are just those to 
 which I have been led by twenty years of thought and observa- 
 tion ; its manner, I wish I could copy. In it, clearness and method 
 are not merely ornamented, but strengthened by a vein of humor, 
 which is a sure sign of mastery of the subject, and of that faculty 
 which no education can give, called genius. I wish that in the 
 writings of our mutual friend, Mr. Mill, I could see some touch of 
 that same humor. I wish that there was any chance of your wise 
 
 advice being adopted; but Mr. 's party have let loose that 
 
 spirit of envy, which is the counterfeit of your righteous idea of 
 equality relative, and tempts men to demand that impossible 
 equality absolute, which must end in making the money lenders the 
 only i)rivileged class. To men possessed by envy, your truly 
 scientific, as well as truly religious method, of looking for the facts 
 of God's world, and trying to represent them in laws, will be the 
 plot of a concealed aristocrat. 1 fear, too, that Mr. Mill and those 
 who follow him most closely, will hardly support your method, and 
 
374 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 for the same reason, Mr. Mill (of whom I speak with real reverence) 
 seems to me to look on man too much as the creature of circum- 
 stances. This it is, which makes him disparage, if not totally deny, 
 the congenial differences of character in individuals, and still more 
 in races. He has, if I mistake not, openly denounced the doctrine 
 of difference and superiority in race. And it is this mistake (as it 
 seems to me) which has led him and others into that theory that 
 the suffrage ought to be educational and formative, which you have 
 so ably combated. 
 
 " Of course if it is assumed that all men are born into the world 
 equals, and that their inequality, in intellect or morals, is chargea- 
 ble entirely to circumstance, that inequality must be regarded as a 
 wrong done by society to the less favored. Society therefor has no 
 right to punish them by withholding the suffrage, for an inferiority 
 which she herself has created ; she is bound to treat them as if 
 they were actually what they would have been but for her, and if 
 they misuse their rights, she must pay the penalty of her previous 
 neglect and cruelty. This seems to me to be the revolutionary doc- 
 trine of 1 793-1848, which convulsed Europe; and from its logic 
 and morality there is no escape as long as human beings are as- 
 serted to be congenitally equal, and circumstances the only cause 
 of subsequent inequality. I have some right to speak on this 
 subject, as 1 held that doctrine strongly myself in past years, 
 and was cured of it, in spite of its seeming justice and charity, by 
 the harsh school of facts. Nearly a quarter of a century spent in 
 educating my parishioners, and experience with my own and others 
 children, in fact, that schooling of facts brought home to the heart 
 — which Mr. Mill has never had — have taught me that there are 
 congenital differences and hereditary tendencies which defy all edu- 
 cation from circumstances, whether for good or evil. Society may 
 pity those who are born fools or knaves, but she cannot, for her 
 own sake, allow them power if she can help it. And therefore 
 in the case of the suffrage, she must demand some practical guar- 
 antee that the man on whom it is bestowed is not dangerously 
 knavish or foolish. I have seen, also, that the differences of race 
 are so great, that certain races, e.g., the Irish Celts, seem quite 
 imfit for self-government, and almost for the self-administration of 
 justice involved in trial by jury, because they regard freedom and 
 law, not as means for preserving what is just and right, but merely 
 as weapons to be used for their own private interests and passions. 
 They take the letter of freedom which killeth, without any concep- 
 tion of its spirit which giveth life. Nay, I go further, and fear 
 much that no Roman Catholic country will ever be fit for free con- 
 stitutional government, and for this simple reason, De Tocqueville 
 and his school (of whom I speak with great respect) say that the 
 cause of failure of free institutions in the Romance countries has 
 been, the absence of the priuiary training in municipal self-govern- 
 
The Right of Suffrage. 375 
 
 ment. That I doubt not. But what has been the cause of that 
 want? — the previous want of training in self government of the 
 individual himself. And as long as the system of education for all 
 classes in the Romance countries is one of tutelage and espionage 
 (proceeding from the priestly notions concerning sin), so long will 
 neither rich nor poor have any power of self-government. Any 
 one who knows the difference between a French lyc'ee and an 
 English public school ought to see what I mean, and see one main 
 cause of the failure of all attempts at self-government in France. 
 May I without boring you (at least you are not bound to read this long 
 letter) go on to another subject, which seems to me just now of 
 great importance ? I think the giving intellect and civilization its 
 due weight, by means of plurality of votes, as you so well advise, 
 ])ractically hopeless just now. But is there no body or influence 
 in the state which may secure them their due weight nevertheless ? 
 I think that tliere is, namely, the House of Lords. You seem (and 
 herein alone I differ from you) to regard as the majority do, the Peers, 
 as standing alone in tlie state, and representing only themselves. 
 I, on the contrary, look at them as representing every silver fork 
 in Great Britain. What 1 mean is this, a person or body may be 
 truly representative without being elected by those whom they 
 represent. You will of course allow this. Now the House of 
 Lords seem to me to represent all heritable property, real or per- 
 sonal, and also all heritable products of moral civilization, such as 
 hereditary inde])endence, chivalry, &c. They represent, in one 
 word, the hereditary principle. This, no House of Commons, no 
 elective body, can represent. It can only represent the temporary 
 wants and opinions of the many, and that portion of their capital 
 which is temporarily invested in trade, &c. It cannot represent the 
 hereditary instinct which binds man and the state to the past and 
 future generations. If you watch the current of American feeling 
 and society you will see full proof of this. If the family bond 
 should break up there, soon the bond will break up which makes a 
 nation responsible in honor for the deeds of its ancestors, and 
 therefore regardful of the obligation of international treaties. Now 
 a body is required which represents the i)ast and the future, and 
 all material or spiritual which has been inherited from the past or 
 bequeathed to the future. And this body must itself be an hereditary 
 one. Some one may answer, ' Just as much as. Who drives fat 
 oxen must himself be fat.' But it seems to me, 
 
 " I. That such a body must be non-elected, to keep it safe from 
 the changes of temporary popular opinion. An elective upper 
 chamber is a monster which is certain to become a den of dema- 
 gogues and money-lenders. 
 
 " 2, That it must be hereditary, because it is impossible for men 
 to represent that which they are not themselves. The Peers are 
 the incarnation of the hereditary principle. I look on them there- 
 
■^"j^ Charles Kings ley. 
 
 fore as what they are in fact, not a caste, not even a class, but a 
 certain number of specimens of a class chosen out by the accident 
 (and a very fair choice, because it prevents quarrels and popular 
 intrigues) of being eldest sons. I look on them as the representa- 
 tives, not only of every younger brother, &c., of their own kin, and 
 of every family which has ever intermarried, or hopes to intermarry 
 with them (though that would include the great majority of well- 
 educated Britons), but as the representatives of every man who has 
 saved up enough to buy a silver fork, a picture, a Yankee clock, or 
 anything, in fact, which he wishes to hand to his children. I hold 
 that while Mr. Bright may, if he likes, claim to be represented 
 merely by the House of Commons, his plate and house is repre- 
 sented by the House of Lords, and that if the House of Lords were 
 'abolished, Mr. Bright's children would discover that fact by the 
 introduction of laws which would injure the value of all heritable 
 property, would tax (under the name of luxuries) the products of 
 art and civilization, would try to drive capital into those trades 
 which afforded most employment for //^-skilled labor, and supplied 
 most the temporary necessities of the back and belly, and would 
 tend to tax the rich for the sake of the poor, with very ugly results 
 to civilization. 
 
 " This picture may seem overdrawn. But I answer, this is already 
 the tendency in the United States. The next fifty years will prove 
 whether that tendency can be conquered or not in a pure demo- 
 cracy, such as they have now for the first time become, since they 
 have exterminated their southern hereditary aristocracy, and their 
 northern hereditary aristocracy, the Puritan gentlemen of old 
 families have retired in disgust*from public life. May I ask you to 
 think over this view of the House of Lords. And may I ask you 
 how far you think, if it be correct, it can be wisely pressed upon 
 all classes, and specially upon the titled persons (there is no titled 
 class in these realms) themselves ? 
 
 " Pray excuse the length of this letter. But your book awoke 
 such an interest in me — a solitary country thinker — that I could 
 not resist the temj^tation of pouring out to you some of the re- 
 sults of my years of practical observation of, and pondering on, 
 facts." 
 
 In the spring of 1867 he undertook the editorship of " Eraser's 
 Magazine " for a few months for Mr. Froude, who had to go to 
 Spain to study the archives of Simancas for his history, and he 
 seized upon this opportunity to get a few papers on science into its 
 pages, and wrote to his friends Professor Newton, Sir Charles Bun- 
 bury, and others, begging for help, to which they kindly responded 
 — Professor Newton writing on the Birds of Norfolk ; Sir Charles 
 
Natural Selection. 2)77 
 
 on the Flora of South America ; he himself contributing one of 
 his most lovely idylls, "A Charm of Birds." 
 
 TO CHARLES DARWIN, ESQ., F.L.S., F.G.S. 
 
 EvERSLEY, yujie 6, 1867. 
 
 " I am very anxious to obtain a copy of a pamphlet, which I 
 unfortunately lost. It came out shortly after your ' Origin of 
 Species,' and was entitled ' Reasons for believing in Mr. Darwin's 
 Theory' — or some such words. It contained a list of phenomenal 
 puzzles, forty or more, which were explicable by you and not 
 otherwise. If you can recollect it, and tell me where I can get a 
 copy, 1 shall be very glad, as I may specially want it in your 
 defence. 
 
 " I advise you to look at a wonderful article in the ' North 
 British ' about you. It is a pity the man who wrote it had not 
 studied zoology and botany, before writing about them. 
 
 " The Duke of Argyle's book is very fair and manly, although 
 he cannot agree with you. What he says about the humming birds 
 is his weakest part. He utterly overlooks sexual selection by the 
 females, as one great branch of natural selection. Why on earth 
 are the males only (to use his teleological view) ornamented, save 
 for the amusement of the females first ? In his earnestness to 
 press the point (which I think you have really overlooked too 
 much), that beauty in animals and plants is intended for the fes- 
 thetic education and pleasure of man, and (as I believe in my old- 
 fashioned way)., for the pleasure of a God who rejoices in His 
 works as a painter in his picture — in his hurry, I say, to urge this 
 truth, he has overlooked that beauty in any animal must surely first 
 i:)lease the animals of that species, and that beauty in males alone 
 is a broad hint that the females are meant to be charmed thereby 
 — and once allow that any striking new color would attract any 
 single female, you have an opening for endless variation. 
 
 " Altogether, even the 'North British' pleases me, for the writer 
 is forced to allow some natural selection, and forced to allow some 
 great duration of the earth ; and so every one who fights you is 
 forced to allow some of your arguments, as a tub to the whale, if 
 only he may be allowed to deny others, while very few have the 
 honesty to confess that they know nothing about the matter, save 
 what you have put into their heads. 
 
 " Remark that the argument of the 'North British,' that geolo- 
 gical changes were more violent, and the physical energies of the 
 earth more intense in old times, cuts both ways. For if that 
 be true, then changes of circumstance in plants and animals must 
 have been more rapid, and the inclination to vary from outivard 
 circumstance greater ; and also, if the physical energies of the 
 earth were greater, so must the physical energies of the animals 
 
378 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 and plants ; and, therefore, their tendency to sport may have been 
 greater ; and not without a gleam of scientific insight have the 
 legends of so many races talked of giants and monsters on the 
 earth of old." .... 
 
 ^ EVERSLEY, Jjlly 12, 1867. 
 
 " I flee to you, as usual, in ignorance and wonder. Have you 
 investigated the migration of the eye in flat-fish ? I have been 
 reading a paper on it by Professor Thompson in ' Natural History 
 Magazine ' for May, 1865. I took to your methods for explaining 
 hojti the miracle takes place ; whether the eye passes through the 
 skull, or round the soft parts, is a minor question. Will you kindly 
 do me the honor to look at two lectures of mine on ' Science and 
 Superstition,' given at the Royal Institution, and reprinted in 
 Fraser's Magazine for June and July ? I think you will find that 
 I am not unmindful of your teaching. I heard with extreme 
 pleasure that your health is nuich improved." 
 
 Trinity Lodge, Cambridge, December 15, 1867. 
 
 " I have been here three or four days, and have been accidentally 
 drawn, again and again, into what the world calls Darwinism, and 
 you and I and some others, fact and science. I have been drawn 
 thereinto, simj^ly because I find every one talking about it to any 
 one who is supposed to know {or mis-know) anything about it ; all 
 showing how men's minds are stirred. I find the best and strongest 
 men coming over. 
 
 " I. Because, being really great men, they know so much already 
 which they cannot co-ordinate with your theories (at least as yet), 
 and say (as they have a right), ' I will stand by what I do know 
 from mathematics, before I give in to what I don^t know from 
 
 .' That last dash is the key of the position. They don't 
 
 know. The men have been asking me questions, e.g.^ 'You don't 
 say that there are links between a cat and a dog ? If so, what are 
 they ? ' 'i'o which I have been forced to answer — my dear fellow, 
 you must read and find out for yourself. I am not bound to answer 
 such a question as that. I am not bound to teach you the alpha- 
 bet, while you are solemnly disputing about my translation of the 
 language. 
 
 " That is what it comes to, my dear and honored master. If 
 men don't agree with you, it is because they don't know facts ; and 
 what I do is simply to say to every one, as I have been doing for 
 three days past, ' Will you kindly ascertain what facts there are to 
 be known or disproved, before you talk on this matter at all?' 
 And I find, in Cambridge, that the younger M.A.'s are not only 
 willing, but greedy, to hear what you have to say ; and that the 
 elder (who have, of course, more old notions to overcome) are 
 
A Visit to Scotland. 379 
 
 facing the whole question in quite a different tone from what 
 they did three years ago. I won't mention names, for fear of 
 'compromising' men who are in an honest, but 'funky,' stage 
 of conversion : but 1 have been, surprised, coming back for 
 three or four days, at the change since last winter. I trust you 
 will lind the old university (which has always held to physical 
 science and free thought, and allows, as she always has done, 
 anybody to believe anything reasonable, provided he don't quar- 
 rel with his neighbors) to be your firmest standing ground in these 
 isles. 
 
 " I say this, especially now, because you will get, I su]3pose, an 
 attack on you by an anonymous ' Graduate of Cambridge,' which I 
 found in the hands of at least one very wise and liberal man, who 
 admired it very much, but knew nothing oi the facts. He showed 
 it me, and, in the first three pages I opened at hazard, I pointed 
 him out two or three capital cases of ignorance or omission, on 
 which I declined to read any more of the book, as coming from a 
 man who knew not^ or did not choose to know, anything about the 
 facts. 
 
 " Excuse the bad writing. I have a pen, which, if natural selec- 
 tion influenced pens, would have been cast into the fire long ago : 
 but the disturbing moral element makes me too lazy to cast it 
 thereinto, and to find a new one. 1 have, as usual, a thousand 
 questions to ask you, and no time, nor brain to ask them now." 
 
 In the summer he was refreshed by a visit to Scotland, which 
 included some days of the British Association at St. Andrew's, and 
 a visit to M. Van de Weyer at Abergeldie Castle. His visits to 
 Scotland were always invigorating and congenial to him. 
 
 TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 St. Andrew's, Sim^iay, September 7. 
 
 " I am looking out on a glassy sea, with the sea-birds sailing 
 about close under the window. I could wish to be at home seeing 
 you all go to church. Yesterday was a day of infinite bustle. The 
 University and City received the British Association, and feasted 
 them. Everything was very well done, except putting me down 
 for a speech against my express entreaty. However, 1 only sj^oke 
 five minutes. After this early dinner a reception soiree of all the 
 ladies of P'ifeshire, ' East Neuk ; ' we escaped early. I hate being 
 made a lion of, and stuck tight to good Mrs. B. 1 sat at dinner 
 between dear old Phillips and Geikie, with Grant-Duff next, who 
 has asked me to co»ie on to him if I have time, and kill his sal- 
 mon. Hurrah ! To-day to church at one, and dine at Principal 
 Tulloch's after, to meet Stanley, who is in great force in his beloved 
 
380 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 St Andrew's, which he called, in a very charming speech last night, 
 his second university. Jowett comes to-morrow with a reading 
 party. Blackwood (of the Magazine), who lives close by, has been 
 most civil to me, wanting me to come and stay with him, etc. ; he 
 has told me much that is curious about De Quincey, Hogg, Wilson, 
 &c. He and B. and T. have been trying hard to make me preach 
 
 in Boyd's Church ; but I talked it over with last night, and I 
 
 was glad to find that he thought with me, that it is quite legal ; but 
 that there was no need for a sudden and uncalfed for row with the 
 Puseyites, I am most careful about all that. Nothing can be 
 more pleasant than my stay here has been. But the racket of the 
 meeting is terrible ; the talking continual, and running into Dun- 
 dee, by two trains, with the steamer at Broughty Ferry, between, 
 is too much ; so I have taken up my hat, and am off to Tilliepro- 
 nie to-morrow ; with the Provost of Dundee, and worse, the dear 
 Red Lion Club crying to me to stop and dine. I will bring for M. 
 home, the Red Lion Club card, with the comicalities on it, which 
 poor Edward Forbes designed. These dear Scots folk — I should 
 like to live always among them ; they are so full of vigorous life 
 and heart. I am very well, but longing for the heather. The 
 rains here have been all but disastrous. All the corn almost 
 is green here. Tell Maurice golf is the queen of games, if 
 cricket is the king ; and the golfing gentlemen as fine fellows as 
 ever I saw." 
 
 " Best of all," said Dean Stanley in a letter from Dundee, speak- 
 ing of the banquet, "was Kingsley's speech, comparing the litera- 
 ture of science to camp followers picking up scraps from the army, 
 plundering, begging, borrowing, and stealing, and giving what they 
 got to the bairns and children that ran after them, ending with a 
 very delicate and well-timed serious turn of ' the voice of God re- 
 vealed in facts.' " 
 
 Abergeldie Castle, Thursday, September 19, 1867. 
 
 " I am quite unhappy to-day thinking of your parting with the 
 dear boy, for I can understand, though my man's coarser nature 
 cannot feel as intensely the pang to you of parting with a bit of 
 yourself More and more am I sure, and physiologists are becom- 
 ing more sure also, that the mother is the more important, and in the 
 case of the boy everything ; the child is the mother, and her rights, 
 opinions, feelings, even fancies about him, ought to be first re- 
 garded. 
 
 " I suppose you will write to me all about his starting ; but I 
 have no fear of his being anything but happy, and Madame V. 
 
Recollections by Prof. S hair p. 381 
 
 says that boys are always so much healthier as soon as they go to 
 school." .... 
 
 TO MARY. 
 
 (With a picture of Abergeldie. ) 
 " My Mary, 
 
 " This is the real castle where I am, and ia the bottom of that 
 tower a real witch was locked up before she was burnt on Craig- 
 na-Ban, overhead. At the back of the house, under my window, 
 which is in the top of the tower, the Dee is roaring, and the sal- 
 mons are not leaping, and a darling water-ouzel, with a white 
 breast, is diving after caddises. And as soon as I have had lunch- 
 eon I am going to fish with two dear little girls, who catch lots of 
 trout with a fly, and a real gilly in a kilt, who, when he and I 
 caught a salmon two days ago, celebrated the event by putting on 
 his Prince of Wales tartan and uniform, taking an enormous bag- 
 pipe, and booming hke an elephantine bumble-bee all round the 
 dinner-table, and then all aj3out the house. It is very pleasant — 
 like a dream — real stags in the forest looking at you, and real 
 grouse, and black cock, and real princesses walking about ; but I 
 long to be home again with you all, and that is truth. Love to 
 Rose, and tell her to write to me to Aboyne. 
 " Your affections pater, 
 
 " C. K." 
 
 He made acquaintance this year with Professor Shairp of St. 
 Salvator's College, St. Andrew's, who thus recalls the meeting which 
 was so welcome to Mr. Kingsley : 
 
 "Twice only was I privileged to meet him, but of both meetings 
 I have a very vivid and pleasing remembrance. 
 
 "The first was in (I think) October, 1867, at Benson's Home, 
 WeUington College. Mr. Kingsley came with your son Maurice to 
 dinner ; as there was no one there, but Benson and myself, we had 
 his conversation all to ourselves. During dinner I remember his 
 saying that whenever he was tired or out of spiiits the book he most 
 turned to was Carlyle's ' French Revolution.' I expressed some sur- 
 l^rise at this, saying that I thought Carlyle's, if a stimulating atmos- 
 ])here, was certainly not a soothing but a disturbing one to me. Of 
 this latter element, the soothing I mean, I think I said I found 
 ■what came home to me far more in some of the best of Newman's 
 'Parochial Sermons' — not those which deal with controversial sub- 
 jects, but those which dwell on great universal truths. Mr. 
 Kingsley did not quite agree, and we had a good deal of friendly 
 discussion arising out of this. 
 
 "Afterwards, in the drawing-room, he told me that he wished to 
 
382 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 know more minutely about our old Scottish ballads. I think he 
 wished it for something he had on hand to write. 
 
 "We sat for a long time in close talk on the ballads ; and I re- 
 member being much struck by his acquaintance, and still more 
 with his fresh appreciation and insight into them — much keener, I 
 thought, than that of most educated Scotchmen. 1 was very sorry 
 when the time came that evening when we had to rise and go. 
 The only other time I met him was in July, 1872 (I think), at a 
 garden-party given by the Dean of Westminster and Lady Augusta, 
 in the Precincts. When I met Mr. Kingsley, he came aside from 
 the throng, and we walked up and down on the grass for some 
 time. I remember wlien I told him I was going to return to the 
 Highlands, he said, with a sort of half sigh, ' Ah, yes ! — those 
 Highland hills — I wish I were among them,' and spoke with the 
 deepest delight of what he had seen of them. 
 
 " Both times, whenever we met, I felt as if he had been an old 
 friend. This, for many reasons, which you may guess." 
 
 TO T. HUGHES, ESQ. 
 
 EVERSLEY, 
 
 "What is a National Freedman's Aid Union, which writes to me, 
 and which has your name on it ? What do they want to do ? 
 
 " I am very glad these slaves are freed, at whatever cost of blood 
 and treasure. But now — what do they want from us ? There is 
 infinite wild land for them to till. There is infinite political skill 
 in the north to get them and the land in contact. There is infinite 
 money in the north to furnish them with tools and seed ; and there 
 is, I hope, infinite common sense in the north to punish them as 
 * strong rogues and vagabonds' if they won't work. 
 
 " What do they ask our money for, over and above ? I am per- 
 sonally shy of giving mine. The negro has had all I ever possessed ; 
 for emancipation ruined me. And yet I would be ruined a second 
 time, if emancipation had to be done over again. I am no slave- 
 holder at heart. But I have paid my share of the great bill, in 
 ]]arba(loes and Demerara, with a vengeance ; and don't see myself 
 called on to pay other men's ! 
 
 " But tell me what will be done with this money when it is got. 
 For got it will be, in plenty. Is it to be spent in turning the south 
 into a big Hayti of savage squatters ? or as a rate in aid to keep 
 these poor wretches from starving, which ought to be done by the 
 American government. They have had the gain. They have 
 made themselves by this war the biggest and most terrible nation on 
 earth. What do they want with a rate in aid ? " 
 
 The following letter may be valuable to stammerers. His own 
 great mental suffering from this cause made him most anxious to 
 
How to Cttre Stamtnering. 2)^2> 
 
 help others. They were the rules he had arrived at in his own case 
 lafter years of observation : 
 
 TO MISS 
 
 "You can cure yourself, or all but cure yourself in three 
 months, without any one observing it, if you will think over, and 
 practice, what follows, and which is a matter of simple common 
 sense. 
 
 "And you must try ; or you will find your health and spirits fail 
 you. Especially you will find your chest contract from tlie eff"ort 
 to force your breath out by unnatural means. 
 
 " Now, you stammer mainly because your upper teeth, like mine, 
 shut over the lower ones. Therefore, if you do not open your 
 mouth wide, your breath is forced out between your teeth, with 
 great exertion, instead of between your lips. If the breath goes 
 out between the lips, then the lips can act on it to form the con- 
 sonants ; and you can articulate. If not, you cannot. 
 
 " Therefore you must first open your mouth wide when you 
 speak. You will be afraid to do so at first, lest people remark it. 
 They will not. Every one opens their mouths, and therefore they 
 only observe a person who does not. 
 
 " If you find it difficult to speak with your mouth open (and it 
 will very likely give you pain in the ear at first, but only at first), 
 
 get a bit of cork, cut it about so thick , and put it between your 
 
 back teeth, and speak so. By-the-bye, if your back teeth are bad, 
 you ought to get rid of them, and have false teeth. Toothache and 
 bad teeth are very bad for this complaint. 
 
 " You jnust practice reading out loud to yourself, opening your 
 mouth at the vowels as wide as you can, and perhaps keeping the 
 cork in at first, till you have made a habit of it. Begin by reading 
 poetry (which is easiest) the first thing in the morning, and then 
 again in the evening before dinner. 
 
 " Read for a quarter of an hour each time. Then try prose. 
 But always keep up reading aloud, for months to come, or even for 
 years. 
 
 " 2. You must, in reading and in speaking, mind your stops. 
 You have been in the habit of speaking from an empty lung. You 
 must learn to speak from a full one. For if there is no wind in 
 the organ bellows, the pipes will not sound ; and also, an empty 
 lung is an unwholesome and injurious thing. For if there is no air 
 in the lungs, the blood is not oxygenated. The more you read 
 aloud, from a full lung, the stronger and healthier, and more 
 cheerful you will feel ; for air is the finest of all tonics. 
 
 " Now how to do this. Before beginning to read, take two or 
 three long full breaths. And also (and this is an excellent rule) be- 
 fore you begin to speak to any one, especially if you are nervous, 
 
384 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 take two or three breaths and then open your mouth and speak. 
 You will find the nervousness go, and the words come out, as by 
 miracle. Remember Balaam's ass could not speak, till his 'mouth 
 was opened.' 
 
 " At each full stop, you should stop, and take a long breath ; at 
 a colon, a less full, at a semi-colon less, at a comma less still. But 
 keep sacredly to the habit of breathing at every stop. Read and 
 speak SLOW; and take care of the co?isofia!its, and the vowels will 
 take care of themselves. 
 
 "And how to take care of the consonants? ^y taking care of 
 the tongue and lips. 
 
 " Now if you will watch any one who speaks beautifully you will 
 see, that the tongue lies quite quiet, on a level with the lower front 
 teeth, and never flies up in the mouth. You will see also that they 
 use their lips a great deal ; and form the consonants with them. 
 But you will see also, that they keep the upper lip down and still, 
 so that the upper front teeth are hardly seen at all ; while they 
 move the under lip a great deal, making it play upon the upper. 
 Watch the Bishop of Winchester (S. Wilberforce), or Bright, or any 
 great actress, and you will see this. 
 
 " Now, I know (though 1 have not seen) that your tongue flies 
 about in your mouth. It did in mine : it always does, because it is 
 trying to do the work which the hps should do. So get into 
 the habit of determinately keeping it down. You will find it easy 
 enough after a while. But at first, when you speak and read, al- 
 ways be sure that you can feel your lower teeth against the tip of 
 your tongue. I know a beautiful great lady who lets her tongue fly 
 about in her mouth, and consequently you often cannot understand 
 her. 
 
 "Also keep your upper Hp down, and right over your upper 
 teeth, and pronounce the consonants with your lower hp again^'. 
 them. Some people will pronounce the consonants against the 
 upper teeth, instead of the lip, and let the hp fly up. But it is 
 dangerous. One of the most beautiful people I know does that 
 when she is excited ; and then you can hardly understand her. 
 
 " Practice this (as I used) before a looking-glass, to see that your 
 upper hp is -down tight, your mouth open, and your tongue lying 
 low and still ; and after a very little while, you will find it quite 
 easy, because it is quite natural ; because your organs will have 
 returned to their natural uses, and you will be speaking like other 
 people. 
 
 " Lastly, use some sort of exercises morning and evening to ex- 
 pand your chest. Raising your arms over your head a few dozer, 
 times is as good as anything — or Indian clubs — or something of 
 that kind. Anything to raise the ribs and expand the chest. 
 
 " If you will attend to these rules, you can cure yourself. You 
 will fail and fall back often. Never mind. You will succeed 
 
How to Ct^re Stammer ing. 385 
 
 better and better each time, till habit becomes nature. I stam- 
 mered far worse till I was five and thirty, or forty almost. But you 
 are young, and can do what you choose easily. 
 
 " Do not be discouraged about your lips. You will soon acquire 
 the power of moving the under while you keep the upper still, if 
 you take pains to open your mouth wide. 
 
 " Sunima : — i. Open your mouth. 2. Take full breaths and 
 plenty of them, and mind your stops. 3. Keep your tongue quiet. 
 4. Keep your upper lip down. 5. Use your lower lip. 6. Read 
 to yourself out loud. 7. Read and speak slow, slow, slow. 
 
 25 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Aged 49. 
 
 Attacks of the Press — Lectures on Sixteenth Century — Mr. Longfellow — Sir Henry 
 Taylor on Crime and its Punishment — Letter from Mr. Dunn — Letter from 
 Rev. William Harrison. 
 
 The professorial lectures this year were on the i6th century, and 
 were crowded, as usual; but the severe attacks on his teaching in 
 two leading newspapers in the preceding autumn had inclined him, 
 for the honor of his University and for his own honor, to resign his 
 post. But as he believed that both attacks sprang from some per- 
 sonal feeling, he thought it best, before sending in his resignation, 
 to consult some of the Cambridge authorities, on whose friendship 
 and impartiality he could rely. They strongly advised him to re- 
 tain the Professorship, and on their advice, though the work was too 
 heavy for him, he determined to keep it on for at least another 
 year. 
 
 That he was doing a work among the undergraduates, there are 
 many who will testify ; and at the day when the history of all 
 hearts shall be revealed, and perhaps not till then, will it be known 
 how many young men owe the first dawn of a manly spiritual life 
 to the very lectures on which severe strictures were passed. » 
 
 The Rev. J. PulHblank, of Liverpool, thus recalls his influence on 
 him in his own undergraduate days : 
 
 "I revered and still revere your husband, and can never tell any- 
 body how much I owe him, until ' in that high place ' I can speak 
 out and tell him all. I find a few memoranda, written in a note- 
 book at the time, at Cambridge, After a lecture I think on the 
 French Revolution or on the colonization of America, — ' We have 
 not yet reached,' he said, ' and I know not when we shall reach, 
 the true aristocracy, when the apiaroi, the best men, shall have the 
 governing of our country ; but thus much I do know, that we shall 
 at last come to it, and that we pray for it every time we use the 
 
Maurice and Kingsley. 387 
 
 Lord's Prayer. " Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done 07i earth, 
 as it is in Heaven. Thy name be hallowed." ' The underscored 
 words marked by that pause, which was so deeply significant. In 
 G. R. Crotch's rooms, conversation arose about the delay of some 
 reform. Somebody said ' public opinion ' wanted awakening. Prof. 
 Kingsley : ' It is not the many who reform the world, but the few, 
 who rise superior to that public opinion which crucified our Lord 
 many years ago.' 
 
 '■'■In E. H. Palmer's (now Professor Palmer's) rooms, March 23, 
 1868, the talk was about the state of nature and the natural man, 
 in which one of us young men propounded some advanced views. 
 Professor Kingsley agreed, till an example was given — viz., the 
 N. American Indian. Then he said, ' No, no, that I won't grant ; 
 the savage is not a natural man, but a most unnatural beast, play- 
 ing all manner of unnatural and unwholesome pranks upon him- 
 self.' Then 1 remember he went on with what was a favorite topic 
 of his, that civilization seems the only natural state for man, be- 
 cause savage races are decaying even before civilization touches 
 them. He instanced the North American Indian, and said that 
 European civilization, bad as it was, did not kill them ; they were 
 dying out before ever a white man set eyes on the New World. 
 
 " I had the rare pleasure of sitting next to Prof. Kingsley at 
 several of Prof. Maurice's lectures on ' Conscience.' One day, 
 Maurice was speaking of the inadequacy of Mr. Bain's theory of 
 conscience as tested by facts (Lecture III.), Prof. Kingsley's fight- 
 ing blood was evidently roused, and when Nelson's famous signal 
 was referred to (it was quoted, though it is not printed in the Lec- 
 tures), I had to shrink into very small compass, for a strong right 
 hand, shot out straight from the shoulder, passed quite as near as 
 was pleasant to my face. I looked and saw that Prof. Kingsley 
 could not see for tears. Then Maurice went on to quote Sir 
 Hastings Doyle's lines on the ' Sinking of the Birkenhead,' and at 
 the end we all rose, as near to tears as to anything else, and cheered. 
 Two or three days afterwards, just a few words in one of Prof. 
 Kingsley's lectures : ' You who come to this room on the other days 
 of the week, know from one who can teach you, and me also — 
 (God grant that we may learn) what duty is.' " 
 
 Happily he was well and vigorous this year, and had so much 
 work on hand in his parish and with his pen, that he had not time 
 to be depressed by the attacks of the press. He began his little 
 history of the Hermits for the " Sunday Library ; " brought out a 
 serie's of Papers for Children on Natural Science in " Good Words 
 for the Young," called, "Madam How and Lady Why ; " lectured 
 for the Hampshire Diocesan Society ; preached at Whitehall and 
 
388 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 St. James's, London, at Sandringham, and at Windsor ; and got 
 through nearly sixteen volumes of Comte's works, in preparation 
 for his next year's lectures at Cambridge. 
 
 After his first introduction to Mr. Longfellow, whom he was in- 
 vited to meet at dinner on his arrival from America, he writes to 
 his wife : 
 
 " . . . . I have seen Mr. Longfellow. The dinner last 
 night was a success, and all went well. Tennyson was not there, 
 but Maurice and the Orator (W. G. Clarke of Trinity), who had 
 come all the way from Cambridge. Longfellow is far handsomer 
 and nobler than his portraits make him. I do not think I ever 
 saw a finer human face. I had an opportunity of'telling him some- 
 thing of what we all felt for him, and of the good work he had done 
 in England, and to get a promise out of him that he would come 
 and see us when he comes back in May. He had three very pleas- 
 ant gentleman-like Americans with him. I kept in the background 
 and talked to them." .... 
 
 In the spring of this year he was consulted by a friend in the 
 army, who was deeply interested in the subject of military educa- 
 tion, on the state of Sandhurst. A Military Education Commission 
 had recently been proposed by Lord Eustace Cecil, on which some 
 officers wished to see Mr. Kingsley placed. This wish, however, 
 was not carried into effect ; there being those in the Government 
 (at that time a Conservative one) who thought him too much of a 
 reformer. 
 
 On receiving a pamphlet from Sir Henry (then Mr.) Taylor on 
 crime and how to deal with it, addressed to Mr. Gladstone, he 
 writes : 
 
 TO HENRY TAYLOR, ESQ. 
 
 EvERSLEY, December 26, 1868. 
 
 " I have to thank you for your able and rational pamphlet.* 
 How far Mr. Gladstone will be able to act upon its suggestions is 
 a question by no means hopeful. As against any just and rational 
 treatment of crime, two influences are at work now. 
 
 " I. The efi'eminacy of the middle class, which never having in 
 its life felt bodily pain (unless it has the toothache) looks on such 
 pain as the worst of all evils. My experience of the shopkeeping 
 class (from which juries are taken) will hardly coincide with yours. 
 
 * On Crime and its Punishment. 
 
Crime a7zd its Punishment. 389 
 
 You seem, page 19, to think them a hardier and less dainty class 
 than our own. I find that even in the prime of youth they shrink 
 from (and are often unable to bear, from physical neglect of train- 
 ing) fatigue, danger, pain, which would be considered as sport by 
 an average public schoolboy. I think that Mill and those of his 
 school are aware of this, and look on it with disfavor and dread, 
 as an instinct of that ' military class ' whom they would (whether 
 justly or not) destroy; and that from the ' extreme left ' of thought 
 you would have heavy opposition on this ground, and also because, 
 
 " 2. The tendency of their speculations is more and more to the 
 theory that man is not a responsible person, but a result of all the 
 circumstances of his existence ; and that therefore if anything or 
 person is responsible for a crime, it is the whole circumambient 
 universe. Doubtless, men who utterly believed this might be as 
 Draconic towards human beings, as towards wasps and snakes, ex- 
 terminating the bad as failures of nature, not as criminals. But the 
 average folk, who only half believe this theory, supplement it by a 
 half belief in the human responsibility of a criminal, a confusion 
 which issues in this : 
 
 "The man is not responsible for his faults. They are to be im- 
 puted to circumstance. But he is responsible for, and therefore 
 to be valued solely by, his virtues. They are to be imputed to 
 himself An ethical theorem, which you may find largely illus- 
 trated in Dickens's books, at least as regards the lower and middle 
 classes. 
 
 " Hence the tendency of the half-educated masses in England 
 will be (unless under panic) toward an irrational and sentimental 
 leniency. 
 
 "As for corporal punishment; after having long objected to 
 •it, even in the case of boys, I have come round in the last ten 
 years to a full concurrence with what you say about it in your 
 pamphlet* 
 
 " On one point alone I hesitate to agree with you. Direct 
 legislation against drunkenness, as such, will be very difficult to 
 work fairly, because drunkenness is so very undefined and gradual 
 a state. Where the drunkard has committed a breach of the peace, 
 or used language likely to provoke the same, the course would be 
 clear. But short of that, I fear lest the policeman would become 
 the judge of who was drunk and who sober; a power which would 
 involve the chance of terrible extortion of money from moneyed 
 men. On the other hand, it seems clear to me that any person 
 convicted repeatedly of being drunk and disorderly, is a fit subject 
 for penal servitude." 
 
 * In case of boys, however, he oI)jected to flogging for any offences, except 
 bullying and cruelty, believing that in boys, as well as in little children, falsehood 
 is often the result of the fear of corporal punishment. 
 
390 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 He made at this time the personal acquaintance of Mr. Henry 
 Dunn, of Blackheath, author of several very suggestive works that 
 had interested him deeply,* and had the pleasure of receiving him 
 at the Rectory. Mr. Dunn thus recalls their meeting : 
 
 " I have a very lively and most pleasant recollection of my visit 
 to Eversley. Especially do I remember with abiding interest a 
 conversation \ had with your husband during a somewhat length- 
 ened walk. We had been speaking of the evangelical party in the 
 Church of England, and of the unhappy tendency sometimes mani- 
 fested by their writers to revile those who differ from them, when 
 Mr. Kingsley, as if glad of the opportunity, enlarged on their many 
 excellencies, and on the good they had been permitted to accom- 
 plish. There was a generosity of tone in all that he said which 
 greatly excited my admiration. Recollecting how often he had 
 himself received injuries in that quarter, I felt afresh the beauty 
 and force of the apostle's words, 'Not rendering railing for railing, 
 but contrariwise blessing.' Passing on we came in sight of a poor 
 laboring man employed in field work, to whom Mr. Kingsley called 
 my attention, and then said, 'he is one of my dissenting parish- 
 ioners, a Baptist and a high Calvinist. He is ignorant and often 
 mistaken in his interpretations of Scripture, but I honor him. 
 He is a good man, well acquainted with his Bible, and consci- 
 entiously living according to the light he has. Why should we 
 quarrel ? ' 
 
 "This absence of all assumed superiority over a poor, unin- 
 structed, and perhaps conceited man, and the glad recognition of 
 good in a class who are often provoking, was to me a very instruc- 
 tive example. Some further exchange of thought on the lessons 
 God teaches us through humiliations occasioned by the remem- 
 brance of past sins and imprudences brought our conversation to a 
 close, and left on my mind some very salutary impressions. I felt 
 that Mr. Kingsley' s genius and varied talent, his peculiar rapidity 
 of thought, and the incessant excitement of his mind, were blended 
 with a spirituality far deeper than that of many who, however de- 
 voted, are but too ready to sit in judgment on others, and to cen- 
 sure whatever they cannot understand. It has often been said that 
 the best of a man is to be seen in his books. But it is not always 
 so. Admirable as those of Mr. Kingsley are, I, for one, on this 
 occasion, could not but feel that their writer had 'hidden life,' un- 
 expressed in his publications, which excelled them all." 
 
 In addition to the Penny Readings in the parish, the Rector had 
 opened a reading-room for the men, for which books, bagatelle- 
 
 * " Destiny of the Human Race," " On the Study of the Bible," " The King- 
 dom of God," &c. 
 
Memories by Rev. Win. Harrison. 391 
 
 boards," and various games were provided. He made it x self-gov- 
 erned club, and sanctioned the managers having in a cask of good 
 beer, each glass to be paid for on the spot, in hopes it would pre- 
 vent their going to the public-houses on tlieir way home. The 
 men drew up their own rules under his eye ; and for a winter or 
 two it succeeded, but the scattered population made difficulties, 
 and the attraction of seven public-houses in a parish of only 800 
 inhabitants, after a time was too strong for the young men — the 
 reading-room languished, and eventually was shut up. 
 
