THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY "£ W55e. MEN WITH A MISSION. CHARLES KINGSLEY MEN WITH A MISSION New Series of Popular Biographies by THE Rev. JAMES J. ELLIS. Illustrated. Small Crown 8vo. Price One Shilling each. HENRY MORTON STANLEY WILLIAM TYNDALE. CHARLES KINGSLEY. HUGH LATIMER. JOHN HOWARD. THOMAS CROMWELL. DAVID LIVINGSTONE. VISCOUNT WOLSELE Y. LORD LAWRENCE. LORD SHAFTESBURY. London : James Nisbet k Co., 21 Berners Street, W. Digitized by the R llft£rnet Archive ° J { - • M £ UNIVEKSl'Py 2 ILUNUIt https://archive.org/details/charleskingsleyOOelli_0 CHARLES KINGSLEY. MEN WITH A MISSION. Charles Kingsley BY REV. JAMES J. ELLIS, AUTHOR OF "HENRY MORTON STANLEY,'’ “JOHN WILLIAMS,” “HARNESS FOR A PAIR,” ETC. ETC. “ I should advise a constant use of the biography of good men, their inward feelings, prayers, &c.” — Dr. Arnold. “ Faith in the God Triune, the God-made man, Sole light wherein I walk, and walking burn ; And they that walk with me, shall burn like me. By faith.” — Legends of St. Patrick. LONDON: JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. ' \ > ' •I c > . V V V. > c 9 i I & 3 WsSe. PREFACE. Charles Kingsley was pre-eminently a man with a mission, and a mission that he discharged most efficiently. He was the prophet of the present life, and as such he endeavoured to show how near and beautiful God is to those who will look for Him. His was the teaching of the Psalmist : a The earth is full of the glory of the Lord : the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof.” And Kingsley endeavoured also to correct the monkish superstition which makes piety synony- mous with asceticism. a Who ever heard of a fat saint ? ” asked a recent speaker. The well-being of the soul has indeed been too often associated with the ill-being of the body, and many pursuits and pastimes have been branded too readily as sinful. Muscular Christianity will never be popular except amongst muscular men ; but the healthier view that VI PREFACE . prevails with regard to cricket and other sports is largely to be attributed to Kingsley's influence. His influence upon the Christian Church was not wholly good, but, taken altogether, it will, we think be found that Charles Kingsley was a man of God who lived and laboured for men. Harringai, London, N., July 1890. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. LOST IN THE WILDERNESS ; OR, THROUGH THICKET AND TANGLE. PAGES “MAKING PEOPLE STARE” — “HIS PALLOR IS HIS BEAUTY” — A DREADFUL OBJECT - LESSON— THE MAN WHO DID MAKE MISTAKES— COLD MUTTON AND HERESY— INTO THE RANKS AT LAST . I-13 CHAPTER II. THE WILD MAN OF THE WOODS; OR, ESAU ALSO A BROTHER. THE BEST FOR HIM— WORKING WHILE WAITING — A BROTHER, AND THEREFORE A HELPER —THE IRON THAT DEFLECTED THE NEEDLE— A BIRTH AND HONOURS— THE GOSPEL OF WORK— CHILDREN OF GOD, AND THEREFORE SALVABLE .... 14-20 CHAPTER III. BLAZING A PATH ; OR, SHOWING TO OTHERS THE WAY HOME. FILLING UP A GAP WITH LEAVES— A CANDID FRIEND — ' 1 ‘ ONLY A BARKER ”— THOMAS COOPER— ‘ ‘ YEAST ” —BURNING THE CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS — INVA- LIDED — AT WORK AGAIN 21^32 CONTENTS . viii CHAPTER IY. THE MODERN CRUSADER; OR , THE VIKING OF A NEW AGE. PAG Ed WORK ! WORK ! WORK ! — ONE ENEMY AFTER ANOTHER —MISUNDERSTOOD, AND THEREFORE HATED— THE GOSPEL OF SOAP AND WATER— ASSAILED IN THE HOUSE OF HIS FRIENDS— EXHAUSTED, BUT NOT BEATEN 33-40 CHAPTER Y. THE GOSPEL OF THIS LIFE; OR , THE APOSTLE TO THE OUTCASTS. MAKING ALLOWANCES— THE SACRED SABBATH— CON- STRAINED TO SPEAK— “ HYPATIA” — NOT UPON THE FATHERS, BUT UPON CHRIST— MORE LIGHT BEYOND ... ... . 41-48 CHAPTER YL STRIFE ABROAD , BUT PEACE AT HOME. THE CRIMEAN BLUNDERS AND SUFFERINGS— TEACHING \ THE NEGLECTED— WE ARE PENCILS— AT HOME A KING— MARRIAGE NOT FOR THIS LIFE ALONE . 49-58 CHAPTER YII. MISUNDERSTOOD ; OR , DIFFERENT , AND THERE . FORE WRONG. CONVERTED BY FEAR— SUFFERING FOR FAITHFULNESS —INDIAN MUTINY AND ITS HORRORS— THE CHIL- DREN IN DANGER— PREACHING BEFORE PRINCES —THE INEQUALITIES OF LIFE .... 59-64 CONTENTS. ix CHAPTER VIII. THE SOLDIER IN A BLACK COAT; OR , NO PEACE HERE . PAGES APPOINTED PROFESSOR— DEATH OF HIS FATHER— IS PRAYER OF ANY AVAIL ? — WATCHED WITH RAT’S EYES— DEATH OF PRINCE ALBERT— SCIENCE NOT OPPOSED TO THE BIBLE 65 72 CHAPTER IX. 'GAINST POPES OF VARIOUS DEGREE . “THRASH THEM WELL ’’—CONTROVERSY WITH NEW- MAN— VISIT TO SPAIN— THE TWO REVELATIONS — THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR— ATTACKED AGAIN . 73 Si CHAPTER X. APPRECIATED TOO LATE; OR, TRUE AFTER ALL . CANON OF CHESTER— TAKING ROOT ONCE MORE— “ ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTING ! ’’—LAST WORDS— INTO NEW AND HIGHER SERVICE 82 - SS CHAPTER XI. DEAD, BUT YET SPEAKING. HERO-WORSHIP— GOOD IN THE WORST AND BAD IN THE BEST OF MEN— KINGSLEY’S FAULTS OF DE- FECT CHIEFLY— HIS INFLUENCE LIKELY TO LAST 89-103 CHARLES KINGSLEY. CHAPTER I. LOST IN THE WILDERNESS; OR, THROUGH THICKET AND TANGLE. “ God had destined to do more Through him than through an armed power, God gave him reverence of laws, Yet stirring blood in freedom’s cause, A spirit to the rocks akin, The eye of the hawk, and the fire therein. ,, — Coleridge. "MAKING PEOPLE STAKE HIS PALLOR IS HIS BEAUTY” —A DREADFUL OBJECT-LESSON— THE MAN WHO DID MAKE MISTAKES— COLD MUTTON AND HERESY— INTO THE RANKS AT LAST. ££ There is in human nature,” said Dr Johnson, ££ a general inclination to make people stare, and every wise man has to cure himself of it, and he does cure himself. If you wish to make people stare by doing better than others, why, make them stare until they stare their eyes out ! But consider how easy it is to make people stare by being A 7 MEN WITH A MISSION. absurd. I may do it by going into a drawing- room without my shoes.” Which witness is still true, and the counsel is requisite even for this genera- tion ; nor is the liking for admiration which is the secret of this longing to make others stare alto- gether wrong. For a man who does not regard the opinions of others is wholly lost to good, and praise and blame are signposts upon the right way of life. It is, therefore, no fault of the subject of this sketch that he possessed in a very remarkable degree this stare- compelling power of the better kind ; he was hated, resisted, excommunicated by many, but Charles Kingsley could not be ignored. For good or for evil, his influence is still powerful amongst us, and in his own way he certainly ful- filled a mission which subserves the grand purpose of Christ. His magnificent mental accomplish- ments, his original gifts of thought and of expres- sion, mark him as a unique man among the many great men of this age. Miss Jewsbury said of her friend Jane Welsh Carlyle, that she could construct a story about a broom-handle, and that, further, she could render the narrative interesting. Which faculty, while it is largely a feminine accomplish- ment and monopoly, is to some extent an essential for all effective teaching. For dulness is not a quality of truth, but is rather the mixture of alloy which an unskilful workman has blended with the fine gold. Or, to change the figure, all real teach- ing is like water, inviting, clear, and refreshing LOST IN THE WILDERNESS. 3 just in proportion as it is pure. It is, therefore, a mark of mental and spiritual poverty when our testimony fails to attract. Charles Kingsley pos- sessed a diction which was undoubtedly a part of his endowment, and it enabled him to set his mes- sage to such music that it became a pleasant song to those who heard it. While, strictly speaking, the prophet is distinct from his message, yet it is also true that the peculiarities and excellences of the lamp are the work of the Fountain of Light, and are therefore to be considered as His gift. The influence of Charles Kingsley upon the age can only be estimated correctly when we understand what he was in himself, for he in his excellences was given to subserve the interests of the Gospel. It is always needful in considering a life to bear strongly in mind the important influence that is exerted upon character by things that are wholly beyond human control and choice. Thus it is already a call from God to holiness when a man is born of pious parents whose ambition it is that he should excel them in Christian service, while it is an additional difficulty when strength must be exerted in removing the dead weight of an evil training before ascending the mountains. Both sets of conditions are arranged by God, and of course with unerring wisdom. In the case of Charles Kingsley, he started in life under highly favourable circumstances, for the blood of a line of soldiers mingled in his veins with that of a family that had been distinguished for 4 MEN WITH A MISSION. travel and scientific attainments, while in his case it was also an advantage, probably, that he was born in a parsonage. For, account for it how one may, it is a fact that many sons of unknown ministers have been famous and useful. In a parsonage, therefore, upon the 1 2th of July 1819, Charles Kingsley was born. His father, the elder of that name, had entered the Church at the age of thirty, without relinquishing the tastes and habits of a country gentleman of his time. At the time of his son s birth, Charles Kingsley was curate in charge at Holne, a village upon the verge of Dartmoor. It goes without saying that the curate was no ordinary man, for no genius is ever born of dull parents, any more than peaches are yielded by a stinging-nettle. In the case of Charles Kingsley, junior, favourable circumstances developed and ex- hibited the talents that were hidden in his father, just as a statue is admired when placed upon an appropriate pedestal, although its merits had been unnoticed in a village workshop. From his father, Charles Kingsley the younger inherited a love for manly sports, and a craving for arduous exertions which were indeed requisite for an iron constitu- tion such as he possessed. From his father, too, he inherited the seeing eye that so quickly detected the beauties of nature, while the stories of peril and of adventure that he heard from his maternal grandfather inspired and strengthened his daring spirit. Although all through his life Charles LOST IN THE WILDERNESS . 5 Kingsley felt an intense affection for the West Country, his earliest years were spent in another part of England. The child was only six weeks old when his father removed to Barnack Rectory, in the Fens, to which place he had been appointed as a place-holder for the Bishop’s son. There the boy grew up amidst such surroundings as have now departed for ever. Then the Fens were still a distinct country, which was inhabited by a race who were quite unlike other English folk ; but in spite of its ague and other discomforts the great Fen was even then very delightful and charming. No- where in the British Isles could such glorious sunsets be seen, and during Kingsley’s boyhood the Fen abounded in game, and in varieties of life that are now extinct. “ The landscape painter,” says Con- stable, “ must walk in the field with a humble mind. No arrogant man was ever permitted to see nature in all her beauty ; ” and the same is true of others as much as of artists. The boy’s mind was occupied from his infancy with the characters of the alphabet by which God spells out His wisdom, power, and love to men. Then Charles Kingsley learned that while this world is imper- fect and stained, yet it is God’s world still, and may be made a vestibule of heaven. His father took the boy abroad whenever he went shooting, and the child’s quick eye and sensitive nature thrilled to the sights and sounds that are a manifestation of God to the devout heart. 6 MEN WITH A MISSION . Nature all, Wears to the lover’s eye a look of love, But to the wicked, lours As with avenging thunder.” Charles Kingsley’s mind came to maturity early, and at the age of four years he began to preach, and even to write poetry. Some of these childish productions were secretly taken down by his mother, who was assured by her friends that her boy would certainly become no ordinary man. But the Divine Wisdom, that moves and shifts men so as to fulfil by them His gracious designs, transferred Charles Kingsley at the age of eleven years to the fair county of Devonshire. His father in the year 1830 was appointed rector of Clovelly, and there, with his wife, he found a most congenial home. Unlike Lord Beaconsfield (of whom his wife is said to have remarked to a painter, “ Remember that his pallor is his beauty”), Charles Kingsley, senior, possessed the physical development and strength that the Devonshire fishermen could readily appreciate and admire. There was certainly no pallor whatever about him, and the fact that he could match any of his flock at their own fishing pursuits, was a bond between them and an advantage which he wisely employed for their spiritual im- provement. They soon loved and obeyed him, as only West Country folk can love, and for them Charles Kingsley acquired a liking which was never eradicated from his nature. Only for a few months, LOST IN THE WILDERNESS. 7 however, was Charles Kingsley, junior, permitted to enjoy the charms of Clovelly, and then he was sent away from home to school at Clifton. The charming Downs, the Nightingale Valley, the Staple- ton Dell, and the many other beautiful surroundings of Bristol were treasuries of natural history to him, and, as all intelligent boys must in similar circum- stances, he became an ardent geologist, and searched with delight the magnificent section of rock beneath the Bridge. There every formation, from the Old Bed Sandstone right up to the Carboniferous lime- stone, is exposed, and waiting to be studied. But a far more terrible lesson than any that the rocks yielded was now appointed for his education, for during Charles Kingsley’s school-days at Clifton the Bristol riots ensued. Owing to the timidity and cowardice of the authorities, a furious mob wrecked and destroyed the city unchecked, and the huge cauldron of flaming ruin was a spectacle that the boy never forgot. At that period all Europe was agitated by volcanic forces that muttered below the surface ; it was as well for Kingsley’s future usefulness that he thus, early learned to appreciate the magnitude of the danger which threatened the established order of things. His timid, shrinking nature, morbidly sensitive as it had been, was transformed at the revelation, and the boy felt a new-born courage arise within him, which in after- years enabled him to grapple with Chartism and infidelity with success. From Clifton, Charles 8 MEN WITH A MISSION. Kingsley was sent on to Helston, and there the friendship and influence of one of his tutors deepened and directed his love for nature. It is probably from the want of the seeing eye that men malign and miss the beauty of God’s fair world, for it is true that — “ This earth is cramm’d with heaven, And every common bush afire with God, Had we but eyes to see it.” Yet his courage was not small, as when, for example, he applied a red-hot poker to a wounded finger, and endured the torture without flinching. A per- haps less noticeable act was when he climbed a tree in order to rob a hawk’s nest. More than once this was done with impunity, and when the bird avenged itself upon the intruder’s hand, without losing his self-control Charles Kingsley calmly descended the tree in order to have his wounds dressed. In the year 1836 a further stage in his pilgrim- age was reached, for then his father removed to Chelsea, in London. Although not then what it is now, Chelsea presented an utter and an unfavour- able contrast to Clovelly. Yet, here, for the first time in his life, Charles Kingsley became acquainted with the awful squalor and vice of our great cities. He had during the two years of his residence here but few amusements, and he therefore found delight in the poets, with the chief of whom he became well acquainted. Probably no man ever became a successful author without a knowledge of poetry, LOST IN THE WILDERNESS. 9 whicli is that upon which other colours are deposited in order to form the picture. Ruskin, in his dog- matic, conceited style, remarks of his own childhood, “ It was extremely unusual with me to make a mistake at all,” which, if ever true, js certainly not so now. Kingsley was far too wise a man to ever make such a claim. He, as all men do, make mis- takes, just as a child stumbles in its attempts to walk and to gauge distances. Yet the child by its very mistakes learns how to stand steadily upon the earth and to move about upon it. During this period of transition from youth to manhood Kingsley walked daily backwards and for- wards from his home to King’s College, London, in order to study. In the year 1838 he went up to Cambridge. By sheer talent he acquired eminence here ; for genius in his case compensated for his want of previous application. But during this term of study his mind was terribly distressed by religious doubts ; a correct portrait of himself at this period of his life is probably given in “ Yeast.” Although it is not necessary for a man to verify the compass every day, yet every man must learn for himself the solid facts upon which our hopes of redemption rest, and the process is often a terrible agony. Ruskin, it is true, attributes the fact that he did not become a clergyman to the disgust which he conceived for evangelical religion, from the fact that his doubtless much-tried aunt gave him cold mutton instead of hot meat for dinner. Probably 10 MEN WITH A MISSION. much so-called honest doubt is of the same un- reasonable nature. But with Charles Kingsley it was not so ; he really desired to know the truth and to be right with God, and this could not easily be. An eccentric clergyman who once lived in the West of England devoutly believed that a bucket of cold water hurled over his children immediately after they left their beds in the morning was highly conducive to their health ; certainly mental and spiritual health is promoted by the cold bath which all must suffer. The shock which Kingsley at first felt at the cold bath was terrible ; the faith which he had received upon parental authority he now longed to be able to rest upon solid fact, and the dash of cold water was therefore an agony. Unable to really rest upon the inviting promises and com- plete atonement of the Gospel, he endeavoured to drown thought, and by excitement and the pursuit of pleasure in sport to still the awful cravings for satisfaction that stirred within him : — “ Poor man ! Ashamed to ask, and yet lie needed help ! Proof this beyond all lingering of doubt That not with natural or mental wealth Is God delighted and His peace secured, That not in natural or mental wealth Is human happiness or grandeur found. Attempt how monstrous and how surely vain ! With things of earthly sort, with aught but God, With aught but moral excellence, truth, and love, To satisfy and fill the immortal soul ! ” 1 1 Pollock. LOST IN THE WILDERNESS. ii It was no wonder that Charles Kingsley so doubted and suffered, for society at that time was in a con- dition of agitation and unrest. The Oxford Tracts acted as powerful solvents upon many men, and although Charles Kingsley was startled at their ten- dency, yet to some extent he was influenced by them at the time. They were positive and earnest, and therefore they were read, and in his case at least they added another discordant element to the mental chaos which at length yielded to the voice that com- manded light and order in the natural world. Yet Charles Kingsley did not attain certainty by the method that he anticipated, for very seldom does any heart find rest by reasoning. He was brought into loving contact with Christ in another life, and although unsolved, his doubts ceased to perplex him. In the year 1839 it fell out, in the providence of God, that he met with a lady whom he loved at first sight, and who afterwards became his wife. His soul awoke under the sunshine of love, and this lady’s faith in God helped to fix his. In the agony of his despair Charles Kingsley had almost resolved to leave England and to emigrate to America, but now a new meaning and force had come into his life : — “ It comes, the beautiful, the free, The crown of all humanity, In silence, and alone, To seek the appointed one. “ O weary heart ! 0 slumbering eyes I O drooping souls whose destinies 22 MEN WITH A MISSION . Are fraught with fear and pain, Ye shall be loved again ! ” Gradually Charles Kingsley came to a knowledge of Christ, and in His vicarious atonement his soul found that for which it had craved so long. As a consequence of his new hopes and resolutions, Charles Kingsley resolved to enter the Church rather than to go to the Bar, as he had once intended, and in July 1832 he became curate at Eversley. This hamlet, with which his name is historically asso- ciated, stands in the midst of a stretch of breezy heathland, which is fragrant with the odour of fir forests all the year round, and in summer is rich in the golden bloom of the broom-plant. The people of this charming village had been shamefully neglected by the preceding clergyman, and as a natural consequence they were inclined both to intemperance and poaching. Kingsley took things as he found them, and endeavoured to adapt himself to the conditions of the place. In this he followed Dr. Johnson’s advice, who, when a friend complained to him that in the county where he lived all men talked of nothing but of oxen, replied — “ Then, sir, I would talk of oxen also.” Charles Kingsley first made himself a friend of his people ; he talked of oxen to them, and as a result he lived to see an immense improvement in their habits and condition. The church at Eversley in which he laboured for thirty-three years was restored in the year 1876 at a cost of ;£l200 as a LOST IN THE WILDERNESS. 