 His parish cares were now shared by the able help of the Rev. 
 William Harrison, who for six years carried out all his plans in 
 church and parish with an earnest devotedness which won him the 
 love and reverence of the people of Eversley, while it lifted a 
 heavy burden from his Rector's mind, and gave him the intimate 
 companionship he needed in their joint labors. For Mr. Harrison 
 thoroughly understood him, and was one with whom, notwithstand- 
 ing their disparity in age, he could take sweet and bitter counsel, 
 according to the mood and circumstances of the moment, and open 
 his heart on all subjects, from theology and the great social ques- 
 tions which were so interwoven with his religious faith, to lighter 
 ones of art and literature ; in whose hands too he could leave the 
 parish and his pulpit with peace of mind during his residences at 
 Chester from 1870 to 1873. Mr. Harrison soon followed him to 
 Westminster as Minor Canon, and was with him in his last failing 
 months, in his great sorrow, and on his death-bed. His own words 
 will best show the deep love he bore him. 
 
 " Soon after I entered upon my duties as curate at Eversley, in 
 May, 1868, old parishioners, who could recall the days prior to Mr. 
 Kingsley's residence among them, began to tell me of the many 
 great reforms he had effected in the parish in the years during 
 which he had worked there. I do not think that the majority of 
 his people ever fully understood that their rector's words were 
 eagerly listened for in the outside world, and that his name was 
 known far and wide. For these things never affected his manner 
 towards them. They loved him emphatically for himself: for what 
 he was, and had been to them. They loved him because he was 
 always the same — earnest, laborious, tender-hearted ; chivalrous to 
 every woman ; gentle to every child ; true to every man ; ready 
 for, and vigorous in every good work; stern only towards vice and 
 selfishness ; the first to rejoice in the success of the strong a4id 
 healthy, and the first to hasten to the bedside of the sick and dying. 
 
392 • Charles Kings ley. 
 
 "He knew his people intimately: their proper callings, tastes, 
 failings, and virtues. He was interested, as a matter of fact, and 
 not from the mere desire to please, in the occupations of every 
 one, and had the right word for each and all. Men at once felt at 
 ease with him, because there was such unmistakable ring of sin- 
 cerity, such evident understanding of their wants, and such real 
 acquaintance and sympathy with what they were thinking and 
 doing in all that he said. The poor could tell him freely what they 
 felt and what they wanted, seeing at once that he knew more about 
 them than men of his social standing generally know. At the same 
 time there was a natural stateliness in his bearing which precluded 
 the possibility of undue familiarity in any one towards him. He is 
 too frequently misunderstood to have been a mere clerical 'Tom 
 Thurnair ; a character which he has drawn with great skill, and 
 with which certainly he had many points of sympathy. That he was 
 unfettered by conventional modes of thought and speech, and 
 exhibited at moments a certain element of fierceness, with a detes- 
 tation of all cant and unmanliness, cannot be denied. But there 
 was, when I knew him, a lofty courtesy and abiding seriousness 
 about him, in his very look and appearance, and in all he said and 
 did, which marked him out from other men, and secured to him at 
 all times the respectful attention and reverence alike of friends and 
 strangers. ' I am nothing,' he once said to me, ' if not a Priest' 
 
 " I think that the tenderness of his nature has never been suffici- 
 ently dwelt upon. In his warm and manful love of physical strength, 
 and for capability of any kind, his imaginative forbearance toward 
 dulness and weakness has, as it seems to me, been sometimes lost 
 sight of Indeed, even towards wrong-doing and sin, although ter- 
 ribly stern in their presence, he was merciful in an unusual degree. 
 He would often say, after sternly rebuking some grave offender, 
 ' Poor fellow ! I daresay if I had been in his place I should have 
 done much worse.' 
 
 " It is almost needless to say that every natural object, from the 
 stones beneath his feet, to the clouds above his head, possessed a 
 peculiar and never-failing interest for him. As he strode through 
 the heather, across his well-beloved moors, he would dilate on all 
 he saw and heard in his vigorous and poetic way. Nature appealed 
 to him from many diverse sides. For not only would his mind busy 
 itself with the more scientific and abstruse thought which a land- 
 scape might suggest, but he could find all an artist's contentment 
 and pleasure in the mere beauty of its forms and colors. He had 
 retained the freshness of boyhood ; and approached and noted 
 everything with delight. It was refreshing to see how much enjoy- 
 ment he could extract from things which most men would never 
 perceive or notice ; with what untiring and reverent perseverance 
 he would seek to know their raison d'etre ; and with what a glow and 
 glory his fruitful imagination clothed everything. 
 
The Eversley Sunday. 393 
 
 "He certainly possessed the power of investing natural objects 
 at the right moment with his own thought, either for joy or pathos, 
 in a most striking manner. Thus I recollect on one occasion 
 (amongst the Welsh mountains) the eagerness with which he knelt 
 down by the side of a trinkling waterfall, and said in a whisper of 
 dehght, ' Listen to the fairy bells ? ' And thus, again, I recall with 
 tender sorrow an incident that occurred in one of the last walks he 
 ever took, on those dark winter days which preceded his own ill- 
 ness, and when a great and overwhelming sorrow was hanging over 
 him. We were passing along one of the Eversley lanes. Suddenly 
 we came on a large tree, newly cut down, lying by the roadside. He 
 stopped, and looked at it for a moment or so, and then, bursting 
 into tears, exclaimed, ' I have known that tree ever since I came 
 into the parish ! ' 
 
 "The Eversley Sunday was very characteristic of Mr. Kingsley. 
 It was not to him far above the level of every other day, but then 
 his every other day was far above the ordinary accepted level. 
 One thing was specially observable about it, the absence of all arti- 
 ficial solemnity of manner, and exceptional restraints of speech and 
 conduct. Whatever the day might be he was emphatically always 
 the same. He would chat with his people in the churchyard before 
 service as freely and as humorously as he would have done in field 
 or cottage. The same vivid untiring interest in nature which has 
 made his rambles by the chalk streams of England, and through 
 the high woods of Trinidad, a source of perpetual enjoyment to his 
 readers, would flash out fronr him the very moment he left church, 
 if anything unusual or beautiful attracted his attention. 
 
 " Yet during service his manner was always impressive ; and at 
 time?, as during the celebration of Holy Communion — until the 
 recent Judgment he always consecrated in the Eastward Position — 
 it rose into a reverence that was most striking and remarkable. It 
 was not the reverence of a school. It was evidently the impulse of 
 the moment, and being so, was not precise and systematic. Indeed, 
 his individuality came out involuntarily at unexpected moments, in 
 a way that occasionally was startling to those who did not know 
 him, and amusing to those who did. One Sunday morning, for 
 instance, in passing from the altar to the pulpit he disappeared, 
 and we discovered that he was searching for something on the 
 ground, which when found was carried to the vestry. Subsequently 
 it came out that he was assisting a lame butterfly, which by its 
 beauty had attracted his attention, and which was in great danger of 
 being trodden on. There was nothing incongruous, nothing of the 
 nature of an eftbrt to him, in turning from the gravest thoughts 
 and duties to the simplest acts of kindness, and observation of every- 
 thing around him. ' He prayeth best who loveth best all creatures 
 great and small.' 
 
 " Many a heart will cherish through life dear memories of the 
 
394 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 Eversley sermons. It was well that Chester and Westminster 
 should grow familiar with the tones of his voice before they were 
 silenced for ever. It was well that men and women, among whom 
 his name had been a household word, should be able, Sunday after 
 Sunday, to come in crowds to listen to his burning words, in a place 
 befitting his genius, and his message to them. But to my mind he 
 was never heard to greater advantage than in his own village pul- 
 pit. I have sometimes been so moved by what he then said, that 
 I could scarcely restrain myself from calling out, as he poured forth 
 words now exquisitely sad and tender, now grand and heroic ; with 
 an insight into character, a knowledge of the world, and a sustained 
 eloquence which, each in its own way, were matchless. 
 
 " Doubtless there is more or less truth in the assertion that Mr. 
 Kingsley was a Broad Churchman. But assuredly in no party 
 sense ; and the only time I ever heard him approach to anything 
 like an exact definition of his position, he described himself as ' an 
 old-fashioned High Churchman.' As in his earlier days, so in his 
 latest, he was the devoted admirer and friend of Professor Maurice, 
 of whom he used touchingly to speak as * my master.' It was his 
 pride to belong to the Church of England, ' as by law established ;^ 
 — he was never tired of quoting the words, nor of referring to the 
 Prayer Book on all disputed points. I have never known any one 
 speak more emphatically and constantly of the value of the Creeds, 
 and the efficacy of the Sacraments, to which he alluded in almost 
 every sermon I heard him preach. But perhaps the proem of ' The 
 Saint's Tragedy,' ' Wake again, Teutonic Father- Ages,' is as true 
 and beautiful an index of his religious position as can be found. 
 The two most distinctive features of his religious teachiog were, I 
 think, that the world is God's world, and not the Devil's, and that 
 manliness is entirely compatible with godliness. Yet, whilst his 
 name will indissolubly be associated with the latter doctrine, it 
 must not be supposed that he was lacking in gentleness and deli- 
 cate sympathy. There was in him a vein of almost feminine ten- 
 derness, which I fancy increased as life advanced, and which 
 enabled him to speak with a peculiar power of consolation to the 
 sad and suffering, both in private and from the pulpit. With Puri- 
 tanism he had little sympathy ; with Ritualism none. The former 
 was to his rich poetic imagination and warm chivalrous nature ludi- 
 crously defective as a theory of life. The latter was, in his opinion, 
 too nearly allied in spirit to Romanism ever to gain his support or 
 sanction in any way ; and of Rome he was the most uncompromis- 
 ing opponent I have ever known. None of the great parties in the 
 Church — it is an important fact — could lay claim to him exclu- 
 sively. Intrepid fearlessness in the statement of his opinions ; a 
 dislike to be involved in the strife of tongues ; unexpected points 
 of sympathy with all the different sections of the Church ; a certain 
 ideal of his own, both with regard to personal holiness and church 
 
The Study at E vers ley. 395 
 
 regimen ; — these things always left him a free lance in the ecclesi- 
 astical field. 
 
 " The opinion may be taken for what it is worth, but it certainly 
 is my opinion, that whilst Mr. Kingsley's convictions, during his 
 career as a clergyman, remained substantially the same, as may be 
 proved by a careful comparison of his later with his earlier writings, 
 his behef in Revealed Truth deepened and increased, and his re- 
 spect for the constituted order of things in Church and State grew 
 more and more assured. Yet never, I fancy, at any time did the 
 great and terrible battle of faith and doubt wholly cease within him. 
 Probably few escape the stress of that conflict now-a-days ; but I 
 think he knew more about it than most of us. For his reverence 
 for what is called 'consistency' was very limited, and his mind was 
 always busy with the workings of those life-problems which had 
 left their mark upon his brow, and wrought into his very manner a 
 restless energy which foretold a shortened career. Nevertheless, 
 there is no doubt but that the victory remained with faith. 
 
 " Surely if ever room could be haunted by happy ghosts it would 
 be his study at Eversley, peopled as it must ever be with the bright 
 creations of his brain. There every book on the many crowded 
 shelves looked at him with almost human friendly eyes. And of 
 books what were there not ? — from huge folios of St. Augustine * 
 to the last treatise on fly-fishing. And of what would he not talk ? 
 — classic myth and mediaeval romance, magic and modern science, 
 metaphysics and poetry, West Indian scenery and parish schools, 
 politics and fairyland, &c., &c. — and of all with vivid sympathy, 
 keen flashes of humor, and oftentimes with much pathos and pro- 
 found knowledge. As he spoke he would constantly verify his 
 words. The book wanted — he always knew exactly where, as he 
 said, it ' lived ' — was pulled down with eager hands ; and he, fling- 
 ing himself back with lighted pipe into his hammock, would read, 
 with almost boylike zest, the passage he sought for and quickly 
 found. It was verj' impressive to observe how intensely he realized 
 the words he read. I have seen him overcome with emotion as 
 he turned the well-thumbed pages of his Homer, or perused the 
 tragic story of Sir Humphrey Gilbert in his beloved Hakluyt. Nor 
 did the work of the study even at such moments shut him in en- 
 tirely, or make him forgetful of what was going on outside. • It's 
 very pleasant,' he would say, opening the door which led on to the 
 lawn, and making a rush into the darkness, ' to see what is going 
 on out here.' On one such occasion, a wild autumnal night, after 
 the thrilling recital of a Cornish shipwreck he had once witnessed, 
 and the memory of which the turbulence of the night had conjured 
 up, he suddenly cried, ' Come out ! come out ! ' We followed him 
 
 * Once the property of John Sterling, and given to Mr. Kingsley by Thos. 
 Carlyle. 
 
396 
 
 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 into the garden, to be met by a rush of warm driving rain before a 
 south-westerly gale, which roared through the branches of the 
 neighboring poplars. There he stood, unconscious of personal 
 discomfort, for a moment silent and absorbed in thought, and then 
 exclaimed in tones of intense enjoyment, ' What a night ! Drench- 
 ing ! • This is a night on which you young men can't thing or talk 
 too much poetry.' 
 
 " Nevertheless, with this appreciation of nature in her wilder 
 moods, he possessed ail a poet's love for her calmness. Indeed I 
 think that anything that was savage in aspect was deeply alien to 
 his mind ; inasmuch as he could never forget the injurious powers 
 
 THE STUDY WINDOW, EVERSLEY RECTORY. 
 
 that lurk in untamed nature to destroy human life, which to him 
 was more precious than any inanimate beauty however sublime. 
 Order and cultivation were of supreme value in his eyes ; and, from 
 a point of artistic beauty, I believe he would have preferred an 
 English homestead to an Indian jungle. Nay, even town scenes 
 had a very great charm for him ; and one bright summer day, after 
 his return from America, whilst walking in Kensington Gardens, he 
 declared that he considered they were as beautiful as anything he 
 had seen in the New World. And again, looking at some photo- 
 graphs of bleak and barren mountain ranges, he said to a young 
 painter who was admiring their grandeur — ' Yes ; paint them, and 
 send the picture to the Academy, and call it, ' The Abomination 
 
Home Life. 397 
 
 of Desolation ! ' Yet, withal, the descriptions of scenery which 
 are so profusely scattered up and down his pages fully testify to 
 his almost unique powers of appreciating nature in all her aspects 
 and circumstances. I sometimes wondered whether his scientific 
 knowledge had not dulled the splendor and dissipated much of the 
 mystery that fill the world for the poet's heart. I once ventured 
 to hint something of the sort to him. A very sad and tender look 
 came over his face, and for a little while he was silent. Then he 
 said, speaking slowly, — ' Yes, yes ; I know what you mean ; it is 
 so. But there are times — rare moments — when nature looks out 
 at me again with the old bride-look of earlier days.' 
 
 " I should not venture to speak of his home-life, unless permis- 
 sion had been granted me to do so, feeling that it is the most diffi- 
 cult of tasks to lift the veil from any family life without marring its 
 sacredness ; and that it is wholly beyond my power to preserve in 
 words the living ' sweetness and light ' which pervaded his house- 
 hold. That household was indeed a revelation to me, as I know 
 it was to others ; — so nobly planned and ordered, so earnest in its 
 central depths, so bright upon its surface. Many, now scattered 
 far and wide, must remember how picturesque the rectory itself 
 was. Even a stranger passing by would have stopped to look at 
 the pleasant ivy-grown house, with its long, sloping, dark roofs, its 
 gables, its bow-windows open to sun and air, and its quaint mixture 
 of buildings, old and new. And who among his friends will ever 
 cease to remember the lawn, and glebe-land sweeping upward 
 towards the half-cultivated, half-wild copse ; through which the 
 hidden path, henceforth sacred groimd to those who loved him, 
 leads up and out to Hartford Bridge Flats. Marked features in 
 the scene to them, and now widely known, were the grand Scotch 
 firs on the lawn, under which on summer evenings I have seen 
 many sweet pictures, and heard many noble words, and the 
 branches of which now Avave solemnly above his last resting-place. 
 The little church, though not remarkable for beauty in any way, 
 seen here, through the bending boughs of the firs, and over the 
 laurel bank, through which the steps led from the house, always 
 made a pleasant corner in the picture in my eyes, with its red 
 brick tower, and four vanes atop, one of which persistently dis- 
 agreed with its neighbors, — ' a Nonconformist from its birth,' as 
 Mr. Kingsley humorously said. 
 
 " Here — in this beautiful home-scene, and truly ideal English 
 Rectory — was the fountain-head — as I certainly think, and as he 
 often said, of all his strength and greatness. Indeed, great as I 
 knew him to be in his books, I found him greater at his own fire- 
 side. Home was to him the sweetest, the fairest, the most roman- 
 tic thing in life ; and there all that was best and brightest in him 
 shone with steady and purest lustre." 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 1869-1870. 
 Aged 50-51. 
 
 Resignation of Professorship — Women's Suffrage Question — Letters to Mr. 
 Maurice, John Stuart Mill — Canonry of Chester — Social Science Meeting at 
 Bristol — Letter from Dr. E. Blackwell — Medical Education for Women — 
 West Indian Voyage — Letters from Trinidad — Return Home — Eversley a 
 Changed Place — Flying Columns — Heath Fires — First Residence at Chester 
 — Botanical Class — Field Lectures — Women's Suffrage — Franco-Prussian 
 War — Wallace on Natural Selection — Matthew Arnold and Hellenism. 
 
 The year 1869, which closed his professorial work at Cambridge, 
 saw the beginning of a new chapter of his life as Canon of Chester. 
 It was a year of severe intellectual work and great activity. He 
 decided to resign the Professorship, and gave his last series of 
 lectures at Cambridge. He completed his volume on the Hermils 
 for the Sunday Library course. The " Lessons on Earth Lore 
 for Children, Madam How and Lady Why," which had been 
 coming out in " Good Words for the Young," was published as a 
 volume. He wrote an article in " Macmillan's Magazine," on 
 Women and Politics^ to help the question which was just then 
 brought into discussion. He attended the first " Woman's Suf- 
 frage " Meeting in London with Mr. J. Stuart Mill. He gave two 
 lectures* on "Thrift" and "Breath" in a course for ladies, at 
 Winchester, arranged by Mrs. C. A. Johns, the wife of his old 
 friend and tutor. He made speeches at various Industrial and 
 Mechanics' institutions in the diocese. He joined the Education 
 League, and was elected President of the Education Section of the 
 Social Science Congress at Bristol. He lectured on Natural Sci- 
 ence to the boys of Wellington College and Clifton College. His 
 parish prospered ; the Penny Readings and entertainments for the 
 laborers, greatly helped by the musical talent of his curate, became 
 more popular, once, as many as one hundred and fifty of his 
 
 * Since published in " Health and Education." 
 
To Mr. Maurice on Overwork. 399 
 
 parishioners being present at the National School. The resigna- 
 tion of his professorial work relieving his mind from a heavy load 
 of responsibility, and the prospect of a voyage to the West Indies, 
 on the invitation of Sir Arthur Gordon, then Governor of Trinidad, 
 fulfilling one of the dreams of his life, all helped to carry him 
 through the active labors and anxieties of the year. 
 
 TO REV. F. D. MAURICE. 
 
 EvERSLEY, January i6, 1869. 
 
 " Your letter comforted me, for I had heard you were ill. You 
 must rest and take care of yourself, and must not do (as I hear 
 you do) other people's work whenever you are asked. You have 
 enough, and too much to do of your own. And either, i. You are 
 necessary to Providence ; and then you have no right to kill your- 
 self by overwork ; or, 2. You are not necessary to Providence ; 
 and then you have no need to kill yourself by overwork. I put 
 that dilemma to you in all seriousness, and leave you to escape it 
 if you can. It was a real' pleasure to me to hear from you that 
 you had read my clumsy and silly little papers.* 1 wished to 
 teach children — my own especially — that the knowledge of nature 
 ought to make them reverence and trust God more, and not less 
 (as our new lights inform us). And they are meant more as 
 prolegomena to natural theology, than as really scientific papers, 
 though the facts in them are (I believe) true enough. But I know 
 very little about these matters, and cannot keep myself *■ au 
 coura7it' of new discoveries, save somewhat in geology, and even 
 in that I am no mineralogist, and palaeontologist. Science is 
 grown too vast for any one head. 
 
 " We are going soon to Cambridge. At first we stay at Barton 
 with the Bunburys, I coming to and fro for my lectures. R. and I 
 now mean to sail for the West Indies, if God permits (for one 
 must say that very seriously in such a case), by the April mail ; 
 but our plans may alter. Ah ! that you were coming too, and 
 could be made to forget everything for a while, save flowers and 
 skies and the mere sensation of warmth, the finest medicine in the 
 world ! 
 
 " What you say about not basing morality on psychology I am 
 most thankful for. I seem to get a vista of a great truth far away. 
 Far away enough from me, Heaven knows. But this I know : that 
 I want to re-consider many things, and must have time to do it ; 
 that I should like to devote the next twenty years to silence, 
 thought, and, above all, prayer, without which no spirit can 
 breathe." 
 
 * "Madam How and Lady Why," dedicated to his son Grenville. 
 
400 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 His concluding lectures at Cambridge were crowded ; the last 
 one was on Comte. 
 
 TO THE MASTER OF TRINITY COLLEGE. 
 
 April I, 1869. 
 
 " I am bound, after your kind advice and sympathy in the mat- 
 ter of the professorship* (which I am not likely to forget), to tell 
 you that I have obtained leave from the Queen to resign it at the 
 end of the academic year, and have told Mr. Gladstone as much, 
 and had a very kind reply from him. My brains, as well as my 
 purse, rendered this step necessary. I worked eight or nine months 
 hard for the course of twelve lectures which I gave last term, and 
 was half-witted by the time they were delivered ; and as I have to 
 provide for children growing up, I owe it to them not to waste 
 time {which is money) as well as brain, in doing what others can 
 do better. Only let me express a hope, that in giving up this ap- 
 pointment 1 do not give up the friendships (especially yours) which 
 I have found at Cambridge, a place on which 1 shall ever look 
 with hearty affection ; and that when 1 come up (which I shall do 
 as often as I can find an excuse) I may come and see you and 
 Mrs. Thompson." 
 
 He left Cambridge with feelings of deep gratitude to men of all 
 classes in the University, having received nothing but kindness on 
 all sides from the authorities down to the undergraduates ; dissatis- 
 fied only with his own work, but thankful to have had his knowl- 
 edge of men, especially young men, enlarged by the experience of 
 the last nine years, and glad to have more time from henceforth to 
 devote to physical science. 
 
 TO JOHN STUART MILL, ESQ. 
 
 EVERSLEY, June 3, 1869. 
 " I have had the honor of receiving ' from the author ' your book 
 on the 'Subjection of Woman.' It is not for me to compliment 
 you. I shall only therefore say, in thanking you for it, that it 
 seems to me unanswerable and exhaustive, and certain, from its 
 moderation as well as from its boldness, to do good service in this 
 good cause. It has been a deep pleasure to me to find you, in many 
 passages in which you treat of what marriage ought to be, and what 
 marriage is, corroborating opinions which have been for more 
 tlian twenty-five years, the guides and safeguards of my own best 
 life. 
 
 * Two years before, when he offered to resign, and Dr. Thompson wished him 
 to retain the office. 
 
To John Stuart Mill on Woman. 401 
 
 " I shall continue to labor, according to my small ability, in the 
 direction which you point out ; and all the more hopefully because 
 your book has cleared and arranged much in my mind which was 
 confused and doubtful." 
 
 EvERSLEY, Jtme 17, 1869. 
 
 "Your kind letter gave me much pleasure. I shall certainly 
 attend the meeting ; and I need not say, that to pass a night under 
 your roof will be an honor which I shall most gratefully accept. 
 
 " I wish much to speak with you on the whole question of 
 woman. In five and twenty years my ruling idea has been that 
 which my friend Huxley has lately set forth as common to him and 
 Comte ; that ' the reconstruction of society on a scientific basis is 
 not only possible, but the only political object much worth striv- 
 ing for.' One of the first questions naturally was. What does 
 science — in plain Enghsh, nature and fact (which I take to be the 
 acted will of God) — say about woman, and her relation to man ? 
 And I have arrived at certain conclusions thereon, which (in the 
 face of British narrowness) I have found it wisest to keep to my- 
 self. That I should even have found out what I seem to know 
 without the guidance of a woman, and that woman my wife, I dare 
 not assert : but many years of wedded happiness have seemed to 
 show me that our common conclusions were accordant with the 
 laws of things, sufficiently to bring their own blessing with them. 
 I beg you therefore to do me the honor of looking on me, though 
 (I trust) a Christian and a clergyman, as completely emancipated 
 from those prejudices which have been engrained into the public 
 mind by the traditions of the monastic or canon law about women, 
 and open to any teaching which has for its purpose the doing 
 woman justice in every respect. As for speaking at the meeting, 
 my doing so will depend very much on whether there will be, or will 
 not be, newspaper reporters in the room. I feel a chivalrous dis- 
 like of letting this subject be lowered in print, and of seeing pearls 
 cast before swine — with the usual result. 
 
 " Mrs. Kingsley begs me to add the expression of her respect 
 for you. Her opinion has long been that this movement must be 
 furthered rather by men than by the women themselves." 
 
 This visit was one of great interest to Mr. Kingsley. He was as 
 much struck with Mr. Mill's courtesy as with his vast learning — he 
 had the manners of the old school, he said. 
 
 *' When I look at his cold, clear-cut face," he remarked to Dr. 
 Carpenter, " 1 thnik there is a whole hell beneath him, of which 
 he knows nothing, and so there may be a whole heaven above 
 him. . . ." 
 26 
 
402 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 TO LIONEL TOLLEMACHE, ESQ. 
 
 yune, 1869. 
 
 " Many thanks for the ' Fortnightly,' and your very amusing and 
 well-written article on Egotism. I trust it will not corrupt me ; 
 for I dread any egotism on my part, as the root which may blossom 
 out into the most unexpected forms of actual wrong-saying and 
 doing. I suppose I am too great a fool to be trusted to talk about 
 myself. If so, it is all the better that I should keep the fact in 
 mind. Are you aware that when ' Pepys's Diary' was fished out 
 of our Pepysian library at Magdalene, much of it was found to be 
 so dirty, that the editors had to omit it ? He was a foul-minded 
 old dog. Our only record of him (beside the curious library he 
 left us) is, I believe : ' Mr. Pepys, having been found by y^ proc- 
 tors last night disguised in liquor, was admonished not to offend in. 
 y° like again.' 
 
 "The whole number is very valuable, especially so to me, for 
 Huxley's article,* I don'-t know whether you take an interest in 
 that matter. In my opinion Huxley is thoroughly right : at least 
 he interprets Comte exactly as I have been in the habit of inter- 
 preting him." 
 
 On the 13th of August Mr, Kingsley received the following 
 letter from Mr. Gladstone : 
 
 " I have much pleasure in proposing to you that you should 
 accept the Canonry of Chester, vacated by the appointment of 
 Dr. Moberly to the See of Salisbury, and if you agree, I need not 
 impose on you any obligation of even temporary secrecy, as I 
 know that the act will be very agreeable to her Majesty. 
 
 " The cathedral of Chester is under an energetic Dean, and nave 
 services are now carried on in it with excellent efifect." 
 
 The canonry was gratefully accepted, and many were the con- 
 gratulations received. 
 
 EvERSLEY, Atigusi 20, 1869. 
 
 " It is very kind," said Mr. Kingsley to his friend and neighbor 
 Mr. Raikes Currie, " of you to congratulate me thus ; but kindness 
 is your element, and a very wholesome element it is, for both parties 
 
 * On the Scientific Aspects of Positivism, in which he speaks of Comte's Ideal, 
 as stated by himself, being " Catholic organization without Catholic doctrine, or 
 in other words, Catholicism minus Christianity." Fortnightly Review, New 
 Series, No. xxx. , p. 657. 
 
At the Social Science Congress. 403 
 
 concerned in it. You never were more right than when you said 
 
 that I should not like to be a bishop And even a 
 
 deanery I shrink from ; because it would take me away from Evers- 
 ley ; the home to which I was ordained, where I came when I was 
 married, and which I intend shall be my last home : for go where I 
 will in this hard-working Avorld, I shall take care to get my last sleep 
 in Eversley church-yard." 
 
 Bishop Wilberforce (then of Oxford) wrote to him at once : 
 
 "I am quite certain of your great powers being used on the side 
 of that Truth which so many, as it seems to me, in their very longing 
 to support it, distrust and dishonor. 
 
 " May God give you many years of usefulness, and a happy ending 
 of your highly vital life." 
 
 In October he went to Bristol to take his share in the Social 
 Science Congress, as President of the Educational Section, at which 
 Mr. Henry de Bunsen read a valuable paper on " How can the 
 State best help in the Education of the Working Classes ? " and 
 in a letter to his mother the baroness, thus speaks of meeting Mr. 
 Kingsley : 
 
 " I was at the Clifton College, the new public school, and a most 
 flourishing one, having already, though only in its fifth year, three 
 hundred and sixty boys, and was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Perceval, 
 the head master. Charles Kingsley and his wife were there. Kings- 
 ley was most hearty and charming, especially when I got used to 
 his stammering speech (which entirely disappears when he has to 
 speak or read in public). ... To me it was a time full of in- 
 terest. I drove Kingsley, on Wednesday afternoon, between two 
 thunderstorms, to Blaise Castle Aunt L wac de- 
 lighted with our visit. Kingsley was, I must say, charming. He 
 is a great lover of art, and understands it thoroughly. He is a still 
 
 greater lover oC trees and Nature, and told Aunt L that it was 
 
 worth while coming the whole way from Eversley to see her two 
 wonderful trees from Japan, the Salisburia, and the Sophora Japon- 
 ica Wednesday was the opening address of the Con- 
 gress from Sir Stafford Northcote. We dined one night at the 
 Lewis Frys', where Sir S. was staying, and he and Kingsley told 
 charming Devonshire stories in turn ! It was a wonderful treat, for 
 both could imitate the language and tone exactly. On Thursday 
 we had a most interesting discussion in the Education Department, 
 as to how far it would be possible to have ' religious instruction,' 
 without entering into 'dogmatic differences,' and therefore having 
 schools admitting eveiy denomination, and leaving to parents and 
 
404 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 ministers the specific instruction in their several denominations. 
 On Friday, Mr. Kingsley gave us as stirring an address on educa- 
 tion (in the highest and best and most comprehensive sense of the 
 word), female and male, compulsory and for all classes, as ever was 
 given. Some nine hundred people (of intelligent classes — no work- 
 ing classes) were present ; and he electrified his audience by his 
 earnestness and liberality, praising the efforts, not only of all min- 
 isters of religion, and of societies like the ' National,' and ' British 
 and Foreign,' but also of the Society of Friends, as being foremost 
 
 in education 
 
 " On Saturday morning, at nine o'clock, we had a great treat in 
 hearing an address from Mr. Kingsley to the three hundred and 
 sixty boys of Clifton College School, chiefly on study combined 
 with scientific observation in other branches of learning ; so as to 
 give them something to do in their spare hours, and to carry on 
 in their holidays, in making collections of all kinds (avoiding cruelty 
 to birds, and wholesale destruction of nests and eggs), and that not 
 for themselves, but for a general museum belonging to their school. 
 This would avoid much destruction. ' Eyes and no Eyes,' played 
 a prominent part in the address." 
 
 His inaugural address, which made a profound sensation at the 
 time, was printed by the League, and about 100,000 copies dis- 
 tributed. 
 
 He had lately joined the Education League with several other 
 clergymen, who, like himself, were nearly hopeless about a compul- 
 sory National Education, in which measure alone they saw hope 
 for the masses ; but he subsequently withdrew, and gave his warm 
 allegiance to Mr, Forster's Act, for the same reasons as his friend, 
 a London Rector, who says : 
 
 "I ceased to take any interest in the League after it had done 
 its work ; that of rousing a reluctant Government to do something. 
 That something the Government did by Mr. Forster's help ; and 
 after the Elementary Act was passed the League to me was dead. 
 It had done its work, and that a good work. So far as I can 
 judge of its work since, I think that work such that a liberal cler- 
 gyman cannot approve it. It has become narrow and sectarian, 
 while pretending to be Catholic and liberal, and its speakers and 
 supporters are generally unjust to the National Church." 
 
 At this Congress, the subject of the Medical Education of 
 Women was discussed, and he made acquaintance with Dr. Eliza- 
 abeth Blackwell, who had herself taken a medical degree, and had 
 
Medical Degrees to Women. 405 
 
 practised for twenty-five years as a consulting physician in America. 
 She was afterwards a welcome guest at Eversley and Chester, and 
 has kindly contributed her recollections of these visits. 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Kingsley, 
 
 " I think that no sketch of Canon Kingsley's life would be 
 complete without some record of his constant and even enthusiastic 
 interest in the subject of the medical education of women. I 
 never shall forget the words he spoke to me, when (returning to 
 my native land after a long absence) I met him for the first time in 
 Bristol. 
 
 " ' You are one of my heroes ! ' was the greeting — words of rec- 
 ognition which filled me with gratitude, and seemed a rich reward 
 for a life of effort. He then proceeded to tell me of the profound 
 interest with which, for many years, he had watched the gradual 
 growth of woman's endeavor to obtain the advantages of a thor- 
 ough medical education ; and how, ' from his inmost soul, he gave 
 it a hearty God-speed.' Through the years that followed, he 
 showed himself a constant and ardent friend of this noble cause ; 
 always ready to give information or advice in relation to any plans 
 for its advancement. The old fir woods of Eversley, and the dis- 
 tant mountain views of Chester, will always be associated in my 
 mind with the long walks we took together; when, with wonder- 
 ful earnestness and eloquence, he poured forth the treasures of 
 his experience for my guidance, listening eagerly to every sign of 
 progress, carefully considering every suggestion ; anxious only, 
 with the whole force of his nature, to give wisdom and support 
 to one who was carrying on this cherished work of his. During 
 the few years that I knew him, he was always ready, no matter 
 how busy or how tired he might be, to give thought and aid to any 
 plan for carrying on the work. Only a few weeks before he left 
 us, in December of 1874, I saw him several times at the Cloisters, 
 Westminster, in relation to a proposed plan for securing medical 
 degrees to women. Although his health was broken, and he was 
 suffering from over-work, he entered upon this subject with his 
 customary enthusiasm ; gave it his most careful consideration, and 
 agreed (with your cordial approbation, dear Mrs. Kingsley) to be- 
 come chairman of the committee which was being formed for the 
 purpose of carrying out this important measure. I have full faith 
 that the accomplishment of no providential work can be really 
 hindered by the departure of any individual worker ; but I know 
 that our cause has suftered a heavy loss in the death of your noble 
 husband ; and with grateful remembrance I offer this record of his 
 large-hearted and intelligent sympathy. 
 
 *' I remain, my dear Friend, affectionately yours, 
 
 " Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D." 
 
4o6 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 In November he went down to Chester to be installed as Canon, 
 and was most kindly received by the Dean and the Chapter, with 
 whom for the next three years he worked so harmoniously. 
 
 On the 2nd of December, he and his daughter embarked at 
 Southampton for the West Indies. 
 
 It would be a twice told tale to those who have read his " At 
 Last " to do more than glance at his account of the voyage and its 
 new experiences, the historic memories of Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir 
 Richard Grenville, and many of England's forgotten worthies woke 
 up by the sight of the Azores, and of all he felt at finding himself 
 on the track of the "old sea heroes," Drake and Hawkins, Carlile 
 and Cavendish, Cumberland, Preston, Frobisher, and Duddely, 
 Keyrnis and Widdon — ^and of the first specimen of the Gulf-weed 
 which brought back " the memorable day when Columbus's ship 
 plunged her bows into the tangled ocean meadow, and the sailors 
 were ready to mutiny, fearing hidden shoals, ignorant that they 
 had four miles of blue water beneath their keel," — and of the awe 
 which the poet and the man of science must needs feel at that first 
 sight of the " Sargasso sea, and of the theories connected with it — 
 not wholly impossible — of a sunken Atlantic continent — and of 
 his enjoyment of the glorious cloudland, and the sudden sunsets 
 
 when 
 
 ' The sun's rim dips, the stars rush out. 
 At one stride comes the dark ; ' 
 
 to be succeeded after balmy nights by the magnificent pageant of 
 tropic sunlight " — and of the first sight of the New World, and the 
 look out for Virgin Gorda, one of those numberless islands which 
 Columbus discovered on St. Ursulas day, and of the arrival at St. 
 Thomas, with- its scarlet and purple roofs piled uj) among orange 
 trees, and the first glimpse of a tropic hill-side. " Oh ! for a boat 
 to get into that paradise ! " and how the boat was got ; and how 
 he leapt out on a sandy beach — and then the revelation of tropic 
 vegetation, and the unmistakable cocoa-nut trees, and the tall aloes, 
 and the grey-blue Cerei, and the bright deep green of a patch of 
 Guinea grass ; — and the astonishment which swallowed up all other 
 emotions at the wonderful wealth of life — and the " effort, at first 
 in vain, to fix our eyes on some one dominant or typical form, 
 while &\t.ry form was clamoring as it were to be looked at, and a 
 fresh Dryad gazed out of every bush, and with wooing eyes asked 
 
Westward Ho ! 407 
 
 to be wooed — and the drooping boughs of the shoregrape with its 
 dark velvet leaves and crimson midrib, and the fragrant Frangi- 
 pane, and the first cocoa-nut, and the mangrove swamp, and then 
 the shells — the old friends never seen till now but in cabinets at 
 home, earnests that all was not a dream ; the prickly pinna, the 
 great strombi, with the outer shell broken away, disclosing the rosy 
 cameo within and looking on the rough beach pitifully tender and 
 flesh-like ; and the lumps of coral, all to be actually picked up and 
 handled — and the first tropic orchid, and the first wild pines cling- 
 ing parasitic on the boughs of strange trees, or nestling among the 
 angular shoots of the columnar Cereus ; " and the huge green cala- 
 bashes, the playthings of his childhood, alive and growing; and 
 how "up and down the sand we wandered collecting shells, till we 
 rowed back to the ship over white sand where grew the short man- 
 ati grass, and where the bottom was stony, we could see huge 
 prickly sea urchins, huger brainstone corals, round and grey, and 
 above, sailing over our heads, flocks of brown and grey pelicans, 
 to show us where we were — and met the fleet of negro boats laden 
 with bunches of plantains, yams, green oranges, sugar cane ; " and 
 then the steaming down the islands, and the sight of the Lesser 
 Antilles, the beauty and grandeur of which exceeded all his boy- 
 ish dreams ; and St. Kitts with its great hill, which took, in Colum- 
 bus's imagination, the form of the giant St. Christopher bearing on 
 his shoulder the infant Christ — and how "from the ship we beheld 
 with wonder and delight, the pride of the West Indies, the Cabbage 
 Palms — well named by botanists the Oreodoxa, the glory of the 
 mountains — grey pillars, smooth and cylindrical as those of a Doric 
 temple, each carrying a flat head of darkest green ; " and how 
 Guadaloupe, Dominica, and Martinique were passed, and St. 
 Vincent and its souffiiere gazed on with awe and reverence — and 
 the beautiful St. Lucia with its wonderful Pitons, and through the 
 Grenadines to Grenada, the last of the Antilles, as now the steamer 
 ran dead south for seventy miles, and on St. Thomas Day, at early 
 dawn, 
 
 "We became aware of the blue mountains of North Trinidad 
 a-head of us ; to the west the island of the Dragon's Mouth, and 
 westward again, a cloud among the clouds — the last spur of the 
 Cordilleras of the Spanish Main. There was South America at 
 last ; and as a witness that this, too, was no dream, the blue waters 
 
4o8 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 of the Windward Isles changed suddenly into foul bottle-green. 
 The waters of the Orinoco, waters from the peaks of the Andes far 
 away, were staining the sea around us. With thoughts full of three 
 great names, connected as long as civilized men shall remain, with 
 those waters — Columbus, Raleigh, Humboldt — we steamed on 
 . . . . and then saw before us .... to the eastward, the 
 northern hills of Trinidad, forest clad down to the water ; to the 
 south a long line of coast, generally level with the water's edge, 
 green with mangroves or dotted with cocoa palms. That was the 
 
 Gulf of Paria and Trinidad beyond In half-an-hour 
 
 more we were on shore, amid negroes, coolies, Chinese, French, 
 Spaniards, short-legged Guaraon dogs and black vultures." 
 
 On the voyage he had been able to write home more than once, 
 and to telegraph from St. Thomas. 
 