13 memorial of him. It is described as being “a brick edifice of no particular character, and the ruddy tiles of the high pitched roof have a singularly un- ecclesiastical appearance. The nave and aisles are of equal proportions, and they are divided by square whitewashed pillars, with substantial arches between them." Thus we see Charles Kingsley at last settled down to his life-work ; the great proportions of which he did not at the time at all foresee, but which was precisely the very best form of service that he could render, both for himself and for the world. CHAPTER II. THE WILD MAN OF THE WOODS ; OR , ESAU ALSO A BROTHER. “ Patience and abnegation of self and devotion unto others, This was the lesson that a life of sorrow and trial had taught him ; So was his love diffused, but, like some odorous spices, Suffered no waste nor loss though filling the air with aroma.” — Longfellow. “ Those things should we regard with fear Which bring misfortune on another’s head.” — Dante. •* God can write straight in crooked lines.” — Portuguese Proverb. THE BEST FOR HIM— WORKING WHILE WAITING— A BROTHER, AND THEREFORE A HELPER— THE IRON THAT DEFLECTED THE NEEDLE— A BIRTH AND HONOURS— THE GOSPEL OF WORK— CHILDREN OF GOD, AND THEREFORE SALVABLE. “ There is some one state of character and plan of action,” said John Foster, “ which is the very best for me, when all the circumstances of my age, measure of mental abilities, and the means within my reach are considered.” This is certainly true of every man, and therefore only when he is himself, and attempts to perform his own peculiar work, is a man as useful as he may be. Then is he seen at THE WILD MAN OF THE WOODS . 15 his best, like a sailor at sea, and then his own peculiar faculties are able to exert their full force. Charles Kingsley was at his best at Eversley, and from no other district could he, probably, have exerted so large an influence upon the mind and life of his time. Dean Stanley, in his funeral sermon on Charles Kingsley, said that “ he was far beyond what falls to the lot of most, alive in every pore to the beauty , the marvels of nature ; ” and to every sense the teachings of the outdoor gospel were directed in his country charge. His sporting instincts and his love for soldiers enabled him to win the confidence of both classes, who admired his English directness and common-sense. His soldierly daring and devo- tion to duty as he knew it, impelled him to make efforts for the mental and spiritual improvement of classes who are generally regarded as somewhat outside the Church of Christ. His mind, too, was of an eagle-type, and swooped directly upon what it aimed at ; for Kingsley was not a man to hesitate or to delay. In him there was very little of the amusing folly of which General Grant speaks in his memoirs. An officer in the Federal army once held two posts, and in one capacity he made a requisition upon himself in another capacity. This requisition he resisted, urged, and again refused, and so he continued waging a wordy war of argu- ment with himself, thus wasting both his time and strength. To a man like Kingsley such folly was a i6 MEN WITH A MISSION , moral impossibility ; he first made up his mind as to what was his duty, and then he attempted to do it. But not without suffering, for indeed no good thing is ever accomplished in this world without pain and anguish. Solomon tells us that it is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth, and experience proves that by the drilling and discipline of defeat men learn how to conquer. To Kingsley the pain of doubt gave place to a severer pang, for during twelve months he was separated from the lady to whom he had given his heart’s love. He was loyal to his troth, however, and he humbly accepted the tribulation as intended for his own good, as it certainly was. He was also far too wise a man to waste his time in vain regrets; he there- fore worked diligently at Eversley, waiting until the cloud should lift, as lift it eventually did. Mathews tells us of a biography that he had seen in MS. which filled three handsomely bound volumes. They related the memorabilia of a life of nearly forty years, and they were mainly occupied with such items as coach-fare and the cost and items of the dinners that had been consumed during that period ! Such existence is fearfully common ; the biographies of such men would be like that of a cabbage or of a rabbit, a mere consuming of the product of other lives without rendering any adequate return. Charles Kingsley, however, was pre-eminently a worker, and his first care was about the country labourers and farmers among whom his lot was cast THE WILD MAN OF THE WOODS. 17 Probably the best portion of his life cannot be written, because it will not be known until the day of God shall declare it ; for no one can tell how many hearts were lightened and comforted by him without his knowing it. After a year of such quiet work he began to find that his hopes and waiting were not in vain, and at the end of the year 1843 was engaged to be mar- ried. He also received a promise of a small living, and accordingly he left Eversley, and in January 1844 he was married to Fanny Grenfell. About this time the rector of Eversley absconded, and the parishioners endeavoured to secure Charles Kingsley as their future pastor. The patron acceded to their request, and in May 1844 Charles Kingsley brought his wife to Eversley. Of course, his difficulties were not necessarily at an end, as is the case in the traditional story, although the bride and bridegroom lived happily ever afterwards. Their house had not been repaired for nearly a century, for then Dr. Jaeger had not fixed that period as the life-limit for a dwelling-house. There were arrears of debt also which the previous rector had left behind him, and these had to be paid. The house, besides being dilapidated, was also very damp and unhealthy, and expensive drainage operations were necessary before it was fit for habitation. There was no school- room in the parish, and practically no school, but all these things acted upon Kingsley as upon Napier, who declared that difficulties only made his feet go deeper into the soil. A schoolmaster was trained B i8 MEN WITH A MISSION . for his work, and the Eectory was thrown open for classes, in which probably the best teaching was the insight which was then afforded into Kingsley’s own earnestness and fidelity. By personal contact with his people at his own house and in their own homes he put into practice that reverence for the poor and that diligence in helping them that he inculcated upon others. The sense that the minister is also a man, and that, beside his official duty, he has a tender sympathy for all the sorrows of his people, probably does far more than anything else to win them for Christ. The days of priestly rule have long since passed away, and the Christian ministry can only exist now, much less prove effective, as it adopts the apostolic rule of going from house to house. Almost every mind is both a sun and a moon to others ; that is, it both receives and it imparts to other minds of the light which each receives in varying measure from God. Kingsley’s ruling spirit was F. D. Maurice, whom he called a Master,” and whose opinions he adopted. It is probably a pity that this was so, for Kingsley’s love for Maurice in- duced him to follow his leader into some of the vagaries into which Maurice wandered. Kingsley undoubtedly loved Christ and believed in His vicarious atonement, but his views upon the Sabbath and upon the future state are not, in the opinion of the writer, those that are taught in Scripture. Further reference will be made to this later on in this sketch, but it is needful here to note the THE WILD MAN OF THE WOODS . 19 magnetic influence that deflected the needle in Kingsley’s moral compass. In the year 1845 Charles Kingsley received his first preferment, for he was made Honorary Canon of Middleham in that year. Neither duties nor emolument were attached to this office, but the title Was valued by Kingsley on account of its historic interest. His home was gladdened about this period by the birth of a daughter in the year 1846, and in the following year his family was still further increased by the birth of a son. The joy which followed this event found expression in many ballads which were written during a holiday that he spent in 1847 by the seaside. These were, however, merely the relief- valves of his exuberant emotions; his first real lite- rary work was finished during the same summer- time. It was a Life of St. Elizabeth, which biography, while relating the heroine’s, story, discussed the great problems and questions of that day. The office of the biographer and historian is not only to relate, but also to apply ; not only to arrange an elegant bouquet, but to distil and to prescribe the medicines which the sicknesses of men require. The past is only of interest and of use to us as it is seen to be an exhibition of the results of principles which are working within and around us to-day. The book at once attracted attention ; it was timely, and many of the youth in the universities 20 MEN WITH A MISSION. were fortified by it against the Eomanising influences which were then dominant. The ascetic life has always been attractive to some minds, for one reason perhaps because it enables a man to earn heaven ; but monachism is always an evil both to the in- dividual and to the Church. The Gospel of Work is the Gospel of the devout life, and the field is the world ; that is, among the unbelieving, - suffering children of men. These Esaus are loved by God, and may be brought within the range of His saving grace. And, in one sense, it is true that — “ All men on earth the children are Of Him who keeps them here in fosterage : They see not yet His face ; but He sees them, Yea, and decrees their seasons and their times : Like infants, they must learn them first by touch, Through Nature and her gifts — by hearing next, The hearing of the ear, and that is faith — By vision last. Upon this first sonship rests the possibility of the second birth, by which they are made joint-heirs with Christ. CHAPTER III. BLAZING A PATH; OR, SHOWING TO OTHERS THE WAY HOME. “Ye are brothers, ye are men ; We conquer but to save.”