 Christmas found him the guest of his kind friend Sir Arthur Gor- 
 don, Governor of Trinidad, at the Cottage, Port of Spain, the 
 earthly Paradise which he had reached at last. 
 
 The Cottage, Port of Spain. 
 
 Trinidad, January 23, 1870. 
 
 " . . . You may conceive the delight with which I got your 
 letter, and M 's, and to think that the telegram should have ar- 
 rived on Christmas Day ! No wonder the intellect of Eversley was 
 puzzled to find out how it came. You may tell them that Mr. . 
 Dunlop, Consul-General at Cuba, who went out with us, took a 
 telegram for us to Havana, whence there is telegraph to New 
 York, and so to England, and as it went by government hands, had 
 priority of all. It is delightful to think that by now you have got 
 
 our lettei-s As for us, we are perfectly well. I have 
 
 not been so well this seven years. I have been riding this week six 
 to eight hours a day, through primeval forests, mud, roots, gullies, 
 and thickets, such that had I anticipated them, I would have 
 brought out breeches and boots. English mud is but a trifle 
 to tropical. But I have had no fall, and never got wet, and as for 
 what I have seen, no tongue can tell. We have got many curiosi- 
 ties, and lots of snakes. I have only seen one alligator, about five 
 to six feet long, and marks only of deer and capo. But I have 
 seen one of the mud volcanoes ! As for scenery, for vastness and 
 richness mingled, I never saw its like. Oh that I could transport 
 you to the Monserrat hills for one hour. We can get no pho- 
 tographs, so that I know not how to make you conceive it all. 
 The woods are now vermilion with Bois Immortel ; in a fortnight 
 they will be golden w^'-h Poui (all huge trees). I have seen a tree 
 which for size beats all 1 ever dreamed of, a Sand-box, forty- 
 
Life in the Trinidad Forests. 409 
 
 four feet round and seventy-five feet (we got down a liana and 
 measured it) to the first fork, which did not seem hah" up the tree. 
 But with too many of these giants, you can get no good view, their 
 heads being lost in the green world above. But I have seen single 
 trees left in parks over one hundred and twenty feet, with vast flat 
 heads, which are gardens of orchids, &c., and tons of lianas hanging 
 down from them, and the spurs of their roots hke walls of board as 
 high ao a man. On Tuesday we start again for the north const, 
 then a short dash to the east, and then home. I have resisted all 
 
 soHcitations and invitations, and poor F. H being ill, gives me 
 
 a plain reason for keeping my promise to you. Besides, I have 
 seen enough already to last me my life. I keep saying, ' I cannot 
 not have been in the tropics.' And as I ride, I jog myself, 
 and say, You stupid fellow, wake up. Do you see that 1 and that .? 
 Do you know where you are ? and ray other self answers. Don't 
 bother. I have seen so much, I can't take in any more, and I 
 don't care about it all. So I am in a state of intellectual repletion, 
 indigestion, and shall take full twelvemonths to assimilate and ar- 
 range the mass of new impressions. I assure you I am very careful. 
 I had to he off a mangrove swamp in burning sun, very tired, 
 after having ridden four hours, and been shoved over the mud in a 
 canoe among the cahing crabs, by three niggers, and I did not feel 
 it the least, though the mud stank, and the wind was off shore, be- 
 cause before I got into the canoe, I took a good dose of quinine, 
 which I always carry. Moreover, there are some wonderful angos- 
 tura bitters (the same which cured Humboldt of his fever) which 
 people take here before dinner, or when wet, tired, or chilly, and 
 their effect is magical. I shall bring some home, and get Heynes 
 to try them on the next case of ague or low fever. They are tonic, 
 not alcoholic. 1 have kept a great number of notes, and must make 
 more. But this week I have travelled too fast, and have had no 
 luggage, save at my saddle-bow. It is a glorious life in the fore.-^t, 
 and I should like six months of it without stopping, if it ilid not 
 rain. But the dry season is coming on now, and it is growing d.i- 
 lightfully cool." 
 
 Seven weeks passed quickly in the enjoyment, not only of the 
 scenery that he has described in " At Last," the memories of which 
 were fresh as ever on his death-bed, but in companionship with one 
 whose society was a continual charm, who had attracted him from 
 the first hour he spent in his society -two years before, and with whom, 
 living at so high a level and with such noble aims, he could com- 
 mune on the deeper subjects, dear to both. Thanks to thi.s kind 
 host, to whom he had now grown strongly attached, and to whom 
 he owed one of the most delightful episodes of his life, he took 
 
4 TO Chaj'les Kings ley. 
 
 leave of lovely Trinidad refreshed in brain, strengthened in health, 
 enriched with beautiful memories, and in the possession of a friend- 
 ship which was true to the last. Sir Arthur Gordon little thought 
 that in five years he should be standing by Charles Kingsley's 
 grave at Eversley, before himself setting sail for a still greater 
 work in the Fiji Islands, than the government of Trinidad or the 
 Mauritius. 
 
 He left St. Thomas by a different track to that by which he came, 
 running northward between Tortola and Virgin Gorda towaid the 
 Gulf-stream — or Drake's Channel, as it had been named since 1575 ; 
 a more advantageous course for a homeward bound ship, as it 
 strikes the Gulf stream soonest and keeps it longest. The voyage 
 was successful, and notwithstanding a fatality among the live-stock, 
 and the death of an ant-eater and an alligator, " who wept crocodile 
 tears before his departure," the kinkajou and the parrot, who were 
 bound for Eversley Rectory, survived, and towards the end of 
 February 
 
 " The Land's End was visible, and as we neared the Lizard we 
 could see not only the lighthouses on the cliff, and every well-known 
 cave and rock from MuUion and Kynance round to St. Keverne, 
 but far inland likewise ; and regrets for the lovely western paradise 
 were all swallowed up with bright thoughts of the cold northern 
 home as ' we ran northwards for the Needles. With what joy we 
 saw at last the white wall of the island glooming dim ahead. With 
 what joy we first discerned that huge outline of a visage, on Fresh- 
 
 Avater Cliff, so well known to sailors ' With what joy 
 
 did we round the old Needles and run past Hurst Castle, and with 
 
 what shivering, too At first an English winter was a 
 
 change for the worse. Fine old oaks and beeches looked to us, 
 fresh from ceibas and volatas, like leatless brooms stuck into the 
 ground by their handles ; while the want of light was for some days 
 painful and depressing. But we had done it, and within the three 
 months, as we promised. As the king in the old play says, ' What 
 has been, has been, and I've had my hour.' At least we had seen 
 it, and we could not unsee it. We could not have been in the 
 tropics." 
 
 And now returned he settled down in the parish with renewed 
 vigor, though feeling the change of climate almost as cruelly as 
 his son, who arrived at the same moment from South America. 
 The parish benefited by their respective travels at Penny Readings 
 
The Camp at Alder shot. 411 
 
 and in their visits to the cottagers. He loved to give his people 
 the results of his own and his children's new experiences in life ; for 
 in a certain sense Eversley had advanced a step in intelligent sym- 
 pathy with the great world outside. It was the same Eversley, and 
 yet different to what it had been when he first came there twenty- 
 eight years before. His own personal influence, and the influence 
 of new circumstances, had told upon it. It was no longer the se- 
 cluded spot it had been in his curate days, or even at a later 
 period, when he loved to dwell on its "monotony" as "so pleasant 
 in itself, morally pleasant and morally useful." 
 
 The monotony was broken occasionally by very startling inci- 
 dents — the neighborhood of Aldershot bringing flying columns to 
 the Flats and Bramshill Park. Engineering parties camped out 
 and wells were sunk on the newly enclosed glebe land, as for an 
 advancing army ; artillery wagons rumbled past the quiet rectory, 
 and bugle calls were heard at all hours by the Rector and his peo- 
 ple. Now and then, too, the monotony was broken by quite 
 another excitement, for a great heath fire would break out on the 
 Flats, and sometimes encroached on the firs at Bramshill Park, 
 and committed havoc among them. 
 
 "At such a time," says a friend, "the Rector was all activity. 
 On one occasion the fire began during the time of divine service. 
 A messenger posted down to the church in hot haste, to call out 
 the men ; and Mr. Kingsley, leaving the curate to finish the 
 service, rushed to the scene of action, taking a flying leap, in 
 surplice, hood, and stole, over the churchyard palings. The fire 
 was an extensive one ; but he, armed with a bill-hook, and now di- 
 vested of everything ecclesiastical, was everywhere, organizing 
 bands of beaters, and, begirt with smoke and flame, resisting the 
 advance of the fire at every advantageous point. Yox many nights 
 subsequently watchers were placed in the woods ; and at a late 
 hour (between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m.) Mr. Kingsley would sally forth 
 and go the rounds, carefully inspecting the country as he went, 
 cheering the watchers with kind hearty words of encouragement — 
 himself intensely interested in the general picturesqueness of the 
 event, and excited by the feeling that the alarm might be given at 
 any moment, and the firs which he loved so dearly be wrapped in 
 flame." 
 
 On the 1st of May he took possession of "the Residence" in 
 Abbey Square, Chester, for three months. His Dean, to whom he 
 gave glad allegiance and under whom he worked for three years, 
 
412 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 received him with cordial kindness ; and it was a happy circum- 
 stance and an important one to him that the first cathedral with 
 which he was connected, was one where the reverent worship and 
 admirable arrangements made every service in which he joined 
 congenial and elevating. Choral services had hitherto had little 
 attraction for him : the slovenliness which in by-gone years charac- 
 terised them in some places, having shocked him from the aesthetic 
 and still more from the religious point of view. Had this been the 
 case at Chester it would have been a serious drawback to the hap- 
 piness of his life while there. But all was in harmony with the 
 ideal of Christian worship. And the dignity of the services, the 
 reverence of all who conducted them, from its visitor, the Bishop 
 much beloved, who was always present (except when diocesan 
 business called him away), down to the little chorister boys, im- 
 pressed him deeply. It filled the new Canon's heart with thank- 
 fulness that the lot had fallen to him in a cathedral, where dean, 
 precentor, organist, choir master and lay clerks all worked ear- 
 nestly to one end ; and he could say with truth, as day by day he 
 entered the venerable cloisters, " How amiable are Thy dwellings, 
 O Lord, Thou God of hosts. My soul hath a desire and longing 
 to enter into the courts of the Lord. One day in Thy courts is 
 better than a thousand. Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house," 
 The early morning daily services were his great refreshment, and 
 seemed to hallow the day to him, and many peaceful moments did 
 he spend in the old chapter house, in reading and prayer, before 
 the clergy and choir assembled for worship, at eight o'clock a.m. 
 
 The Sunday services, including the vast nave congregation in 
 the evening, were exciting and exhausting ; but through all, he ex- 
 perienced an abiding satisfaction of soul, a sense of the fitness of 
 things, which was quite unexpected to himself and to those who 
 had known his previous habit of life and feeling. Without pro- 
 fessing to understand music, he had always felt it, as a man of his 
 genius and fine organization necessarily must : but at Chester it 
 revealed itself to him in the cathedral worship, and in daily inter- 
 course with his friend the Precentor, he soon learned to look and 
 long for particuar anthems and services with eagerness and appre- 
 ciation. 
 
 A ie.w days after arriving at Chester he took the chair for the 
 Dean at a meeting of the Archccological Society, and on being 
 
Settled at Chester. 413 
 
 asked whether he belonged to the old Kingsley family once in 
 Cheshire, said : 
 
 " His own feeling in coming to Chester was that he was coming 
 home, for although he was landless, his ancestors had not been. 
 He confessed to a feeling of pride in his connection with Che- 
 shire, and to the mention of his name in the old Tarporley hunt- 
 ing song : 
 
 ' In riglit of his bugle and greyhounds to sieze 
 Waif, pannage, agistment, and wind-fallen trees ; 
 His knaves through our'forest Ralph Kingsley dispersed, 
 Bow-bearer-in-chief to Earl Randall the First. 
 
 * This Horn the Grand Forester wore at his side 
 Whene'er his liege lord chose a-hunting to ride — 
 By Sir Ralph and his heirs for a century blown, 
 It passed from his lips to the mouth of a Done.' 
 
 He was glad to come to a county where many of his kin had 
 lived, and where he had many friends, and he had no higher ambi- 
 tion than to hve and die Canon of Chester. He was by no means 
 an ambitious man, as the world called a man ambitious. All he 
 wanted was time to do his work and write his books ; and if in 
 anything set on foot in this ancient city — any movement connected 
 with literary and scientific societies or mechanics' institutes— he 
 might be able to help in his humble way, he was at the service of 
 the good citizens of Chester. He did not wish to thrust himself 
 forward, to originate anything grand, or to be in anybody's way ; 
 but if they could find him reasonable work, as he was a rather 
 overworked man, he would be happy to do it, without any regard 
 to creed, politics, or rank in any way whatsoever. He thanked the 
 gentlemen who had said so much in his favor, and hoped he should 
 not forfeit the good opinion they had somewhat hastily formed of 
 him." 
 
 Besides the daily services, which were an occupation in them- 
 selves, and the preparation of his sermons, he was anxious to get 
 some regular week-day work that would bring the cathedral and 
 the town in close contact. As usual his heart turned to the young 
 men, whose time on long spring and summer evenings might be 
 
 * The bugle horn, alluded to in the old song, and which is in his coat of arms, 
 was the one which his ancestors, as Foresters to Earl Randall, ha-J the right to 
 wear. Tlie grandson of this Ranulph, Ralph de Kingsley, married Mabilla de 
 Moston in 1233, and the same coat of arms, "vert a cross engrailed ermine on 
 an escocheon of pretence Argent, a bugle strung sable," have been carried by 
 the family through many reverses to the present day. 
 
414 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 turned to account, and he offered to start a little class on physical 
 science, expecting to have perhaps at most sixteen to twenty young 
 shopmen and clerks. Botany was the chosen subject, and in a 
 small room belonging to the city library, on the walls, he began — 
 the black board and a bit of white chalk being as usual of impor- 
 tant help to the lectures, which he illustrated throughout. The 
 class soon increased so much in numbers that he had to migrate 
 to a larger room — a walk and a tield lecture was proposed once a 
 week — and the party was watched from the walls with surprise, and 
 once the gathering was so large that a man who met them sup- 
 posed them to be a congregation going off to the opening of a 
 Dissenting chapel in the country. This was the beginning of the 
 Chester Natural History Society, which now numbers between five 
 and six hundred members, with president, secretary, monthly meet- 
 ing report, regular summer excursions, and winter courses. 
 
 " I am very happy here," he writes to Mr. Froude. " I have daily 
 service, which is very steadying and elevating. Plenty of work in 
 the place. I have started a botanical class for middle-class young 
 men, which seems to go well ; an opportunity of preaching to 
 shrewd, able Northern men, who can understand and respond ; 
 and time to work at physical science — the only thing I care for 
 much now — for it is the way of God who made all ; while, — 
 
 ' All the windy ways of men 
 Are but dust which rises up 
 And is lightly laid again.' " 
 
 He occasionally preached in the diocese during his first resi- 
 dence, the Dean being anxious that the work of the chapter should 
 extend beyond the cathedral city, and on one occasion he preached 
 a sermon for the Kirkdale Ragged School, in June, which made a 
 deep impression, and was much quoted from by Liverpool news- 
 papers, under the heading of " Canon Kingsley on Human Soot." 
 " I remember," says a clergyman who heard him on this occasion, 
 " that marvellous sermon on ' Human Soot,' It made me more 
 than ever know the magnificent mental calibre of the man. Canon 
 Kingsley was one of a few, and they giants. . . . " 
 
 We now return to the letters for the year. Among them are 
 two on "Woman's Rights ;" the date of the last is uncertain, but 
 both are significant of his latest views on this question. 
 
Womctts Suffrage. 415 
 
 TO MRS. PETER TAYLOR. 
 
 Chester, May 27, 1870. 
 
 "I have the honor of acknowledging your letter respecting the 
 Women's Suffrage Question. If I, as one who has the movement 
 at heart more intensely than I choose to tell any one, and also as 
 one who is not unacquainted with the general public opinion of 
 England, might dare to give advice, it would be, not in the direc- 
 tion of increased activity, but in that of increased passivity. Fool- 
 ish persons have 'set up the British Lion's back,' with just fears 
 and suspicions. Right-minded, but inexperienced persons, have set 
 up his back with unjust (though pardonable) fears and suspicions. 
 I do not hesitate to say, that a great deal which has been said and 
 done by women, and those who wish to sujjport women's rights, 
 daring the last six months, has thrown back our cause. I will not, 
 nay, I utterly decline to, enter into details. But that what 1 say is 
 true, I know, and know too well. We shall not win by petitions. 
 The House of Commons cares nothing for them. It knows too 
 well how they can be got up, and takes for granted that we shall 
 get up ours in the same way. 
 
 " By pamphleteering we shall not win. Pamphlets now are too 
 common. They melt on the debauched and distracted sensorium 
 of the public, like snow on water. By quiet, modest, silent, private 
 influence, we shall win. ' Neither strive nor cry, nor let your voice 
 be heard in the streets,' was good advice of old, and is still. I 
 have seen many a movement succeed by it, I have seen many a 
 movement tried by the other method, of striving, and crying, and 
 making a noise in the street. But I have never seen one succeed 
 thereby, and never shall. I do not hesitate to say, that unless 
 this movement is kept down to that tone of grace, and modesty, 
 and dignity, which it would always be by you, madam, were you 
 the only leader, and which would make it acceptable to the mass 
 of cultivated and experienced, and therefore justly powerful, 
 Englishmen and English women, it will fail only by the fault of its 
 supporters. 
 
 " I warn you of a most serious danger. I have found that when 
 the question has been put in its true, practical, rational light, to men 
 and women who had the greatest horror of it from prejudice, their 
 consciences and reasons gave way at once, and they were ready to 
 submit and agree. But I have found, alas ! that within a week, 
 some one or other had said or done something premature, or even 
 objectionable, which threw back tJie process of conversion. This 
 is the true cause of our seemingly unexpected failure. And 1 en- 
 treat you, as one who never by word or deed, as far as I have 
 known, have contributed to that failure, and for whom I have so 
 profound a respect, to control, instead of exciting, just now, those 
 over whom you have, and ought to have, influence." 
 
4i6 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 About this time Mr. John Stuart Mill, hearing that Mr. Kingsley 
 had withdrawn more or less from the movement, wrote to ask him 
 his reasons. The mode of procedure of some of its advocates had 
 shocked him so, tliat he refused to attend any meetings, and the 
 only branch of the subject to which he willingly gave his influence 
 latterly was the Medical education of women, which he had held 
 for years (long before the question of " Women's Suffrage " was 
 mooted) was one of the deepest importance, and which to the last 
 had his entire sympathy. 
 
 TO JOHN STUART MILL, ESQ. 
 
 , Chester. 
 " My dear Mr. Mill, 
 
 " As you have done me the maexpected honor of asking my 
 opinion on an important matter, I can only answer you with that 
 frankness which is inspired by confidence and respect, i. I do not 
 think that ladies speaking can have had, or can have, any adverse 
 influence. You used, J doubt not, your usual wisdom in opposing 
 
 Miss 's speaking at a public meeting, and, as yet, but only as 
 
 yet, I should think such a move premature. That I think women 
 ought to speak in public, in any ideal, or even truly civilized society 
 and polity, I hope I need not tell you. My fear is, not so much that 
 women should speak, as who the women are who speak. . . 
 
 " There exist, in all ranks of the English, and in none more than 
 in the highest rank, women brave, prudent, pure, wise, tried by 
 experience and sorrow, highly cultivated and thoughtful too, whose 
 intiuence is immense, and is always exercised for good, as far as they 
 see their way. And unless we can get these, of all ranks, and in 
 each rank, down to the very lowest, to be ' the leaders of fashion,' 
 for good, instead of evil, we shall not succeed. I am pained, in a 
 very large acquaintance of all ranks, to find the better rather than 
 the worse women against us, to find that foolish women, of no sound 
 or coherent opinions, and of often questionable morals .... 
 are inclined to patronise us in the most noisy and demonstrative 
 Avay. I am aware of the physical and psychical significance of this 
 fact. 1 know, and have long foreseen, that what our new idea has 
 to beware of, lest it should be swamped thereby, is hysteria, male 
 and female. Christianity was swamped by it from at least the third 
 to the sixteenth century, and if we wish to save ourselves from the 
 same terrible abyss, and to — I quote my dear friend Huxley's words, 
 with full agreement, though giving them a broader sense than he would 
 as yet — ' to reconstruct society according to science,' we must steer 
 clear of the hysteric element, which 1 define as tlie fancy and emo- 
 tions unduly excited by suppressed sexual excitement. It is all the 
 more necessary to do this, if we intend to attack ' social evils,' i.e..^ 
 
Emancipated Women. 417 
 
 sexual questions, by the help of woman raised to her proper place. 
 That you mean to do so I take for granted. That I do, I hope 
 you take for granted. If not, I should be glad some day to have 
 the honor of talking over with you this whole matter, on which I 
 have long thought, and on which I have arrived at conclusions 
 which I keep to myself as yet, and only utter as Greek cf>wvavTa 
 a-vveTOLu-i, the principle of which is, that there will never be a good 
 world for woman, till the last monk, and therewith the last remnant 
 of the monastic idea of, and legislation for, woman, i.e., the canon 
 law, is civilized off the earth. 
 
 "Meanwhile, all the most pure and high-minded women in Eng- 
 land, and in Europe, have been brought up under the shadow of the 
 canon law, have accepted it, with their usual divine self-sacrifice, as 
 their destiny by law of God and nature ; and consider their own 
 womanhood outraged, when it, their tyrant, is meddled with. It is to 
 them, therefore, if we wish (as I do) for a social revolution, that we 
 must address ourselves mildly, privately, modestly, rationally. Public 
 meetings drive them away, for their experiences, difficulties, wrongs, 
 are too sacred to be detailed even before women of whom they 
 are not sure, much more before men, most of all before a press, which 
 will report, and next morning cynically comment on, the secrets of 
 their hearts. A free press — with all its innumerable advantages — is 
 the great barrier (I say it to you deliberately) to the moving in this 
 matter of that great mass of matrons for whom, in the long run, the 
 movement is set on foot ; and by whom alone it can be carried out. 
 At least, so it seems to me, who fight, not for the maiden so much 
 as for the matron, because, if the mother be benefited, the child is 
 benefited in her. And therefore I deprecate the interference in 
 
 this movement of unmarried women But I see with 
 
 pain this movement backed up by , and , and by other 
 
 men and women who, unknown themselves to the English nation, 
 and knowing nothing of it, and its actual opinions and habits for 
 good or evil, in a word, sectarians (whether they know it or not), 
 seem ready to scramble back into a society which they have in some 
 cases forfeited, by mixing themselves up with questions which it is 
 not for such as they to speak of, either in the study or the forum. 
 I object, also, to the question of woman's right to vote or to labor, 
 and above all, to woman's right to practise as physicians and sur- 
 geons, being mixed up with social, i.e., sexual questions. Of 
 woman's right to be a medical practitioner, I hold (as perhaps you 
 may do me the honor to be aware) that it is perhaps the most im- 
 portant social question hanging over us. I believe that if once 
 women can be allowed to practise as freely as men, the whole 
 question of the relation of the sexes, according to natural laws, and, 
 therefore, according to what I believe to be the will and mind of 
 God, the author of nature [will be made clearj. . . . But for 
 that very reason, I am the more anxious that women should not 
 27 
 
41 8 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 meddle with these sexual questions, lirst, before they have acquired 
 a sound, and also a general, scientific physiological training, which 
 shall free them from sentiment, and confine them to physical laws 
 and fact, on these matters. Second, before they have so accustomed 
 the public to their ministrations, as to show them that they are the 
 equals of men in scientific knowledge and practical ability (as they 
 are) ; and more, that they know, as women, a hundred woman's 
 secrets, which no one but a woman can know truly, and which it is 
 a disgrace to modern civilization that a man should have the right 
 of trymg to interpret. Therefore I deprecate, most earnestly, all 
 the meddling, however pure-minded, humane, &c., which women 
 have brought to bear on certain questions during the last six months. 
 I do not say that they are wrong. Heaven forbid ! But 1 do say, 
 that by so doing they are retarding, it may be for generations, the 
 cause which they are trying to serve. And I do say (for I have 
 seen it), that they are thereby mixing themselves up with the fanat- 
 ical of both sexes ; with the vain and ambitious, and worst of all, 
 with the prurient. Prurience, sir, by which I mean lust, which, 
 unable to satisfy itself in act, satisfies itself by contemplation, usually 
 of a negative and seemingly virtuous and Pharisaic character, vilify- 
 ing, like St. Jerome in his cell at Bethlehem, that which he dare not 
 do, and which is, after all, only another form of hysteria — that is 
 the evil which we have to guard against, and we shall not do so, 
 unless we keep about this whole movement a tone of modesty, 
 delicacy, lofty purity, which (whatever it knows, and perhaps it 
 knows all) will not, and dare not, talk aloud about it. That tone 
 will not be kept, if we allow the matrons, and after them the 
 maidens (by whom I mean women still under the influence of their 
 fathers and mothers), or women having by their own property a 
 recognised social position, to be turned out of sight in this move- 
 ment by 'emancipated' women. 
 
 " I know that the line is very difficult to draw. I see how we 
 must be tempted to include, nay, to welcome as our best advocates, 
 women who are smarting under social wrongs, who can speak on 
 behalf of freedom with an earnestness like that of the escaped slave. 
 But I feel that we must resist that temptation ; that our strength 
 lies not in the abnormal, but in the normal type of womanhood. 
 And 1 must say, that any sound reformation of the relations between 
 woman and man, must proceed from women who have fulfilled 
 well their relations as they now exist, imperfect and unjust as they 
 are. That only those who have worked well in harness, will be able 
 to work well out of harness ; and that only those that have been 
 (as tens of thousands of women are every day) rulers over a few 
 things will be fit to be rulers over many things ; and I hold this — 
 in justice to myself I must say it — not merely on grounds ' theo- 
 logical' so-called, but on grounds without which the 'theological' 
 weigh with me very little — grounds material and physiological — on 
 
Woman the Teacher and Inspirer. 419 
 
 that Toluntatem Dei in rebus revelatam, to which I try, humbly 
 though confusedly, to submit all my conclusions. 
 
 " Meanwhile, 1 shall do that which I have been doing for years 
 past. Try to teach a noble freedom, to those whom I see most 
 willing, faithful, conscientious in their slavery, through the path of 
 self-sacrifice ; and to influence their masters likewise, to see in that 
 self-sacrifice something far more divine than their own self assertion. 
 To show them that wherever man and wife are really happy 
 together, it is by ignoring and despising, not by asserting the subordi- 
 nation of woman to man, which they hold in theory. To set forth 
 in every book I write (as I have done for twenty-five years) woman 
 as the teacher, the natural and therefore divine, guide, purifier, 
 inspirer of the man. And so, perhaps, I may be as useful to the 
 cause of chivalry, dear equally to you and me, as if I attended 
 many meetings, and spoke, or caused to be spoken, many 
 speeches." 
 
 TO PROFESSOR MAX MtJLLER. 
 
 EVERSLEY, AlCgUSt 8, 187O. 
 
 " Accept tiiy loving congratulations to you and your people. 
 The day which dear Bunsen used to pray, with tears in his eyes, 
 might not come till the German people were ready, has come, and 
 the German people are ready. 
 
 "Verily God is just; and rules, too, whatever the press may 
 think to the contrary. 
 
 " My only fear is, lest the Germans should think of Paris, which 
 cannot concern them, and turn their eyes away from that which 
 does concern them, the re-taking Elsass (which is their own), and 
 leaving the Frenchman no foot of the Rhine-bank. To make the 
 Rhine a word not to be mentioned by the French henceforth, 
 ought to be the one object of wise Germans, and that alone. In 
 
 any case, with love to dear G , I am yours, full of delight and 
 
 hope for Germany." 
 
 To another friend he writes :— 
 
 "As for the war, I dare not give opinion on it. It is the most 
 important event since the Revolution of 1 793, and we are too near 
 it yet to judge of it fairly. My belief is, that it will work good for 
 generations to come. But at what an awful price ! " 
 
 TO ALFRED WALLACE, ESQ., F.L.S. 
 
 EvERSLEY, October 22j 1^70. 
 
 " I have read your ' B^ssay on Natural Selection ' with equal de- 
 light and profit. 
 
420 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 "I wish you would re-consider pages 276-285. The facts, of 
 course, are true, as all yours are sure to be ; but I have never been 
 able to get rid of the belief, that every grain of sand washed down 
 by a river — by the merest natural laws — is designedly put in the 
 exact place where it will be needed some time or other ; or that 
 the ugliest beast (though I confess the puzzle here is stranger), and 
 the most devilish, has been created because it is beautiful and use- 
 ful to some being or other. In fact, I believe not only in ' special 
 providences,' but in the whole universe as one infinite complexity 
 of special providences. I only ask you to extend to all nature the 
 truth you have so gallantly asserted for man — ' That the laws 
 of organic develo])ment have been occasionally used for a special 
 end, just as man uses them for his special ends.' Page 370. 
 
 " Omit 'occasionally/ and say 'always,' and you will complete 
 your book and its use. In any case, it will be a contribution 
 equally to science and to natural theology." * 
 
 TO MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 EvERSLEY, November i, 1870. 
 
 "I have at last had time to read carefully your ' Culture and 
 Anarchy,' and here is my verdict if you care for it. That it is an 
 exceeding wise and true book ; and likely, as such, to be little 
 listened to this autumn, f but to sink into the ground and die, and 
 bear fruit next spring, when the spring comes. For me, born a 
 barbarian, and bred a Hebrew of the Hebrews, it has been of sohd 
 comfort and teaching, 1 have had for years past an inkling that 
 in Hellenism was our hope. I have been ashamed of myself, as a 
 clergyman, when I caught myself saying to myself that I had rather 
 have been an old Greek than an Englishman. Your book has 
 justified me to myself, while it showed me where I was ungrateful 
 to God and wrong. I will not trouble you with more talk, for it 
 will be far worse than that which you can say to yourself any day ; 
 but 1 must thank you for the book, as a moral tonic, as well as an 
 intellectual purge. Ah, that I could see you, and talk with you. 
 But here 1 am, trying to do my quiet work ; and given up, now, 
 utterly, to physical science — which is my business in the Hellenic 
 direction." 
 
 , . : . . 
 
 * "Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection : A Series of Essays," 
 by Alfred Russell Wallace. The chajjter referred to at pages 276-85 is headed, 
 "Adaptation brought about by General Laws." The passage is too long to 
 quote. 
 
 f French and Prussian War-time. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 1871. 
 Aged 52. 
 
 Lecture on " The Theology of the Future " at Sion College — Expeditions of the 
 Chester Natural Science Society — Lectures on Town Geology — Race Week 
 at Chester — Letters on Betting — Camp at Bramshill — The Prince of Wales in 
 Eversley — Prince of Wales's Illness — Lecture to Royal Artillery Officers at 
 Woolwich. 
 
 In January he gave a Jecture by request at Sion College. The 
 subject he chose was " The Theology of the Future,"* in which he 
 urged on the clergy the necessity of facing the great scientific facts 
 of the day, and asserted his own belief in final causes. 
 
 " I wish to speak," he says, " not on natural religion, but on 
 natural theology. By the first I understand what can be learnt 
 from the physical universe of man's duty to God and his neighbor ; 
 by the latter I understand what can be learned concerning God 
 Himself. Of natural religion I shall say nothing. I do not even 
 affirm that a natural religion is possible ; but I do very earnestly 
 beheve that a natural theology is possible ; and I earnestly believe 
 also that it is most important that natural theology should, in every 
 age, keep pace with doctrinal or ecclesiastical theology " 
 
 He goes on to speak of Bishop Butler, Berkeley, and Paley, the 
 three greatest of our natural theologians, and of the strong fact, 
 that the clergy of the Church of England, since the foundation of 
 the Royal Society in the 17th century, have done more for sound 
 physical science than the clergy of any other denomination ; and 
 expresses his belief that if our orthodox thinkers for the last hun- 
 dred years had followed steadily in their steps, we should not now 
 be deploring the wide and, as some think, widening gulf between 
 
 * This lecture, or rather part of it, is incorporated into the preface of his 
 " Westminster Sermons," published in 1874. 
 
42 2 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 science and Christianity. He considers Goethe's claims to have 
 advanced natural theology as very much over-rated, but strongly 
 recommends to the younger clergy " Herder's Outlines of the 
 Philosophy of the History of Man '' as a book, in spite of certain 
 defects, full of sound and precious wisdom. 
 
 He speaks of certain popular hymns of the present day as i)roofs 
 of an unhealthy view of the natural w^orld, with a savor hanging 
 about them of the old monastic theory of the earth being the 
 devil's planet instead of God's, and gives characteristic instances, 
 contrasting their key-note with that of the 104th, T47th, and 148th 
 Psalms, and the noble Benedicite Omnia Opera of our Prayer-book. 
 Again, he contrasts the Scriptural doctrine about the earth being 
 cursed with the popular fancies on the same point. He speaks of 
 the 139th Psalm as a "marvellous essay on natural theology," and 
 of its pointing to the important study of embryology, which is now 
 occupying the attention of Owen, Huxley, and Darwin. Then he 
 goes on to " Race," and " the painful and tremendous facts " which 
 it involves, which must all be faced ; believing himself that here, as 
 elsewhere, Science and Scripture will be ultimately found to coin- 
 cide. He presses the study of Darwin's FertiHzation of Orchids 
 (whether his main theory be true or not) as a most valuable addi- 
 tion to natural theology. Then, after an eloquent protest against 
 the " child-dream of a dead universe governed by an absent God," 
 which Carlyle and even Goethe have " treated with noble scorn," 
 he speaks of that "nameless, invisible, imponderable," yet seem- 
 ing omnipresent, thing which scientific men are finding below all 
 pheiiomena, which the scalpel and the microscope can show — the 
 life which shapes and makes — that " unknown and truly miraculous 
 element in nature, the mystery of which for ever engrossing, as it 
 does, the noblest minded of our students of science, is yet for ever 
 escaping them while they cannot escape it." He calls on the 
 clergy to have courage to tell them — what will sanctify, while it 
 need never hamper, their investigations — that this perpetual and 
 omnipresent miracle is no other than the Breath of God : The 
 Spirit who is The Lord, and The Giver of Tife, " Let us only 
 wait," he says — " let us observe — let us have patience and faith. 
 Nominalism, and that ' sensationalism ' which has sprung from 
 Nominalism, are running fast to seed ; Comtism seems to me its 
 supreme effort, after which the whirligig of Time may bring round 
 
The Chester Scientific Society. 4.23 
 
 its revenges ; and Realism, and we who hold the ReaUst creeds, 
 may have our turn." 
 
 " I sometimes dream," he adds, " of a day when it will be con- 
 sidered necessary that every candidate for ordination should be 
 required to have passed creditably in at least one branch of physi- 
 cal science, if it be only to teach him the method of sound scien- 
 tific thought. And if it be said that the doctrine of evolution, by 
 doing away with the theory of creation, does away with that of final 
 causes— let us answer boldly, Not in the least. We might accept 
 what Mr. Darwin and Professor Huxley have written on physical 
 science, and yet preserve our natural theology on exactly the same 
 basis as that on which Butler and Paley left it. That we should 
 have to develop it, I do not deny. That we should have to relin- 
 quish it, I do." 
 
 Extracts give a poor conception of the lecture, which made a 
 profound impression, and, as private letters showed, gave hope 
 and comfort to many among those who heard it delivered, or read 
 it afterwards in the pages of " Macmillan's Magazine ; " and re- 
 printing it, as he did, only a year before his death, it may be looked 
 on as his last words on his favorite topic, and a last confession of 
 his faith that, If the clergy would only play the great "r^/^" which 
 is before them, science and the creeds would one day shake hands. 
 
 Scientific subjects, and especially the distribution of plants, occu- 
 pied him much at this time, and the success of his botanical class 
 at Chester the previous year, decided him to follow it up with 
 geology. He was busy, too, with the proofs of his West India 
 book, "At Last." 
 
 The work at Chester this year assumed larger proportions, for 
 the botanical class of 1870 had been the nucleus of a Scientific 
 Society in 1871; his geological lectures were much more fully 
 attended, not only the number of members increased, but each 
 member was allowed to bring a lady friend. Consequently, in 
 preparation for walks and field lectures, he had to go over the 
 ground himself a day or two before, to get thoroughly acquainted 
 with its capabilities for geology and botany, and also to arrange for 
 a place of rest and refreshment for the class ; and in these re- 
 searches he was always accompanied by his kind friend, the Pre- 
 centor, or some member of the Cathedral body, who were always 
 ready with loyal and intelligent help. Expeditions now were taken 
 to more distant spots ; the railway authorities had to be consulted 
 
424 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 about trains — they, too, gave most willing help ; and, at the ap- 
 pointed hour at the place of meeting, a happy party, numbering 
 sometimes from sixty to a hundred, would find the Canon and his 
 daughters waiting for them on the platform of the railway, he with 
 geological hammer in hand, botany box slung over his shoulder, 
 eager as any of his class for the holiday, but feeling the responsi- 
 bility of providing teaching and amusement (in the highest sense of 
 that word) for so many, who each and all hung upon his words. 
 
 Those were bright afternoons, all classes mingling together ; 
 people who had lived next door to each other in Chester for years 
 perhaps without exchanging a word, now met on equal and friendly 
 terms, in pursuit of one ennobling, object, and found themselves all 
 travelling in second-class carriages together without distinction of 
 rank or position, to return at the end of the long summer evening 
 to their old city, refreshed and inspirited, — with nosegays of wild 
 flowers, geological specimens, and happy thoughts of God's earth 
 and of their fellow creatures. Perhaps the moral gain was as 
 valuable as the scientific results of these field lectures, uniting 
 Cathedral and town as they did in closer bonds. 
 
 The thought of giving importance to the society by adding honor- 
 ary members now occurred to the president, and he wrote to Sir 
 Charles Lyell, Sir Philip Egerton, Dr. Hooker, Professors Huxley, 
 Tyndall, Hughes, &c., whose distinguished names are all enrolled 
 in the Chester Natural Science Society. 
 
 TO SIR CHARLES LYELL. 
 
 Chester, June 22, 1871. 
 
 " I have a great favor to ask. Whether you decline or not, I am 
 sure you will not be angry with me for asking. I have just started 
 here a Natural Science Society — the dream of years. And I be- 
 lieve it will ' march.' But I want a few great scientific names as 
 honorary members. That will give my plebs, who are men of all 
 ranks and creeds of course, self-respect ; the feeling that they are 
 initiated actually into the great freemasonry of science, and that 
 such men as you acknowledge them as pupils. 
 
 " I have put into the hands of my geological class, numbering 
 about sixty, your new ' Students' Elements.' I shall not be rude 
 enough to compliment you on it ; but I may say that you seem in 
 it as great as ever. These good fellows, knowing your name, and 
 using your book, would have a fresh incentive to work if they but 
 felt that you were conscious of their existence. 
 
 "Let me then beg for your name, to be proposed by me as an 
 
Town Geology. 425 
 
 honorary member. I ask nothing more ; but to give that would 
 be not only to help them, but to help me, who already feel the 
 drag of the collar (having to do all myself as far as teaching and 
 
 inspiriting go) very heavy 
 
 "Your most faithful and loyal pupil, 
 
 " C. KiNGSLEY." 
 
 Sir Charles not only gave his name, but some of his most valu- 
 able works to the infant society. 
 
 The room hitherto used at the City Library had now to be given 
 up, and by the Dean's kindness the King's School was used as 
 lecture-room. A preliminary lecture on the subject of physical 
 science was followed by six, which will never be forgotten in 
 Chester, on The Soil of the Field, The Pebbles in the Street, The 
 Stones in the Wall, The Coal in the Fire, the Lime in the Mortar, 
 The Slates on the Roof.* The black-board was in constant use. 
 Many of those who were present must recall the look of inspira- 
 tion with which his burning words were accompanied, as he went 
 through the various transformations of the coal, till it reached the 
 diamond, and the poetry he threw into his theme as, with kindling 
 eyes, he lifted a lump of coal off the table, and held it up to his 
 breathless listeners. 
 
 Never had a man a more appreciative audience — intelligent, 
 enthusiastic, affectionate. "They spring to touch," he would say, 
 "at every point," and never did he receive such a warm grasp of 
 the hand as from men of all ranks in the beloved old city. The 
 Chester residence was one of the dearest episodes of his life, and 
 when he was transferred to Westminster he could not speak of it 
 without tears in his eyes. 
 
 The following year the expeditions took place, but his lectures 
 were less frequent. The society, he felt, was well established on a 
 basis of its own ; and with him, over-work of brain had brought on 
 a constant lassitude and numbness of the left side, which led him 
 to apin-ehend coming paralysis, and forced him to confine his work 
 more exclusively to preaching and the never-ceasing correspondence. 
 
 It so happened that tiie first week of his residence in Chester, 
 being always in May, was the race-week, whicli for the time being 
 
 * These lectures, published in 1872 as "Town Geology," were dedicated to 
 the members o£ the class he loved so well. 
 
426 Charles Ki?igsley. 
 
 turned the streets of the venerable old city into a sort of Pande- 
 monium. Trade, except in the public-houses, was stagnant, and 
 the temptations of the young men in the middle and lower classes 
 fiom betting and bad company, with the usual ending of a suicide, 
 and the ruin of many, weighed heavily on his heart, as on that of 
 the Dean and many of the residents. Most of the respectable 
 tradesmen deplored the effect of the race-week, not only on the 
 higher ground of morality, but because the direct losses to trade 
 and to the working classes which resulted from it were so serious. A 
 series of short papers on " Chester Races and their Attendant Evils" 
 were started, and by the wish of Dean Howson, Mr. Kingsley 
 took the subject of Betting and addressed his letter "To the Young 
 Men of Chester." It is characteristic, and therefore given entire : 
 
 " betl'ing. a letter to the young men of chester." 
 
 " My dear Young Men, 
 
 " The human race may, for practical purposes, be divided into 
 three parts : 
 
 " I. Honest men : who mean to do right ; and do it. 
 
 " 2. Knaves : who mean to do wrong ; and do it. 
 
 " 3. Fools : who mean to do whichever of the two is the pleas- 
 anter. 
 
 "And these last may be divided again into — 
 
 " Black fools : who would rather do wrong ; but dare not ; unless 
 it is the fashion. 
 
 " White fools : who would rather do right ; but dare not ; unless 
 it is the fashion. 
 
 " Now the honest men do not need my advice ; and the knaves 
 will not take it ; neither, I fear, will the black fools. They will 
 agree in their secret hearts, most of them, that every word I say is 
 true. But. they do not wish it to be true ; and therefore they will 
 tell every one that it is not true, and try to wriggle out from under 
 it by far-fetched excuses, and go back next races, 'like the dog to 
 his vomit, and the sow to her wallowing in the mire,' and bet and 
 gamble boldly, because then that will be the fashion. But of the 
 white fools I have hope. For they are not half bad fellows : some 
 of them, indeed, are very near being very good fellows, and would 
 like so much to do anything which is right and proper — only it 
 takes so much trouble ; and perhaps it might look rather odd now 
 and then. 
 
 " Now let me ask them — and really I have so much liking for 
 them, that I fear at times I must be one of them myself — in all 
 friendliness and courtesy — Why do you bet and gamble at the 
 races? Consider well what your answer will be. Certainly it will 
 
A Letter on Betting. 427 
 
 not be that you do so to avoid trouble, which you so much disHke 
 in general. For you must confess at once that it is more trouble 
 to bet, more anxiety, and often more grief and sorrow, than it is 
 not to bet, but to leave the matter alone. And while you are pre- 
 ])aring your reasons, I will give )'Ou two at least of mine, for leav- 
 ing the matter alone. 
 
 " The first reason (which seems to me the strongest reason which 
 can be given against any matter whatsoever,) is this — that betting, 
 and gambling of every kind, is in itself wrong and immoral. I do 
 not say that every man who bets is an immoral man. Far from it : 
 many really honest men bet ; but thai is because they have not 
 considered what they are doing. Betting is wrong : because it is 
 wrong to take your neighbor's money without giving him anything 
 in return. Earn from him what you will, and as much as you can. 
 All labor, even the lowest drudgery, is honorable ; but betting is 
 not laboring nor earning : it is getting money without earning it, 
 and more, it is getting money, or trying to get it, out of your 
 neighbor's ignorance. 
 
 " If you and he bet on any event, you think that your horse will 
 win : he thinks that his will ; in plain English, you think that you 
 know more about the matter than he : you try to take advantage 
 of his ignorance, and so to conjure money out of his pocket into 
 yours — A very noble and friendly attitude in which to stand to your 
 neighbor, truly. That is the plain English of it : and look at it up- 
 wards, downwards, sideways, inside out, you will never make any- 
 thing out of betting, save this — that it is taking advantage of your 
 neighbor's supposed ignorance. 
 
 " But says some one, ' That is all fair, he is trying to do as much 
 by me.' Just so : and that again is a very noble and friendly atti- 
 tude for two men who have no spite against each other ; a state of 
 mutual distrust and unmercifulness, looking each selfishly to his 
 own gain, regardless of the interest of the other. I say, regardless. 
 You know whatever you lose, he will expect you to pay, however 
 much it may inconvenience you : while if he loses you expect him 
 to ])ay, however much it may inconvenience him. Thus betting is 
 founded on selfishness ; and the consequence is, that men who live 
 by betting are, and cannot help being, the most selfish of men, and 
 (I should think) among the most unhapi)y and pitiable ; for if a 
 man who is given up to selfishness, distrust, and cunning, who is 
 tempted every hour to treachery and falsehood, without the possi- 
 bility of one noble or i)urifymg feeling throughout his whole day's 
 work, or the consciousness that he has done the slightest good to 
 a human being — not even as much good as an old woman at a stall 
 has by selling a penny-worth of a))ples — if that man is not a piti- 
 able object, 1 do not know what is. 
 
 " But some will say, ' It is not the money I care for, but the 
 amusement.' Excuse me : but if so, why do you bet for money ? 
 
428 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 That question I have asked again and again, and have never got 
 an answer. Why do you bet for money, and not counters, or pins, 
 or pebbles ? Why, but because you want the money, to buy with it 
 money's worth ? 
 
 " Of course, I know well enough that plenty of bets pass on 
 every race, which are practically quite harmless. A dozen of kid 
 gloves to a lady — when you know that she will expect you to pay 
 her, while you are bound not to ask her to pay you — he would be 
 a very strait-laced person who could see any great harm in that ; 
 any more than in a rubber of sixpenny whist. And yet it would be 
 better for many a young man, for some of the finest fellows of all, 
 men of eager temper, high spirit, delicate lionor, if they would 
 make up their mind never to bet, even a shilling ; never to play 
 cards, except for love. For gambling, like drinking, grows upon 
 some men, and upon the very finest natures too. And remember, 
 that in betting and gambling, the more honorable man you are, the 
 worst chance you have ; gambling is almost the only thing in the 
 world, in which the bad man is the stronger by very virtue of his 
 badness, the good man the weaker by very virtue of his goodness. 
 The man who will not cheat is no match for the man who will. 
 The honorable man who will pay his debts, is no match for the dis- 
 honorable man who will not. No match indeed : not even in that 
 last sad catastrophe, which I have seen too often : when the hon- 
 orable man, throwing good money after bad to recover his losses, 
 grows desperate, tries his hand just once at foul play, and sells his 
 soul — for nothing. For when he borrows the knave's tools, he 
 cannot use them ; he is ashamed of himself, hesitating, clumsy ; 
 is found out — as I have known such found out : and then — if he 
 does not put a pistol to his own head and blow his brains out, it is 
 not because he does not long, poor wretch, to do so. 
 
 " I hold, then, that betting is itself more or less wrong and im- 
 moral. But I hold, too, that betting, in three cases out of four, is 
 altogether foolish ; so foolish that I cannot understand why the 
 very young- men who are fondest of it, should be the very men 
 who are proudest of being considered shrewd, knowing, men of the 
 world, and what not. 
 
 " They stake their money on this horse and on that. Now judg- 
 ing of a horse's capabilities is an art, and a very delicate and diffi- 
 cult art, depending first on natural talent, and next on experience, 
 such as not one man in a thousand has. But how many betting 
 young men know anything about a horse, save that he has four 
 legs ? Flow many of them know at sight whether a horse is sound 
 or not ? Whether he can stay or not ? Whether he is going in 
 good form or not ? Whether he is doing his best or not ? Prob- 
 ably five out of six of them could not sit on a race-horse without 
 falling off; and then such a youth pretends to himself that he is a 
 judge of the capabilities of a noble brute, who is a much better 
 
Tricks in Horse Racing. 429 
 
 judge of the young gentleman's capabilities, and would prove him- 
 self so within five minutes after he had got into the saddle. 
 
 " ' But they know what the horse has done already.' Yes ; but 
 not what the horse might have done. They do not know — no one 
 can, who is not in the secrets of the turf — what the horse's engage- 
 ments really are ; whether he has not been kept back in view of 
 those engagements ; whether he will not be kept back again ; 
 whether he has not been used to make play for another horse ; and 
 — in one word — whether he is meant to win. 
 
 " ' But they have special information : They have heard sport- 
 ing men on whom they can rely, report to them this and the other 
 wonderful secret.' Of all the various follies into which vanity, 
 and the wish to seem knowing, and to keep sporting company lead 
 young men — and mere boys often — this I think is about the most 
 absurd. A young lad hangs about the bar of a sporting public- 
 house, spending his money in drink, in hopes of over-hearing what 
 the initiated Mr. This may say to the initiated Mr. That — and 
 goes off with his hearsay, silly fellow, forgetting that Mr. This prob- 
 ably said it out loud to Mr. That in order that he might overhear ; 
 that if they have any special information, they will keep it to them- 
 selves, because it is their stock-in-trade whereby they live, and they 
 are not going to be foolish enough to give it away to him. Mr. 
 This and That may not be dishonest men ; but they hold that in 
 betting, as in love and war, all is fair ; they want to make their 
 books, not to make his ; and though they very likely tell him a 
 great deal which is to their own advantage, they are neither simple 
 enough, nor generous enough, to tell him much that is to his ad- 
 vantage ; or to prevent him from making the usual greenhorn's 
 book by which he stands sure to lose five pounds, and likely to 
 lose fifty. 
 
 " ' Ah, but the young gentleman has sent his money on com- 
 mission to a prophet in the newspaper, in whom he has the highest 
 confidence ; he has prophesied the winner two or three times at 
 least ; and a friend of his sent him money to lay on, and got back 
 ever so much ; and he has a wonderful Greek name, Lynceus, or 
 Polyphemus, or Typhloi)s, or something, and so he must know.' Ah ! 
 fool, fool. You know how often the great Polyphemus prophe- 
 sied the winner, but you do not know how often he did not. Hits 
 count of course ; but misses are hushed up. And as for your friend 
 getting money back, if Polyphemus let no one win, his trade would 
 stop. The question is, not whether one foolish lad won by him, 
 but whether tive-and-tvventy foolish lads did not lose by him. He 
 has his book to make, as well as you, and he wants your money 
 to pay his own debts with if he loses. He has his bread to earn, 
 and he wants youj" money to earn it with ; and as for sending 
 him money, you may as well throw a sovereign down a coal-pit 
 and expect it to come up again with a ton of coals on its back. 
 
430 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 If any young man will not believe me, because I am a parson, 
 let him read, in the last chapter or two of ' Sponge's Sporting 
 Tour,' what was thought of the Enoch Wriggles and Infallible 
 Joes, by a better sportsman and a wiser man, than any Chester 
 betting young gentleman is likely to be. 
 
 "'Ah, but the young gentleman has a private friend. He 
 knows a boy in Mr, So and So, or Lord the Other's stables, and 
 he has put him up to a thing or two. He is with the horse day 
 and night ; feeds him ; knows the jockey who will ride him.' Does 
 he then ? What a noble and trustworthy source of information ! 
 One on the strength of which it would be really worth a lad's 
 while to disobey his father, make his mother miserable, and 
 then rob his master's till, so sure must he be to realize a grand 
 haul of money 1 A needy little stable-boy, even a comfortable big 
 groom, who either tells you what he does not know, and so lies, 
 or tells you what he does know, and so is probably a traitor ; and 
 who in any gase, for the sake of boasting and showing off his own 
 importance, or of getting half a crown and a glass of brandy and 
 water, will tell you anything which comes uppermost. I had al- 
 most said he i.s a fool if he does not. If you are fool enough to 
 buy his facts, his cheapest and easiest plan must be to invent 
 sham facts, and sell them you, while he keeps the real facts for 
 his own use. For he too has his little book to make up j and like 
 every one who bets, must take care of himself first, with his hand 
 against every man, and every man's hand against him. 
 
 " I could say much more, and uglier things still. But to what I 
 have said, I must stand. This used to be the private history of 
 small bettings at races thirty years ago ; and from all I hear, 
 things have not grown better, but worse, since that time. But 
 even then, before I took Holy Orders, before even I thought 
 seriously at all, things were so bad that I found myself forced to 
 turn my back on race-courses, not because I did not love to see 
 the horses run — in that old English pleasure, taken simply and 
 alone, I can fully sympathize — but because I found that they 
 tempted me to betting, and that betting tempted me to compan}', 
 and to passions, unworthy not merely of a scholar and a gentle- 
 man, but of an honest and rational bargeman or collier. And I 
 have seen what comes too often of keeping that company, of in- 
 dulging" those passions. I have known men possessed of many 
 virtues, and surrounded with every blessing which God could give, 
 bring bitter shame and ruin, not only on themselves, but on those 
 they loved, because they were too weak to shake off the one pas- 
 sion of betting and gambling. And I have known men mixed up 
 in the wicked ways of the world, and too often yieldmg to them, 
 and falling into much wrong doiiT^-, who have somehow steered 
 through at last, and escaped ruin, and settled down into a respect- 
 able and useful old age, simply because they had strength enough 
 
All Gambliiig CondeTnned. 431 
 
 to say — 'Whatever else I may or may not do, bet and gamble I 
 will not.' And I very seriously advise my good friends the White 
 Fools, to make the same resolution, and to keep it. 
 
 " Your very good friend, 
 
 " C. KiNGSLEY. 
 " Februa7y ist, 1871." 
 
 The local papers, of course, took up the subject, and he again 
 replied. 
 
 The following letter to his eldest son, when quite a boy at a pub- 
 lic school, on his telling his father he had put into a lottery without 
 thinking it any harm, will come in appropriately here, though writ- 
 ten many years before : 
 
 " My Dearest Boy, 
 
 " There is a matter which gave me much uneasiness when you 
 mentioned it. You said you had put into some lottery for the 
 Derby and had hedged to make safe. 
 
 "Now all this is bad, bad, nothing but bad. Of all habits 
 gambling is the one I hate most and have avoided most. Of all 
 habits it grows most on eager minds. Success and loss alike make 
 it grow. Of all habits, however much civilised men may give way 
 to it, it is one of the most intrinsically savage. Historically it has 
 been the peace excitement of the lowest brutes in human form for 
 ages past. Morally it is unchivalrous and unchristian. 
 
 " I. It gains money by the lowest and most unjust means, for it 
 takes money out of your neighbor's pocket without giving him any- 
 thing in return. 
 
 "2. It tempts you to use what you fancy your superior knowl- 
 edge of a horse's merits — or anything else — to your neighbor's 
 harm. 
 
 " If you know better than your neighbor you are bound to give 
 him your advice. Instead, you conceal your knowledge to win 
 from his ignorance; hence come all sorts of concealments, dodges, 
 deceits — I say the Devil is the only father of it. I'm sure, more- 
 over, that B. would object seriously to anything like a lottery, betting, 
 or gambling. 
 
 " I hope you have not won. I should not be sorry for you to 
 lose. If you have won I should not congratulate you. If you wish 
 to please me, you will give back to its lawful owners the money 
 you have won. If you are a loser in gross thereby, I will gladly 
 reimburse your losses this time. As you had put in you could not 
 in honor draw back till after the event. Now you can give back 
 your nioney, saying you understand that Mr. B. and your father 
 disapprove of such things, and so gain a very great moral influence. 
 
 "^ Recollect always that the stock argument is worthless. It is 
 
432 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 this : ' My friend would win from me if he could, therefore I have 
 an equal right to win from him.' Nonsense. The same argument 
 would prove that I have a right to maim or kill a man if only J give 
 him leave to maim or kill me if he can and will. 
 
 " 1 have spoken my mind once and for all on a matter on which 
 I have held the same views for more than twenty years, and trust 
 in God you will not forget my words in after life. I have seen many 
 a good fellow ruined by finding himself one day short of money, 
 and trying to get a little by play* or betting — and then the Lord 
 have mercy on his simple soul, for simple it will not remain long. 
 
 " Mind, I am not the least angry with you. Betting is the way 
 of the world. So are all the seven deadly sins under certain rules 
 and pretty names, but to the Devil they lead if indulged in, in spite 
 of the wise world and its ways. 
 
 " Your loving Pater." 
 
 A regular member of his congregation this summer was Chief 
 Justice Bovill, who was living in a neighboring parish, and drove 
 over on Sunday mornings to Eversley Church. His devoutness 
 made a great impression on Mr. Kingsley, who was much affected 
 by his death in 1873. He writes: 
 
 " . . . Poor dear Chief Justice Bovill is dead. Happy man ! 
 But what a loss ! How well I remember giving him the Holy Com- 
 munion at Eversley ; and the face was so devout, though boiling 
 over with humor." 
 
 On his return from Chester the quiet parish of Eversley was 
 startled into new life by the formation of a camp in Bramshill Park 
 and on Hartford Bridge Flafs, at the opening of the autumn ma- 
 noeuvres, at which H.R.H. the Prince of Wales was not only 
 ])resent, but camped out with his regiment, the loth Hussars. 
 The tumult of enthusiasm and pride of the little parish at such an 
 event and the remembrance of the Prince's royal presence and 
 gracious courtesy (which will never be erased from the annals of 
 Eversley), had scarcely subsided, when the country was electrified 
 by the news of H.R.H. being struck down with fever and at the 
 point of death, and rector and parishioners grieved and prayed 
 and wept together. But Mr. Kingsley' s deep personal attachment, 
 
 * So strong was his feeling about gambling, that he would never in his own 
 house allow a game of cards to be played for money. To rest his brain, he 
 Hi ways played with his children in the evening for an hour or two — dominoes, 
 backgammon, patience, whist, or some other game of cards. 
 
Loyalty and Sanatory Reform. 433 
 
 independent of his loyal feelings, made it too painful to him to stay 
 so far away ; and he started off to Lynn, from whence he could get 
 hourly news, and could walk over daily to Sandringham, sending 
 telegrams on to Eversley, which were put up on the church door 
 and in the window of the village shop. When all danger was over, 
 and the heart of the whole nation rebounded with joy and thank- 
 fulness in a way that will stand in history as something unexampled, 
 he preached at the Chapel Royal, St. James's, a sermon on 
 Loyalty, which enabled him to press the subject of Sanatory 
 Reform in connection with what, but for God's mercy, he felt might 
 have been one of England's greatest disasters. 
 
 In the autumn he was invited, through Colonel Strange, then at 
 Woolwich with the Royal Artillery, to deliver a lecture at the R. A. 
 Institution there. With some hesitation, but with real pleasure, 
 he accepted, and was the guest of Colonel Strange, with whom he 
 spent two deeply interesting days. He chose for his subject " The 
 Study of Natural History." * 
 
 * Since published in a volume of essays — " Health and Education." 
 28 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 1872. 
 Aged 53. 
 
 Opening of Chester Cathedral Nave — Deaths of Mr. Maurice and Norman 
 McLeod — Letters to Max Mailer — Mrs. Luard — Lecture at Birmingham 
 and its Results — Lecture on Heroism at Chester — A Poem — The Athanasian 
 Creed. 
 
 The year began at Eversley with the usual winter's parish work, 
 night-schools, Penny Readings, &c., which were only interrupted 
 by his going to the opening of Chester Cathedral, the nave of which 
 had been shut up for repairs. He writes on January 24 : 
 
 "Scribbling in Deacle's study. Service this afternoon magnifi- 
 cent. Cathedral quite full. Anthem, 'Send out Thy Light.' 
 Collection, ;^io5. Cathedral looks lovely, and I have had a most 
 happy day. Every one glad to see me, and enquiries after you all. 
 I do love this place and people, and long to be back here for our 
 spring residence." 
 
 Mr. Maurice's death in March, and Dr. Norman McLeod's, 
 saddened him, and warned him of the consequences of an over- 
 worked brain. "Ah," he said, on hearing of the latter, "he is an 
 instance of a' man who has worn his brain away, and he is gone as 
 I am surely going." Work of all kinds seemed now to redouble; 
 and the mere letters refusing sermons, lectures, church openings, 
 and kind invitations from friends in England and Scotland, who 
 were eager to give him the rest and refreshment which he so sorely 
 needed, gave constant employment to his home secretary. He 
 toiled on, dreaming of that time of "learned leisure" for which a 
 Canonry he held should provide ; but which did not as yet fall to 
 his lot ; and those who watched him most closely and loved him 
 best felt that if rest ever came it would come too late. " Better, 
 however," he said, " to wear out than rust out." 
 
Death of Mr. Maurice. 435 
 
 TO PROFESSOR MAX MULLER. 
 
 EVERSLEY, Feb. 19, 1872. 
 
 " I have read your gallant words about Bishop Patteson in the 
 Times. I did not know him ; but it is at least a comfort to me to 
 read words written in such a tone in this base generation. 
 
 " By all means let us have a memorial to him. But where ? 
 In a painted window, or a cross here in England ? Surely not. 
 But on the very spot where he died. There let the white man, 
 without anger or revenge, put up some simple and grand monolith, 
 if you will ; something at least which the dark man cannot make, 
 and which instead of defacing, he will rather worship as a memorial 
 to the Melanesian and his children, which they would interpret for 
 themselves. So, indeed, 'he being dead would yet speak.' 
 
 "Think over this. If it please you I will say more on the 
 matter." 
 
 TO MRS. LUARD, 
 (On Mr. Maurice's Death.) 
 
 April i^, 1872. 
 
 "Your letter to F. was a comfort to me, as is every word from 
 any one who loved and appreciated him. You, too, saw that his 
 work was done. I had seen death in his face for, I may almost say, 
 two years past, and felt that he needed the great rest of another life. 
 And now he has it. 
 
 "I see that you were conscious of the same extraordinary per- 
 sonal beauty which I gradually discovered in his face. If I. were 
 asked, Who was the handsomest, and who the most perfectly gen- 
 tlemanlike man you ever met ? I should answer, without hesitation, 
 Mr. Maurice." 
 
 In the autumn he went to Birmingham, where he had often been 
 asked to give lectures. It was a town for which he had great 
 respect, as being one of the best drained in England, and where in 
 all the cholera visitations there had been the fewest cases of cholera 
 (in one visitation only one, and that an imported case), rte had 
 been urged, and could not well refuse, to be President of the Mid- 
 land Institute for the year. As President, he was bound to give 
 the Inaugural Address. The subject he chose was the Science of 
 Health, and the noble response given to his lecture, will make it 
 long remembered in Birmingham. I^oi'd Lyttelton was in the chair, 
 aud received him with marked kindness. It was one of' his best 
 and most suggestive lectures. Special reporters were sent down 
 by leading London newspapers, and the following morning the 
 
436 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 " Times " gave him a leading article, which, after speaking of other 
 Institutes and other speakers, adds : 
 
 " But everybody was prepared to expect Canon Kingsley to 
 exhibit the development of the Institute in a more striking and 
 picturesque light. Every one of his topics and suggestions appears 
 to us strictly in the lines of an Inaugural Address to the Institute 
 of a great manufacturing town like Birmingham, Yet we could 
 fancy that some, even among the most hopeful originators of this 
 movement, would have opened their eyes upon hearing the acqui- 
 sition of the Spanish and Portuguese languages urged as a means 
 of making one's fortune in South America, and on finding, put in 
 the first place, nearly to the exclusion of all other subjects, the 
 necessity of studying the laws of health and strength, of physical suc- 
 cession, natural selection, and morbid degeneracy, especially as 
 illustrated in the dwarfed and enervated population of our large 
 towns, in unhappy marriages, and expiri-ng families. We feel really 
 obliged to the Canon for taking the bull by the horns, and telling 
 these townsfolk some very simple truths, with the further remark 
 that they have only to use their eyes, their memories, and their 
 understandings, and then they will learn a great deal more than 
 he can tell them." 
 
 The Lecture bore fruit at once. A gentleman of Birmingham 
 (a manufacturer), who had been long wishing to promote scientific 
 knowledge among the working- classes of Birmingham, and had 
 long deplored the ignorance prevailing on the subject of health, 
 without the idea occurring to him of making it a distinct object of 
 study, on hearing the address immediately decided to devote the 
 sum of 2,500/. to found classes and Lectures on Human Physiology 
 and the Science of Health, believing, with Mr. Kingsley, that if 
 people's interest could only be excited on the subject, physical 
 improvement would be followed by moral and mental improvement, 
 and the hospitals, and even prisons and madhouses, would be 
 relieved of many cases which have their origin in mere ignorance 
 of the laws of health and physiology. 
 
 The immediate result of this lecture was perhaps the highest 
 earthly reward ever granted to him, and had he lived to see the still 
 greater results which Mr. Ryland's letter point to, his soul would 
 have been satisfied. He may see it now — God knows ! 
 
 The Chester City Library and Reading-room were just now very 
 low in funds, and in want of modern books ; and the committee 
 
Lectures on Heroism. 437 
 
 applied to the Canon to help them out of their difficulties. He 
 writes at once to Mr. Shone from Eversley : 
 
 " Of course — what did I come to Chester for, if not to help in 
 such a case ? Will you and your friends make all arrangements, 
 and send me a reminder about the beginning of November, that I 
 may have time to think over something which may interest our dear 
 good Chester folk. I should like you and my friends to look 
 at what I said at the Midland Institute, Birmingham, about the 
 science of health and physical education. I spoke from long 
 knowledge ; and be sure we all need to think about the subject 
 very seriously, else our grandchildren will be by no means such big 
 men as you are ! " 
 
 Some days later he writes : " The subject of my lecture will be 
 Heroism. I mean it to be a prologue to a set of lectures which I 
 hope to give at Chester during my next residence " 
 (in May, 1873). This residence never took place ; but the Lec- 
 ture on Heroism* was given on November 22, 1872, most success- 
 fully, as far as its pecuniary object, and doubtless it found a 
 response in many hearts. The Duke of Westminster, foremost as 
 usual in giving the lead to all noble thought and noble work in the 
 old city, was in the chair. The next evening, after attending the 
 last chapter, at which he was ever present, the Canon gave a lec- 
 ture on Deep-Sea Dredging to the Scientific Society, of which he 
 was still president — the last words he spoke to his beloved class. 
 
 It was a year of hard work, and owing to this and to the increas- 
 ing infirmities of his mother, who was in her 85th year, and lived 
 with him, he scarcely left home for more than a few days. The 
 three months now at Chester and the four yearly sermons at Wind- 
 sor, Sandringham, Whitehall, and St. James's, made him unwilling 
 to give up his Eversley people for a single Sunday. So that he had 
 no intermission of work ; and his only rest this year was four days 
 in the English Lakes in June, yachting for the inside of a week with 
 Lord Carnarvon in autumn, and a short visit to his dear friends 
 General and Mrs. Napier, at Oaklands ; indeed, since he returned 
 from the West Indies, nearly three years before, he had preached 
 every Sunday once, if not twice. 
 
 The late autumn brought a time of severe anxiety and illness in 
 his household ; but once again before clouds thickened, his heart 
 
 * Republished in "Health and Education." 
 
438 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 bubbled up into song, and after the last meet of the foxhounds, at 
 which he was ever present, in front of Bramshill House — a sight he 
 had loved for years, and to which he always took his children and 
 friends, — he put these lines into his wife's hands : 
 
 November 6, 1872. 
 . . "THE DELECTABLE DAY. 
 
 " The boy on the famous grey pony, 
 Just bidding goodbye at the door. 
 Plucking up maiden heart for the fences 
 Where his brother won honor of yore. 
 
 " The walk to ' the Meet ' with fair children. 
 And women as gentle as gay, — 
 Ah ! how do we male hogs in armor 
 Deserve such companions as they ? 
 
 " The afternoon's wander to windward. 
 To meet the dear boy coming back ; 
 And to catch, down the turns of the valley, 
 The last weary chime of the pack. 
 
 " The climb homeward by park and by moorland. 
 And through the fir forests again, 
 While the south-west wind roars in the gloaming, 
 Like an ocean of seething chanipagne. 
 
 "And at night the septette of Beethovenj 
 And the grandmother by in her chair. 
 And the foot of all feet on the sofa 
 Beating delicate time to the air. 
 
 "Ah, God ! a poor soul can but thank Thee 
 .For such a delectable day ! 
 Though the fury, the fool, and the swindler. 
 To-morrow again have their way ! ' ' 
 
 He was asked and consented this year to join the Committee for 
 the Defence of the Athanasian Creed. He had previously signed 
 addresses suggesting a modification or explanation of the damna- 
 tory clauses from the Provinces of Canterbury and York, when the 
 Creed seemed most in danger. This apparent ambiguity of pur- 
 pose created some surprise, but in reality his views had not changed 
 materially on this point since he took holy orders. 
 
 While paying a visit in Weybridge in 1873, ^^ was asked to write 
 
A Character Album. 439 
 
 some answers to the folIcAving questions in a book kept for the 
 Autographs of Hterary men. The answers are characteristic, and 
 therefore interesting : 
 
 " Favorite character in history? David. 
 
 " Favorite kind of Hterature ? Physical science. 
 
 " Favorite author? Spenser. 
 
 " Favorite male and female character in fiction ? (No answer 
 given.) 
 
 " Favorite artist ? Leonardo da Vinci. 
 
 " Favorite composer ? Beethoven. 
 
 " Favorite dramatic performance ? A pantomime. 
 
 " Favorite public character ? (No answer given.) 
 
 " Favorite kind of scenery ? Wide flats or open sea. 
 
 " Place at home and abroad you most admired ? Clovelly. . 
 
 " Favorite reminiscence ? July, 1839. 
 
 " Favorite occupation ? Doing nothing. 
 
 " Favorite amusement ? Sleeping. 
 
 " What you dislike most ? Any sort of work. 
 
 " Favorite topics of conversation ? Whatever my companion 
 happens to be talking about. 
 
 " And those you dislike most ? My own thoughts. 
 
 " What you like most in woman ? Womanliness. 
 
 " What you dislike most ? Unwomanliness. 
 
 " What you like most in man ? Modesty. 
 
 " What you dislike most ? Vanity. 
 
 " The character you most dislike ? Myself. 
 
 " Your ambition ? To die. 
 
 " Your ideal ? The One ideal. 
 
 " Your hobby ? Fancying I know anything. 
 
 " The virtue you most admire ? Truth. 
 
 " The vice to which you are most lenient? All except lying. 
 
 " Your favorite motto or proverb ? ' Be strong.' 
 
 "Charles Kingsley." 
 
 His year closed at Eversley with his three children round him, 
 his eldest daughter having returned safe from a long visit to her 
 brother in Colorado, and a perilous journey with him and some 
 American friends through Mexico, who were " prospecting " for the 
 carrying on of the narrow gauge railway which her brother had as- 
 sisted in building from Denver down to Colorado Springs, and 
 which the company hoped to take dirough the heart of Mexico 
 down to the city itself. The Report made by his son on the survey 
 had been a great source of pride and joy to his father, and seemed 
 
440 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 to open great prospects for his own future, and for that of civiliza- 
 tion, which, however, were finally frustrated by the Mexican Gov- 
 ernment. During the last six months the Rectory had the pleasant 
 addition of a young German tutor, who was preparing the youngest 
 boy for a public school. Dr. Karl Schulze had been all through the 
 Franco-Prussian war, and had come to England to learn the lan- 
 guage before settling in his professorship in Berlin. His society 
 was a great pleasure to Mr. Kingsley, who in return had the same 
 magnetic attraction for him, as for all young men who came within 
 his influence. 
 
 O 
 
( 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 1873-4. 
 
 Aged 54-5. 
 
 Harrow-on-the-Hill — Canonry of Westminster — His Son's Return — His Mother's 
 Death — Parting from Chester — Congratulations — Sermon and Letters on Tem- 
 perance — Preaching in Westminster Abbey — Voyage to America — Eastern 
 Cities and Western Plains — Canada — Niagara — The Prairie — Salt Lake City 
 — Yo Semite Valley arid Big Trees — San Francisco — Illness — Rocky Moun- 
 tains and Colorado Springs — Last Poem — Return Home — Letter from John 
 G. Whittier. 
 
 Some months of this year were spent at Harrow, where his youngest 
 son was at school, a change to higher ground having been recom- 
 mended for some of his family, to secure which the Bishop gave 
 him leave of non-residence : but he went regularly for his Sundays 
 to Eversley, and himself helped to prepare the candidates for the 
 first confirmation that, thanks to the kindness of Bishop Wilber- 
 force, had ever been held in his own parish church. ITie letters 
 are few this year. 
 
 While at Harrow it was with mingled feelings that he received on 
 Lady Day a letter from the Prime Minister. 
 
 "I have to propose to you, with the sanction of her Majesty, 
 that in lieu of your canonry at Chester, you should accept the va- 
 cant stall in Westminster Abbey. I am sorry to injure the people 
 of Chester ; but I must sincerely hope your voice will be heard 
 within the Abbey, and in your own right." 
 
 There was a strong battle in his heart between the grief of giving 
 up Chester and the joy of belonging to the great Abbey, a position 
 which included among many advantages the blessing he had long 
 craved for, of laying down his pen as a compulsory source of income, 
 at once and for all, and devoting his remaining writing powers and 
 strength to sermons alone. His feeHngs are best told in his own 
 letters. The day before he received Mr. Gladstone's letter, he 
 
442 Charles Kings ley, 
 
 had been writing to a member of his scientific class, his friend and 
 coadjutor, Mr. Shepheard of Bridge Street Row, Chester, on some 
 point connected with his work thei'e, which ends^thus. " Give my 
 love — that is the broadest and h.onestest word — to all the dear 
 Chester folk, men, women, and children, and say that I long for 
 May I, to be back again among them." But on the 27th he wrote 
 in lower spirits : 
 
 " A thousand thanks for the MSS., which have been invaluable 
 to me. The programme of your Society for the year makes me at 
 once proud and envious. P'or now I have to tell you that I have 
 just accepted the vacant stall at Westminster, and shall, in a week 
 or two, be Canon of Chester no more. Of course, I had to take 
 it for my children's sake. Had I been an old bachelor, I would 
 never have left Chester. Meanwhile I would sooner be Canon of 
 Westminster than either dean or bishop. But I look back longingly 
 to Chester. Shall we ever go up Hope Mountain, or the Halkin 
 together again, with all those dear, courteous, sensible people ? 
 My eyes fill with tears when I think of it. 
 
 " Give them all my love. I must find some means, by the 
 papers or otherwise, of telling them all at once what I owe to their 
 goodness of heart. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " C. KlNGSLEY." 
 
 His eldest son, to his father's great joy, had just returned from a 
 railway survey in Mexico for a holiday ; and his aged mother, now 
 in her 86tli year, and so long the inmate of his home, just lived to 
 know of, and rejoice in, her son's appointment, and to see her 
 grandson once more before her death on the i6th of April. 
 
 Letters of mourning and congratulation poured in from Chester. 
 Canon Blomfield, the first canon who welcomed him there in 1869, 
 writes : 
 
 " Of course one might expect that such an event would occur, 
 and before very long. It was quite clear that you ought to be 
 lifted up to a higher degree in the scale of ecclesiastical preferment, 
 and to find a larger sphere for your powers. But yet, when the 
 time comes to lose you from Chester, it comes as a blow on one's 
 feelings. I don't know how the Chester people will get over it. 
 They will be like the schools of the prophets when Elijah was taken 
 from them. We shall no less miss you in the cathedral, and in the 
 chapter, and in the matter, especially of the King's School. And 
 then whom shall we have to replace you ?".... 
 
Canon of Westminster. 443 
 
 Such words from a man so much his senior, and whom he so deeply 
 respected, are a strong testimony, and as Canon Blomfield gene- 
 rously writes : 
 
 " A sincere one, to a man, whom, to know, was to love and to rev- 
 erence as one who indefatigably employed his great powers in the 
 good of his fellow men and for the glory of God." 
 
 " It will be pleasant," says Canon Hildyard, another valued 
 member of the Chapter, also his senior, " among the regrets felt by 
 the Chapter, to remember what tae had. I say tve, because I think 
 each member of the Chapter will say and think the same of you in 
 all your bearings to us. The whole of Chester mourns." 
 
 " I ought, my dear Mr. Kingsley," writes the Archbishop of 
 Canterbur)', on April 9, "to have written before now to welcome 
 you to the great Abbey, which I do very heartily. It is a great 
 sphere for a man who, hke you, knows how to use it." .... 
 
 While from his own diocese Bishop Wilberforce wrote : 
 
 *'My dear Kingsley, 
 
 " 1 have just seen an authoritative statement of your appoint- 
 ment to the Canonry at Westminster, and I must tell you the 
 pleasure that it gives me. It is so just an acknowledgment of your 
 merits : it gives so much better a pedestal from which you may 
 enlighten many, that I rejoice unfeignedly at it ; and then it is a 
 great personal pleasure to me. I am proud to have you in my old 
 Collegiate Church ; and I hope it may favor more of that personal 
 intercourse between us which has been so much increased since I 
 came to this diocese (Winchester), and which has given me such 
 great pleasure. 
 
 " I am, my dear Kingsley, 
 "Yours most sincerely, and let me add affectionately, 
 
 " S. WiNTON." 
 
 The new Canon of Westminster little thought when he read this 
 letter, that his first sermon in the Abbey after his installation would 
 be one among many public lamentations for the sudden death of 
 his diocesan. 
 
 The page of his Chester life fitly closes with a letter from Dean 
 Howson, whose never-failing kindness and friendship he valued so 
 truly. 
 
 FROM THE DEAN OF CHESTER. 
 
 " I have been asked to write a brief notice of that part of Charles 
 Kingsley' s life which was spent in close connection with the city 
 
444 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 and cathedral of Chester ; and it is a request— considering from 
 whom it comes — concerning which I feel, not only that I cannot 
 refuse it, but that it must be a true pleasure to me to act upon it to 
 the best of my power. I should be sorry, indeed, if this task had 
 been assigned to any one else ; for my own relations with him here 
 were of the happiest kind, and I have a hvely sense of the good 
 he has left behind, as the result of three short official residences in 
 Chester, and a few occasional visits to the place. 
 
 " Since the remarks in this paper are necessarily of a personal 
 character, and since they must relate particularly to the religious 
 side of the subject, it seems to me natural to begin with the first 
 meeting which, so far as I remember, I ever had with Canon 
 Kingsley. This took place at Cambridge, I must confess that at 
 that time I had a strong prejudice against him. I had read 'Alton 
 Locke,' on its first appearance, and had thought it very unjust to 
 the University of which both he and I were members. It seemed 
 to me quite out of harmony with my recollections of a place, from 
 which I was conscious of having received the utmost benefit. I 
 must say here, in passing, that the passages to which I refer have 
 been so modified by notes in the last edition, that warm commen- 
 dation has taken the place of blame ; and I am not sure that the 
 pendulum of his strong feeling did not, on this last occasion, swing 
 too far in its new direction. This, however, belongs to a subse- 
 quent period. At the time to which I refer the book remained 
 unchanged. Besides the impression which it made upon me, I had 
 acquired a general notion of Mr. Kingsley's tone of mind, through 
 conversation and through casual reading : and the notion amounted 
 to this ; that 1 regarded him as the advocate of a self-confident, 
 self-asserting Christianity, whereas the view I had been led to take 
 of the religion which has been revealed to us, and which is to 
 save us here and hereafter, was extremely different. Under these 
 circumstances I happened to be appointed Hulsean Lecturer at 
 Cambridge, he being then Professor of Modern History. I had 
 taken for my subject the Character of St. Paul ; and being, in one 
 of my sermons,- about to preach on the Apostle's ' tenderness and 
 sympathy,' which, to my mind, involved a sense of utter weakness, 
 and a continual self-distrust, I was very uncomfortable. I thought 
 that 1 should be understood to be preaching against Professor 
 Kingsley. Such a course would have been, to the utmost degree, 
 foreign to my feehngs ; and yet I was bound to do justice to my 
 convictions concerning, not only St. Paul's character, but Chris- 
 tianity itself, in this respect. My surprise, therefore, was great, 
 when, at the close of the service, and after the dispersion of the 
 congregation, I met Canon Kingsley at the south door of St. Mary's. 
 He was waiting for me there, that he might express his sympathy 
 with what I had said in the sermon ; and this he did, not merely 
 with extraordmary cordiality, but literally, I may say, with tears of 
 
Dean Howsons Meinories. 445 
 
 approval. It was a moment of my life which made a deep impres- 
 sion on me. It not only caused me to be conscious that I had 
 made a mistake, but it formed in me a warm personal regard for 
 Mr. Kingsley, though, at that time, I had no expectation of any 
 frequent opportunities of seeing him. 
 