— tCampbell. “ is a glorified failure, you know ! ” — Trench. “ His favourite expression was, ‘ The bitterest of all griefs is to see misery, and yet not to be able to do anything ; ’ and it might stand as the motto of his whole mind, as it was often before his life.” — Said of Dr. Arnold. FILLING UP A GAP WITH LEAVES— A CANDID FRIEND—* “ ONLY A BARKER THOMAS COOPER— “ YEAST ’’—BURN- ING THE CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS— INVALIDED— AT WORK AGAIN. It is related of a titled lady, whose house was situated upon the verge of a cliff which looked over the sea, that she desired to have the chasm filled up. For this purpose her gardeners were directed to throw the cuttings from the lawns and the sweepings from the garden-walks over the cliff, and the lady herself occupied her leisure by throw- ing any trifles such as dead leaves into the gulf below. Of course, this labour had no perceptible influence in filling up the chasm ; it was simply 21 22 MEN WITH A MISSION. labour in vain. In much the same spirit men have been accustomed to deal with the yawning gulfs that separate society and produce misery, but, for all their well-meaning efforts, the chasm still is not the less deep. Now and then the leaves and grass-mowings are swept away by a whirlwind, and then the abyss appears. Such a tempest came in the year 1848, when Europe was astounded at the revelations which were made of its dreadful misery. The events of that year were such as brought Kingsley prominently to the front and showed him to be a born leader of men. He threw himself into the educational movement which sought to prepare the working classes for liberty, and also into the Chartist agitation, that brought him into touch, not only with the leaders of the working classes, but also with those who sympathised with them. He left his parish work and came to London to endeavour, if possible, to allay the rancour of the contending and opposite parties, and to fit the Chartists for the rights which they demanded. He was a very candid friend to them, however, point- ing out to them what he considered to be great faults in their programme and society. The plea for political liberty had become associated with French infidelity and french books, with a small and dirty “ f.” Although this was probably owing to the persistent opposition which the privileged classes had offered to the suggested and necessary reforms, its effect was incalculably harmful all BLAZING A PATH. 2 3 round. A paper was started by Kingsley and bis friends avowedly for the purpose of enlightening the working classes, and large placards were issued, which in terse, clear phrase showed both the merits of the cause and its defects. The scorn and obloquy which this entailed upon Kingsley were not more than might have been anticipated from the strength of the evils that he assailed. It is said that, when Cobden made his maiden speech in the House of Commons, Horace Twiss of the Times said, “ There is nothing in him ; he is only a barker.” No one could say that Kingsley was only a barker ; he certainly had teeth, and he knew how to use them with terrible effect. No small part of the opposition which he had to encounter came from his relatives, who regarded the probable consequences to himself and his family of such plain speaking with considerable alarm. But he could not be induced to act a lie by being silent when he felt it to be his duty to speak out. Pro- bably Kingsley was of Latimer’s opinion, who in his letter to King Henry the Eighth endorses what “that holy man St. John Chrysostom saith — that he is not only a traitor to the truth which openly for truth teaches a lie, but he also which doth not freely pronounce, and show the truth which he knoweth.” It is indeed a crime both against God and man when a needful testimony is withheld by a witness into whose heart it has been given for speech. This Kingsley certainly 24 MEN WITH A MISSION . did not do at any part of his life, for he uttered with all his might all that he himself knew as truth. One triumph he certainly secured by this fearless speaking out of the Divine message, and that was in the conversion of Thomas Cooper, who was at that time one of the ablest advocates of infidelity and of Chartism. Kingsley somehow secured Thomas Cooper’s friendship, and gently and tenderly he led him into faith in Christ. After his conversion Thomas Cooper dedicated his life to the service of the faith that he had once destroyed, and with signal success. May not his usefulness be re- garded as a secondary triumph of Kingsley’s efforts ? This Thomas Cooper was a remarkable man; in- deed he was probably one of the most powerful stimulative thinkers and pioneers that has ever arisen in the land. He was born to poverty, and only secured for himself an education by dint . of self-denial tod gigantic efforts. While in the receipt of ten shillings per week, as a journeyman shoemaker (upon which pittance he and his aged mother subsisted), Thomas Cooper taught himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and German. His constitution at length broke down under the severe strain to which he subjected it during these studies, and then Thomas Cooper turned his attention to teaching. After a variety of vicissitudes, he found himself present at a Chartist meeting in Leicester. BLAZING A PATH. 25 He Lad come there in order to report on behalf of a newspaper with which he was connected, but his warm heart was lacerated by the tidings of sorrow that he then heard. He found that the poor stocking- makers earned only at the most four shillings and sixpence per week, and sometimes not even that amount. The natural effect of this hope- less toil was the enfeeblement of mind and body, the poor creatures became too much dispirited to even complain about the degradation and misery that was their daily portion, and they ceased to struggle against it. They had but few friends, for most people viewed such conditions as a part of the bene- ficent plan of Providence, or else they shut their ears and hearts to the voice of pity. Cooper could not do this ; he not only pitied the poor dumb sufferers, but he immediately gave himself to the work of alleviating their distress. In order to accomplish this Thomas Cooper surrendered the small pittance which was his only income, and he threw himself heart and soul into a movement that he almost solely originated in their behalf. The Whig Government of the day, doubtless with the best possible intentions, contrived to impress the poor with the feeling that they would not attempt any relief for the distress that the Ministers ignored. The irritating behaviour of the Government, who had no better remedies for starving men than imprison- ment and massacre, made Cooper and those who rallied around him desperate, and what selfish 26 MEN WITH A MISSION. politicians desired for base purposes of tlieir own ensued. The populace created a riot, and ostensibly for their supposed sedition and complicity in this rioting Cooper and other leaders of the people were sent to prison. The story of his own life, from which the above facts are gleaned, is a book which will richly repay study, for it casts a light not only upon the sufferings of a patriot, but upon the blind and selfish folly of some of those who were then in power. “ I cannot avoid throwing my whole nature into an undertaking when I once enter upon it, either from a sense of duty or for self-gratification,” says Mr. Cooper in his autobiography. Accordingly, in spite of the risk that he thereby incurred of another term of imprisonment, he persisted in his efforts, and soon became a recognised leader of the working-classes. He had in his early manhood been a devout Christian. “ Often,” he says, “ for several days together I felt close to the Almighty ; felt that I was His own and His entirely.” The harsh conduct of his minister drove Thomas Cooper from the Methodist body, with which he had been connected, and among whom he had been a successful local preacher. The hopeless misery, also, that he saw in the World still further distressed and puzzled him, as it has perplexed many another man before him. For, explain it as we may, it is still a fact that there are many pro- found mysteries in God’s government of the world, BLAZING A PATH. 2 7 and there are many facts that appear to clash with His mercy and justice. Of course, they only appear to do so, for eventually they will be found to be the modes of mercy, that only require time in order to be seen in their beauty. These things, however, pained Cooper, and the behaviour of Christian people deepened the doubts that were lurking within him, and in due time he lost his faith in Christ. In words that are sadly significant he himself asks : “ When the belief in eternal punishment is given up, the eternal demerit of sin has faded from the preacher’s conscience, and then what consistency can he see in the doctrine of Christ’s atonement ? ” Strauss’s book on the “ Life of Christ ” was in a great measure the cause of Cooper’s wandering into infidelity, and he was retailing the opinions of Strauss to immense audiences of the working- classes when Charles Kingsley made his acquaintance. In the volume from which extracts have already been given Mr. Cooper says : “ Immediately after I had obeyed conscience, 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. He began a corre- spondence which extended over many months ; in fact, over more than a year. I told him every doubt and described every hope I had ; and he coun- selled, instructed, and strengthened me to the end.” Mr. Cooper’s friends obtained an introduction 28 MEN WITH A MISSION. for him to Mr. Cowper, who was then President of the Board of Health. “ He said he wished much that he could offer me anything better, but the only thing he could offer me was that I should become a copyist of letters, &c., at a low remuneration ; he thought it was seventy words a penny. I told him I would take the employ, if it were seventy words for a halfpenny. So I went down into the cellar of the Board of Health — for that is the truest name of the room — and there I was almost a daily worker every week for ninety- seven weeks, not finally quitting my post till the end of May 1858.” 1 Charles Kingsley sympathised much with his friend in his drudgery, and he wrote thus to him : “ May not our Heavenly Father just be bringing you through this seemingly degrading work to give you — what it cost me no little sorrow to learn — the power of working in 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.” 2 Thomas Cooper took the advice so graciously given to him, and he endured the yoke well. His doubts did not depart all at once, nor did he ex- pect such an experience. But he was enabled in the darkness to keep a firm grasp upon the doc- 1 “ Life of Thomas Cooper.” 2 “ Life of Charles Kingsley.” BLAZING A PATH. 29 trine of the Atonement, and therefore he eventually came into happiness and rest. Kingsley stood his friend all through this time of agony and change, and he contributed by his fervent brotherly affection to the establishment of Cooper’s faith in Christ. Cooper has gratefully acknowledged this Christian conduct on the part of Kingsley, and it must not be forgotten that at that time Cooper had not attained the honour and renown that are now deservedly his. “ I told my friend Charles Kingsley,” he says, “ in our correspondence, that while I diligently read the c Bridgewater Treatises , 5 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 seemed 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. “ 4 No, no ! 5 said my faithful and intelligent friend, ‘you will get out of all doubt in time. When you feel you are in the 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 ! 55 and God will deliver you . 5 55 1 God did deliver Thomas Cooper, and that by the most unlikely means. The words that he had 1 “Life of Thomas Cooper.” 30 MEN WITH A MISSION . heard in his childhood when, in Gainsborough Church, he had joined in the general confession of sin, came back to his memory and delivered him from the paralysis of doubt that had prevented him from praying, and Thomas Cooper was able to find rest in Christ. Nor was this a solitary instance of Kingsley's ready sympathy for those who were in spiritual blindness and distress. It seems, indeed, as if God, who formerly had sent Paul to those who were afar off, also sent Kingsley in like manner to the Gentiles, if so be that he might save some. It is true that in many instances the results of Kingsley’s sympathy and teaching were not so readily evident as they were in Cooper’s case, but Cooper was only one out of many who were attracted by Kingsley’s rare qualities of heart and intellect, and who were by him led from darkness into light. There was abundant need for all and more than Kingsley could accom- plish, for the social and religious condition of England at that period was truly horrible. Kings- ley did all that he could, and far more than he should have done, if a due regard to his own health had influenced him at all. He attempted to awaken the upper classes from the selfish torpor in which they remained, insensible both to the miseries of their fellow-creatures, and to the dangers which those miseries, unless checked, must eventually pro- duce to all. He did this in a story which received the singular title of “ Yeast.” During the autumn BLAZING A PATH. 3 * of this year “ Yeast ” was passed as a serial through Frasers Magazine, and though inferior to his subsequent books, it accomplished his purpose. Kingsley in it described scenes that his own eyes had looked upon, and he attacked real evils that were the death of multitudes. He wrote its pages gene- rally after a hard day of parish work, a method which was fearfully exhaustive to himself, but which im- parted the glow and earnestness that make “ Yeast ” still a useful book. Such a book could not but empty him of needful energy and vitality ; and, therefore, in the fall of the year his health broke down entirely. So prostrate was he, that during the following autumn and winter he was compelled to take complete rest at Ilfracombe. There his receptive wits were not idle, for, while exploring the countless treasures of the shore, he was slowly dreaming out the story that afterwards shaped itself into “ Alton Locke.” This story, as all useful books must do, lay simmering in his mind for a long time before it acquired definite shape and purpose. In the summer of I 849 he returned to Eversley once more, bat only to fall again a victim to his devotion to his work. During the summer a low fever visited the village, and oblivious of the risk he ran, Kingsley diligently visited and nursed the sufferers : and with a result that might have been anticipated, for after a night of nursing his health once more broke down, and he had to return to Ilfracombe for rest and complete quiet. 32 MEN WITH A MISSION In these labours Kingsley was to a large extent a pioneer, for then there were very few who even knew what was required, much less were able to do what was needful. His work in many departments was to pioneer for others, and in doing so he blazed a path by which many wanderers have reached a knowledge of Christ. The axe that he employed was not a borrowed one, and he struck the trees with a personal peculiarity which was all his own, but none the less he was a helper of many who, humanly speaking, must without him have died in the waste. So that men be led into happiness, what matter how the guide induces them to take the right path ? Yet there were many who, be- cause they could not understand Kingsley, suspected and assailed him. The true principle is laid down for all time in the words of our Lord when He said, “ He that is not against us is on our part ” (Mark ix. 40). CHAPTER IV. THE MODERN CRUSADER; OR, THE VIKING OF A NEW AGE. “ I have told Most bitter truth, but without bitterness.” — Coleridge. “ It is only by the repetition of noble acts of self-denial and faith that natural character is nerved for high and continuous efforts. ” —John Foster. “ Christ in Christ-like life expressed, This, this, not words, subdues a land to Christ ; And in this best apostolate all have part.” — Legends of St. Patrick. WORK ! WORK ! WORK ! — ONE ENEMY AFTER ANOTHER— MISUNDERSTOOD, AND THEREFORE HATED— THE GOSPEL OF SOAP AND WATER— ASSAILED IN THE HOUSE OF HIS FRIENDS— EXHAUSTED BUT NOT BEATEN. “ As for bidding me not work,” said Sir Walter Scott, “ Molly might just as well put the kettle on the fire and say, ‘ Now, don’t boil.’ ” This is the true spirit of all the world’s workers ; their work is a natural and irresistible consequence of what they are and are sent to do. To a man, there- fore, of Kingsley’s combative temperament it was utterly impossible not to combat the errors and 33 C 34 MEN WITH A MISSION. evils which he saw around him, and in preaching the modern crusade against dirt, cant, and tyranny of all kinds his hand was against many a man’s, and many a man’s hand, therefore, was against him. This was partly the consequence of his own nervous temperament, which could not stay to conciliate, and which sometimes made him unjust when calmer reason would have prevented the error. To mention one instance of many, his picture of Dissenting ministers in “ Alton Locke ” is felt by all impartial men to be manifestly unjust and untrue; in this case the fault was rather from want of thought than from malice prepense. Another example is his treatment of the Free-traders, who are now admitted to have rendered a most valuable service to the nation. But these blemishes, while they should not be omitted in a faithful portrait, be- cause they were in the man, are counterbalanced by the sterling excellence of his character and work. The gospel of soap and water required to be preached, and men needed to be reminded that this life has a present importance and may be happy in greater measure than it is. Many excellent men had settled down into a kind of fatalism which regarded disease wholly as the visitation of God, and not as also the penalty for violating His laws. And in thinking of such men as Kingsley, it must be admitted that there is a section of the Evangelical school which is extremely narrow and self-conceited. All light does not come through the same window, THE MODERN CRUSADER. 35 and it is possible that a man may differ from our view of truth without necessarily being an alien and a heretic. But every man who really strives to fulfil the mission that God has entrusted to him does so at the expense of fighting, for the dragon will not relinquish his captives without a struggle. The year 1850 was pre-eminently a year of battle with Charles Kingsley. He resigned upon principle a sinecure that he had held for some years, and this at a period when the loss of the money was serious to him. His poor-rates were heavy, and the distress among the farmers also lessened his income, so that the sacrifice to principle was made at great personal cost. But Kingsley felt the spirit of Scott’s words when he said, “ Time and I against any two ; ” for he set to work at once to provide for the deficit in his in- come. He finished “ Alton Locke,” that incomparable picture of his suffering fellow-creatures, — alas ! true in every page. Keynolds remarked truthfully that no man can put into a picture more than there is in himself, and the same is also true of books. As with every useful author, Kingsley put himself largely into his books, and their amount of heart is one of their charms. But there was such a prejudice against Kingsley in many quarters that “ Alton Locke ” was rejected by the publishers to whom it was first offered. By the kind offices of Thomas Carlyle (who loved a man dearly when he strove to perform a man’s work) the book was at length placed in the hands 36 MEN WITH A MISSION . of a firm of publishers who were willing to incur the odium which issuing Kingsley’s books involved at that time. This attack upon the tyranny that estimated the lives of men as less valuable than the goods which they manufacture at the cost of health and life itself, was followed up by a pamphlet, in which he assailed the same evil. Then, as if he had not enough assail- ants already attacking him, Kingsley threw himself into another conflict. George Eliot, whose influence upon this generation is of the nature one might expect from such as she was, translated Strauss’s flimsy book upon the Life of Christ. This, Kingsley felt, should not go unanswered, when the interests in- volved were so great and the refutation so easy. As a general rule error is like fish, it soon exhibits its own decay ; but it is sometimes useful to speak out the truth, for fear any should be deluded by the colours of death, which are indeed only a sign of begun decay. This effort was the more needful because the distress among the working classes became extreme during the autumn, and men grow lawless in proportion as religion loses its wholesome terrors. Kingsley’s house was among the number that were attacked by housebreakers, and, sorely against his will, he was compelled to arm himself. One of the Evangelical newspapers now commenced an attack upon him, upon the principle, perhaps, that “ the principal business of good Christians is, beyond all controversy, to fight one another,” as has THE MODERN CRUSADER. 