 " For some time afterwards our meetings were only casual, and 
 our acquaintance was very slight ; and I must confess that when a 
 letter came to me from him to tell me that he had been appointed a 
 Canon of Chester, in succession to Dr. Moberly, who had been 
 made Bishop of Salisbury, I was full of fear. There seemed to me 
 an incongruity in the appointment. I fancied that there was no 
 natural affinity between the author of ' Alton Locke ' and cathe- 
 dral life. Here again I soon found that I had made a mistake. I 
 might, indeed, have reflected that cathedral institutions, even under 
 their present restricted conditions, have great capacity for varied 
 adaptation, and that 1 myself had been diligent in giving expression 
 to an opinion of this kind. And here I may remark that the cathe- 
 dral stall in question has had a very curious recent history, illus- 
 trative of the correctness of this remark. It has been held in suc- 
 cession by three men of eminence — Dr. M'Neile, Dr. Moberly, 
 and Mr. Kingsley — differing from one another as much as possible 
 in habits of thought, but in each case with beneficial results to the 
 city of Chester, though in very various ways. 
 
 "Now, to describe particularly Canon Kingsley's work and use- 
 fulness in Chester, I must note first the extraordinary enthusiasm 
 with Avhich he entered upon his connection with the place. Ches- 
 ter has certainly a very great charm for an imaginative mind, and 
 for any one who is fond of the picturesque aspects of history ; and 
 upon him it told immediately, giving him from the first a greater 
 delight than he would have felt elsewhere in the work v/hich he 
 found here to do. And with this enthusiasm I must note his old- 
 fashioned courtesy, loyalty, and respect for official position. ] 
 suppose his political and social views would have been termed 
 'liberal ; ' but his liberalism was not at all of the conventional type. 
 I should have described him as a mixture of the Radical and the 
 Tory, the aspect of character which is denoted by the latter word 
 being, to my apprehension, quite as conspicuous as that which is 
 denoted by the former. Certainly he was very different from 
 the traditional Whig. I have spoken of his respect for official 
 position. I believe that to have caused inconvenience to me, to 
 have done what I did not Uke, to have impeded me in my efforts 
 to be useful, would have given him the utmost pain. That he was 
 far my superior in ability and knowledge made no dift'erence. I 
 happened to be Dean, and he happened to be Canon ; and this was 
 quite enough. From the first letter which he wrote to me announ- 
 cing his appointment, till the time when, to our great regret, he 
 left Chester for Westminster, he showed to me the utmost consid- 
 
446 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 eration. I record this, that I may express my gratitude ; but I 
 note it also as a mark of character. 
 
 "The opportunities of usefulness, which he found and employed 
 at Chester, were not altogether limited to the city. He had a 
 beneficial relation to the diocese at large, the mention of which 
 ought not to be entirely omitted. Mere popularity in a canon of 
 a cathedral, who is eminent for literary and scientific attainments, 
 and who is known to take a large and kindly interest in his fellow- 
 men, is no slight benefit to a diocese. But Canon Kingsley did 
 useful work in Chester and South Lancashire by preaching at 
 choral festivals, taking part in the proceedings of scientific societies, 
 promoting the restoration of the cathedral to which he belonged, 
 and the like. Under the present system, indeed, of capitular insti- 
 tutions, a cathedral cannot do as much as might be desired for the 
 diocese in which it is placed ; but such general work as was done 
 here by Canon Kingsley, and more especially, the spirit in which 
 he did it, aided to diff"use through the neighborhood the idea that 
 cathedral institutions have inherently a capacity for diocesan ex- 
 pansion. 
 
 " In the cathedral city itself, with which he is connected, it is 
 desirable that a canon should do some definite thing, and one which 
 is not likely to be spoilt and broken by intermittent residence. This 
 one thing, suitable to his own tastes, and easily within the range of 
 his powers. Canon Kingsley perceived at Chester as desirable to be 
 done ; and he definitely did it with all his heart and with complete 
 success. By establishing a Society for the study of Natural Science, 
 he brought to view much latent knowledge, promoted co-operation 
 among those who had been isolated, encouraged those who knew 
 little to learn more, and those who knew nothing to learn some- 
 thing. He promoted these studies by excellent lectures; and his 
 personal help, readily rendered on every side, was invaluable. For 
 the making of such assistance effectual, he had many high qualities 
 — a quiet and kindly sympathy, a genial humor combined with 
 intense earnestness, and a disdain of the silly social distinctions 
 which separate those who ought to be acquainted with one another. 
 He had a quick eye for vegetable forms, and a large experience in 
 judging of geological facts. Others may have known more than he 
 did of many sciences ; but he could teach what he knew ; and he 
 had another most important faculty — he could make others work, 
 
 "All this enthusiasm for Natural Science — to revert to a point 
 which was touched before — might at first seem out of harmony with 
 the grave and formal traditions of cathedral life. Even if it were 
 so, there could be no objection to this, but rather a great advantage 
 in it. The clerical office ought to touch human interests on every 
 side ; an ancient institution ought to diffuse light into fresh places ; 
 the meeting of the old and the new never occurs more properly 
 or more usefully, than in a cathedral. But precedents for what has 
 
Religiotis Life in Chester. 447 
 
 happened to us, to our great benefit, in Chester, are suppHed by 
 the connection of Buckland and Sedgwick and Mozeley with West- 
 minster and Norwich and Bristol. In our own cathedral, too, there 
 seems a special invitation to associations of this kind. For not 
 only do our Gurgoyles and Corbels betray the general mediaeval 
 interest felt of old in animal and vegetable forms, but carvings in 
 wood and stone, even in the interior of the church, show that here 
 there was a lavish enjoyment of such observation and imitation. 
 As an illustration of what I mean at this moment, I may say that 
 in this building there are monkeys in the midst of the crockets of 
 some canopies, and that Canon Kingsley, in the midst of Divine 
 Service, was once observed to start, when his eye caught the sight 
 of this strange creature in an unexpected place. 
 
 " But it is time now to turn to the religious and most serious side 
 of his life in Chester; and this I must say, he was most careful and 
 conscientious in attendance at the cathedral services, most reveren- 
 tial in public worship, most diligent in preaching. There is a 
 remarkable passage in the statutes of this cathedral, which charges 
 the Dean and Canons — and even pleads with them ' by the mercies 
 of God,' thai inasmuch as the Divine Word is 'a light to our feet 
 and a lamp to our path,' they be diligent in preaching ; and though 
 the number of sermons prescribed in the year is so small, as almost, 
 after such a preamble, to provoke a smile, yet the spirit of the in- 
 junction is excellent ; and in this spirit Canon Kingsley acted. He 
 is remembered here as a preacher of great power ; he had always 
 large congregations, and tliey tended, towards the end of his time, 
 to increase rather than to diminish. Through his preaching — in 
 consequence of his known interest in science, and his large sym- 
 pathy with humanity — religious truth found its way to many hearts, 
 which otherwise might have been nearly closed to such influence. 
 As to the sermons themselves, several of those which have been 
 published in his volume of ' Westminster Abbey Sermons ' were 
 first preached here at Chester. I will make mention of two, the 
 delivery of which I remember very distinctly. One was preached 
 from the 104th Psalm, and dealt with the subject of the physical 
 suffering of the animals around us, caused by their preying on one 
 another. ' The lions roaring after their prey do seek their meat 
 from God.' He felt keenly all the m3fstery of pain in those creat- 
 ures that had not deserved it by sin ; and yet he had an undis- 
 turbed belief that God is good. The other was a sermon on 
 Prayer : ' Thou that hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come.' 
 Some had doubted, in consequence of certain discussions then 
 recent, whether the preacher did not so limit the use of prayer, as 
 to cause it really to be no comfort to us at all. But those who 
 heard this sermon found their doubts on this subject removed. 
 Speaking from my own point of view, I by no means say that I 
 always agreed with Canon Kingsley' s mode of presenting Divine 
 
448 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 Truth, and of arranging its proportions ; but there was far less 
 divergence between us than I had expected to find ; and he ex- 
 hibited, with more force than any one else that I have ever heard, 
 certain aspects of Christianity, which to both of us seemed of the 
 utmost importance. 
 
 " In connection with his efforts for the moral and religious bene- 
 fit of the people of this place I must mention one subject, which 
 lo me is of overwhelming interest, and which no reasonable man 
 -can say is unimportant. I refer to the Chester Races, which, to 
 speak in plain English and in simple words, hinder here everything 
 that is good, and promote everything that is bad. It is not my 
 business, in this place, to say much of my own strong convictions 
 upon this subject ; but I may record, with grateful satisfaction, the 
 harmony which subsisted regarding it between Canon Kingsley and 
 myself. He was well acquainted with the whole subject of modern 
 Horse-racing ; and he deserved to be listened to when he main- 
 tained that, instead of being a manly sport, it had become a selfish 
 and fraudulent trade. Among the efforts which were made during 
 his connection with Chester, to give a right direction to public 
 opinion in this matter, and to diminish the mischief caused here 
 by the system, some small pamphlets were published, exhibiting 
 its evils on various sides. Canon Kingsley wrote one on ' Betting.' 
 It was very short, but it was admirable ; and I think an account 
 of his life would be incomplete without a notice of this small pub- 
 lication. 
 
 " Before I conclude, I must refer to the good done here by Can-- 
 on Kingsley, through remarks made in the course of casual con- 
 versations. Great effects are produced in this way by certain men ; 
 and he produced them without being aware of it. I will simply 
 give two slight illustrations, each having reference to Science. On 
 being asked how he reconciled Science and Christianity, he said, 
 ' By believing that God is love.' On another occasion, when the 
 slow and steady variation of Mollusca, traced from stratum to stra- 
 tum, was pointed out by a friend, with the remark that Darwin's 
 explanation would hardly be considered orthodox, he observed, 
 ' My friend, God's orthodoxy is truth; if Darwin speaks the tr-uth, 
 he is orthodox.' I may remark here that Kingsley's bent was, in 
 his own opinion, more towards Science than towards Literature. 
 He once said something to this effect, that he would rather be low 
 on the roll of Science than high on that of Literature. 
 
 " This is a poor and inadequate account of a passage in Canon 
 Kingsley's life, which was productive of great good in one particu- 
 lar city and neighborhood, and which has left among us here, in 
 one sense indeed, a very sorrowful, but, in a higher sense, a very 
 cheerful, recollection. Various facts and incidents, for which room 
 cannot here be found, might have been mentioned, as, for instance, 
 his warm and practical interest in the development of our Cathedral 
 
Farewell to Chester. 449 
 
 School, which, under its new conditions, has already entered upon 
 a successful career ; or, again, the general lectures which he deliv- 
 ered in Chester to audiences far larger than can commonly be as- 
 seinbled here for such a purpose. But my aim has been simply to 
 give a truthful impression of the life, and character, and work, 
 which we observed, and from which we have derived advantage. It 
 must be added, in conclusion, that three permanent memorials of 
 Charles Kingsley have been established in Chester. On his scien- 
 tific side he is commemorated by a prize founded in connection 
 with the Natural History Society which he established : on his lit- 
 erary side by a marble bust, executed by Mr. Belt, which is to be 
 placed in the Cathedral Chapter-house ; while the religious aspect 
 of his life and work are suitably recorded, in the midst of the beau- 
 tiful tabernacle-work of the cathedral, by a restored stall which 
 bears his name. His best and most faithful memory, however, 
 remains in the seeds of good which he has sown in the minds and 
 hearts of those over whom his influence was exerted." 
 
 In July he went to Chester to say good-bye, and to -join the 
 Nave Choir and Scientific Society in an excursion into Wales. 
 
 His kind friends insisted on his still keeping the ofhce of Presi- 
 dent to the Scientific Society. Professor Hughes is his distin- 
 guished successor, who closed his Inaugural Lecture in 1874 with 
 these words : 
 
 " Let us then try to carry on our Society in the spirit that per- 
 vaded all the work of him to whom this Society owes everything — 
 whose loss, when last I came among you we had so recently to de- 
 plore ; a spirit of fearless and manly grappling with difficulties — a 
 spirit of vigorous, prompt, and rigorous carrying out of whatever 
 was taken in hand — a spirit of generous and hearty co-operation 
 with fellow-workers — a wide range of interests — not meaning by 
 this, scattered desultory thought — but thought, like Napoleon's, 
 ready to be concentrated at once where the battle must be fought." 
 
 Some of Canon Kingsley's friends in their congratulations ex- 
 pressed the hope that this distinction might be a stepping stone to 
 a higher post, but he had no ambition beyond a stall at Westmin- 
 ster and the Rectory of Eversley. 
 
 " A thousand thanks," he says to Sir Charles Bunbury, " for 
 your congratulations, and Lady Bunbury' s. Let me assure you 
 that your view of my preferment, as to its giving me freer access to 
 scientific society, libraries, &c., is just mine, with this addition, 
 that it will give me freer access to you. So far from looking on it 
 29 
 
450 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 as an earnest of future preferment, I acquiesce in it as all I want, 
 and more than I deserve. What better fate than to spend one's 
 old age under the shadow of that Abbey, and close to the highest 
 mental activities of England, with leisure to cultivate myself, and 
 write, if I will, deliberately, but not for daily bread ? A deanery 
 or bishopric would never give me that power. It cannot be better 
 than it is ; and most thankful to God am I for His goodness." 
 
 To him in his great humility the outburst of sympathy on all 
 sides was only a surprise : while to those who knew the history of 
 his life it was a triumph, which wiped out many bitter passages in 
 the past, but a triumph tempered by the fear that it came too late 
 to save the overstrained brain. The candle had already burnt 
 down, and though light and flame still flared up, it flared as from 
 the socket. His eldest son returning at the moment to share in 
 the joy of his father's elevation, was so much struck with his 
 broken appearance, that he urged upon him rest and change and a 
 sea voyage before he entered on a position of fresh responsibility. 
 This, however, he refused, though it was strongly recommended by 
 medical advisers, and decided not to go to America till the follow- 
 ing year, when the repairs of both homes — at Eversley and the 
 house in the Cloisters, would oblige him to take a holiday. 
 
 He preached in the Abbey for the Temperance Society * in 
 April, for which at once he put himself under the orders of his 
 Dean. To it this letter refers, 
 
 Eversley, April 2t,^ 1873. 
 "My dear Dean, 
 
 " Many thanks for your letter and its instructions, which I will 
 follow. Kindly answer me this — to me important — question. 
 
 " Have you any objection to my speaking, in my sermon, in 
 favor of opening the British Museum, &c., to the public on Sunday 
 afternoons ? Of course I shall do so without saying anything vio- 
 lent or uncharitable. But I have held very strong and deliberate 
 opinions about this matter for many years ; and think that the 
 opening of these Public Institutions would not only stop a great 
 deal of Sunday, and therefore of Monday drunkenness, but would 
 — if advocated by the clergy — enable the Church to take the wind 
 out of the sails of the well-meaning, but ignorant, Sunday League, 
 
 * This sermon was the foundation of a vpluable article in " Good Words," 
 called the " Tree of Knowledge," since published in the volume, " Health and 
 Education." 
 
The Qtiestion of Total Abstinence. 451 
 
 and prove herself — what she can prove herself in other matters if 
 she has courage — the most liberal religious body in these isles. 
 But if you, with your superior savoir-faire, think it better for me to 
 be silent as yet, I obey." 
 
 On the same subject he writes to J. Barfleet, Esq., J. P., of 
 Worcester : 
 
 " I am not a ' total abstainer ; ' but that does not prevent my 
 wishing the temperance movement all success, and wishing success, 
 also, to your endeavor to make people eat oatmeal. I am sorry to 
 say that they will not touch it in our southern counties; and that 
 their food is consequently deficient in phosphates and they in bone, 
 in comparison with the northern oatmeal eating folk, who are still 
 a big-boned race, 
 
 " I have told them this ; and shall again. For growing children 
 oatmeal is invaluable. Meanwhile, we must not forget to supply 
 the system with hydro-carbons (especially if we lessen the quantity 
 of beer) in order to keep the fire alight, or we get a consumptive 
 tendency, as in many oatmeal eating Scotch, who, with tall and 
 noble frames, die of consumption, because they will not eat bacon, or 
 any fats in sufficient quantity. Hence not only weakness of tissue, 
 but want of vital heat, and consequent craving for whiskey. The 
 adjustment of the elements of food in their right proportions is almost 
 the most important element in ensuring temperance." .... 
 
 His first residence at Westminster was in September, during a 
 time in which London was considered " empty." He preferred 
 these quiet months, as the congregations were composed chiefly of 
 men of the middle and lower class, whose ear he wished to gain, and 
 preached during September and November to vast congregations 
 twice a day. Speaking of this, he says : — 
 
 " I got through the sermons without any bodily fatigue, and 
 certainly there were large congregations worth speaking to. But 
 the responsibility is too great for me^ and I am glad I have only two 
 months' residence, and that in a quiet time. What must it be in 
 May and June ? " 
 
 To his wife, who was ill in the country, he writes from the Clois- 
 ters in November : 
 
 " I ought to have written yesterday, but I was very busy with two 
 sermons and early communion. The sermons, I am assured, were 
 heard, and R. says, the attention of the congregation was great. If 
 I find I can get the ear of that congregation, it will be a work to 
 
452 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 live for, for the rest of my life. What more can a man want? 
 And as for this house, the feeling of room in it is most pleasant, and 
 the beauty outside under this delicious gleamy weather, quite lifts 
 
 my poor heart up a-while I regret much that I am 
 
 leaving just as I seemed to be getting hold of people. But I do 
 not think I could have stood the intense excitement of the Sundays 
 much longer." 
 
 His last sermon in 1873 i'^ the Abbey was on "The Beatific 
 Vision," and those who heard him were impressed by the deep 
 solemnity of his words and manner as he, in prospect of leaving 
 Europe, bade farewell to a congregation which he had already begun 
 to love.* 
 
 In the autumn he wrote three articles on Health, Physical Edu- 
 cation, and Sanitary subjects, to which and to his sermons he 
 proposed to devote the remaining years of his life, and made prepa- 
 rations for his American journey ; and in December he returned to 
 Eversley with his family, and remained till the end of January, when 
 he and his eldest daughter sailed for New York, taking with him a 
 few lectures, to meet his expenses. 
 
 This Poem, written, but not corrected for the press, is the only 
 one he composed this year : 
 
 JUVENTUS MUNDI. 
 
 List a tale a fairy sent us 
 
 Fresh from dear Mundi Juventus. 
 
 When Love and all the world was young, 
 
 And birds conversed as well as sung ; 
 
 And men still faced this fair creation 
 
 With humor, heart, imagination. 
 
 Who come hither from Morocco 
 
 Every spring on the Sirocco ? 
 
 In russet she, and he in yellow, 
 
 Singing ever clear and mellow, 
 
 Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet you, sweet you. 
 
 Did he beat you ? Did he beat you ? 
 
 Phyllopneustes wise folk call them, 
 
 But don't know what did befal them, 
 
 Why they ever thought of coming 
 
 All that way to hear gnats humming, 
 
 * This sermon, with others, form the volume of " Westminster Sermons," 
 which appeared in 1874, published by Messrs. Macmillan. 
 
Jjiventus Mundi. 45; 
 
 Why they build not nests but houses, 
 Like the bumble-bees and mousies. 
 Nor how little birds got wings, 
 Nor what 'tis the small cock sings — 
 
 How should they know — stupid fogies ? 
 
 They daren't even believe in bogies. 
 
 Once they were a giid and boy, 
 
 Each the other's life and joy. 
 
 He a Daphnis, she a Chloe, 
 
 Only they were brown, not snowy, 
 
 Till an Arab found them playing 
 
 Far beyond the Atlas straying. 
 
 Tied the helpless things together. 
 
 Drove them in the burning weather. 
 
 In his slave-gang many a league, 
 
 Till they dropped from wild fatigue. 
 
 Up he caught his whip of hide, 
 
 Lashed each soft brown back and side 
 
 Till their little brains were burst 
 
 With sharp pain, and heat, and thirst. 
 
 Over her the poor boy lay. 
 
 Tried to keep the blows away, 
 
 Till they stiffened into clay. 
 
 And the ruffian rode away : 
 
 Swooping o'er the tainted ground, 
 
 Carrion vultures gathered round. 
 
 And the gaunt hyenas ran 
 
 Tracking up the caravan. 
 
 But — Ah, wonder ! that was gone 
 
 Which they meant to feast upon. 
 
 And, for each, a yellow wren. 
 
 One a cock, and one a hen. 
 
 Sweetly warbling, flitted forth 
 
 O'er the desert toward the north. 
 
 But a shade of bygone sorrow. 
 
 Like a dream upon the morrow. 
 
 Round his tiny brainlet clinging, 
 
 Sets the wee cock ever singing 
 
 Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet you, sweet you, 
 
 Did he beat you ? Did he beat you ? 
 
 Vultures croaked, and hopped and flopped, 
 
 But their evening meal was stopped. 
 
 And the gaunt hyenas foul, 
 
 Sat down on their tails to howl. 
 
 Northward towards the cool spring weather, 
 
 Those two wrens fled on together. 
 
454 Charles Kingsley, 
 
 On to England o'er the sea, 
 Where all folks alike are free. 
 There they built a cabin, wattled 
 Like the huts where first they prattled. 
 Hatched and fed, as safe as may be, 
 Many a tiny feathered baby. 
 But in autumn south they go 
 Pass the Straits, and Atlas' snow, 
 Over desert, over mountain, 
 To the palms beside the fountain, 
 Where, when once they lived before, he 
 Told her first the old, old story. 
 What do the doves say ? Curuck-Coo, 
 You love me and I. love you. 
 
 EvERSLEY, January 7, 1874. 
 
 ". . . . We sail on the 29th," he vi^rites to Professor New- 
 ton ; ''we go in April or May (when the prairie is in flower) to 
 San Francisco, and then back to Denver and the Rocky Moun- 
 tains south of Denver, and then straight home. 
 
 " Tell us if we can do anything for you. ... I think you 
 have ordered a pair of Asahta sheep-horns already, we will do our 
 best, . . . and have friends who will do their best for you 
 after we are gone." 
 
 The notes of the journey are made by his daughter, and form the 
 connecting thread between his own letters home : 
 
 "We arrived at Sandy Hook late on the loth Feb., and on the 
 morning of the nth landed at New York ; and here, before my 
 father set foot on American soil, he had a foretaste of the cordial 
 welcome and generous hospitality which he experienced everywhere, 
 without a single exception, throughout the six months he spent in 
 the United States and Canada. The moment the ship warped into 
 her dock a deputation from a literary club came on board, took 
 possession of us and our baggage, and the custom-house authorities 
 passed all our trunks without looking at them. We went out later 
 in the day to stay at Staten Island with Mr. F. G. Shaw, where we 
 stayed till the 14th, going to New York on that day for a dinner 
 and reception given in my father's honor by the Lotus Club." 
 
 Staten Island, February 12. 
 
 " I have, thank God, nothing to write but what is pleasant and 
 hopeful. We got here yesterday afternoon, and I am now writing 
 
Arrival in the United States. 455 
 
 in a blazing, sunny, south window, in a luxurious little room, in a 
 luxurious house, redolent of good tobacco and sweet walnut-wood 
 smoke, looking out on a snow-covered lawn, and trees, which 
 like the people, are all English, with a difference. I have met 
 with none but pleasant, clever people as yet, afloat or ashore, and 
 Mr. Curtis (Mr. Shaw's son-in-law, and an old friend of Thack- 
 eray's,) a very handsome, cultivated man. 
 
 "As for health, this air, as poor Thackeray said of it, is like 
 champagne. Sea-air and mountain air combined, days already 
 an hour longer than in England, and a blazing hot sun and blue 
 sky. It is a glorious country, and I don't wonder at the people 
 being proud of it. 
 
 To-day R. and I go into New York by steamer to see various 
 people and do business ; and out again before dinner, to meet a 
 very gentleman-like clergyman of this place, once rector of San 
 Francisco. I enclose a log and chart of the voyage which should 
 interest and teach Grenville, for whom it is intended. 1 dine 
 with the Lotus Club on Saturday night, and then start for Boston 
 with R. to stay with Fields next week." 
 
 " On Monday evening, after a busy day in Boston, we went out 
 to Salem, fifteen miles by train, and my father was particularly 
 struck and interested by the recurrence of the old Fen names, with 
 which he was familiar from his early childhood, on that side of the 
 Atlantic, and made me notice, with tears in his eyes, the difference 
 between the New World and Old World Lynn, etc., etc. Through 
 the whole of his stay in America the recurrence of the Old World 
 names of places and people were a never-failing source of interest 
 and pleasure to him, 
 
 " On the i8th we went out to Cambridge, and spent the next 
 few days there with some friends, my father going in and out to 
 Boston, and spending one night at Andover and another at George- 
 town. At Georgetown, the lady with whom he was to stay being 
 ill, he went to the village inn, and told me that the great question 
 of hard money v. paper had been quaintly brought to his notice by 
 the landlord's little child of six or seven, who sat on his knee play- 
 ing with his watch chain, and finding among his seals an old Span- 
 ish gold doubloon, cried, ' See, father, the gentleman has got a 
 cent on his chain ! ' never having seen a gold coin before. He 
 took the greatest interest in the Agassiz Museum at Cambridge, 
 his only regret being that he had come to America two months too 
 late to make the acquaintance of its founder. The joyous young 
 
456 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 life of the university with which he was surrounded, together with 
 the many distinguished Americans with whom he made or renewed 
 acquaintance, made these days exceedingly pleasant to my father, 
 and it was with real regret that he left Cambridge on the 25th. 
 
 " We broke our journey at Springfield, staying there one night 
 as the guests of Mr. Samuel Bowles, of the celebrated Springfield 
 Republican newspaper, and reached New York again, to stay with 
 our kind friends Professor and Mrs. Botta." 
 
 Dr. Wharton's, Cambridge, Mass., February 19, 1874. 
 
 "• Here is a little haven of rest, where we arrived last night. 
 LongfeJ'ow came to dinner, and we dine with him to-night. Yester- 
 day, in Boston, dear old Whittier called on me and we had a most 
 loving and like-minded talk about the other world. He is an old 
 saint. This morning I have spent chiefly with Asa Gray and his 
 plants, so that we are in good company. 
 
 " New York was a great rattle, dining, and speechifying, and 
 being received, and so has Boston been ; and the courtesy, and 
 generosity, and compliments would really turn any one's head who 
 was not as disgusted with himself, as I always (thank God,) am. 
 The Westminster lecture is the only one I have given as yet. 
 Salem was very interesting, being next to Plymouth, the Pilgrim 
 Fathers' town. People most intelligent, gentle, and animated. 
 They gave me a reception supper, with speeches after, and want us 
 to come again in the summer to their Field Naturalists' Club. New 
 England is, in winter at least, the saddest country, all brown grass, 
 ice-polished rocks, sticking up through the copses, ced.lr scrub, low, 
 swampy shores ; an iron land which only iron people could have 
 settled in. The people must have been heroes to make what they 
 have of it. Now, under deep snow, it is dreadful. But the sum- 
 mer, they say, is semi-tropic, and that has kept them alive. And, 
 indeed already, though it is hard frost under foot, the sun is bright, 
 and hot, and high, for we are in the latitude of Naples ! I cannot 
 tell you a thousandth part of all I've seen, or of all the kindness 
 we have received, but this I can say, that R. is well, and that I 
 feel better than I have felt for years ; but Mr, Longfellow and 
 others warn me not to let this over-stimulating climate tempt me 
 to over-work. One feels ready to do anything, and then suddenly 
 very tired. But I am at rest now. ..." 
 
 New York, March i, 1874. 
 
 " . . . . We made great friends with Asa Gray and are 
 going to stay with him when we return. Moreover, dear Colonel 
 John Hay, with his beautiful wife, has been here, and many more, 
 and here, as at Boston, we have been seeing all the best people. 
 
In Washington. 457 
 
 Mr. Winthrop was most agreeable, a friend of the Cranvvorths, 
 Bunburys, Charles Howard, and all the Whig set in England, and 
 such a fine old gentleman. Nothing can exceed the courtesy and 
 hospitality everywhere. . . . On Thursday we are ofif to Phila- 
 delphia, then vVashington, where we have introductions to the 
 President, etc., and then back here to these kind fiiends. From 
 Professor Botta I am learning a lot of Italian history and politics, 
 which is most useful. 
 
 " Here the streets are full of melting snow. We had a huge 
 snow-storm on Wednesday after dreadful cold, and overhead a sky 
 like Italy or south of France, and a sun who takes care to remind 
 us that we are in the latitude of Rome. But it is infinitely healthy, 
 at least to me. R. looks quite blooming, and I am suddenly quite 
 well. ... I never want medicine or tonic, and very little 
 stimulant. But one cannot do as much here as at home. All say 
 so and I find it. One can go faster for awhile but gets exhausted 
 sooner. As for the people they are quite charming, ahd 1 long to 
 see the New Englanders again when the humming bifds and mock- 
 ing birds get there and the country is less like Gi'eenland. . , , 
 I have been assisting Bishop Potter at an ordination. The old 
 man was very cordial, especially when he found I was of the re- 
 spectful and orthodox class. So that is well, but I will not i)reach, 
 at least not yet." 
 
 " During our stay among our many friends in New York, renew- 
 ing old friendships and making fresh acquaintances, my father ])ar- 
 ticularly rejoiced at an opportunity of meeting Mr. William CuUea 
 Bryant, " wkose poetry had been his delight from his boyhood. 
 From New York we went to Philadelphia, staying there for two 
 nights with Mr. C. J. Peterson. On the evening of our arrival my 
 father lectured in the Opera House to an audience of nearly 4,000 
 — every seat being occupied, and the aisles and steps crowded with 
 people, who stood the whole time. Here, as in New York and 
 Boston, we were overwhelmed with kindness, our hosts and other 
 friends gathering together at their houses everyone in the city 
 whose acquaintance was most likely to give us pleasure. 
 
 " On the 7th of March we went on to Washington, where Presi- 
 dent Grant welcomed my father most cordially. The loth we 
 spent among the scientific men of Washington, Dr. Henry at the 
 Smithsonian Institute, and Professor Hayden at the office of the 
 Geological Survey of the Territories. In the latter my father took 
 a keen interest, and was struck by the admirable work displayed in 
 the geological maps and photographs made by the surveying parties 
 
45 S Charles Kingsley. 
 
 in the field in Colorado, Nebraska, Utah, and Wyoming daring the 
 summer months, which are worked up at Washington during the 
 winter. 
 
 " We also went to the Senate House though rather weary with 
 continual sightseeing : but my father often said afterwards that he 
 would not have missed that visit for any consideration, for in the 
 Senate he was introduced to Mr. Charles Sumner. They had cor- 
 responded a good deal in former years, though personally unac- 
 quainted, and for some time the correspondence had ceased owing 
 to the different views they had held on some American matters. 
 But the moment tlie two came face to face all mistrust vanished, as 
 each instinctively recognized the manly honesty of the other, and 
 they had a long and friendly talk. An hour after, Mr. Sumner was 
 seized with an attack of Angina Pectoris, from which he had long 
 suffered, and when we reached New York the next day we were 
 shocked to find that the news of his death had preceded us by 
 telegraph." 
 
 Washington, Mai'ch 8. 
 
 " . . . . We are received with open arms, and heaped with 
 hospitality. I hardly like to talk of it, and of our reception by 
 Mr. Childs and all Philadelphia. We went just now and left our 
 introductions at the White House^ and in walked dear Rothery, 
 who is here settling the International Fisheries question, and he is 
 going to take me round to make all our calls, on Fish, and 
 Dr. Henry, &c., and then to dine, and go with him to the White 
 House in the evening, and go to P)altimore on Tuesday. . . . 
 
 " Railway travelling is very cheap and most luxurious. Mean- 
 while we are promised free passes on the Chicago lines and also to 
 CaHfornia. 1 have not been so well for years. My digestion is 
 ])erfect, and I am in high spirits. But 1 am homesick at times, 
 and would give a finger to be one hour with you, and G., and M. 
 But I dream of you all every night, and my dreams are more 
 pleasant now 1 sleep with my window open to counteract the 
 hideous heat of these hot-air pipes. R. is very well and is the best 
 of secretaries. Tell G. I was delighted with his letter. 
 
 " On Monday the 9th, I was asked by the Speaker of the House 
 of Representatives to open the Session of the House with prayer,* 
 and I simply repeated two collects from the Englisli Prayer-book, 
 mentioning, as is the custom, the President of tne United States, 
 
 * This was considered a most unusual distinction, and the deep solemnity of 
 manner and simplicity with which it was done struck every one present. 
 
In New England. 459 
 
 the Senate, and the House of Representatives, and ended with the 
 Lord's Prayer." 
 
 " From New York my father went up the Hudson to Pough- 
 keepsie and Troy, joining me at Hartford (Conn.) on the 14th, to 
 pay a long-promised visit to Mr. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). 
 From Troy to Hartford he came through the wooded passes of 
 Berkshire County, and was enthusiastic about the beauty of the 
 pine forests, and rocky trout streams, just breaking free from the 
 winter snow which was beginning to melt, comparing it to the best 
 parts of the Eifel and Black Forest. 
 
 "On Monday the i6th, we returned to Boston to stay with my 
 father's old friend Mr. James T. Field, in whose hospitable house 
 we were able to see many whose acquaintance we had long wished 
 to make, and whose friendship was a lasting pleasure to my father. 
 During this week my father spent one night at New Haven, stay- 
 ing with his namesake and distant kinsman, Dr. William Kingsley, 
 of Yale College." 
 
 Boston, March 23. 
 
 ". . . . We are housed and feasted everywhere. I do not tire 
 the least. — Sleep at night, and rise in the morning as fresh as 
 a lark, to eat a great breakfast, my digestion always in perfect 
 order, while my nerve is like a bull's. This is a marvellous cli- 
 mate. The Americans make themselves ill by hot-air, and.foul air. 
 and want of exercise ; I, who sleep with my window open and get 
 all fresh air I can by day, am always well. To-morrow morning we 
 start for Montreal, and then on to Quebec to good Col. Strange. 
 
 " Sumner's death has been an awful blow here. I do not won- 
 der, for he was a magnificent man. He and 1 were introduced to 
 each other in the Senate an hour before his attack. He was most 
 cordial, and we had much talk about Gladstone, and the A.'s. 
 His last words to me were, that he was going to write to the 
 Duchess of Argyle the next day. Alas ! I wrote to her for him, to 
 tell her particulars of the end. 
 
 " Oh, dear, I wish spring would come, the winter here is awful. 
 The grass as brown with frost as a table. But the blue-bird and 
 the robin (as they call a great particolored thrush,) are just begin- 
 ning to come, to my intense delight. However, when we go north 
 tomorrow we shall run into Arctic weather again. Don't frighten 
 yourself at our railroads, they seem utterly safe, and I believe one 
 is far safer, humanly speaking, here than at home. As for the 
 people, they are fine, generous, kindly, wholesome folk, all classes 
 of them. Now good-bye, and love to M., and my blessing to 
 G. . . ." 
 
460 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 Washington, Ap}il g. 
 
 " Here we are safe and sound, having run 500 miles in thirty 
 hours to Baltimore, from the delightful Dufferins. . . . The 
 long journeys do not in the least tire me, so have no fears for me. 
 The safety of these rails is wonderful, as is their comfort. We have 
 come out of intense winter into damp spring. The birds (such beau- 
 ties) are coming fast from the Bahamas and Floridas ; the maples 
 are in crimson clouds of little flowers ; the flowers are coming out 
 in the gardens. I have seen two wasps like West India ones, an 
 inch and a half long, and heard a tree toad, and am warm once 
 more. All goes well. We have a dinner-party to-night ; we are 
 staying with Senator Potter, and to-morrow a dinner-party with the 
 President. So we shall have seen quasi-royalty, British and Ameri- 
 can both in one week. , . . Thank God for our English letters. I 
 cannot but hope that there is a time of rest and refreshing for us 
 after I return. . . . To me the absence of labor and anxiety is 
 most healthy. I am quite idle now for days together, and the rail 
 itself is most pleasant idleness." 
 
 "At Baltimore my father yielded to the entreaties of the friends 
 with whom we were staying, and preached on the 12th in the princi- 
 pal church of Baltimore to a large congregation. On Easter day he 
 had preached in the little church close to Rideau, for the first time 
 since he landed in America, on ' The Peace of God.' On the 20th 
 of April, we left New York to begin working our way slowly west- 
 ward, so as to be at Omaha early in May to meet a large party of 
 friends who had invited us to join them in a trip to California. 
 Our first halting place was Ithaca (Cornell University), which we 
 should have reached on the evening of the 20th, but on the Erie 
 railroad we were stopped for six hours by a huge rock falling on the 
 track as a coal train was coming towards us, round sharp curves, 
 and we should have had a frightful accident but for the presence of 
 mind of the engineer, as his engine ran over the rock, jamming itself 
 and the tender across both lines of rail ; he being unhurt, and remem- 
 bering our train was due at that moment, ran down the line seeing us 
 coming, and we pulled up within 100 yards of the disaster. It hap- 
 pened in the midst of the finest scenery on the Delaware, above Port 
 Jervis, where the railway follows the windings of the river, and is in 
 many places blasted out of the cliffs. And as there was no possi- 
 bility of getting on till the disabled train and broken trucks were 
 removed, my father and I spent the hours of waiting in wandering 
 about the rocky woods above the railway, botanizing and geologizing. 
 
At Niagara. 461 
 
 " On Tuesday we reached Ithaca, and went on the next day to 
 Niagara. After one night at Niagara we went on the 23rd (St. 
 George's day) forty miles to Hamilton (Ontario), where my father 
 had an enthusiastic reception at his lecture. After lecturing he 
 
 went to the dinner of the St. George's Society We 
 
 returned next day to Niagara, staying at Clark's Hill with an old 
 English friend, with whom we spent the next three days, my father 
 preaching on Sunday, the 26th, in the morning, at Clifton, and in the 
 afternoon at Chippewa. He thoroughly enjoyed being once more 
 in the country, and the walks on country roads, after three months 
 of cities and pavements. The spring birds were just beginning to 
 make their appearance, and the spring flowers to try and push their 
 leaves through the melting snow. On the 27th we went on to 
 Toronto for one night, and on the 28th we finally bade farewell to 
 Canada, and set our faces westward, reaching Detroit (Mich.) late 
 that night. 
 
 "At Detroit, where we stayed three days with the rector of one 
 of the Episcopal churches, the weather was still bitter, and my father 
 could not shake off a cold which he had caught at Niagara. But as we 
 neared St. Louis, on the afternoon of the 2nd of May, after a railway 
 journey of twenty hours, we began to be warm once more, and 
 realize what spring time in the West really was. All the fruit trees 
 were in blossom ; the ground on either side of the railway, where 
 any was left unfilled, was carpeted with beautiful flowers utterly 
 unknown to us, and the air was mild and balmy." 
 
 Niagara, April 21, 
 
 " At last we are here, safe and well, thank God, in the most 
 glorious air, filled with the soft tl*imder of this lovely phantom, for 
 such, and not stupendous, it seems as yet to me. I know it could 
 and would destroy me pitilessly, like other lovely phantoms, but I 
 do not feel awed by it. After all, it is not a quarter of the size of 
 an average thunderstorm, and the continuous roar, and steady 
 flow, makes it less terrible than either a thunderstorm or a real 
 Atlantic surf. But I long for you to sit with me, and simply look 
 on in silence whole days at the exquisite beauty of form and 
 color. . . 
 
 " After a delightful time in the Prince's old quarters at Hamilton, 
 we are here again in another old quarter of his, the loveliest house 
 in the loveliest grounds, and as I write the whole rapids of Niagara 
 
462 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 roaring past 100 yards off, between the h^ige arbor vitcC, forty feet 
 high, Hke a tremendous grey Atlantic surf lushing down-hill instead 
 of up. I could not describe the beauty of this place in a week. I 
 can see the smoke of the horse-shoe through a vista on my left, not 
 half a mile off as I sit (sketch enclosed). We are above, under- 
 stand, and the river is running from right to left. To-day we are 
 going to Des Veaux College to see the lower rapids." 
 