37 been sadly observed. Kingsley, it is true, somewhat invited attack, but it is certainly a pity when the strength of a nation is wasted in civil war, to the joy of the enemies outside. After all, Christ is far vaster than any experience of Him can be, and it is surely more Christ-like to cover our brethrens’ faults than, Ham-like, to jest at their follies. Cruden styled himself the censor, and he walked the streets with a sponge with which he wiped out all announcements that he supposed to be wrong and injurious to his fellow-creatures. Which office might with advantage be revived just now; it would certainly be more lovely than is the madness that at times possesses some Christians. It is not too much to say that in some parts of the Church of Christ it would be plain truth to expose a placard — c< Mantraps and spring-guns set on these premises.” But it was Kingsley's fortune to be a fighting man all his days ; indeed, he was a man of war from his youth. His contributions to social science will be referred to presently; suffice it to note that in that he was also in advance of his age. The year 1851 was signalised by the opening of the Great Exhibition, which men imagined would begin a new era in the history of men. Kingsley recognised the immense benefits which the Exhibi- tion conferred upon the whole civilised world, but he could scarcely have been so sanguine as others were as to its results. His best work, “ Hypatia,” was commenced during 38 MEN WITH A MISSION. this year, and it was passed through the pages of Fraser's Magazine as a serial. It is undoubtedly his masterpiece, and in it the excellences and defects of his mind appeared. As a picture exquisitely accurate of one of the most important periods of human history it is unrivalled among all the books of this age, while its influence as a' moral force cannot now be gauged. It belongs also to that high order of books that express clearly what many feel but cannot themselves utter, while, also, alas ! it is an attack upon received beliefs concerning the future which is more difficult to repel than a treatise would have been. In the summer of the Exhibition year Kingsley experienced what was probably the most bitter of all the attacks that he endured. He had been invited to preach in a London church, and he dis- coursed as one might have expected him to speak. Had the clergyman who invited Kingsley been ignorant of Kingsley’s views, it might have been wise of him to have allowed his visitor to say his say and then to have departed. But after having him- self arranged the service, the minister so far forgot what was due both to God and to his friend as to publicly denounce from the pulpit much of the ser- mon. The working men who thronged the building very naturally resented this injustice, and probably were more alienated from the Church by this well- intended attempt to win them than by previous years of neglect. Kingsley wisely attempted no reply at THE MODERN CRUSADER. 39 the time; but when, weary and heart-sick, he returned home to Eversley again he found relief for his spirit in composing his exquisite ballad entitled “The Fishers/’ He required all the fortitude that he possessed to withstand the new attack which was hereupon made upon him. The papers took up the new scandal, and the Bishop of London allied himself with Kingsley’s enemies so far that he forbade Kingsley to preach in the diocese of London. Subsequently, upon reading the sermon, the Bishop withdrew his pro- hibition ; but all this anxiety and conflict seriously injured Kingsley’s health. To some natures such struggles are not harmful, but to a man of Kings- ley’s exquisite sensibility even a victory purchased at such a price is like a defeat. The conflict left him exhausted in mind and body, and once more he was compelled to seek for rest. He left England in company with his parents, and amidst fresh scenes he acquired new impetus for the arduous conflict which was yet before him. The fact that he was so furiously assailed may perhaps be accounted for upon the principle which was indicated by the Chinese evangelist when he said that “ he lamented the want of opposition, blaming his own unfaithful- ness as the only cause of such peace on the part of the powers of darkness.” For no fortress cares to assail a train of baggage-mules, but every gun will be pointed against an approaching train of artillery. It is the severest condemnation when the Christian Church is let severely alone in contemptuous neglect ; 4 ° MEN WITH A MISSION . then there is nothing for fallen Samson but to grind in the prison-house. Kingsley intended to combat every accessible enemy of God and man, and there- fore he encountered a violent resistance from men whose instincts compelled them to dread the incoming of light into their foul caverns. CHAPTER V. THE GOSPEL OF THIS LIFE ; OR , THE APOSTLE TO THE OUTCASTS . “ For knowledge is a steep which few may climb, While duty is a path which all may tread.” — Epic of Hades. “ Every human heart is human, And even in savage bosoms There are longings, yearnings, strivings, For the good they comprehend not. And the feeble hands and helpless, Groping blindly in the darkness, Touch God’s right hand in that darkness, And are lifted up and strengthened.” — Longfellow. MAKING ALLOWANCES— THE SACRED SABBATH— CONSTRAINED TO SPEAK — “HYPATIA” — NOT UPON THE FATHERS, BUT UPON CHRIST— MORE LIGHT BEYOND. “My dear sir/’ Turner the painter once remarked to a critic, “if you only knew how difficult it is to paint even a decent picture, you would not say the severe things that you do of those who fail.” The counsel is good for all those whose only contribution to the service of man is a criticism, and it repre- sents also an element to be borne in mind in 41 42 MEN WITH A MISSION. estimating a life-work. The work of a pioneer is infinitely more difficult than the enterprises of those who follow him ; his log hut may really be a greater triumph of art than a Grecian temple, all things being considered. Yet, while all this is true, fidelity to truth com- I pels the writer to dissent from many of the views of / Kingsley. His merits and usefulness are now gene- rally acknowledged, but it is imperative to remember that the truth has paramount claims upon us. During the year 1852 a proposal was made to open the Crystal Palace upon Sundays, upon the plea that by so doing drunkenness would be lessened. Such an end, of course, is infinitely desirable, but it has yet to be proved that the purpose intended would be accomplished by the suggested change. The drunken classes are not as a rule patrons of art, and the probabilities are that intemperance would increase instead of lessening. But even if the step be expedient, it has yet to be proved to be lawful, for in the judgment of many, the obliga- tion to keep the Sabbath is one of the primary laws of the moral constitution of man. And with all diffidence, the writer would urge that the ends of the Sabbath are not attained unless it be recog- nised as a sacred rest, a day for worshipping God. It is true that the Sacred Day is a feast and not a fast, but a feast it is with a peculiar meaning and purpose. Had Kingsley lived for a few years longer, it is probable that he would have modified his views THE GOSPEL OF THIS LIFE. 43 upon this point. For the well-being and prosperity of a nation depend entirely upon its obedience to the Divine law, of which the fourth commandment forms a conspicuous and integral portion. Having said so much by way of criticism, it is pleasant now to point out the usefulness of Kingsley in other important directions. His correspondence was immense and exhaustive, for from all parts of the world men and women wrote to him for sym- pathy and guidance. Yet Kingsley did not com- plain, but he accepted the labour which was thus entailed upon him as a portion of his life-mission. Although this is rapidly becoming an age of post- cards, it is as well even now to employ the post as a moral force, for a letter wisely written may become of immense spiritual influence for good. During the summer of this same year, that is, in 1852, the family of Judge Erskine settled in Eversley, to the great comfort and assistance of Kingsley. They gave him sympathy, counsel, and practical monetary help in the multiform duties of his charge. And this was the more needful, because as he was understood, more and more strangers flocked, often from a great distance, to hear Kingsley preach. To him this popularity was displeasing, as it must be with every finely-strung nature ; although, indeed, he did not desire to be crowded, yet it must have been a delight for him to find that, in spite of opposi- tion, and perhaps in consequence of it, he was able to secure an audience. It might be said of Kingsley, 44 MEN WITH A MISSION . both in his writing and in his preaching, as it was said of Burke by Johnson, “ Burke's talk is the ebullition of his mind ; he does not talk from a desire of distinction, but because his mind is full.” Kingsley felt that he had a message to deliver, and therefore he uttered what was to many most un- welcome truth ; but although he had no pleasure in wounding them, he could not repress that which burned within him for expression. Silence is not always golden, for at times it amounts to treason against God and cruelty to men. We never really know a truth until we can testify it, and we know only potentially as we express that which is given into our charge. Kingsley at this period offended many people (who might have been expected to have known better) by the publication of “ Hypatia ” as a book. This was issued in the year 1853, an d it set forth the writer’s opinions about the future state. Of the hereafter very little positive information is revealed in Scripture, but in the opinion of most Christian people the Scripture is clear in its asser- tion of the eternity, both of pain and of bliss. As with many others who have departed from the orthodox teaching upon this point, Kingsley’s views shifted more than once ; he was permanent only in his fierce and at times almost blasphemous denun- ciation of hell and of penalty. It is comparatively easy for any one to indicate difficulties in any solution of the after-life theory, but the question, after all, is one of revelation and also of God’s jus- THE GOSPEL OF THIS LIFE. 45 tice. “ Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? ” may well still every murmur at what, after all, we only dimly understand. Probably on account of the persistent preaching of these views (which many regarded as unscriptural and as having a tendency to weaken the moral restraints which are all too few with all of us), “ Hypatia ” was disliked by some. Others were less excusable in their opposition, for the exposure of the meanness, vileness, and wicked- ness of Cyril and other so-called fathers greatly displeased those who regarded them w T ith intense reverence. As if men were not always and every- where the same, and the truth did not rest upon Divine sanctions rather than upon merely human testimonies ! Even supposing that all who had gone before us were as vile as it is possible for men to be, the Christian religion would not be affected by their follies. The obligation to believe and to obey the Gospel would even then be just as cogent as it is now, for the Gospel is addressed to every individual soul, quite apart and distinct from all others. To many excellent people, however, it appeared as if Kingsley were removing one of the pillars upon which they supposed that the Church rested, and they feared the doom of the Philistines. The ugly charge of heresy was hinted, and it cer- tainly did much to prevent Charles Kingsley from afterwards receiving a D.C.L. degree at Oxford. To a greater extent than we know, or are disposed to admit, the Christian Church acts upon the ancient 46 MEN WITH A MISSION . assertion, “ that every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and that every man has a right to knock him down for it.” Truth is many- sided, and it is always possible that some truth is invisible from every attainable point of view ; but above all things error should be dealt with gently, and in a Christian spirit. The antagonism of the Bar is out of place in themes that are the subject of a Divine revelation, and the Holy Spirit will never dwell in a contentious heart, even if that heart be that of a defender of the faith. Old John Robinson bade the pilgrim fathers remember that God had not yet shown them all that they might yet know. “ He charged us,” says the old chronicler, “ that if God should reveal anything to us by any other instrument of His, to be as ready to receive it as any truth by his ministry ; for he was very confi- dent the Lord had more light and truth yet to break forth out of His Holy Word.” George Rawson paraphrases the old man’s words thus : — ■ “ We limit not the truth of God To our poor reach of mind By notions of our day or sect, Crude, partial, and confined. No ; let a near and better hope Within our breasts be stirred ; The Lord hath yet more light and truth To break forth from His Word.” From various reasons, therefore, but with painful consequences to Kingsley, “ Hypatia ” was generally THE GOSPEL OF THIS LIFE. 47 received by the Church with regret and worse. But its mission, as with others of Kingsley’s books, was chiefly to the outcasts who are generally out- side all recognised Christian influences. And Kingsley’s chief teaching to them was the divineness of all the nature of man ; asserting that the old Manichean view of the body, which is a part of ourselves, is utterly wrong. Every portion of the body is a witness to the Divine skill and wisdom, and it may also become the temple of the Holy Ghost. For the useful evangelical revival had not put the present life in its true view. We are not born merely in order to prepare for death, but also that in life we may enjoy and serve God, and find present happiness in Him. Of course, the application of the vicarious atonement of our Lord and the renewal of the heart by the Divine Spirit are essential to true life, but men who are busy in practical matters require a present-day Gospel, which recognises even this world as God’s kingdom and the theatre of His grace. In the year 1854 Charles Kingsley spent the spring and winter at Torquay. This was on account of his wife’s illness. During this visit Kingsley amused himself with the scientific wonders which were scattered upon the shore, and an ar- ticle upon them was subsequently developed into a volume which has been well received by the public. Here, too, he was once more amidst the stirring influences of the west country that he loved so 48 MEN WITH A MISSION. devoutly, and the historical associations of his new home suggested to him “ Westward Ho ! ” — one of the best, if not the very best, of his books. In the June of 1854 Kingsley had taken a house at Bideford, on account of his wife’s health. This suggested the theme for the book, which is a power- ful sermon upon the tendencies of Bomanism. It would be a useful study if some one would tell us about the circumstances under which the great books which have influenced the world have been written. It would be found that in almost every case sickness and sorrow upon the part of the writer or of his dear ones was at least a part of the originating cause. Thus, Longfellow’s words are true : — “ Only those are crowned and sainted W ho with grief have been acquainted; Making nations nobler, freer. In their feverish exultations, In their triumph and their yearning In their passionate pulsations, In their words among the nations, The Promethean fire is burning. ” CHAPTER VI. STRIFE ABROAD , BUT PEACE AT HOME. “ Not scathless those that sing such song, Grief th$ir instructress, of the Muses chief To hearts by grief unvanquished, to their hearts Had taught a melody that neither spared Singer nor listener.” — Legends op St. Patrick. “ Let truth be told, but still without offence.” THE CRIMEAN BLUNDERS AND SUFFERINGS— TEACHING THE NEGLECTED — WE ARE PENCILS — AT HOME A KING— MAR- RIAGE NOT FOR THIS LIFE ALONE. The Crimean war, into which the English Govern- ment had drifted with a light heart, proved the inefficiency of the English military leaders, and the terrible sufferings which were endured by our brave soldiers in consequence, wrung the heart of the nation with indignation and anguish. “ The great majority of us are clothed with rags,” wrote one who was with the army. “ Some of us are without shoes ; others of us are without a cap to cover our heads from the pelting of the pitiless storm, and some of us have more mud than clothing attached to our bodies. Hundreds of sick and wounded are daily brought down famished, emaciated, and clothed in 49 D 5o MEN WITH A MISSION . rags. I have seen many a noble form a total wreck from the lack of timely aid. A heart-hardening process in the army is only too apparent. A party of soldiers was the other day seen playing at cards in the trenches, when a shot laid one of them low. Instantly they rose, carried the dead man away, and resumed their game.” The story of the suffer- ings of our brave men who were sacrificed to the recklessness and incompetence of their leaders stirred many who could not feel that — “ ’Tis nothing ; a private or two now and then Will not count in the tale of the battle ; Not an officer lost, only one of the men Breathing out all alone his death-rattle.” Not only was an inquiry demanded, but practical relief was poured into the Crimea, private gene- rosity eclipsing Government grants in its eagerness to supply the needs of the soldiers. Kingsley felt keenly the exciting interest of the struggle, and he has given vent to his military instincts in “ Two Years Ago.” He wrote also a small tract to which he did not affix his name, and which was sent out in large quantities to the camp. And so the cam- paign went on with disastrous effects to the British Empire in India, where it contributed to produce afterwards the awful Mutiny. Meanwhile, in England, Kingsley published his “ Westward Ho,” which he dedicated to Bishop Selwyn, and to Rajah Brooke, two noble and suc- cessful workers in the cause of civilisation and of STRIFE ABROAD , BUT PEACE AT HOME. 51 righteousness. The volume met with considerable favour from the first, although Thackeray in the Times expressed some disapproval. When the book was off his mind, Kingsley felt the need of some other employment to occupy his restless energies. Madame de Stael has defined happiness as “ a con- stant occupation for a desirable object which is constantly attended by a sense of continual pro- gress.” It is true that continual progress seldom attends any enterprise, however laudable, for, like the tide, ebb and flow alternate with most efforts. Yet no man can be happy who is not really working, and that for ends outside himself and his interests. The old story of the traveller who warmed himself by his efforts to revive a dying man is a parable of all life ; the reflex action of every good deed is both a present reward and a promise of greater recom- pense yet to come. Kingsley, therefore, during his stay in fair Bideford attempted to gather around him the neglected and uneducated young men of the town. He formed a drawing-class for their benefit, and himself instructed them, in some instances at least, with signal benefit to their future career. His own skill with the pencil was marvellous ; indeed one might have inferred this from the form and beauty of his sentences. And he possessed the artist gift, and could depict in a few strokes the thought that burned within him. So the days passed in useful work, with results that eternity alone will reveal. If the drawing-classes had no other result than that 52 MEN WITH A MISSION. which attended Joseph Livesey’s attempts at edu- cating the poor, they would have been worth the labour that they entailed. “ I don’t know that I made much, if any, progress in my irregular attend- ance at Mr. Livesey’s night-school,” says Thomas Whittaker. “ One thing, however, I did learn, and it has continued with me to the present day — I learned to love and esteem Joseph Livesey ; his is a name never to be forgotten.” It is no small gain when the scholar learns to love and esteem his teacher, who thus becomes a useful lesson, whatever he may be able to impart to his pupils of other instruction. Kingsley, unselfish, generous, cultured, and exquisitely sensitive to the teachings of God in nature, must have been a noble influence upon the youths who gathered around him, and who learned from him what he also learned from Christ. “ Let us remember that our children are pencils,” said Richard Cecil ; and so also are the lives that, for their good or evil, come into daily contact with us ; for by them we portray ourselves upon the time w r hich is yet to come. It is a serious and necessary inquiry as to what we are by them depicting for coming generations to read. Kingsley returned to Eversley once more, but only to find that during the winter his wife could not live in the damp Parsonage house. But instead of being compelled to remove to a distance, he was able to find a house in an adjoining district which did not necessitate his prolonged absence from his charge. STRIFE ABROAD ; BUT PEACE AT HOME. 53 The formation of the military camp at Aldershot also brought new interest and new responsibilities to him. Always interested in military men and their needs, he formed many friendships among the officers. Nor was he afraid to speak out when he thought that his duty required him to reprove what he felt to be wrong in them. His colours, like Nelson’s, were nailed to the mast, and those who knew him most intimately say that Kingsley was like Hannington, of whom it was said, “ that all his life, his amusement, as well as his labour, was per- meated by his faith in the Unseen.” Therefore, “ the business of seeking to influence souls for Christ was never alien to any of his moods.” Of Kingsley this was true, and he employed methods which were his own, and therefore the best for him to use. He was still consulted by many who had been affected by his books, and who desired to break free from the fetters which early vice had forced upon them. To such Kingsley was a genuine son of consolation, and for them he ungrudgingly gave the best of his mind and heart. To gather the outcasts is the Saviour’s work ; He Himself describes His office as that of the shepherd “ who goeth after that which is lost until he find it ; ” and men are likest God when so they do. The need for sympathy prompted the Romish Confessional, which is a perversion of the true method which God has devised. Every man should become such, that all who are dis- heartened and discouraged may be able to turn to 54 MEN WITH A MISSION . him, confident that they will not be rejected or betrayed when they confess their faults. Such was Kingsley, and therefore he was able to help so many of his fellow-men. Among those who visited Kingsley during this year of 1856 was Mrs. Beecher Stowe, who, like many Americans, has recorded her impressions and memories of English scenes and persons. Mrs. Stowe, it is true, did not come to Eversley for sym- pathy, but it was a tribute to Kingsley’s genius that the authoress of “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin” visited him. And visited him in his own home, where he was pre-eminently at his best. Many extremely worthy people leave their courtesy and almost their piety outside their door-mat; at home their natures are under no restraint, and they are not compelled to preserve the courtesies which make life bearable. Bunyan remarks that Talkative “ was a saint abroad and a devil at home,” and it is to be feared that there are many who are like him in this respect. At home Kingsley, on the contrary, was at his best, and there his best qualities pre-eminently shone. He had not, it is true, the pecuniary anxieties and difficulties which sometimes shadow the homes of business men, but he left, as all men may do, his work and all its troubles outside the family circle. In his home Kingsley was all brightness, and he continued to impart his own sunny spirit to those who lived with him. With him, love did not cease at the altar, and his devotion to his wife partook STRIFE ABROAD , BUT PEACE AT HOME . 