 St. Louis, May 4. | 
 
 " At St. Louis safe and well, thank God, in the capital of the 
 West, and across the huge rushing muddy ditch, the Mississippi. 
 Having come here over vast prairies, mostly tilled, hundreds of 
 miles like the Norfolk fens, without the ditches, a fat, dreary, aguish, 
 brutalizing land, but with a fine strong people in it, and here is a 
 city of 470,000 souls growing rapidly. It is all very wonderful, and 
 like a dream. But there is material civilization and comfort every- 
 where (except at the stations where the food is bad), and all goes 
 well. Only I wish already that our heads were homeward, and 
 that we had done the great tour, and had it not to do. However, 
 we shall go west in comfort. The Cyrus Fields, the Grays, and 
 probably the dear Rotherys, will make up a good party. And I 
 cannot but feel that I have gained much if only in the vast experi- 
 ence of new people and new facts. I shall come home 1 hope a 
 wider-hearted and wider-headed man ; and have time, I trust, to read 
 and think as I have not done for many years. At least so runs my 
 dream. We had a glorious thunderstorm last night after I had 
 helped at the communion in the morning, and preached in the 
 afternoon for good Mr. Schuyler ~ 
 
 "We start to-morrow for California, after receiving here every 
 civiUty. The heat is tremendous, all of a sudden, but it will be 
 cooler as we rise the prairies out of the Mississippi Valley. We 
 have free passes here to Kansas City, and the directors offered to 
 take us on with them to Denves. We shall also have free passes 
 to California and back from Omaha — a great gain." 
 
 "We stayed for a week in St. Louis, where the hot weather 
 came on so suddenly and fiercely that we were both made quite ill 
 by it, and were thankful on Saturday, the 9th of May, to leave the 
 city on our way to Omaha, where we were to join our friends from 
 New York. 
 
 " The journey was intensely hot. A perfect sirocco blowing 
 away everything in the cars if the windows were opened ; but the 
 country was so lovely as almost to make amends for our discomfort. 
 The trees were bursting into a tender green ; the woods were here 
 
At Salt Lake City. 463 
 
 snowy with the pure white dogwood and wild plum blossoms, there, 
 purple pink with the Judas tree, and down below grew countless 
 wild flowers, making us long every moment that it were possible to 
 stop the train and gather them. 
 
 " We reached Omaha on Sunday morning, the loth, and had 
 hardly been there an hour before we felt the renovatmg effect of 
 the glorious air rushing dovvn, down, in a gale 500 miles from the 
 Rocky Mountains, to cool and refresh the panting Missouri Valley ; 
 and we were able once more to eat and sleep, which in the heat of 
 the last three days at St. Louis had become impossible." 
 
 Omaha, May ii. 
 
 " And we are at Omaha ! a city of 20,000, five years old, made 
 by the railway, and opposite to us is Council Bluffs ! ! Thirty 
 years ago the palavering ground of trappers and Indians (now all 
 gone), and to that very spot, which I had known of from a boy, 
 and all about it, I meant to go in despair .... as soon as 
 I took my degree, and throw myself into the wild life, to sink or 
 swim, escaping from a civilization which only tempted nie and 
 maddened me with the envy of a poor man ! Oh ! how good God 
 has been to me. Oh ! how when I saw those Bluffs yesterday 
 morning I thanked God for you — for everything, and stared at 
 them till I cried " 
 
 " On the 14th the party of friends we were awaiting arrived at 
 Omaha, and on the following day we left with them for the first 
 stage of the Californian journey. Mr. Cyrus Field and Mr. J. A. 
 C. Gray, of New York, were the organizers of the expedition, and 
 with them, besides several of their own relations and friends, were 
 Mr. and Mrs. H. C. Rothery, making a party of eleven Americans 
 and five English, which quite filled, but did not crowd, the magnifi- 
 cent Pullman car which was our home for the next fortnight. 
 
 " Our first halt was at Salt Lake City, where we arrived on 
 Friday, the 15th May, one day too late, unfortunately, for my 
 father to take part in the consecration of St. Mark's, the first 
 Episcopal church which has been built in Utah. On Sunday, the 
 17th, however, he preached the evening sermon at the church, to 
 such a crowded congregation that there was not standing room in 
 the little building, and numbers had to go away. The steps out- 
 side, and even the pavement, being crowded with listeners, among 
 whom were many Mormons as well as ' Gentiles.' Brigham Young 
 
464 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 sent to offer my father the tabernacle to lecture or preach in, but 
 of this offer he of course took no notice whatever, a course strongly 
 approved by the excellent Bishop, IJr. Tuttle. 
 
 " On Monday, the i8th, we left Salt Lake City, after a visit to 
 General Moreau at Camp Douglas, the United States camp, on the 
 hill-side above the city, who had one of the Gatling guns fired for 
 our amusement. On our remonstrating against such a waste of 
 ammunition he said that 'he was glad sometimes to show those ras- 
 cals in the city how straight his guns fired, and that if they gave 
 him any trouble he could blow the city to pieces in an hour.' " 
 
 Walker House, Salt Lake City, Utah, May 17. 
 
 "Here we are after such a journey of luxury — through a thou- 
 sand miles of desert, plain, and mountain, treeless, waterless 
 almost, sage brush and alkali. Then canons and gorges, the last 
 just like Llanberris Pass, into this enormous green plain, with its 
 great salt lake ; and such a mountain ring, 300 to 400 miles in cir- 
 cumference ! The loveliest scene I ever saw. As I sit, the snow- 
 peaks of the Wasatch tower above the opposite houses five miles 
 off, while the heat is utterly tropical in the streets. Yesterday we 
 Avere running through great snowdrifts, at from 5,000 to 7,000 feet 
 above the sea (we are 5,000 here) and all along by our side the old 
 trail, where every mile is fat with Mormon bones. Sadness and 
 astonishment overpower me at it all. The ' city ' is thriving 
 enough, putting one in mind, with its swift streams in all streets, 
 and mountain background, of Tarbes, or some other Pyrenean 
 town. But, ah ! what horrors this place has seen. Thank God it 
 is all breaking up fast. The tyrant is 70, and must soon go to his 
 account, and what an awful one. I am deeply interested in the 
 good bishop here, and his mission among the poor little children, 
 whose parents are principally Cornish, Worcestershire, and South 
 Welsh ; and if I can do aught for him when I come hojne, I will 
 do it with a will.- Meanwhile our kind hosts insist on R. and me 
 being their guests right through, and let us pay for nothing. It is 
 jan enormous help, for they control both railways and telegraphs, 
 and do and go exactly as they like. The gentlemen and R. are 
 gone down to-day to see a silver mine, by special engine, and she 
 and Rothery (F.L.S.) are going to botanize. The flowers are ex- 
 quisite, yellow ribes over all the cliffs, &c., and make one long to 
 jump off the train every five minutes. While the geology makes 
 me stand aghast ; geologizing in England is child's play to this. 
 R. is quite well, and the life of everything, and I am all right, but 
 den't like a dry air at 95°, with a sirocco. 
 
 "Interrupted by a most interesting and painful talk with a man 
 who has been United States Governor here. It is all very dread 
 
Off for the Yosemite. 465 
 
 ful. Thank God we (in England) at least know what love and 
 purity is. I preach to-morrow evening, and the Bishop of Colorado 
 in the morning." 
 
 " On the 20th our car was slipped during the night at Reno, and 
 when we woke at 5 a.m., we found ourselves on a branch line at 
 Carson City. After breakfast, with Californian strawberries heaped 
 on dishes on every table, we left our car for a special train, the 
 Pullman being too long for the sharp curves of the railroad, and 
 with Mr. D. O. Mills, of San Francisco, who had joined our train in 
 his directors' car, the day before, at Ogden, we went up to Virginia 
 city, and spent the day among silver mines and stamp mills, and 
 dust, and drought, my dear father finding, even in the out of the 
 way spot, a warm and hearty welcome from many. We returned 
 to Carson in the afternoon, and were picked up in the night b}'^ the 
 Western train at Reno, breakfasting at Summit, on the top of the 
 Sierra Nevada next morning, and arrived at Sacramento at midday 
 on the 2 1 St. 
 
 " My father was delighted at finding himself once more in almost 
 tropical heat, and spent all the afternoon driving with our friends 
 about the city, and revelling in the gorgeous subtropical flowers 
 which hung over every garden fence. In the evening he lectured 
 to a very pleasant audience, and that night we left Sacramento in 
 our car, with a special engine, for Merced, which we reached 
 before dawn. 
 
 " Next morning, the 22nd, we were all up about four, and before 
 starting on our Yosemite trip, Mr. Cyrus Field sent off a telegram 
 to the Dean of Westminster, to my mother, and various friends in 
 England : — ' We are, with Canon Kingsley and his daughter and 
 other friends, just entering Yosemite Valley, all in excellent health 
 and spirits. Mr. Kingsley is to preach for us in Yosemite on 
 Sunday.' 
 
 "We started at 6 a.m., in two open stages with five horses, and 
 drove 54 miles that day through exquisite country, botanizing all the 
 way to Skeltons, a ranch in the forest, and some of our party made 
 their first acquaintance with a real western shanty. On the 23rd we 
 were all up betimes, my father, the earliest of all, came up with his 
 hands full of new and beautiful flowers, after a chat with the guides, 
 who had driven the mules and ponies in from their grazing ground, 
 and were begmning to saddle them for our day's ride. At 6 we 
 30 
 
466 Charles Kingsley, 
 
 started, and my father said he felt a boy again, and thoroughly 
 enjoyed the long day in the saddle, which many of our friends found 
 so tiring. We chose a new and unfrequented route, and havnig to 
 climb two mountains and ride along precipices, and ford four rivers 
 in flood in 29 miles, we were not sorry to reach the Valley at sun- 
 set. But rough as the ride was, it surpassed in beauty anything we 
 had ever seen before, as we followed the windings of the Merced 
 river between pine-clad mountains, still white with snow on their 
 highest points, till we reached the mouth of the Valley itself, and, 
 emerging from a thicket of dogwood, pines, and azaleas, ' El 
 Capitan,' just tipped with the rosy setting sun on one side, and the 
 Bridal Veil Fall rushing in a white torrent, 900 feet high, over the 
 gloomy rocks, on the other side, revealed themselves to us in aglow 
 of golden rosy light. 
 
 "The next day (Whit Sunday) most of our party rested from 
 their fatigues, and we walked about and feasted our eyes on the 
 almost overpowering scene around us, which seemed, if possible, to 
 increase in beauty in every fresh phase of light or shade, sunlight 
 or moonlight. At 5 p.m. the visitors of both hotels assembled in 
 the little parlor at Black's, and my father gave a short service, after 
 which we sang the looth Psalm, and he preached a short sermon 
 on verses 10-14, J:6-i8 of the 104th Psalm, which happily was the 
 Psalm for the day.* 
 
 * In his sermon, in Westminster Abbey, on Whit-Sunday, the Dean of West- 
 minster referred to Mr. Field's telegram. His text, too, was on Psalm civ., 2, 
 14, 15. 24: " On this very day, " he says, " (so I learnt yesterday by that elec- 
 tric flash which unites the old and new worlds together), a gifted member of this 
 Collegiate Church, whose discourses on this and like Psalms have rivetted the 
 attention of vast congregations in this Abbey, and who is able to combine the 
 religious and scientific aspects of Nature better than any man living, is on this 
 very day, and perhaps at this very hour, preaching in the most beautiful spot on 
 the face of the earth, where the glories of Nature are revealed on the most gigan- 
 tic scale — in that wonderful Californian Valley, to whose trees, the cedars of Leba- 
 non are but as the hyssop that groweth out of the wall — where water and forest 
 and sky conjoin to make up, if anywhere on this globe, an earthly paradise. Let 
 me, from this pulpit, faintly echo the enthusiasm which I doubt not inspires his 
 burning words. Let us feel that in this splendid Psalm and this splendid festival, 
 the old and the new, the east and the west, are indeed united in one." 
 
 "On May 26th Mrs. Kingsley received the following telegraphic message from 
 Mr. Cyrus Field, through the Secretary of the Anglo-American Telegraph Com- 
 pany : " Yosemite Valley, California, Sunday, May 24th. — We arrived here 
 
Mariposa Grove. 467 
 
 " On Monday we spent the day in riding all over the Valley, 
 and on Tuesday, 26th, we left it at 6 a.m., and rode 24 miles to 
 Clark's Ranch, near the Mariposa Grove. It was bitterly cold, 
 for the snow had not melted on some of the high passes, which 
 were 7,000 feet above the sea; but we found blazing fires and a 
 good supper at Clark's, and after a good night rode out six miles 
 the next day to the Mariposa Grove of Sequoias (WeUingtonias). 
 My father and I agreed to see the first one together, and riding on 
 ahead of our party a little, we suddenly came upon the first, a huge 
 cinnamon-red stem standing up pillar-like, with its head of delicate 
 green foliage among the black sugar pines and Douglas spruce, 
 and I shall never forget the emotion with which he gazed silently 
 — and as he said 'awe struck ' — on this glorious work of God. 
 
 " It was very cold, and we rode over snow for some two miles 
 under the 'big trees,' and were glad to camp in Mr. Clark's litttle 
 empty shanty under a group of some of the largest of the sequoias. 
 Mr, Clark, who is the guardian of the Grove, had come with us as 
 well as our own guide, Jim Cathy, and they soon lighted a roaring 
 fire, and seated on a bed of fragrant hemlock twigs, we warmed 
 ourselves and ate our luncheon of bread and meat and excellent 
 beer, and then rode on and back to the Ranch, with a collection 
 .of flowers that took our whole evening to dry. Next day, the 
 28th, we drove down to Merced, 65 miles, and there joined the 
 railroad again, and left on the 29th at dawn, arriving that afternoon 
 in San Francisco." 
 
 San Francisco, May 31. 
 
 " Here we are safe after such adventures and such wonders in 
 the Yosemite and the Big Trees, and found the dear English let- 
 ters waiting for us Tell G. 1 will write to him all about 
 
 the sea lions which I saw this morning. All is more beautiful and 
 wonderful than I expected, and California the finest country in the 
 world — and oh ! the flowers." 
 
 yune g. 
 
 " The next letter you get from me will, I hope, be from Denver. 
 We start east to-morrow, thank God, and run the Sierras, and the 
 desert back again, and beautiful as Cahfornia is, I think destined 
 
 safely Saturday evening, all delighted with the magnificent scenery. Canon 
 Kingsley preached in the Valley this Sunday afternoon. We leave here Tuesday 
 for the Big Trees. Arrive in San Francisco, Friday. Remain there till the 
 following Wednesday." 
 
468 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 to be the finest country in the world, I want to be nearer and 
 nearer home. We have been so heaped with kindness that this 
 trip will cost us almost nothing. 1 have got cones fi-om the big 
 trees, with seeds in them, for Lord Eversley and Sir Charles Bun- 
 bury ; and we have collected heaps of most exquisite plants. 1 
 think we shall bring home many pretty and curious things." 
 
 " We stayed in San Francisco about ten days, my father makmg 
 excursions to different places in the neighborhood. The most 
 notable of these was to the Berkeley University at Oakland, 
 whither he was invited by the president, Mr. D. C. Oilman. This 
 day he most thoroughly enjoyed ; and he made an address to the 
 students full of vigor and enthusiasm, on Culture, a subject always 
 very near to his heart. 
 
 "During the last few days of my father's stay in San Francisco, 
 he caught a severe cold from the damp sea fog which makes the 
 city and parts of the coast of California extremely unhealthy, while 
 a few miles inland the climate is the finest in the world. This 
 cold became rapidly worse, and the doctors in San Francisco or- 
 dared him to leave the city as quickly as possible ; so on Wednes- 
 day, June 10, we set off eastward once more, with Mr. J. A. C. 
 Gray, and part of our original party ; and after a very trying 
 journey of four days, we reached Denver. Here most providen- 
 tially my father met his brother, Dr. Kingsley, who found that he 
 was suffering from a severe attack of pleurisy, and advised our 
 going south on the next day, 75 miles, to Colorado Springs, by the 
 narrow gauge railway, which my brother had helped to build four 
 years before. Here Dr. and Mrs. W. A. Bell received us, and 
 nursed my father with the most devoted attention in their charm- 
 ing English house, at the foot of Pike's Peak. 
 
 " As soon as my father had recovered sufficiently to be moved, 
 we all drove up twenty-two miles to Bergun's Park for change of 
 , air, and stayed at Mr. Cholmondely Thornton's Ranch, for a week. 
 My father's chief amusement during these weeks of illness was 
 botany, and though he was not able to get many specimens himself, 
 he took a keen delight in naming those we brought him in every 
 day. 
 
 " On Sunday, the 5th July, he had recovered enough to be able 
 to read a short service in the large dining-room of the Ranch, and 
 he often reverted to that service with pleasure and emotion. 
 
In Colorado. 469 
 
 " On the 6th we went down again to Manitou, and spent a few 
 days with General and Mrs. Pahner, at Glen Eyrie, whose care 
 and kindness helped on his recovery ; and on the following Sunday, 
 July 12, my father preached in the Episcopal Church at Colorado 
 Springs, which was barely finished, and in which only one service 
 had been held. The church was crowded, many men, young Eng- 
 lishmen chiefly, having ridden in twenty miles and more from dis- 
 tant Ranches to hear my father preach. The next week, before 
 leaving Colorado Springs for the homeward journey, he gave a 
 lecture in Colorado Springs for the benefit of the church, where he 
 also had a crowd to listen to him. The place was very dear to 
 him from the fact of my brother having been one of the first 
 pioneei's there." 
 
 Manitou, Colorado, June i8. 
 " We are here in perfect peace, at last, after the running and 
 raging of the last three weeks, and safe back over those horrid 
 deserts, in a lovely glen, with red rocks, running and tinkling burn, 
 whispering cotton woods, and all that is delicious, with Pike's Peak 
 and his snow seemingly in the back garden, but 8,000 feet over our 
 heads. Oh, it is a delicious place, and the more so, because we 
 have just got a telegram from Maurice, to say he and his wife are 
 safe in New York from Mexico. Thank God ! The heat is tre- 
 mendous, but not unwholesome. God's goodness since I have been 
 out, no tongue can tell. . . . Please God I shall get safe and 
 well home, and never leave you again, but settle down into the 
 quietest old theologian, serving God, I hope, and doing nothing 
 else, in humility and peace." 
 
 yiine 29. 
 " A delightful party has clustered here, not only the Rotherys, 
 but Dudley Fortescue and Lord Ebrington, who has just got his 
 Trinity scholarship, and is a charming lad ; and we all go up to 
 Bell's Ranch in Bergun's Park to-morrow, for a few days, to get 
 cool^ for the heat here is tropic, and we cannot move by day. That 
 has given me rest though, and a time for reading. God has been 
 so gracious that I cannot think that He means to send my grej 
 hairs down in sorrow to the grave, but will, perhaps, give me time 
 to reconsider myself, and sit quietly with you, preaching and work- 
 ing, and writing no more. Oh ! how I pray for that. Tell the 
 Dean 1 have been thinking much of him as I read Arnold's life and 
 letters. Ah, happy and noble man ; happy life, and happy death. 
 But 1 must live, please God, a little longer, for all your sakes. 
 Love to G. and M." 
 
470 Charles Kings ley. 
 
 Bergun' s Park, July 2. 
 " Oh, my Love, Your birthday-letter was such a comfort to me, 
 for 1 am very home-sick, and counting the days till I can get back 
 to you. Ah, few and evil would have been the days of my pilgrim- 
 age had 1 not met you; and now 1 do look forward to something 
 like a peaceful old age with you. . . Tell John Martineau his 
 letter was a great comfort to me. This place is like an ugly High- 
 land strath, bordered with pine woods. Air almost too fine to 
 breathe, 7,200 feet high. Pike's Peak 7,000 feet more at one end, 
 fifteen miles off ; and, alas ! a great forest-fire burning for three days 
 between us and it \ and at the other end wonderful ragged jjeaks, 
 ten to twenty miles oft". Flowers most lovely and wonderful. 
 Plenty of the dear common hare-bell, and several Scotch and Eng- 
 lish plants, mixed with the strangest forms. We are (or rather 
 Rose is) making a splendid collection. She and the local botanist 
 got more than fifty new sorts one morning. Her strength and ac- 
 tivity and happiness are wonderful ; and M.'s letters make me very 
 ha:ppy. Yes ; I have nuich to thank God for, and will try and 
 show my thankfulness by deeds. Love to G. Tell him there are 
 lots of trout here ; but it is too hot to catch them." 
 
 Glen Eyrie, Jtdy 11. 
 
 " Thank God our time draws nigh. I preach at Colorado Springs 
 to-morrow, and lecture for the Church on Wednesday ; * Denver, 
 
 * Canon Kingsley and a Beetle. — (From a Denver letter.) — I will 
 relate a little anecdote of Canon Kingsley, which I heard at Colorado Springs, 
 the other day. On a recent evening he read his lecture on " Westminster 
 Abbey " to the people of Colorado Springs, right under the shadow of Pike's 
 Peak. In the midst of his lecture a bug of some species of Coleoptera, new and 
 strange to the eminent lecturer, ahghted on his manuscript and attracted his 
 attention at once. Mr. Bug sat still a moment or two, during which space the 
 speaker "improved the occasion" to study his peculiarities of form and struct- 
 ure — perhaps determining in his mind certain obscure or doubtful questions ; but 
 while these investigations were in progress, and his language rolling right along 
 to the delight of his hearers, the insect began to expand his wings as if anxious 
 to fly away. The reverend speaker saw the motion, and deftly caught it in his 
 hand. Going right on with his line of argument, he continued his examination 
 for several moments, until, having settled everything to his own satisfaction, he 
 let it buzz away about its own business — perhaps mentally repeating the parting 
 injunction of " My Uncle Toby" to the fly. To any ordinary man the presence 
 of such an intruder would have been unwelcome, and he would have been brushed 
 aside, but the great English divine, trained to such close habits of observation 
 and thought, could not forego the opportunity, even in the midst of his lecture, 
 to study the points in a new species of beetle, his mental discipline enabling him 
 to carry along in his mind two trains of ideas at the same time. 
 
Lorraine, a Ballad. 471 
 
 Friday, and then right away to New York, and embark on the 25th. 
 Letters from M., who has gone to Tennessee. . , . 
 
 " This is a wonderful spot : such crags, pillars, caves — red and 
 grey — a perfect thing in a stage scene ; and the P'lora, such a 
 jumble — cactus, yucca, poison sumach, and lovely strange flowers, 
 mixed with Douglas's and Menzies' pine, and eatable pinon, and 
 those again with our own harebells and roses, and all sorts of 
 English flowers. Tell G. I have seen no rattlesnakes ; but they 
 killed twenty-five here a year or two ago, and little Nat. M., twelve . 
 years old, killed five. Tell him that there are ' painted lady 
 butterflies, and white admirals here, just like our English, and a 
 locust, which, when he opens his wings, is exactly like a white 
 admiral butterfly ! and with them enormous tropic butterflies, all 
 colors, and as big as bats. We are trying to get a horned toad to 
 bring home alive. There is a cave opposite my window which 
 must have been full of bears once, and a real eagle's nest close by, 
 full of real young eagles. It is as big as a cart-load of bavins. 
 Tell G. that I will write again before we start over the plains. Oh ! 
 happy day ! " 
 
 Glen Eyrie, July 14. 
 
 " I cannot believe that I shall see you within twenty-one days , 
 and never longed so for home. I count the hours till I can cross 
 the Great Valley, on this side of which God has been so good to 
 me. But, oh ! for the first rise of the eastern hills, to make me sure 
 that the Mississippi is not still between me and beloved Eversley. 
 I am so glad you like Westminster. Yes ! we shall rest our weaiy 
 bones there for a while before kind death comes, and, perhaps, see 
 our grandchildren round us there.* , Ah ! please God that I \ 
 look forward to a blessed quiet autumn, if God so will, having had 
 a change of scene, which will last me my whole life, and has taught 
 
 me many things The collection of plants grows 
 
 magniticent " 
 
 During his severe illness in Colorado, he composed these lines ; 
 they were the last he ever wrote : 
 
 " * Are you ready for your steeple-chase, Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorree? 
 
 Barum, Barum, Barum, Baruni, Barum, Barum, Baree. 
 You're booked to ride your capping race to day at Coulterlee, 
 You're booked to ride Vindictive, for all the world to see, 
 To keep him straight, and keep him first, and win the run for me. 
 
 Barum, Barum, &c.' 
 
 * His first grandchild passed away at its birth just before he himself went into 
 the unseen world, and happily he never knew it. 
 
472 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 2. 
 
 " She clasped her new-born baby, poor Lorraine, Lorrame, Lorree, 
 
 Barum, Barum, &c. * 
 ' I cannot ride Vindictive, as any man might see, 
 And I will not ride Vindictive, with this baby on my knee ; 
 He's killed a boy, he's killed a man, and why must he kill me ? ' 
 
 3- 
 '" Unless you ride Vindictive, Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorree, 
 Unless you ride Vindictive to-day at Coulterlee, 
 And land him safe across the brook, and win the blank for me. 
 It's you may keep your baby, for you'll get no keep from me.' 
 
 4- 
 " ' That husbands could be cruel,' said Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorree, 
 * That husbands could be cruel, I have known for seasons three ; 
 But oh ! to ride Vindictive while a baby cries for me. 
 And be killed across a fence at last for all the world to see ! " 
 
 5- 
 
 " She mastered young Vindictive — Oh ! the gallant lass was she. 
 And kept him straight and won the race as near as near could be ; 
 But he killed her at the brook against a pollard willow tree, 
 Oh ! he killed her at the brook, the brute, for all the world to see. 
 And no one but the baby cried for poor Loi-raine, Lorree." 
 
 The American chapter may be fitly closed by the following letter 
 from Mr. John Whittier, whose poetry and whose acquaintance, 
 made in Boston, had given him such especial pleasure. 
 
 Bearcamp House, W., N. H., 8th Mo. 30, 1876. 
 "Dear Friend, 
 
 " I am glad to learn from a letter received from an American 
 clergyman just, returned from England that thou art engaged in 
 preparing a biography of thy lamented husband. It seems to me 
 very fitting that the life of such a man as Charles Kingsley should 
 be written by one so fully acquainted with the noble and generous 
 
 * The meaning of this strange refrain is not known. Some were doubtful 
 whether, as no explanation was given by Mr. Kingsley, it would not be better to 
 omit it ; but Mr. Froude, who thought this poem one of the finest of his ballads, on 
 being consulted, wrote : "I am in favor of keeping the refrain. The music of 
 the song will be incomplete without it : and as the words went humming 
 through his head, the refrain went along with them. It presses like an inex- 
 orable destiny, and makes you feel the iron force with which poor Lorraine was 
 swept to her fate." .... 
 
Letter from Whittier. 473 
 
 personal qualities of the reformer, poet, and theologian. In this 
 country his memory is cherished by thousands, who, after long ad- 
 miring the genius of the successful author, have learned, in his 
 brief visit, to love him as a man. 
 
 " I shall never forget my first meeting with him in Boston. I 
 began, naturally enough, to speak of his literary work, when he 
 somewhat abruptly turned the conversation upon the great themes 
 of life and duty. The solemn questions of a future life, and the 
 final destiny of the race, seemed pressing upon him, not so much 
 for an answer (for he had solved them all by simple faith in the 
 Divine Goodness), as for the sympathetic response of one whose 
 views he believed to be, in a gi^eat degree, coincident with his own. 
 ' I sometimes doubt and distrust myself,' he said, ' but I see some 
 hope for everybody else. To me the Gospel of Christ seems in- 
 deed Good Tidings of great joy to all people ; and I think we may 
 safely trust tlie mercy which endureth_/(?r eve7\^ It impressed me 
 strongly to find the world-known author ignoring his literary fame, 
 unobservant of the strange city whose streets he was treading for 
 the first time, and engaged only with ' thoughts that wander through 
 eternity.' All I saw of him left upon me the feeling that I was in 
 contact with a profoundly earnest and reverent spirit. His heart 
 seemed overcharged with interest in the welfare, physical, moral, 
 and spiritual, of his race. I was conscious in his presence of the 
 bracing atmosphere of a noble nature. He seemed to me one of 
 the manliest of men. 
 
 " I forbear to speak of the high estimate which, in common with 
 all English-speaking people, I place upon his literary life-woi'k. 
 My copy of his ' Hypatia ' is worn by frequent perusal, and the 
 echoes of his rare and beautiful lyrics never die out of my memory. 
 But since I have seen hivi^ the man seems greater than the author. 
 With profound respect and sympathy, 
 
 " I am truly thy friend, 
 
 "John G. Whittier." 
 
 To Airs. Kings ley. 
 
CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 1874-5- 
 Aged 55. 
 
 Return from America — Work at Eversley — Illness at Westminster — New Anxiety 
 — Last Sermons in the Abbey — Leaves the Cloisters for Ever — Last Return 
 to Eversley — The Valley of the Shadow of Death — Last Illness and Depart- 
 ure — The Victory of Life over Death and Time.- 
 
 It was sultry August weather when he returned to Eversley from 
 America ; there was much sickness and a great mortality in the 
 parish, and he was out among his people twice and three times 
 a day in the burning sun and dry easterly wind. His curate, the 
 Rev. Elis Price, was away for his well-earned holiday ; and 
 his great joy at being with his poor people again made him 
 plunge too eagerly and suddenly into work, and Sunday services, 
 before he had regained his strength after his illness in Colorado. 
 When he went up to Westminster in September, a severe attack 
 of congestion of the liver came on, which alarmed his friends, and 
 prevented his preaching in the Abbey on the first Sunday of his 
 residence. This attack shook him terribly, and from that time he 
 was unable to preach more than once a day during his residence ; 
 but, though altered and emaciated, he seemed recovering strength, 
 when, early in October, a shadow came over his home, in the 
 dangerous illness of his wife, touching him in his tenderest point, 
 and filling him with fears for the future. When all immediate dan- 
 ger was over, it was with difficulty he was persuaded to leave her 
 and take a few days' change of air and scene, before his Novem- 
 ber work commenced, at Lord John Thynne's, in Bedfordshire, 
 and with his friend Mr. Fuller JVlaitland, in Essex.* From these 
 visits, however, he returned invigorated in health and spirits, and 
 got through his sermons in the Abbey with less difficulty. The 
 congregations were enormous — the sermons powerful as ever, 
 
 * At Staustead, during this visit, the friend with whom he was conversing on 
 tlie deepest doctrines of Christianity said she could never forget his look and 
 voice, as he folded his arms, and bowing his head, said, " I cannot — cannot live 
 without the Man Christ Jesus." 
 
The last Sermon. 475 
 
 though their preparation was an increasing labor. The change in 
 his appearance was observed by many. " I went back," said an 
 old correspondent, who had gone to hear him preach in West- 
 minster Abbey, " sad at the remembrance of the bent back and 
 shrunken figure, and while hoping the weakness was but temjio- 
 rary, I grieved to see one who had carried himself so nobly, broken 
 down by illness. 
 
 His sermon on All Saints' Day will never be forgotten by those 
 who heard it. It was like a note of preparation for the life of 
 eternal blessedness in the vision of God upon which he was so 
 soon to enter. It was a revealing too of his own deepest belief 
 as to what that blessedness meant, with back glances into the 
 darker passages and bitter struggles of his own earthly life and 
 warfare with evil. 
 
 On Advent Sunday, November 29, he preached his last sermon 
 in the Abbey, with intense fervor. It was the winding up of his 
 work in the Abbey, but neither he nor those who hung upon his 
 words thought that it was the winding-up of his public ministrations 
 and the last time he would enter the pulpit. The text was Luke 
 xix. 41, Christ weeping over Jerusalem. A great stoi'm was raging 
 over London that afternoon, and the gale seemed almost to shake 
 the Abbey, which made the service to one who was keenly sensi- 
 tive, as he was, to all changes of weather, especially those which 
 would affect the fate of ships at sea, most exciting. 
 
 The sermon was a characteristic one. " Advent," he said, 
 " should be a season not merely of warning, awe, repentance, but 
 a season of trust and hope and content." He sketched the lead- 
 ing features of his past teaching in the Abbey — dwelling on the 
 Kingship and Divine Government of Christ over races, nations, in- 
 dividuals — His infinite rigor and yet infinite tenderness of pity — 
 the divine humanity which possessed Him as he wept over the 
 doomed city, and cried out, " How often would I have gathered 
 thee as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings," and closed 
 with these words : 
 
 "And what is true "of nations and of institutions — is it not true 
 of individuals, of each separate human brother of the Son of Man ? 
 
 " Ah — and is there a young life ruined by its own folly — a young 
 heart broken by its own wilfulness — an elder man or woman too, 
 who is fast losing the finer instincts, the nobler aims, of youth in 
 the restlessness of covetousness, of fashion, of ambition ? Is there 
 
476 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 one such poor soul over whom Christ does not grieve ? To whom, 
 at some supreme crisis of their lives, He does not whisper — ' Ah, 
 beautiful organism — thou, too, art a thought of God — thou, too, if 
 thou wert but in harmony with thyself and God, a microcosmic 
 City of God ! Ah ! that thou hadst known — even thou — at least in 
 this thy day — the things which belong to thy peace ? ' 
 
 " Shall I go on ? shall I add to the words of doom ? ' But now 
 they are hid from thine eyes ? Thou hast gambled with thine own 
 destiny too long. Thou hast fixed thy habits. Thou hast formed 
 thy character. It is too late to mend. Thou art left henceforth 
 to the perpetual unrest which thou hast chosen — to thine own lusts 
 and passions ; and the angels of peace depart from thy doomed 
 heart, as they did in the old legend, from the doomed Temple of 
 Jerusalem — sighing — ' Let us go hence ' — shall I say that ? God 
 forbid — it is not for me to finish the sentence — or to pronounce the 
 doom of any soul. 
 
 " But it is for me to- say — as I say now to each of you — Oh that 
 you each may know the time of your visitation — and may listen to 
 the voice of Christ, whenever and however He may whisper to you, 
 ' Come unto Me, thou weary and heavy-laden heart, and I will give 
 thee Rest.' 
 
 " He may come to you in many ways. In ways in which the 
 world would never recognize Him — in which perhaps neither you 
 nor I shall recognize Him ; but it will be enough, I hope, if we 
 but hear His message, and obey His gracious inspiration, let Him 
 speak through whatever means He will. 
 
 " He may come to us, by some crisis in our life, either for sorrow 
 or for bliss. He may come to us by a great failure ; by a great 
 disappointment — to teach the wilful and ambitious soul, that not in 
 that direction Hes the path of peace. He may come in some un- 
 expected happiness to teach that same soul that He is able and 
 willing to give abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think. 
 He may come to us, when our thoughts are cleaving to the ground, 
 and ready to grow earthy of the earth — through noble poetry, noble 
 music, noble art — through aught which awakens once more in us 
 the instinct of the true, the beautiful, and the good. He may come 
 to us when our souls are restless and weary, through the repose of 
 Nature — the repose of the lonely snow-peak, and of the sleeping 
 forest, of the clouds of sunset and of the summer sea, and whisper 
 Peace. Or He may come, as He may come this very night to 
 many a gallant soul — not in the repose of Nature, but in her rage 
 — in howling storm, and blinding foam, and ruthless rocks, and 
 whelming surge—and whisper to them even so — as the sea swallows 
 all of them which it can take — of calm beyond, which this world 
 cannot give and cannot take away. 
 
 ''He may come to us when we are fierce and prejudiced, with 
 that still small voice — so sweet and yet so keen. ' Understand 
 
Last Illness. 477 
 
 those who misunderstand thee. Be fair to those who are unfair to 
 thee. Be just and merciful to those whom thou wouklst hke to 
 hate. Forgive and thou shalt be forgiven ; for with what measure 
 thou measurest unto others, it shall be measured to thee again.' 
 He comes to us surely, when we are selfish and luxurious, in every 
 sufferer who needs our help, and says, ' If you do good to one of 
 these, my brethren, you do it unto Me.' 
 
 " But most surely does Christ come to us, and often most hap- 
 pily, and most clearly does he speak to us — in the face of a little 
 child, fresh out of heaven. Ah, let us take heed that we despise 
 not one of these little ones, lest we despise our Lord Himself 
 For as often as we enter into communion with little children, so 
 often does Christ come to us. So often, as in Judea of old, does 
 He take a little child and set him in the midst of us, that from its 
 simplicity, docility, and trust — the restless, the mutinous, and the 
 ambitious may learn the things which belong to their peace — so 
 often does He say to us, ' Except ye be changed and become as 
 this little child, ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of 
 Heaven. Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me. For I am 
 meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.' 
 
 " And therefore let us say, in utter faith, ' Come as Thou 
 
 SEEST BEST BuT IN WHATSOEVER WAY ThOU COM EST EVEN SO 
 
 COME, Lord Jesus.' " 
 
 As soon as the Abbey service was over, he came home much 
 exhausted, and went straight up to his wife's room. "And now 
 my work here is done, thank God ! and .... I finished 
 with your favorite text." 
 
 The next day he dined at the Deanery to meet Di\ Caiid, before 
 attending his lecture in the Abbey at the special evening service. 
 The night was damp, and coming out into the cold cloister he 
 caught a fresh cold, and coughed all through the night ; but he 
 made light of it, for he could think of nothing but the joy of return- 
 ing with his wife to Eversley for Christmas and the quiet winter's 
 work. And on the 3rd of December, full of spirits and thankful- 
 ness, he left the cloisters forever, and took her with tenderest care 
 to Eversley. But his happiness was shortlived ; the journey down 
 had had serious consequences for her, and that night the Angel of 
 Death for the first time for thirty-one years seemed hovering over 
 the little rectory. He had been engaged by the Queen's connnand 
 to go to Windsor Castle the following Saturday for two days. 
 Telegrams were sent there, and to his children who were absent. 
 Still he could not believe there was danger, till he was told 
 
478 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 that there was no hope, and then — " My own death-warrant was 
 signed," he said, "with those words." Children and friends col- 
 lected round him, while he gathered himself up with a noble self- 
 repression to give comfort where it was needed. His ministrations 
 in the sick room showed the intensity of his own faith, as he 
 strengthened the weak, encouraged the fearful, and in the light of 
 the Cross of Christ and the love of God, spoke of an eternal 
 reunion and the indestructibility of that married love which, if 
 genuine on earth, can only be severed for a brief moment. When 
 asked if he thought it cowardly for a poor soul, who had been 
 encompassed with such protecting love as his, to tremble on the 
 brink of the dark river which all must cross alone — to shrink from 
 leaving husband, children — the love that had made life blessed and 
 real and full for so many years — and to go alone into the unknown : 
 "Cowardly!" he said. "Don't you think I would rather some 
 one put a pistol to my head than lie on that bed there waiting? 
 But, — " he added, "it is not darkness you are going to, for God is 
 light. It is not lonely, for Christ is with you. It is not an un- 
 known countr)'^, for Christ is there." And when the dreary interval 
 before reunion was mentioned, he spoke of the possibility of all 
 consciousness of time being so abolished that what would be long 
 years to the survivor might be only a moment to the separated soul 
 that had passed over the River of Death. And so, with words of 
 strong consolation and hope, with daily prayer and reading from the 
 Gospel and Epistles of St. John and the Psalms, he preached 
 peace and forgiveness till all was calm ; and dwelling on the border- 
 land together tor weeks of deep communion, every chapter of the 
 past was gone over once more, and " life was all re-touched again," 
 — favorite poetry was read for the last time, Wordsworth's "Ode 
 to Immortality," Milton's magnificent Ode to "Time," again and 
 again, Matthew Arnold's "Buried Life," and certain passages from 
 Shakspeare. Once more he himself administered the Holy Com- 
 munion to his wife, children, and servants ; and once again, before 
 he himself lay down to die, he received it with them from the hands 
 of Mr. Harrison. But though his own iron will and utter submis- 
 sion to the Will of God enabled him to be outwardly calm in the 
 sick room, and even to speak there of the lonely years which he 
 feared were before him, of the grave where, he said, he would allow 
 no one but himself to do the last office, where he would place the 
 
The Valley of the Shadow of Death. 479 
 
 three Latin words in which the Ufe of his life, past, present, and 
 future, are gathered up, — the charm of Hfe for him was over, and 
 he spoke the truth when he said his "heart was broken," for so it 
 was. He was ill himself, and became careless of his own health, 
 reckless of cold and snow; his cough became bronchitic. On the 
 28th of December he took to his bed, and pneumonia, with its 
 terrible symptoms, came on rapidly. He had promised his wife to 
 "fight for life" for his children's sake, and he did so for a time ; 
 but the enemy, or, as he would have said himself, "kindly Death," 
 was too strong for him, and in a few weeks the battle was over and 
 he was at rest. The weather was bitter, and he had been warned 
 that his recovery depended on the same temperature being kept 
 up in his room, and on his never leaving it ; but one day he leapt 
 out of bed, came into his wife's room for a few moments, and tak- 
 ing her hand in his, said, "This is heaven, don't speak ; " but, after 
 a short silence, a severe fit of coughing came on, he could say no 
 more, and they never met again. When told that another move 
 would be fatal, he replied, " We have said all to each other, we 
 have made up our accounts ; " and often repeated, " It is all right, 
 all as it should beT For a few days a correspondence was kejDt up 
 in pencil ; and on December 30 he wrote of this " terrible trial," 
 the fiery trial of separation, to both so bitter at such a moment. 
 " But," he adds, " I am somewhat past fretting — almost past feel- 
 ing I know it must be right, because it is so strange 
 
 and painful." Again, on New Year's Eve, " I am much better in 
 all ways. Thank God for the gleam of sun and the frost on the 
 
 window-pane " And again, in the last letter he ever 
 
 wrote, on January 3rd, a bright morning, the first Sunday in the 
 year : " Ah ! what a good omen for the coming year — this lovely 
 Sunday morning. May it mean light and peace and blessing in 
 both worlds for us all ! , . . ." But, to use his own words, it 
 then became " too painful, too tantalising," and the letters ceased. 
 He was now kept constantly under the influence of opiates to 
 quiet the cough and keep off haemorrhage, and his dreams were 
 always of his travels in the West Indies, the Rocky Mountains, and 
 California. These scenes he would describe night after night to the 
 trained nurse from Westminster Hospital who sat up with him, and 
 whose unwearied care and skill can never be forgotten. He would 
 tell her. too, of the travels of his eldest son in America, of whom 
 
480 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 he continually spoke with love and pride, and to whose success in 
 life he so eagerly looked. His own physical experiences were 
 very singular to him, for he sat as a spectator outside himself, and 
 said if he recovered he would write a book about them. Early in 
 January, when the alarming symptoms came on, his devoted medi- 
 cal attendant, Mr. Heynes, of Eversley, who was day and night at 
 the Rectory, begged for further advice ; and Dr. Hawkesley, who 
 twice came dovvn from London, did not despair of Mr Kingsley ; 
 he said he never saw a " more splendid fight for life," and was 
 struck with his brilliancy in describing his symptoms. 
 
 He spoke but little latterly, and the fear of exciting him made 
 those around afraid of telling him anything that would rouse him 
 to the sense of his great loneliness. But one morning before his 
 condition became hopeless, when some little letters, enclosing 
 some drawings to amuse him, had come from the young Princes at 
 Sandringham, who loved him well and were sorry for his illness 
 and his grief, his doctor said they might be shown him. They 
 touched him deeply; and his messages in answer were among the 
 last he sent. On Sunday, the 17th, he sat up for a few moments, 
 where he could see from the bedroom window which looked into 
 the churchyard his dear people go into church, and spoke of their 
 "goodness" to him and how he loved them. He reiterated the 
 words, "It is all right." "All under rule." One morning early 
 he asked the nurse, if it was light, to open the shutters, for he loved 
 light. It was still dark. "Ah ! well," he said, " the light is good 
 and the darkness is good — it is all good." From sleeping so much 
 he was unconscious of the lapse of time. " How long have I been 
 in bed ? " he said one day, and on being told three weeks, he said, 
 " It does not seem three days. Ah, I live in fairyland, or I should 
 go mad ! " 
 
 On the 20th of January the Prince of Wales, whose regard and 
 affection had never failed for fourteen years, requested Sir William 
 Gull to go down to Eversley. He, too, thought recovery possible ; 
 but immediately after his visit hcemorrhage returned — the end 
 seemed near, and then the full truth — and not a painful one — burst 
 upon him. " Heynes," he said, " I am hit ; this last shot has told 
 — did F. tell you about the funeral ? We settled it all," and then 
 he repeated, in the very words used to himself, the arrangements 
 that had been made in view of the event he had been dreading, 
 
Rest at Last. 481 
 
 which God mercifully spared him ; and after mentioning the names 
 of the bearers selected (laboring men endeared by old parish 
 memories), " Let there be no paraphernalia, no hatbands, no car- 
 riages . . . ." He was calm and content. He had no need 
 to put his mind into a fresh attitude, for his life had long been 
 " hid with Christ in God." Twenty-tive years before, in speaking 
 of a friend who did not accept Christianity, he had said, "The 
 more I see of him, the more I learn to love the true doctrines of 
 the Gospel, because I see more and more that only in faith and 
 love to the Incarnate God, our Saviour, can the cleverest, as well 
 as the simplest, find the Peace of God which passes understanding." 
 In this faith he had lived — and as he had lived, so he died — ■ 
 humble, confident, unbewildered. That night he was heard mur- 
 muring, " No more fighting — no more fighting ; " and then followed 
 intense, earnest prayers, which were his habit when alone, — too 
 sacred for any listener. Yes, his warfare was accomplished, he 
 had fought the good fight, and never grounded his arms till God 
 took them mercifully out of his brave hands and gave him rest. 
 
 It was on one of those, his last nights on earth, his daughter 
 heard him exclaim, " How beautiful God is." For the last two 
 days before he departed, he asked no questions, and sent no mes- 
 sages to his wife, thinking all was over, and hoping that at last the 
 dream of his life was fulfilled of their dying together; and under 
 this impression, it is thought, when the faithful nurse who had been 
 with his children since their birth, left his wife for a moment to 
 come to her dying master the day before he went, "Ah," he said, 
 " dear nurse, and I, too, am come to an end ; it is all right — all as 
 it should be,'' and closed his eyes again. On that same morning 
 from his bed he had looked out over the beloved glebe once more. 
 The snow, which had been deep for weeks, had cleared a little, the 
 grass of the pasture was green, and he said/ " Tell Grenville (his 
 youngest son, who had just left him after helping to arrange his 
 b>.J) I am looking at the most beautiful scene I ever saw," adding 
 some words of love and approval, that were scarcely audible. 
 
 The last morning, at five o'clock, just after his eldest daughter, 
 who, with his medical man and Mr. Harrison, had sat up all night, 
 had left him, and he thought himself alone, he was heard, in a 
 clear voice, repeating the words of the Burial Service : 
 31 
 
482 Charles Kings ley, 
 
 " Thou knowest, O Lord, the secrets of our hearts ; shut not 
 Thy merciful ears to our prayer, but spare us, O Lord most holy, 
 O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, Thou most 
 worthy Judge Eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, from any 
 pains of death, to fall from Thee." 
 
 He turned on his side after this, and never spoke again, and be- 
 fore midday, on the 23rd of January — without sigh or struggle — 
 breathed his last breath, so gently that his eldest daughter and the 
 family nurse, who were watching him, could scarcely tell that all 
 was over. Twenty years before, and how often since, he had 
 expressed his longing for that moment : " God forgive me if I am 
 wrong, but I look forward to it with an intense and reverent curi- 
 osity." And now the great secret that he had longed to know was 
 revealed to him, and he was satisfied. 
 
 On the afternoon of his departure a telegram was sent to Ches- 
 ter, where the daily bulletins had been watched for so eagerly, 
 " Canon Kingsley peacefully expired ; " and on the Sunday morn- 
 ing the tolhng of the Cathedral bell, and the omission of his name 
 in the daily prayer for the sick, confirmed the worst fears of 
 many loving hearts. For many weeks the prayers of the congrega- 
 tion had been asked for " Charles and Fanny Kingsley." Not 
 only in Chester Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, but in other 
 churches and chapels, at prayer-meetings too, in London, Sheffield, 
 and elsewhere, his fife was prayed for, and God in His great mercy, 
 had answered by giving him immortal life. 
 
 As soon as the news reached Westminster, a telegram from the 
 Dean brought these words to his children : " Bear up under the 
 blow. You will perhaps choose Eversley, but the Abbey is open 
 to the Canon and the Poet." 
 
 Deanery, Westminster, Jan. 24, 1875. 
 
 " I cannot let the day pass without a word in addition to the 
 brief telegram I sent last night. 
 
 " It seems but a few years, though it is many, since I first saw 
 your dear father at Oxford, and again still fewer, though that is also 
 long ago, since I for the first time was at Eversley — and our meet- 
 ings have been but few and far between— but I always felt that he 
 was a faithful friend, and a brave champion for much and many 
 that I loved ; and when he was transplanted among us, my dear 
 wife and I both looked forward to the multiplication of these meet- 
 ings — to long years of labor together. 
 
Honored in his Death. 483 
 
 " God has ordered it otherwise. He had done his work. He had 
 earned his rest. You had seen all that was highest and best in him. 
 
 "The short stay amongst us here had given him a new Ufe, and 
 had endeared him to a new world. He has gone in the fulness of his 
 strength, like one of his own tropical suns — no twilight — no fading. 
 Be of good heart, for you have much for which to be thankful. 
 
 " I ventured to say something about the place of burial. It is 
 far the most probable (from what I have heard that he had said) 
 that Eversley will have been the place chosen by him and by you 
 — most natural that it should be so. Had his days ended here, 
 then I should have pressed that the right which we have acquired 
 in him should have the chief claim, and you know that should the 
 other not be paramount, here we should be too glad to lay him, 
 not by that official right which I try to discourage, but by the natu- 
 ral inheritance of genius and character. Any way, let me know 
 the day and hour of the funeral. If none nearer or more suitable 
 should be thought of, I, as the chief of his last earthly sphere, would 
 ask to render the last honors. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 "A. P. Stanley." 
 
 There was no hesitation with those who knew his own feelings, 
 and at Eversley he was buried on the 28th of January ; no one was 
 invited to come, but early in the day the clmrchyard was full. 
 There had been deep snow and bitter cold for many weeks. But 
 the day was kindly, soft, and mild, with now and then gleams of 
 sunshine. He was carried to the grave by villagers who had 
 known, loved, and trusted him for years. The coffin, covered with 
 flowers, was m^t at the garden-gate by the Bishop of Winchester, 
 the Dean of Westminster, Mr. Powles, his oldest friend, his two 
 last curates, Rev. William Harrison, and Rev. Elis Price, and his 
 churchwarden Sir William Cope, and was laid before the altar, 
 where for thirty-two years he had ministered so faithfully, before the 
 service was finished at the grave. Roman Catholic and Protes- 
 tant, Churchman and Dissenter, American and English, met at that 
 grave ; every profession, every rank, every school of thought, was 
 represented. Soldiers* and sailors were there ; among them three 
 Victoria Cross Officers, men whom he had loved, and who honored 
 him. The Master of Fox Hounds, with the huntsman and the 
 whip, were there also, and from his beloved Chester came the Dean 
 
 * Gen. Sir William Codrington ; Col. Sir Charles Russell, V.C. ; Col. Alfred 
 Jones, V.C. ; Col. Evelyn Wood, V. C. ; Captain F. Maurice, &a 
 
484 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 and a deputation from the Natural Science Society he had founded.* 
 " I have been at many state funerals," said a naval officer who was 
 present, " but never did I see such a sight as Charles Kingsley's." 
 
 " Who," says Max Miiller, '' can forget that funeral on the 28th 
 of January, 1875, and the large sad throng that gathered round his 
 grave ? There was tlie representative of the Prince of Wales, and, 
 close by, the gipsies of Eversley Common, who used to call him 
 their ' Patrico-rai ' (their Priest King). There was the squire of 
 his village, and the laborers young and old, to whom he had been 
 a friend and a father. There were governors of distant colonies, f 
 officers, and sailors, the bishop of his diocese, and the dean of his 
 abbey ; there were the leading Nonconformists of the neighbor- 
 hood, and his own devoted curates, peers and members of the 
 House of Commons, authors and publishers, and the huntsmen in 
 pink ; and, outside the churchyard, tlie horses and the hounds, for 
 though as good a clergyman as any, Charles Kingsley had been a 
 good sportsman, and had taken in his life many a fence as bravely 
 as he took the last fence of all, without fear or trembling. All that 
 he had loved and all that had loved him was there, and i&v^ eyes 
 were dry when he was laid in his own gravel bed, the old trees, 
 which he had planted and cared for, waving their branches to him 
 for the last time, and the grey sunny sky looking down with calm 
 pity on the deserted rectory, and on the short joys and the shorter 
 sufferings of mortal man. 
 
 " All went home feeling that life was poorer, and every one knew 
 that he had lost a friend who had been, in some peculiar sense, his 
 own. Charles Kingsley will be missed in England, in the English 
 colonies, in America, where he spent his last happy year ; aye, 
 whei-ever Saxon speech and Saxon thought is understood. He will 
 be mourned for, yearned for, in every place in which he passed 
 some days of his busy life. As to myself, I feel as if another cable 
 had snapped that tied me to this hospitable shore." 
 
 Such was the scene at Eversley, while at Chester and at West- 
 minster the cathedral bell tolled for the well-beloved Canon, whom 
 
 they should see no more. 
 
 ****** 
 ***** 
 
 The Sunday following his funeral, sermons on his life and death 
 were numerous. Dean Stanley in London, Dean Howson at 
 Chester, Churchmen, Baptists, and other Nonconformists, both in 
 
 * Dr. Stolterforth, Mr. Shepheard, Mr. Manning, Mr. Griffith. 
 
 \ His Excellency Sir Arthur Gordon ; Col. Sir Thomas Gore Browne. 
 
A Memorial Fu7td. 485 
 
 London, Chester, and elsewhere, while his own pulpit at Eversley 
 Church was occupied by Sir WiUiam Cope in the morning, and by 
 his devoted and attached curate, the Rev. Elis Price, in the afternoon. 
 
 'Telegrams and letters, full of reverent love for him and of sym- 
 pathy for those whom he had left, poured in from the highest to the 
 lowest in this land, and from many in other lands, where his words 
 had brought light in darkness, comfort in sorrow, hope in despair 
 — from the heart of Africa, from Australia, from California, as well 
 as from America, where thousands had loved him before they had 
 seen him face to face so recently. 
 
 Never had mourners over an unspeakable loss more exultant 
 consolation, lifting them above their own selfish sorrow, to the 
 thought of what they had possessed in him, and that, if misunder- 
 stood by some in his lifetime, he was honored by all in his death — 
 that among men of all parties, there was the unanimous feeling 
 that the great presence which had passed away had left a blank 
 which no one could exactly fill. 
 
 A Kingsley Memorial Fund was set on foot immediately after 
 the funeral, in London, Chester, and at Eversley. The call was 
 responded to in America as well as in England. The church at 
 Eversley has been enlarged and improved. The Chester memorials 
 have been described by the Dean ; and on the 23rd of September 
 the London memorial was placed in Westminster Abbey, of which 
 the following account appeared in the Times of the next morning : 
 
 The bust of Canon Kingsley, which has been executed in marble 
 by Mr. Woolner, was unveiled yesterday afternoon in Westminster 
 Abbey. The ceremony was extremely simple, but interesting and 
 touching. At 2 o'clock Canon Duckworth, who succeeded the 
 late Mr. Kingsley in his canonry, and is now in residence, attended 
 by the Rev. W. Harrison (Mr. Kingsley's son-in-law) and the Rev. 
 J. Troutbeck, Minor Canons, proceeded in surplices to the Bap- 
 tistery, accompanied by the two sons and two daughters and 
 daughter-in-law of the late Canon, and a small number of intimate 
 friends. Canon Farrar was also present, but took no ofticial part. 
 
 After the bust had been unveiled by Mr. Maurice Kingsley, 
 Canon Duckworth delivered an address, at the close of which the 
 ladies laid wreaths of choice flowers below the bust. 
 
 The bust itself is one of Mr. Woolner' s finest works, and, to those 
 who knew Charles Kingsley well, represents with marvellous 
 fidelity the character which had so stamped itself upon his expres- 
 sive features. The mingled sternness and tender sympathy, the 
 
486 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 earnestness and i^layful humor are all in the living marble. To 
 those who knew Mr. Kingsley but sHghtly, the likeness is at first 
 less striking. The sculptor holding that either the beard or the 
 smooth face may be legitimately treated in sculpture, but that the 
 whisker is a temporary fashion of no artistic worth, has (since Mr, 
 Kingsley wore no beard) entirely divested the face of hair, and 
 this, while it increases the grandeur of the work, renders the like- 
 ness less immediately apparent. But we believe that Mr. Kings- 
 ley's own family, and all those who knew him well, are entirely 
 satisfied that Mr. Woolner is not only right in his idea, but most 
 thoroughly successful in his treatment. 
 
 The Baptistery in which the bust is placed, is rapidly becoming, 
 as the Dean has said, " a new Poets' Corner." On the same wall 
 with the bust of Charles Kingsley stands that of Mr. Maurice, 
 whom he delighted to call his "dear master ;" Keble and Words- 
 worth find a place in the same chapel, and a stained window pre- 
 sented to the Abbey by an American gentleman contains figures 
 of George Herbert and Cowper. 
 
 It was a matter of regret to all that Mrs. Kingsley' s extremely 
 delicate health prevented her presence, but we may mention, that 
 so*soon as the bust was completed and ready for the position 
 it now occupies, Mr. Woolner sent it down to Byfleet for her in- 
 spection. Those who know the danger of moving heavy works of 
 art will appreciate the sculptor's kindness, which was, we know, 
 deeply felt by Mrs. Kingsley. 
 
 In Eversley Churchyard his wife has placed a white marble 
 cross, on which, under a spray of his favorite passion-flower, are 
 the words of his choice, the story of his life : 
 
 "Amavimus, Amamus, Amabimus." 
 
 And above them, circling round the Cross, " God is Love," the 
 keynote of his faith. 
 
 The green turf round the grave was soon worn by the tread of 
 many footsteps 5 for months a day seldom passed without strangers 
 being seen in the churchyard. On Bank holidays numbers would 
 come to see his last resting-place — little children, who had loved 
 the " Waterbabies," and the " Heroes," would kneel down rever- 
 ently and look at the beautiful wreaths of flowers, which kind 
 hands had placed there, wliile the gipsies never passed the gate 
 without turning in to stand over the grave in silence, sometimes 
 scattering wild flowers there, believing, as they do, to use their 
 
The " True and Perfect Knight'^ 487 
 
 own strange words, that " he went to heaven on the prayers of the 
 gipsies." 
 
 * « * * * 
 
 % :{: H> H< H: ^ 
 
 And now these scattered memories, connected by a feeble 
 thread all unworthy of its great subject, draw to a close. To some 
 it may have seemed a treachery to lift the veil from the inner life 
 of a man, who while here hated the notoriety which he could not 
 escape, and shrunk from every approach to egotism ; but these 
 private letters, showing, as they do, the steps by which he arrived 
 at many of his most startling conclusions through years of troubled 
 thought, are a commentary on much that seemed contradictory in 
 his teaching, and may justify him, while they teach and strengthen 
 others. Those alone who knew him intimately — and they not 
 wholly — best understood his many-sided mind, and could interpret 
 the apparent contradictions which puzzled others. Those who 
 knew him little, but loved him much, could trust where they could 
 not interpret. But to the public, some explanation, if not due, 
 may yet be welcome ; and in that invisible state where perhaps he 
 now watches with intensest interest the education of the human 
 race, he would not shrink, as he would have shrunk here, from a 
 publicity which, in revealing the workings of his own mind, may 
 make his teaching of the truths which were most precious to him 
 on earth more intelligible, if such a revelation should only help 
 one poor struggling soul to light, and strength, and comfort, in the 
 sore dark battle of life. 
 
 Some, again, may be inclined to say that this character is drawn 
 in too fair colors to be absolutely truthful. But " we speak that we 
 do know, and testify to that we have seen." The outside world 
 must judge him as an author, a preacher, a member of society ; but 
 those only who lived with him in the i itimacy of everyday life at 
 home can tell what he was as a man. Over the real romance of 
 his life, and over the tenderest, loveliest passages in his private let- 
 ters, a veil must be thrown ; but it will not be lifting it too far to 
 say, that if in the highest, closest of earthly relationships, a love 
 that never failed — pure, patient, passionate, for six-and-thirty years 
 — a love which never stooped from its own lofty level to a hasty 
 word, an impatient gesture, or a selfish act, in sickness or in health, 
 in sunshine or in storm, by day or by night, could prove that the 
 
4-88 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 age of chivalry has not passed away for ever, then Charles Kingsley 
 fulfilled the ideal of a "most true and perfect knight" to the one 
 woman blest with that love in time and to eternit^-. To eter- 
 nity — for such love is eternal ; and he is not dead. He himself, 
 the man, lover, husband, father, friend, he still lives in God, who is 
 not the God of the dead, but of the living. 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY'S GRAVE, EVERSLEY CHURCHYARD. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 THE KINGSLEY MEMORIAL FUND. 
 
 The Kingsley Memorial Fund, set on foot in February, 1875, resulted 
 at Eversley in the enlargement of the Church, and in the carrying out 
 of a plan of their late Rector for turning the old vestry in the tower into 
 a baptistery, opening out the roof, and substituting open benches for 
 the remaining pews. The Committee included the following names : — 
 
 The Duke of Westminster. Rev. R. C. Powles. 
 
 Lord Eversley. Rev. Elis Price. 
 
 Lord Calthorpe. Mr. Martineau. 
 
 Rt. Hon. W. Cowper Temple. Mr. Stapleton. 
 
 General Sir William Codrington. Mr. Tindal. 
 
 Sir William Cope. Mr. Dew. 
 
 Mr. Beresford Hope, M. P. Mr. Wyeth. 
 
 Mr. Raikes Currie. Mr. Seymour. 
 
 On a Brass Plate in the Baptistery these words are inscribed : — 
 
 IN PIAM MEMORIAM 
 
 CAROLI KINGSLEY 
 
 S. PETRI WESTMONASTERIENSIS 
 
 CANONICI ^ 
 
 HVIVSCE ECCLESIjE 
 
 PER XXXI ANNOS 
 
 RECTORIS DILECTISSIMI 
 
 HANC ^DEM SACROSANCTAM 
 
 QVAM DOCTRINA ILLVSTRAVIT SVA 
 
 INSTAVRANDAM CVRAVERVNT 
 
 PAROCHIANI ET AMICI 
 
 DESIDERANTES 
 
 A.D. 
 
 MDCCCLXXV. 
 
 At Chester, a Committee with which the Wrexham Society of Natu- 
 ral Science joined, was formed, and it was decided that a Marble Bust 
 should be placed in the Chapter House ; a Medal struck for successful 
 students in the Natural Science Society ; and the ladies of Chester 
 undertook to restore one of the Cathedral Stalls in memory of the 
 Canon. 
 
490 Appendix. 
 
 In London the following Prospectus was issued by Mr. John Thynne, 
 and responded to most generously, both in England and America. 
 
 KINGSLEY MEMORIAL FUND. 
 
 WESTMINSTER. 
 
 Independently of the proposed Restoration of Eversley Church, it is 
 proposed that a Bust should be made of the Rev. Charles Kingsley, 
 and that one copy be presented to the Chapter of Westminster, to be 
 placed in the Abbey, and another to Cambridge, of which University 
 Mr. Kingsley was so distinguished a member. 
 
 Mr. Woolner, R. A., has expressed his willingness to undertake the 
 execution of the bust. 
 
 The following have already sent in their names in support of the 
 Memorial : — 
 
 The Archbishop of Dublin. Sir Arthur Helps, K.C.B. 
 
 The Dean of Chester, Anthony Trollope, Esq. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson, Esq. Thomas Hughes, Esq. 
 
 Tom Taylor, Esq. The Dean of Windsor. 
 
 The Master of Trinity College, John Martineau, Esq. 
 
 Cambridge. Prescott Hewett, Esq. 
 
 The Rev. H. Montagu Butler, G. W. Smalley, Esq., New York. 
 
 D.D. The Rev. C. Powles. 
 
 Professor Max Miiller. The Rt. Hon. Lord John Manners, 
 A. Macmillan, Esq. M.P. 
 
 The Bishop of Chester. Matthew Arnold, Esq. 
 
 The Marquis of Lansdowne. Lord Houghton. 
 
 The Hon. J. L. Motley. The Rev. S. Flood Jones. 
 
 The Rev. Chancellor Benson, D.D. The Duke of Argyll, K.T. 
 
 The Duke of St. Alban's. The Bishop of Winchester. 
 
 John Walter, Esq., M.P. The Earl of Ellesmere. 
 
 The Duke of Bedford. Sir Thomas Watson, Bart. 
 
 The Marquis of Lome, K.T. Sir Charles Russell, Bart., M.P. 
 
 The Right Hon.W.E. Forster,M.P. Lord Carlingford. 
 
 The Right Hon. G. Hirdy, M.P. The Rev. Lord John Thynne. 
 
 The Hon. C. L. Wood. Lord Henniker. 
 
 Professor Tyndall. The Rev. Stopford Brooke. 
 
 Lord Clinton. The Earl of Clarendon. 
 
 Lord Penrhyn. The Rev. Canon Prothero. 
 
 Treasurer : 
 
 John C. Thynne, Esq. 
 
 Little Cloisters, Westminster, Feb. 19, 1875. 
 
 The list of Subscribers, which is too large to be inserted here, 
 includes many names, dear to one who loved Art as he did : among 
 them, George Macfarren, Alma Tadema, James Burn ; besides those 
 of American friends who had welcomed him so warmly and so lately to 
 their homes across the Atlantic. Mr. Charles Peterson, of Phila- 
 delphia ; Mr. J. A. C. Gray, of New York ; Mr. G. W. Childs, of 
 Philadelphia; Mr. D. O. Mills, of Cahfornia, &c., &c. 
 
Appendix. 491 
 
 11. 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF 
 THE REVEREND CHARLES KINGSLEY'S WORKS. 
 
 1848 Saint's Tragedy. 
 
 1849 Alton Locke. 
 1849 Yeast. 
 
 1849 Twenty-five Village Sermons. 
 
 1852 Phaeton. 
 
 1852 Sermons on National Subjects, ist Series. 
 
 1853 Hypatia. 
 
 1854 Sermons on National Subjects, 2nd Series. 
 
 1854 Alexandria and her Schools. 
 
 1855 Westward Ho ! 
 
 1855 Sermons for the Times. 
 
 1856 The Heroes. 
 
 1857 Two Years Ago. 
 
 1858 Andromeda and other Poems. 
 
 1859 The Good News of God — Sermons. 
 1859 Miscellanies. 
 
 i860 Limits of Exact Science applied to History(InauguraI Lectures). 
 
 1 861 Town and Country Sermons. 
 
 1863 Sermons on the Pentateuch. 
 
 1863 Waterbabies, 
 
 1864 The Roman and the Teuton. 
 1866 David and other Sermons. 
 
 1866 Hereward the Wake. * 
 
 1867 The Ancien Regime (Lectures at the Royal Institution). 
 1867 Water of Life and other Sermons. 
 
 1869 The Hermits. 
 
 I869 Madam How and Lady Why. 
 
 1871 At Last. 
 
 1872 Town Geology. 
 
 1872 Discipline and other Sermons. 
 
 1873 Prose Idylls. 
 
 1873 Plays and Puritans. 
 
 1874 Health and Education. 
 
 1874 Westminster Sermons, 
 
 1875 Lectures delivered in America. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ABBOT, Archbishop, portrait of, by 
 Vandyke, 59. 
 
 Abergeldie, Castle of, 380, 381. 
 
 Abou Zennab and his horse, story of, 214. 
 
 " Advanced thinker " rebuked by Kings- 
 ley, 280. 
 
 Agassiz Museum, 455. 
 
 Aldershot, camp at, 233 ; lecture to 
 troops in camp at, 279 ; lecture on 
 study of history at, 354, 411. 
 
 Alston, Capt. A. H. , friendship between 
 Kingsley and, 239. 
 
 ''Alton Locke, Autobiography of a Cock- 
 ney Poet," origin of, iii ; finished, 
 127 ; published by Chapman & Hall, 
 128; published, 132 ; Carlyle on, 132; 
 how received, 136. 
 
 America, Kingsley sails for, with daugh- 
 ter, 452. 
 
 American Lectureship at Cambridge, 
 address on by Kingsley, 364 ; offer 
 to establish rejected, 366. 
 
 American States, Kingsley proposes to 
 lecture on history of, 319. 
 
 Andover, 455. 
 
 Animals, love of, 263. 
 
 Archaeological Society of Chester, Kings- 
 ley presides at, 413. 
 
 Argyle, Duke of, book by, 377. 
 
 Aristocrat, Kingsley repels charge that 
 he is, 109. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, " Culture and Anar- 
 chy," 420. 
 
 Arnold's Life and Letters, 469. 
 
 Art of Learning (the), lecture by Kings- 
 ley on, 330. 
 
 " At Last," 406. 
 
 Articles (the), force of subscription to, 
 
 358, 359- 
 Athanasian Creed, 325, 354 ; asked to 
 
 join committee in defence of, 438. 
 Atheist editor, correspondence with, 288. 
 Attacks on Kingsley's teachings by 
 
 press, 386. 
 "Autobiography of a Cockney Poet," 
 
 III. 
 Avignon, 352. 
 
 BALTIMORE, Kingsley preaches in, 
 460. 
 
 Baptism, infant, F. D. Maurice on, 84. 
 
 Baptists, F. D. Maurice on, 83. 
 
 Barnack, living of, presented to Charles 
 Kingsley, Sr., for son Herbert, 24; 
 living surrendered, 28. 
 
 Bateson, Master of St. John's College, 
 recollections by, 52. 
 
 Bates, H., letter to, 339. 
 
 Bath and Wells, Lord Arthur Harvey, 
 Bishop of, 311. 
 
 Beatific Vision, sermon on, 452. 
 
 Beetle, incident connected with, 470. 
 
 Bell, Dr., and Mrs. W. A., 468. 
 
 Bennett, Sir William Sterndale, 320. 
 
 Bennett, Charles Henry, consults Kings- 
 ley about illustrating " Pilgrim's 
 Progress," 289. 
 
 Benson, Dr., memories of Kingsley by, 
 328. 
 
 Berkeley University, at Oakland, visited, 
 468. 
 
 Betting, letter to young men of Chester 
 on, 426 ; letter on, to son, 431. 
 
 Bewick's works, 369. 
 
 Biarritz, 348, 353. 
 
 Bible politics, 135. 
 
 Birmingham, lectures on Human Physi- 
 ology, 436. 
 
 Blackwell, Dr. Elizabeth, 405. 
 
 Blandford, Kingsley curate of, 69. 
 
 Bloomfield, Dr., Bishop of London, for- 
 bids Kingsley to preach in London, 
 147; prohibition withdrawn, 147. 
 
 Bloomfield, Canon of Chester, letter 
 from, 442, 443. 
 
 Body and .Soul, 235. 
 
 Boston, 455, 459. 
 
 Botta, Prof, and Mrs. , 456, 457. 
 
 Bovill, Chief Justice, death of, 432. 
 
 Bowles, Samuel, 456. 
 
 Boys, teaching of, Kingsley's views on, 
 226. 
 
 Bramshill Park Camp, 432. 
 
 " Brave Words to Brave Soldiers," by 
 Kingsley, 215. 
 
 Bremer, Frederika, 135 ; visits Evers- 
 
494 
 
 Index, 
 
 ley Rectory, 170 ; letter to Kings- 
 ley, 171. 
 
 Bright, Mynors, letter from, 42. 
 
 Brimley, George, letters to, 136, 276. 
 
 Bristol riots, 31, 159. 
 
 British Association meets at Cambridge, 
 321 ; meeting of, at St. Andrews, 379. 
 
 British Museum, paper on, by " Parson 
 Lot," 102. 
 
 Bronte, Miss, Life and Works of, 269. 
 
 Brooke, Rajah, Sir James, letter from 
 on " Westward Ho ! " 221. 
 
 Brotherhoods and societies, letter from 
 Kingsleyon, 211. 
 
 Brother's love illustrated by story of 
 Dover coachmen, 60. 
 
 Brown, Rev. Baldwin, on keeping Crys- 
 tal Palace open on Sundays, 171. 
 
 Bryant, W. C, 457. 
 
 Bullar, John, letters from Kingsley to, 
 237, 267, 268, 275. 
 
 Bunbury, Sir Charles Fox, letter from 
 Kingsleyon rain sermon, 309; Kings- 
 . ley's friendship with, 311 ; memories 
 of Kingsley, 312 ; proposes Kings- 
 ley as Fellow of Geological Society, 
 326 ; letter from Kingsley to, on ap- 
 pointment to Westminster, 449, 
 
 Bunsen, Chevalier, 62 ; on " Hypatia," 
 178, 180 ; letter from, to Kingsley 
 about preface to " Deutsche Theolo- 
 gie," 208. 
 
 Bunsen, Henry de, paper by, on " How 
 can the State best help in the Edu- 
 cation of the Working Classes," 
 403 ; recollections of Kingsley, 403. 
 
 Button Cap at Barnack, 24. 
 
 CALVINISM, ruinous influence of, 
 237- 
 
 Cambridge, incident of examination 
 at, 53 ; inaugural lectures at, by 
 Kingsley, 311, 455. 
 
 Campbell, Rev. E. Pitcairn, letter from, 
 44 ; letter to, on Royal Wedding, 
 327 ; on toads in a hole, 341. 
 
 Canterbury, Archbishop of, congratu- 
 lates Kingsley on appointment to 
 Westminster, 443. 
 
 Carcassonne, 350. 
 
 Carlyle's works, effects of, on Kingsley, 
 49 ; writings, bright views of life, 
 given by, 75, 118 ; recommends 
 "Alton Locke" to Chapman and 
 Hall, 128; opinion of "Alton 
 Locke," 132 ; Kingsley not follower 
 of in theology, 269 ; views on Church 
 of England, 320. 
 
 Carnarvon, Lord, 287. 
 
 Catholics, justice to, 285. 
 
 Character Album, as filled out by 
 Kingsley, 439. 
 
 Chartist outbieak, 94 ; Kingsley preach- 
 es on, 97 ; sketch of, by Thomas 
 
 Hughes, 98 ; Kingsley attends 
 
 Chartist meeting, 117. 
 " Cheap Clothes, and Nasty," by Parson 
 
 Lot, 129 ; preface to, by Thomas 
 
 Hughes, 97. 
 Chester, Kingsley takes up residence at, 
 
 411 ; botanical class at, 423 ; Lyell 
 
 made member of Natural Science 
 
 Society, 424. 
 Chevallier Mons, 117. 
 Childs, G. W., 458. A 
 
 Cholera in England, 120 ; three sermons 
 
 preached on, 120. 
 Christ weeping over Jerusalem, subject 
 
 of sermon in Westminster Abbey, 
 
 475- 
 Chris'tian Socialist, 135 ; attacked in 
 
 Edinburgh and Quarterly, 137 ; 
 
 stopped, 164. 
 Chronological list of Kingsley 's works, 
 
 491. 
 Church of Rome, letter from Kingsley 
 
 to young man going over to, 114. 
 Civil Service Volunteers, Kingsley made 
 
 chaplain of, 308. 
 Clemens, Samuel (Mark Twain), 459. 
 Colenso on Pentateuch, 343. 
 Coleridge, Derwent, Kingsley's teacher 
 
 at Helston, 32 ; reminiscences by, 
 
 33- 
 
 Colorado Springs, 469. 
 
 Congreve, Capt. , memories by, 283. 
 
 Conington, Prof, reviews " The Saint's 
 Tragedy," 92. 
 
 Conscience, incident of Maurice's lec- 
 ture on, 387. 
 
 " Constitutionalism of the Future," let- 
 ter to Prof Lorimer on, ^iTi- 
 
 Comte, lectures on, at Cambridge, 400. 
 
 Cooper, Thomas, acquaintance with, 
 begins, 108 ; letters to, 108, 187- 
 200. 
 
 Cornell University, 460. 
 
 Cotton famine, controversy about with 
 Lancashire mill-owners, 319. 
 
 Cranworth, Lord, 287. 
 
 " Crime and its Punishment," pamphlet 
 on, by Henry Taylor, 388. 
 
 Crimean war, 207, 215. 
 
 Crystal Palace, question of opening on 
 Sunday, 171 ; letter from Kingsley 
 on, 172. 
 
 "Culture and Anarchy," Matthew Ar- 
 nold's, 420. 
 
 Culture, address on, at Berkeley Uni- 
 versity, Cal. , 468. 
 
 Curtis, G. W., 455. 
 
 D 
 
 ARWIN, 210; " Originof Species " 
 and " Fertilization of Orchids," 
 327 ; conquering, 337 ; letters to, 
 on "Natural Selection," 339, 377, 
 378 ; Kingsley oh progress of Dar 
 winism, 378. 
 
Index. 
 
 495 
 
 David, sermons on, 355. 
 
 Death of Kingsley, 482. 
 
 " Delectable Day, The," verses on, 
 438. 
 
 Detroit, 461, 
 
 " Deutsche Theologie " by Bunsen, Miss 
 Winkworth translates, and Kingsley 
 writes preface to, 207, 209. 
 
 Development theory, letter to H. Bates 
 on, 339, 
 
 Devonshire, Duke of, installed as Chan- 
 cellor of Cambridge, 320. 
 
 Diphtheria appears at Eversley, 278. 
 
 Disestablishment discussed in letter to 
 Thomas Cooper, 199, 
 
 Drummond, Henry, letters from, on 
 " Westward Ho ! " 220. 
 
 Dunn, Henry, memories by, 390, 
 
 ■pBRINGTON, Lord, 469. 
 
 Edinburgh, Kingsley lectures on 
 " Schools of Alexandria " at, 205, 
 
 '' Education of the Working Classes, 
 how can the State best help in," 
 paper by Henry de Bunsen, 403. 
 
 Education League, Kingsley joins, 404. 
 
 "Egotism," article on, by Lionel Tolle- 
 mache, 402. 
 
 Elegiacs composed on Morte Sands, 
 112. 
 
 Emancipated Women, letter from Kings- 
 ley to John Stuart Mill on, 417. 
 
 Emma, Queen of Sandwich Islands, 
 visits Eversley, 361 ; writes letter to 
 Dr. Benson of Wellington College, 
 361 ; letter from, to Kingsley, 362. 
 
 Endless Torment, letter to Thomas 
 Cooper on, 194, 
 
 Epicedium, 165. 
 
 Erie Railroad, narrow escape from acci- 
 dent on, 460. 
 
 Erskine, Henry, death of, 356. 
 
 Erskine, Rt. Hon. Thomas, settles at 
 Eversley, 164. 
 
 "Essays and Reviews," letter from 
 Kingsley to Dean Stanley on, 316 ; 
 letter on, to Bishop of Winchester 
 (Dr. Sumner), 367. 
 
 Eversley, Kingsley made Curate of, 54 ; 
 parish described, 58 ; life at, de- 
 scribed by mother, 67; Kingsley 
 settles as Rector of, 76 ; parish work 
 at, TJ \ first confirmation, 79; low 
 contagious fever breaks out in, 118 ; 
 flood in, 129 ; study window of rec- 
 tory, 396; life at rectory described 
 by Rev. Wm. Harrison, 395 ; Kings- 
 ley's grave in church-yard at, 488. 
 
 Eyre, Ex-Gov. of Jamaica, Kingsley's 
 defence of, 370. 
 
 " Ezekiel's Vision," sermon before 
 the Queen, 354. 
 
 Tn*AME and Praise, Kingsley on, 229. 
 
 Farley Court, winter at, 233. 
 
 Field, Cyrus W., 463, 465, 466. 
 
 Field, James T., 459. 
 
 '' Firmley Murder," 135. 
 
 Fishing for trout at Salisbury, 74 ; de- 
 scription of fishing excursion, 107 ; 
 on the Torridge, 119 ; Notes on, 
 to Thomas Hughes, 139 ; expedition 
 to Snowdon with Tom Hughes and 
 Tom Taylor, 235 ; lines to wife on, 
 241 ; letter to Tom Hughes on, 242 ; 
 in Strathficidsaye, 272 ; kills first 
 salmon at Markree Castle, 308 ; 
 catching salmon in Scotland, 321 ; 
 letter to Froude on, 340. 
 
 Forster, Rt. Hon. E. , 284. 
 
 Fortesque, Dudley, 469. 
 
 Fraser's Magazine, edited by Kingsley, 
 376. 
 
 Freedmen's Aid Union, letter to T. 
 Hughes inquiring about, 382. 
 
 " Frithiofs Saga" presented to Kings- 
 ley by Fredrika Bremer, 170. 
 
 Froude, on Oxford and Cambridge Re- 
 view 86, 93, 94 ; becomes ac- 
 quainted with his future wife, Mrs. 
 Kingsley's sister, iii ; at Clovelly 
 met Kingsley, 114, 117 ; quoted as 
 an authority on natural phenomena 
 of Snowdon, 276 ; letter to, 340 ; 
 goes to Spain to examine Simancas 
 MSS., 347, 376; letter to, from 
 Kingsley on settlement at Chester, 
 413 ; opinion of ballad of Lorraine, 
 472. 
 
 Froude, Mrs. J. A., death of, 306. 
 
 Funeral of Kingsley, 484. 
 
 GASKELL, Mrs., letter from Kings- 
 ley vindicating her from attack, 
 180; letter from Kingsley to, on 
 Miss Bronte's " Life," 269. 
 
 Oilman, D. C.,468. 
 
 Geological Society, Kingsley made Fel- 
 low of, 326. 
 
 Gladstone nominates Kingsley to Can- 
 onry of Chester, 404 ; letter from, 
 appointing Kingsley Canon of 
 Westminster, 441. 
 
 " Glaucus," origin of, 203, 
 
 Glyder, melodrama on the, 276. 
 
 Good Words, 319. 
 
 Gordon, Sir Arthur, invites Kingsley to 
 visit Trinidad, 399. 
 
 Gosse, H. P., Kingsley sends specimens 
 to, 202 ; letter to, 203 ; meeting 
 with, 210. 
 
 Grant, U. S. President, 457. 
 
 Gray, Dr. Asa, 338, 456. 
 
 Gray, J. A. C, 463, 468. 
 
 " Great Cities, their influence for Good 
 and Evil," 275. 
 
496 
 
 Index. 
 
 Great Exhibition, 135 ; sermon on open- 
 ing of, 140 ; question of opening 
 on Sunday, 172, 173. 
 
 Grenfell, Fanny, Kingsley married to, 
 
 74- 
 
 Grenfell, Charlotte, wife of J. A. Froude, 
 death of, 306. 
 
 Grenfell, Charles, death of, 306. 
 
 Grove, George, letter to, from Kings- 
 ley on keeping Crystal Palace open 
 on Sunday, 170. 
 
 Gull, Sir William, 480. 
 
 HANSARD, Rev. Septimus, assists 
 Kingsley at Eversley, 316. 
 
 Hants and Wilts Education Society, 
 lectures before, 278. 
 
 Hare, Archdeacon, 94 ; consulted about 
 protest against dismissal of Maurice 
 from King's College, 185 ; letter 
 from, touching dismissal, 185 ; wor- 
 ried about Maurice's affairs, 206. 
 
 Harrison, Rev. William, memories by, 
 391, 482. 
 
 Harrow-on-the-Hill, 441. 
 
 Harvard, address on American Lecture- 
 ship in Cambridge, 364. 
 
 Harvey, Lord Arthur, Bishop of Bath 
 and Wells, 311. 
 
 Hay, Col. John, 456. 
 
 Hayden, Prof., 457. 
 
 Helps, Sir Arthur, Kingsley writes to, 
 on sanitary matters, 205. 
 
 Henry, Dr., 457. 
 
 Henslowe, Rev. Geo. .letter from Kings- 
 ley to, on sense of humor in Crea- 
 tor, 274. 
 
 " Hermits" for Sunday Library, 387,398. 
 
 "Heroes, The,'' book of Greek fairy 
 tales, by Kingsley, 228. 
 
 " Heroism," lectures on, 437. 
 
 Hildyard, Canon of Chester, letter from, 
 
 443- 
 
 " Hereward the Wake," seeds of, 29. 
 
 " High Church Parson " (Rev. Baldwin 
 Brown), on keeping Crystal Palace 
 open on Sunday, 173. 
 
 Hippocampus Question, controversy on, 
 between Owen and Huxley, 322 ; 
 burlesque speech of Lord Dun- 
 dreary on, by Kingsley, 322. 
 
 Holiest, clergyman of Frimley, murder- 
 ed, 130. 
 
 Hooker, Dr. Joseph, 311. 
 
 Housebreaking and robbery in Hamp- 
 shire, Surrey, and Sussex, 130. 
 
 Howard, George, letter from, 366. 
 
 Howson, Dean, memories of Kingsley 
 by, 445 ; preaches sermon on Kings- 
 ley's life, 484. 
 
 Hughes, Prof., President of Chester 
 Scientific Society, 449. 
 
 Hughes, Thomas, Kingsley becomes 
 acquainted with, 94 ; preface by, to 
 
 " Cheap Clothes, and Nasty," 97 ; 
 recollections of Kingsley by, 97 ; 
 defends Kingsley from charge of 
 being a Chartist, loi ; letter from 
 Kingsley to, 138 ; letter from 
 Kingsley to, on Iron lockout, 160 ; 
 on the Crimean War, 214, 215 ; on 
 fishing excursion to Snowdon, 234- 
 246, 247 ; invitation in verse to visit 
 Snowdon, 248 ; gossip about fish- 
 ing, 242 ; letter to, on '' Two Years 
 Ago," 265; on occasion of Kings- 
 ley's thirty-eighth birthday, 270 ; on 
 " Tom Brown," 271 ; on fortieth 
 birthday, 288 ; letter to, about Mill 
 and Maurice, 356 ; letter to, inquir- 
 ing about Freedmen's Aid Union, 
 382. 
 
 Human Physiology and Science of 
 Health, lectures on, founded at 
 Birmingham, 436. 
 
 Humor, sense of, in the Creator, letter 
 on, 274. 
 
 " Hypatia," reference to " Oxford 
 Tracts '' in introduction to, 43 ; be- 
 gun as serial in Fraser's, 135 ; letter 
 to J. M. Ludlow, 165 ; published as 
 a book, 178 ; condemned as immor- 
 al by Professor of Hebrew in Cam- 
 bridge, 342 ; Whittier's opinion of, 
 
 473- 
 Huxley, letter to, 339. 
 Huxley and Owen, on Hippocampus 
 
 Question, 322. 
 " Hypotheses Hypochondriacae,'' 36. 
 " Hyppolytus," Baron Bunsen's, 178, 
 
 180. 
 
 TGNATIUS and Hyppolytus, Baron 
 -•- Bunsen's, 178,* 180. 
 Ilfracombe, Kingsley recruiting at, iii. 
 Indians of N. America, Kingsley's views 
 
 of, 387- 
 Indian Mutiny, news of, received, 267 ; 
 
 Kingsley s distress over, 275. 
 Invitation, in verse, to fishing trip on 
 
 Snowdon, to Tom Hughes and Tom 
 
 Taylor, 248. 
 Iron trade lockout, letter from Kingsley 
 
 on, 160. 
 Ithaca, 464. 
 
 TAMIESON'S (Mrs.) " Sacred and 
 
 J Legendary Art,'' article on, in Fra^ 
 ser. III. 
 
 '' Jane Eyre,'" 266. 
 
 Jews' tin and Jews' houses, 371. 
 
 J inns. The, 372. 
 
 Jowett, Prof., 380. 
 
 Justice of God, letter to Thomas Coo- 
 per on, 189. 
 
 " Juventus Mundi," poem by Kingsley, 
 452. 
 
Index. 
 
 497 
 
 KINGSLEY, CHARLES, birth of, 
 21 ; descent, 21 ; account of his 
 father, 21 ; mother, 22 ; account of 
 maternal grandfather, 23 ; letter 
 about Button Cap, 25 ; sermon 
 and poems at four years of age, 25, 
 26 ; juvenile reminiscences, 28 ; be- 
 gins study of conchology, 30 ; life 
 at Clovelly, Devonshire, 30, 31 ; at 
 Helston Grammar School under Der- 
 went Coleridge, 32, 34, 36 ; entered 
 at King's College, 38 ; entered at 
 Magdalene College and gains schol- 
 larship, 41 ; first meets future wife, 
 42 ; thinks of going to the Far West, 
 44 ; difficulties about Trinity, 46 ; 
 pedestrian feats, 48 ; decides on the 
 Church as a profession, 51 ; leaves 
 Cambridge, S3 ; Curate of Eversley, 
 54; ordained at Farnham, 56; first 
 day of public ministration at Evers- 
 ley, 59 ; engagement to future wife, 
 6g ; Curate of Blandford, 69 ; do- 
 mestic arrangements at Pimperne, 
 72 ; married to Fanny Grenfell, 74 ; 
 presented to living of Eversley, 76 ; 
 settled as Rector of Eversley, 76 ; 
 first confirmation at, 79 ; first per- 
 sonal acquaintance with Maurice, 
 80 ; Honorary Canon of Middleham, 
 85 ; eldest son born, 91 ; lionized at 
 Oxford, 92 ; Professor of English 
 Literature in Queen's College, 93 ; 
 proposed for professorship in Kings' 
 College, 107; breaks down while 
 writing " Yeast," 109 ; in ill-health at 
 Ilfracombe, iii ; decides to take 
 pupils, 113 ; letter to a young man 
 going over to Church of Rome, 114 ; 
 breaks down nursing sick at Evers- 
 ley, 118 ; resigns office of Clerk in 
 Orders at Chelsea, 127 ; finishes "Al- 
 ton Locke," 127; letter in reply to 
 attack on "Yeast" in the Guar- 
 dian, 142 ; publicly rebuked by In- 
 cumbent of a London church for 
 sermon to working men, 146 ; visits 
 Germany, 148 ; correspondence with 
 Maurice touching dismissal from 
 King's College, 181-185 ; classed as 
 unorthodox, 202 ; lectures at Edin- 
 burgh on " Schools of Alexandria," 
 205 ; writes preface to Bunsen's 
 " Deutsche Theologie," 207; con- 
 ference with Palmerston on sanitary 
 matters, 207 ;. letter from, to a lady 
 on joining a sisterhood, 210 ; lectures 
 on Fine Arts at Bideford, 221 ; facility 
 in sketching, 223 ; address on work of 
 ladies in country parish, 223 • writes 
 the " Heroes," book of Greek fairy 
 tales, 228 ; winter at Farley Court, 
 233; " Two Years Ago, "234; fishing 
 excursion to Snowdon with Tom 
 Hughes and Tom Taylor, 254 ; invi- 
 
 32 
 
 tation to, 248 ; verses in visitors' 
 book at Pen-y-gwryd, 252 ; fall from 
 a horse, 255 ; writes preface to life 
 of Tauler, 256; completes " Two 
 Years Ago," 265 ; made Fellow of 
 Linnaean Society, 265 ; views on 
 marriage, 267 ; fights diphtheria at 
 Eversley, 278; rebuke to an "ad- 
 vanced thinker," 280 ; poems pub- 
 lished, 280 ; preaches before Queen 
 and made a Chaplain in Ordinary, 
 286 ; preaches sermon at marriage 
 of niece to Max Miiller, 287 ; address 
 to Ladies' Sanitary Association, 
 291 ; appointed Regius Professor of 
 Modern History at Cambridge, 303 ; 
 takes his degree of M. A, 307 ; made 
 chaplain of Civil Service Volunteers, 
 308 ; preaches sermon for Trinity 
 House, by command of Prince Con- 
 sort, 308 ; sermon on ''Why should 
 we Pray for fair Weather ?" 309 ; 
 inaugural lecture at Cambridge on 
 " The Limits of Exact Science 
 applied to History," 311 ; lectures 
 on " The Roman and the Teuton," 
 311 ; lectures before Prince of 
 Wales on Modern History, 314 ; 
 letter to Dean Stanley on " Essays 
 and Reviews," 316 ; lectures on 
 history of American States, 319 ; 
 writes installation ode for Duke of 
 Devonshire as Chancellor of Cam- 
 bridge, 320 ; visits Scotland, 321 ; 
 burlesque speech of Lord Dundrea- 
 ry on Hippocampus question, 322 ; 
 made Fellow of Geological Society, 
 326 ; Chaplain to Prince of Wales, 
 327 ; lecture on " Art of Learning," 
 330 ; proposed by Prmce of Wales to 
 Oxford for degree of D.C.L., 342 ; 
 name withdrawn, 342 ; sermon on 
 Pentateuch, 343 ; publishes "Water- 
 babies," 345 ; controversy over New- 
 man's " Apologia pro vita sua," 346 ; 
 starts for Spain with Froude, 347; 
 preaches before Queen on " Ezeki- 
 el's Vision " in Chapel Royal, 354 ; 
 sermons on David, 355 ; visited by 
 Queen Emma of Sandwich Islands, 
 361 ; lines on death of King Leo- 
 pold, 362 ; address on proposed 
 American Lectureship in Cam- 
 bridge, 364 ; lectures at Royal In- 
 stitution on Science and Supersti- 
 tion, 368 ; defence of ex-Gov. Eyre, 
 370 ; edits Fraser's Magazine for 
 Froude, 376 ; on Darwinism, 378 ; 
 visits Scotland, 379; how to cure 
 stammering, 383 ; lectures on i6th 
 Century, 386 ; incident in Maurice's 
 lecture room, 387 ; " Hermits," 387 ; 
 " Madam How and Lady Why," 
 387 ; resigns Cambridge professor- 
 ship, 398, 400 ; attends Women's 
 
^498 
 
 Index. 
 
 Suffrage meeting with J. Stuart Mill, 
 398 ; made Canon of Chester, 402 ; 
 presides over educational section 
 of Social Science Congress, 403 ; 
 joins Education League, 404 ; in- 
 stalled Canon at Chester, 406 ; sails 
 for West Indies, 406; arrival at 
 Trinidad, 408 ; return from West 
 Indies, 410 ; lectures at Sion College 
 on theology of the future, 422 ; presi- 
 dent of Midland Institute, 435 ; ap- 
 pointed Canon of Westminster, 414; 
 farewell to Chester, 442 ; death of 
 mother, 442 ; first residence in 
 Westminster, 449, 451 ; sermon in, 
 452 ; sails for America, 452 ; ar- 
 rival at New York, 454 ; Boston and 
 Cambridge, 455 ; Philadelphia, 457 ; 
 Washington, 457 ; opens Session of 
 House with prayer, 458 ; Western 
 trip, 461-470 ; severely ill in Colora- 
 do, 468; returns to Eversley, 474 ; 
 attack of congestion of liver, 474 ; 
 last illness, 477 ; death, 482 ; burial 
 at Eversley, 483 ; grave, 488 ; memo- 
 rial fund, 489 ; chronological list of 
 works, 491. 
 
 Kingsley ancestry, 413. 
 
 Kingsley, Charles, father. Rector of 
 Holne, 21 ; Rector of Barnack, 24; 
 Rector of Clovelly and St. Luke's, 
 30, 38 ; death of, 304 ; epitaph on, 
 
 304- 
 Kingsley, Gen., Governor of Fort Wil- 
 liam, 279. 
 Kingsley, Herbert, living of Barnack 
 
 held for, 24 ; death of, 35. 
 Kingsley, Mrs., description of future 
 
 husband, when she first met him, 42 ; 
 
 marriage, 74 ; narrow escape of, 237 ; 
 
 serious illness of, 477. 
 Kingsley, Lieut., death of, 84. 
 Kingsley, Miss Rose, letter from father 
 
 to, 107 ; account of travels in United 
 
 States, .1.54 et seq. 
 Kingsley, Maurice, memories of father 
 
 by, 261 ; at home from Mexico, 442. 
 Kingsley, Grenville Arthur, second son 
 
 born, 283. 
 Kingsley, Mrs., mother of Charles, 
 
 death of, 442. 
 Kingsley, Dr., 468. 
 Kingsley, Dr. William, of New Haven, 
 
 459- 
 Knowledge of God, letter to Thomas 
 Cooper on, 193. 
 
 LABORING Man, Message of Church 
 to, sermon by Kingsley, 145. 
 Ladies" Sanitary Association, address 
 
 to, 291. 
 Ladies, work of, in country parish, ad- 
 dress 0.1 by Kingsley, 223. 
 Land Colo lization question, 117. 
 
 Last illness of Kingsley, 477-482. 
 
 " Levana," by Jean Paul, quotations 
 from, 257. 
 
 Lees, Mr., reads for Holy Orders with 
 Kingsley, 129. 
 
 Leopold, King of Belgium, death of, 
 362. 
 
 "Limits of Exact Science applied to 
 History," Kingsley 's inaugural lec- 
 ture at Cambridge, 311. 
 
 Linnaean Society, Kingsley made Fellow 
 of, 265. 
 
 London Quarterly Review, favorable 
 notice of Kingsley 's works in, 269. 
 
 Long Game (The), 135. 
 
 Longfellow, H. W. , 388 ; dines with, at 
 Cambridge, Mass., 456. 
 
 Lorimer, Prof. , letter to on ' ' Constitu- 
 tionalism of the Future," 373. 
 
 " Lorraine," ballad of, 471. 
 
 Lotos Club, reception by, 454. 
 
 Loyalty and Sanatory Reform, sermon 
 on, 433. 
 
 Ludlow, John Malcolm, 94 ; letters to, 
 105, 128, 131, 165, 168, 228, 232; 
 
 Lyell, Sir Charles, letter from, to Kings- 
 ley on rain sermon, 309, 311 ; sec- 
 onds Kingsley's nomination as 
 Fellow of Geological Society, 326 ; 
 letter from Kingsley to, 337 ; made 
 member of Natural Science Society 
 at Chester, 424. 
 
 MACLEOD, Dr. Norman, death of, 
 434- 
 
 " Madam How," written, 283. 
 
 "Madam How and Lady Why," 387, 
 398. 
 
 Mallet, Sir Charles, 311. 
 
 Man and woman, intellectual relations 
 between, 55. 
 
 Mansfield, Charles B., 118; death of, 
 216 ; sketch of, by Kingsley, 217. 
 
 Manchester Exhibition, 267. 
 
 Mariposa Grove, 467. 
 
 Mark Twain, 459. 
 
 Marriage, Kingsley's views on, 267 ; 
 eternity of, 299 ; views on second 
 marriage, 302. 
 
 Martineau, John, recollections of Kings- 
 ley by, 149. 
 
 Marty n, Henry, life of, 74. 
 
 Massacre of Innocents, 286. 
 
 Maurice, "Kingdom of Christ" first 
 read, 61 ; Kingsley's first personal 
 acquaintance with, 80 ; letter from, 
 81 ; sponsor to Kingsley's eldest 
 son, 91 ; writes preface to Kingsley's 
 life of St. Elizabeth, 91 ; trying to 
 control Chartist outbreak, 95 ; ex- 
 cursion to Crowland Abbey with, 
 107 , letter from, to Prof. Thompson 
 commending Kingsley as tutor, 113; 
 letters from Kingsley to, 131, 135, 
 
Index. 
 
 499 
 
 236 ; on Kingsley's reply to review 
 of "Yeast" in Guardian, 142; 
 anecdote of, by John Martineau , 
 153 ; " Tlieological Essays," 181 ; 
 dismissed from King's College for 
 sermon on Eternal Life and Death, 
 181 ; letters from Kingsley on dis- 
 missal, 181, 184 ; Kingsley visits, in 
 London, 206; views on Kingsley 
 writing preface to "■ Deutsche The- 
 ologie," 208 ; letter to, from Kings- 
 ley on Sabbath question, 243 ; let- 
 ter to, from Kingsley on father's 
 death, 305 ; superintends issue of 
 " Tracts for Priests and People," 
 318 ; letter to, on Darwinism, 337 ; 
 letter to, on Pentateuch, 343 ; letter 
 to, on Stanley's lectures on Jewish 
 Church, 344 ; letter to, on Athana- 
 sian Creed, 354 ; letter to, on ser- 
 mons on David, 355 ; letter to, on 
 Doctrine of the Trinity, and Sub- 
 scription to Articles, 359 ; letter to, 
 on Savonarola, 360 ; appointed to 
 Chair of Moral Philosophy at Cam- 
 bridge, 366 ; incident of lecture on 
 Conscience, 387 ; at dinner to Long- 
 fellow, 388 ; letter to, on overwork, 
 399; death of, 434, 435- 
 
 Medical Education of Women, 404. 
 
 Memorial Fund to Kingsley, 485, 489, 
 490. 
 
 Meteor shower, 372. 
 
 Middleham, Kingsley Honorary Canon 
 of, 85. 
 
 Mills, D. 0.,46s. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, letter from, 297; let- 
 ters to, from Kingsley on Woman 
 question, 401 ; Kingsley's personal 
 impressions of, 401 ; letter from 
 Kingsley to, on Womans' Rights. 
 416 
 
 Mitford, Miss, mistakes his curate for 
 Kingsley, 125, 135. 
 
 Montagu, Rev. James, letter from, 50. 
 
 Montagu, Col. Geo. and Montagu's 
 Chirodota, 203. 
 
 Montagu, Lord Robert, letter to, on re- 
 vivals, 299. 
 
 Money difficulties, Kingsley on, 206. 
 
 Monsell, Rev. Dr., letter from, about 
 " Santa Maura,'' 281. 
 
 Muller, Max, criticism on " Saga," 165 ; 
 on Kingsley at sea-shore, 204; visits 
 Kingsley, 265 ; marriage of, to 
 Kingsley's neice, 287 ; letter to, on 
 Jews' Tin, Jews' Houses, and Ger- 
 many, 371 ; on funeral of Kingsley, 
 484. 
 
 NAPIER, Sir W., description of, an- 
 swering to that of Kingsley, 260. 
 Napier, Mrs. Wm , asks Kingsley to 
 bless new regimental colors, 279. 
 
 Napier, Sir Charles, on the 22nd Regt., 
 
 279. 
 Narbonne, 350. 
 
 National Subjects, sermons on, 174. 
 " Nature's Melodrama," 277. 
 "Natural Selection," Wallace's Essay 
 
 on, 419. 
 New Haven, 459. 
 Newman's (Dr.) Apologia pro vita sua, 
 
 controversy over, 346. 
 Newman, F., 117. 
 Niagara visited, 461. 
 Nismes, 351. 
 
 " North-East Wind, Ode to," 310. 
 Novel writing, Kingsley on, 105. 
 " Nun's Pool, The," 135. 
 
 ODE to the North-East Wind, by 
 Kingsley, 310. 
 Omaha, 463. 
 Owen and Huxley on Hippocampus 
 
 question, 322. 
 Owen, Prof., 118. 
 
 Oxford and Cambridge Review, 85, 86. 
 " Oxford Tracts," Kingsley's first im- 
 pressions of, 43. 
 
 PALESTINE, questions about geo- 
 logy of, 310. 
 Palmer, Gen. and Mrs. , 469. 
 Parker, John, publisher, 94. 
 Parson Lot, origin of nont de plume,, 98 ; 
 
 on British Museum, 105 ; last words 
 
 in " Christian Socialist," 164. 
 Patteson, Bishop, letter to Max Muller 
 
 on, 435. 
 Pau, 349. 
 Paul, Rev. C. Kegan, Memories of 
 
 Kingsley by, 121 ; letter to, 130 ; let- 
 ter to, about Justice to Catholics, 
 
 285. 
 Pen-y-gwryd, lines in visitors' book at, 
 
 by Tom Hughes, Tom Taylor, and 
 
 Kingsley, 252. 
 Penny Readings, 367. 
 Pentateuch, Kingsley's sermons on, 343. 
 Penrose, Frank, letter from, 50. 
 " Pepys's Diary " expurgated, 402. 
 Periodical proposed, 89. 
 Perkins, Mrs., sister of Mrs. H. B, 
 
 Stowe, visits Eversley, 234. 
 Peterson, C. J., 457. 
 Philadelphia visited, 457. 
 "Pilgrim's Progress" illustrated, 289, 
 
 298. 
 ''Pilgrimage of Grace," unfinished 
 
 novel, 284. 
 Plucknett, Mr., memories by, 222. 
 Poems published, 280. 
 Poetry, advice to an Oxford friend on 
 
 writing and publishing, 109. 
 Poetic faculty, Kingsley's opinion of his 
 
 own, 169. 
 
500 
 
 Index. 
 
 ■' Politics for People," appearance of 
 first number, 99. 
 
 Popery and Protestantism, struggle be- 
 tween, 88. 
 
 Popery, article on, in Frasers Magazine, s^ 
 
 93- 
 
 Potter, U. S. Senator, 460. 
 
 Poverty, views of, 60. 
 
 Powles, Rev. R.. C. , reminiscences of 
 Kingsley at Helston Grammar 
 School, 34 ; letter to, 88. 
 
 Price, Rev. Elis, 474. 
 
 Prince Consort, 286 ; by command of, 
 Kingsley delivers annual sermon at 
 Trinity House, 308 ; delivers lec- 
 tures before Prince of Wales on , 
 Modern History, 314 ; death of, 316, 
 319. 
 
 Prince of Wales, Kingsley lectures 
 before, on Modern History, 314 ; 
 marriage of, 327; proposes Kings- 
 ley's name to Oxford for degree of 
 D.C.L. , 342; in Bramshill Park 
 Camp, 432 ; attacked with fever, 
 432 ; sends Sir William Gull to at- 
 tend Kingsley, 480. 
 
 Pulliblank, Rev. J. , memories by, 386. 
 
 Punishment, corporal, Kingsley 's views 
 of, 389. 
 
 Punishment of children, Kingsley's 
 views of, 258. 
 
 " Purgatory of Suicides," by Thomas 
 Cooper, 108. 
 
 i^UEEN'S Chaplain, Kingsley ap- 
 >^ pointed, 286. 
 
 Queen, sermon before on " Ezekiel's 
 Vision," 354. 
 
 ■p ABELAIS, Kingsley learns from. 
 
 rv 
 
 119. 
 
 Ragged School, Kingsley on, 226. 
 Rain, sermon by Kingsley on, 309. 
 Reading for Orders, advice on, to C. 
 
 Kegan Paul, 130: 
 Regius Professor of Modern History at 
 
 Cambridge, 303. 
 Revivals and revivalists, 299. 
 Richter, Jean Paul, 259. 
 Rigg, Rev. Dr., letter to, 269. 
 '• Roman and the Teuton, The," lectures 
 
 on, by Kingsley at Cambridge, 
 
 311. 
 Rome, Church of, Kingsley's advice to 
 
 young man about going over to, 
 
 114. 
 Romilly, spot where drowned, 284. 
 Rothery, Mr. and Mrs. H. C. , 4S8, 463. 
 
 469, 
 Royal Wedding, Prince of Wales, 327. 
 Rusfiell, Francis, letter from Kingsley 
 
 to, 255. 
 
 SABBATH question, letter to Maurice 
 on, 244. 
 Sacramento, 465. 
 " Saint's Tragedy," published, 92. 
 Salt Lake City, 464. 
 Sanitary Matters, conference with Lord 
 
 Palmerston on, 207 ; gives evidence 
 
 on before House of Commons, 210 ; 
 
 clergy urged to attend to, 205. 
 Sanitary Science, lectures on, 286. 
 Sanitary Reform, connection of women 
 
 with, 291. 
 "Santa Maura," 135; publication of, 
 
 280 ; Kingsley to Maurice on letter 
 
 from Dr.Monsell on, 281 ; Kingsley's 
 
 reply, 282. 
 Savonarola, letter to Maurice on, 360. 
 Schools of Alexandria, Kingsley lectures 
 
 on, at Edinburgh, 205. 
 Schulze, Dr. Karl, 440. 
 Science and Superstition, lectures on at 
 
 Royal Institution, 368. 
 Science Congress, 404. 
 Science of Health, classes and lectures 
 
 on, founded at Birmingham, 436. 
 Scriptures, study ot, letter from F. D. 
 
 Maurice on, 81. 
 Self-improvement, Kingsley's views on, 
 
 70. 
 Sermons for the Times, 227 ; good 
 
 worked by, 240 ; letter to Kingsley 
 
 on, from chaplain, 272. 
 Seymour, Sir Michael, 238. 
 Shaw, F. G., 454- 
 Shairp, Prof., memories of Kingsley by, 
 
 381. 
 Shields, Frederic, letter to, on illustrat- 
 ing " Pilgrim's Progress," 298. 
 Shirley, 269. 
 Sisterhood, letter from Kingsley to a 
 
 lady enjoining, 211. 
 Sixteenth Century, lectures on, 386. 
 Sketching, Kingsley's facility in, 223. 
 Smith, Rev. H. Percy, Curate of Evers- 
 
 ley, 118. 
 Smoking, Kingsley defends his habit of, 
 
 129. 
 Snowdon, expedition to, with Tom 
 . Hughes and Tom Taylor proposed, 
 
 234 ; invitation, 248 ; starting, 251 ; 
 
 lines in visitors' book, 252. 
 Social Science Congress at Bristol, 403. 
 Sorrow and its lessons, 167. 
 St. Louis, 461, 462. 
 " St. Elizabeth of Hungary," Life of, 
 
 commenced by Kingsley, 56 ; opin- 
 ion of Coleridge on, 90 ; drama of, 
 
 published by Parker, 91. 
 Stammering, how to cure, 383. 
 Stanley, Bishop of Norwich, 94. 
 Stanley's " Sinai," 214; Kingsley's views 
 
 of lectures on Ecclesiastical History, 
 
 282 ; first visit to Eversley, 287 ; on 
 
 Kingsley's controversy with Dr. 
 
 Newman, 347 ; letter from Kingsley 
 
Index. 
 
 501 
 
 to, on '' Essays and Reviews," 316 ; 
 " Lectures on the Jewish Church," 
 letter to Maurice on, 344 ; letter 
 from, on Kingsley's death, 482 ; 
 preaches sermon on, 483. 
 Stowe, Mrs. Beecher, visits Eversley, 
 
 234- 
 
 Strauss's "Leben Jesu," 129. 
 
 Strettell, Rev. Alfred, succeeds Kings- 
 ley at Queen's College, 114. 
 
 Study of History, 354. 
 
 Subjection of Women, J. Stuart Mill's 
 work on, 400. 
 
 Suffering working out perfection, 227. 
 
 Sumner, Charles, Kingsley introduced 
 to, 458 ; sudden death of, 458. 
 
 TAULER'S Life, Kingsley writes pre- 
 face to, 255. 
 
 Taylor, Tom, fishing excursion to Snow- 
 don with Kingsley, 234. 
 
 Taylor, Henry, on crime and its punish- 
 ment, 388. 
 
 Taylor, Mrs. Peter, letter from Kingsley 
 to, on women's suffrage, 415. 
 
 Teaching, Kingsley's plan of, 113. 
 
 Teetotalism, 137. 
 
 Temperance question, 451. 
 
 Tennyson's poems first mentioned, 56 ; 
 Tennyson collecting Arthurian le- 
 gends at Torridge Moors, 119 ; King- 
 sley visits Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson 
 at Isle of Wight, 287. 
 
 Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," Kingsley's 
 judgment of, 269. 
 
 " T h ology of the Future," lecture on, 
 by Kingsley, 421. 
 
 Thompson, Yates, of Liverpool, pro- 
 poses to establish American Lec- 
 tureship at Cambridge, 364 ; offer 
 rejected, 366. 
 
 " Thoughts in a Gravel Pit," lecture on, 
 
 275- 
 "Three Fishers," circumstances under 
 
 vi^hich written, 157. 
 Titnes, London, on Woolner's bust of 
 
 Kingsley, 485. 
 Toads in a hole, letter to Rev. E. Pit- 
 cairn Campbell on, 341. 
 Tollemache, Lionel, Kingsley's views of 
 
 article on Egotism by, 402. 
 "Tom Brown," Kingsley's opinion of, 
 
 271. 
 Torquay described, 201. 
 Total abstinence, 451. 
 "Town and Country Sermons," 325. 
 '' Town Geology," lectures by Kingsley, 
 
 425. 
 Tractarians, 89. 
 "Tracts for the Times," Kingsley's 
 
 opinion of characterization by £d- 
 
 inburgh Review, 51. 
 " Tracts for Priests and People," issued 
 
 under superintendence of Mr. Mau- 
 rice, 318. 
 Trades Unions, letter from Kingsley on, 
 
 239- 
 
 Transmutation Theory, 203. 
 
 Treves, visit to, 148. 
 
 Trinidad, arrival at, 408. 
 
 Trinity, letter to Thomas Cooper on, 
 198. 
 
 Trinity, doctrine of, letter to Maurice 
 on, 357. 
 
 Tulloch, Principal, 379. 
 
 " Twenty-five Village Sermons," 174. 
 
 " Two Years Ago," completed, 265; fa- 
 vorable opinion of, 268 ; letter from 
 a naval chaplain about, 273; influ- 
 ence of, 272. 
 
 UNITED STATES, Kingsley and 
 daughter sail for, 452. 
 
 V 
 
 AN DE WEYER, M., 379. 
 
 Verses by Kingsley, 120. 
 
 " Vestiges of Creation, The," 203. 
 
 Vicars, Capt. Hedley, death of, 216. 
 
 "Village Sermons," 117. 
 
 Visitors' book at Pen-y-gwryd, lines in, 
 
 by Kingsley, Hughes, and Taylor, 
 
 252. 
 
 WAGES of sin is death ; sermon at 
 Chapel Royal St. James's, 354. 
 
 Wallace, Alfred " Essay on Natural Se- 
 lection," 419. 
 
 Warre, John Ashley, death of, 306. 
 
 Washington visited, 457-460. 
 
 " Waterbabies, The," written, 283, 320, 
 345- 
 
 Wellington College, Kingsley's interest 
 in, 328 ; lecture on Natural History, 
 before, 330. 
 
 Westminster, Kingsley made Canon of, 
 441 ; first residence at, 451 ; sermon 
 in Abbey, before sailing for Ameri- 
 ca, 452 ; allusion in sermon to tele- 
 gram from Kingsley by Dean of 
 Westminster, 466 ; Kingsley's last 
 sermon in, 475 ; Dean of Westmins- 
 ter at Kingsley's funeral, 483 ; Wool- 
 ner's bust of Kingsley unveiled in 
 Westminster Abbey, 485. 
 
 "Westward Ho! " commenced, 210; 
 correspondence about, 220, 221 ; 
 letter from naval officer on, 238. 
 
 West Indies, Kingsley sails for, 406 ; re- 
 turn from, 410. 
 
 Wharton, Dr., 456. 
 
 Whewell, Dr., 303 ; directs formation of 
 class on Modern History under 
 Kingsley's instruction, for Prince 
 of Wales, 315 ; death of, 363. 
 
502 
 
 Index. 
 
 Whittier, J. G. , letter from, 472. 
 
 " Why should we pray for fair wea- 
 ther ? " sermon, 309. 
 
 Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, congrat- 
 ulatory note from, on appointment to 
 Chester, 403 ; congratulates Kings- 
 ley on appomtment to Westminster, 
 
 443- 
 Winchester, Bishop of, letter from 
 Kingsley to, on " Essays and Re- 
 views," 317 ; at Kingsley's funeral, 
 
 483. 
 
 Winkworth, Miss, translates Bunsen's 
 " Deutsche Theologie," 207 ; letter 
 to, from Kingsley about preface to 
 " Life of Tauler," 255. 
 
 Winthrop, J. C, 457. 
 
 Women, and Sanitary reform, 293. 
 
 Women, medical education of, discussed 
 at Social Science Congress at Bris- 
 tol, 404. 
 
 Women's Suffrage, letter to Mrs. Peter 
 Taylor on, 415 ; letter to John Stu- 
 art Mill on, 416. 
 
 " Wonders of the Shore," 202, 203. 
 
 Wood, Dean of Middleham, appoints 
 Kingsley Honorary Canon, 85. 
 
 Wood, Peter A. L. H. , Rector of Cop- 
 
 ford, letter to, 67 ; visits Eversley 
 68. 
 
 Woolner's bust of Kingsley unveiled in 
 Westminster Abbey, 485. 
 
 Wordsworth's " Excursion," 75. 
 
 Work of ladies in a country parish, 
 address on by Kingsley, 223. 
 
 " Working parson. A," 96. 
 
 Working men, sermons to, 145. 
 
 Workmen's Club, literature recom- 
 mended for, 319. 
 
 Workmen, Kingsley's address to, 95. 
 
 Y 
 
 ALE College, 459. 
 
 " Yeast," published as serial in Eraser's 
 Magazine, 92 ; Kingsley breaks 
 down while writing, 109 ; publica- 
 tion of, provokes enemies, 133 ; re- 
 viewed unfairly in Guardian, 141 ; 
 testimony to good influence of, 143, 
 266. 
 
 Yosemite Valley, Kingsley preaches in, 
 
 465- 
 Young, Brigham, 463. 
 Young men, Kingsley's sympathy with, 
 
 163. 
 
^Authorized Edition printed from duplicate plates of the complete English 
 Edition, with all the illustrations.] 
 
 MEMOIR OF 
 
 NORMAN MACLEOD, D.D., 
 
 Minister of Barony Parish^ Glasgow ; one of her Majesty's 
 Chaplains, Dean of the Chapel Royal, etc. 
 
 BY HIS BROTHER, REV. DONALD MACLEOD, B.A., 
 
 One of Her Majesty's Chaplains, Editor of 
 " Good Words," etc. 
 
 WITH STEEL PORTRAIT AND NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 New and Cheaper Edition. Two volumes in one. Crown 8vo. Cloth, $2.50. , 
 
 In less than a month after publication this Memoir reached a sale of 
 SEVEN THOUSAND copies in Great Britain. It is one of the liveliest, most 
 amusing, and at the same time most profitable of recent biographies. 
 
 The volume overflows with racy and characteristic Scotch anecdotes, 
 while Dr. Macleod's irrepressible buoyancy of spirits sparkles on every page 
 and now and then breaks out in pen and ink caricatures, suggestive of 
 Thackeray in his best vein. 
 
 CRITICAL NOTICES. 
 
 From the Atla7itic Monthly. 
 " The life of Dr. Macleod is one of the most interesting and affecting biographies of a 
 year singularly prolific in important memoirs. It is written by his brother, the Rev. Donald 
 Macleod, and is beautifully written, with great tenderness, and at the same time a most 
 dignified restraint of eulogy." 
 
 From the New York Observer. 
 
 "To a remarkable list of interesting memoirs of prominent men that have appeared 
 within the last twelve months is now added the one of which the title is given above. The 
 relations of Dr. Macleod, not only to the religious and literary public, but to the royal 
 household, his prominence as a man of talent and influence, and his genia! character, have 
 awakened expectations in regard to his biography that will not be disappointed. 
 From the Advance. 
 " A very enjoyable and instructive book we have found it to be, in the variety of its 
 contents, and in the insight which it has gi\en us unto the heart of a very noble Christian." 
 From the Christian Union. 
 
 " We would commend the book as one in which no person whose heart is in tlie right 
 place can fail to be greatly interested." 
 
 From the Christian Intelligencer. 
 
 " There is something very refreshing and invigorating in the memoirs of such a man as 
 Dr. Macleod." 
 
 From the New York '''' Evening Post." 
 "The work is one of uncommon interest." 
 Se?it post paid on receipt of price by the publishers, 
 
 SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO., 
 
 743 & 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
The Life and W^ritings of 
 Saint John. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. JAMES M. MACDONALD, D.D., 
 
 PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY. 
 
 , Edited, nvith an Introduction, by the 
 
 Very Rev. J. S. HOWSON, D.D., Dean of Chester, 
 
 Joint Author of Conybeare and Howson's St. Paul. 
 
 In one large handsome volume 8vo. Cloth. Price, $5.00. 
 
 LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS, ENGRAVED EXPRESSLY FOR THIS WORK. 
 
 Bust of Augustus. Shechem. _ Bust of Nero. Sardis. 
 
 Bust of Tiberius Csesar. Csesarea Philippi. Thyatira. Site of Capernaum. 
 
 Bethsaida, Site of. Garden of Gethsemane. Philadelphia. Jacob's Well. 
 
 Jerusalem. Bethany. Laodicea, Tiberias. 
 
 Cana of Galilee. Samaria. Bust of Julius Caesar. Pool of Siluam. 
 
 Road from Jerusalem Bust of Caligula. Old Tyre, Bust of Vespasian. 
 
 to Jericho. Ephesus. Bust of Titus. Smyrna. 
 
 Jerusalem, Walls of St. John. Pergamos. 
 
 Imperium Romanorum Latissime Palestine in Time of Christ Patmos. 
 
 Patens. Asia Minor, showing the Seven St. John's Travels. 
 
 Churches 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 I. The Place in History, and character of the period in which the Apostle John appeared. 
 II. Parentage, early life, and natural trr ' "♦■ the Apostle. 
 III. St. John in his early stage of preparai ir the Apostleship as a disciple of John the 
 
 Baptist. 
 rV. St. John under the training of the Great Master Himself from the beginning of His public 
 
 ministry. 
 V. Preparation for his work from intercourse and instruction in private ; especially from the . 
 great sacrifice offered by Jesus, as witnessed by the Apostle himself. 
 VI. Crowning pr. of of the Messiahship of Jesus, as witnessed by St. John. 
 VU. History of St. John in the Acts of the Apostles. 
 
 VIII. Later History n traditionary sources, till his arrival at Ephesus, and banishment to 
 Patmos. 
 IX. St. John writes the Apocalypse. Its Date and Design. 
 X. Analysis of the Apocalypse, with brief explanatory Notes. 
 XL Traditionary History of the Apostle continued. 
 XII. St. John writes the Fourth Gospel. Date, Design, and Contents. 
 
 XIII. Analysis of the Gospel, with brief explanatory Notes. 
 
 XIV. Last days and concluding Writings of the Apostle. 
 XV. Analysis of the Epistles, with brief explanatory Notes. 
 
 *^c* The above work for sale by all booksellers, or ivill be se7tt,posi or express charge* 
 paid, upon receipt of advertised price by the publishers, 
 
 SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO., 
 
 743 & 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
 I R n '10 
 
HBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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