55 of the romance of old chivalry. This was probably owing partly to his natural high-toned courtesy, but it was also owing to his own high ideas of marriage. “ A true idea of the institution of mar- riage, ” says Dr. Dale, “ lies very near the founda- tion of every true philosophy of human life, and affects the whole theory of the rights and duties both of men and of women, and of their* relations to each other. Marriage rests upon the possibility of the absolute mutual surrender to each other of man and woman ; a surrender in which nothing is reserved but loyalty to God and to those supreme moral duties which no human relationship can disturb and modify. It rests not only on the possibility of that perfect blending of life and interest, but on the strength and blessedness which come from it. And any theory of marriage which would impair the completeness of the resolution of two individual lives into a higher though complex unity is a departure from that ideal which, in our highest, noblest, and happiest hours, asserts for each one of us its authority and truth.” These are noble words, and they are true as they are worthy to be remembered. They explain Kingsley’s view of the sacred relationship which our Saviour has constituted a model and type of His union with His saints. Towards his wife Kingsley ever mani- fested his affection, and he clung firmly to the devout hope (which is cherished by many others) that the tie which is created by marriage is pro- 5 $ MEN WITH A MISSION. bably eternal. Of late years the fact that a lead- ing journal could discuss the question, “ Is marriage a failure ? ” shows the low esteem into which the sacred bond has fallen. We require a repetition of Kingsley’s teaching in order that woman may receive her due, and the national life be kept pure at its source. As a natural consequence of his devoted affection towards his wife, Kingsley was tender and con- siderate towards his children. Sir James Wylie has discovered as the result of careful investiga- tions that four times as many patients recover from their sickness when they are placed in clear sun- shine as do those who are in the dark, and this is a most important principle in morals. Cheer- fulness is a most powerful medicine and preventive against moral and social perils both for old and young. Kingsley possessed the mirth -provoking faculty in a very eminent degree, and he did not scruple to use it. He felt rightly that humour and wit are gifts of God, and are to be used for His glory. He at least did not assent to George Herbert’s singular saying — “ All Solomon’s sea of brass and world of stone Is not so dear to God as one good groan.” Without doubt there is a frivolity which is ruinous — giggle and make giggle are terribly demoralising, but a cheerful spirit is a part of the work of grace, and joy in the Lord is one of the marks of the new birth. Goldsmith said that he had a knack of STRIFE ABROAD , BUT PEACE AT HOME. 57 hoping, and Dr. Johnson said also that a habit of looking at the bright side of things was worth a thousand pounds per year to any man. Kingsley had that habit, and he did not scruple to use it at home. His piety was never sour and vinegary, and therefore his children loved him. All life is necessarily so sad, that any man who will assist his fellows to bear their burdens easily is sure of being popular, for men turn to cheerfulness as they do to a sunny landscape. It cheers and brightens them, and merely looking at it lightens the heart. It is true that with regard to the Sabbath Kingsley was led into excess, but this may have been a revolt against the narrow, evangelical strict- ness of his childhood's home. The spirit which forbade a mother to kiss her child on a Sunday is undoubtedly unscriptural, but so also is the making of the Lord's Day into a holiday. Cricket on the green at Eversley on Sunday afternoons was no doubt popular, but it was certainly a breach of the fourth commandment, which, as is every other precept of the moral law, is still binding upon Chris- tians. The holy day, it is true, has been changed from the seventh to the first, but this has been done by the highest authority of all. Cricket also is not a primary necessity of human nature, but the worship of God is ; and, after all, the old adage is true that — “ A Sabbath well spent Brings a week of content, And health for the toil of the morrow ; 58 MEN WITH A MISSION. But a Sabbath profaned, Whate’er may be gained, Is the certain forerunner of sorrow.” In Kingsley’s home, indeed, the Sabbath was marked as a day of gladness, for then his children brought out their Sunday picture-books, in which he drew whatever animal or subject they might select, and the early hours of the day were spent by them in decking the graves in the churchyard with flowers. Such a custom is, of course, impossible in some homes, but yet it is surely possible to do far more than has ever yet been done by any one to make the Sabbath a delight to the children and servants of the family. A true idea of the Sabbath obliga- tion and an earnest attempt to rise to its solemn meaning would do much to heal the breaches of religious and national life. This, however, will not be until right views prevail as to the supreme authority of the Word of God. CHAPTER VII. MISUNDERSTOOD ; OR, DIFFERENT, AND THEREFORE WRONG. “ But good my brother, Do not as some ungracious pastors do, — Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, Whilst like a puff’d and careless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not his own rede.” — Shakespeare. “ He had perceived the presence and the power Of Greatness ; and deep feeling had impressed Great objects on his mind with portraiture And colour so distinct, that on his mind They lay like substances, and almost seemed To haunt the bodily sense.” — Wordsworth. “ God was using these things to create in me a sense of vocation, confused at first, but becoming ever more distinct.” — C asalis. CONVERTED BY FEAR — SUFFERING FOR FAITHFULNESS — • INDIAN MUTINY AND ITS HORRORS— THE CHILDREN IN DANGER— PREACHING BEFORE PRINCES— THE INEQUALI- TIES OF LIFE. In “ My Life in Basuto Land ” we are told that the Dutch colonists tried to excuse their cruelties to the poor helpless natives by alleging that they supposed that thereby they (the Dutch) were advancing the cause of religion. “ Am I not a Christian ? ” one of 59 6o MEN WITH A MISSION . them inquired. “ I have a white skin and long hair ! I have been baptized and I sing psalms ! ” Which is similar to the Irishman’s definition of the Methodists as the people whose religion consisted in their wearing long whiskers ! In various degrees the same kind of spirit lingers amongst us even yet, and it requires a faithful deal- ing with on the part of those who would help their fellow-men. Almost all through his life Kingsley was looked at suspiciously by many excellent people, who, if they believed in him at all, regarded him in much the same kind of spirit. He was an ori- ginal, and grew foliage of his own, and as in many respects he refused to be clipped into shape after the orthodox fashion, men hinted at more than they dared to say about him. It was, however, his power that he was one by himself, for the gifts of his genius were for a special and peculiar purpose. When, therefore, in the year 1857, Kingsley pub- lished his “ Two Years Ago,” the book was met with a chorus of disapproval from many who did not understand its drift and purpose. It was not after the pattern of the books which they were accus- tomed to read or to approve, and therefore they supposed that it must be evil. Yet the book is one that must do good to every intelligent reader, because it deals with facts as they really are in the world around us. For outside the circle of our immediate acquaintance there are throngs of those who both require and will repay religious teaching. MISUNDERSTOOD. 61 To these outcasts Kingsley spoke, and these he really did influence for good in “ Two Years Ago.” The book was issued from the press at a period when, for the first time in three years, Kingsley was able to spend the winter in his own home at Eversley; that is, in the year 1857. The same year brought to England the awful news of the Indian Mutiny, and Kingsley shared to the full the national frenzy which arose when the horrible story was related. “ I regard it as the dying effort of Brahminism,” said Lord Shaftesbury, “ which is visibly, palpably declining ; all its remaining strength is excited and concentrated for one final struggle. And bear this in mind, the retribution that follows upon these crimes must be equal to the nature and extent of the crimes themselves. I maintain that justice, pure simple justice, demands we should exact of these men that compensation which is due to that crime unparalleled in the history of mankind. We do not seek for revenge. God forbid that the word should be used in our declamation ! And God for- bid that the sentiment should enter into our hearts ! But there is such a thing as justice, and there is such a thing as a sense of justice imprinted upon the human heart by the hand of God Himself. Justice, I hold, must be satisfied ; every principle of policy and every principle of religion require it — it is your policy, and the greatest policy in the 62 MEN WITH A MISSION . sense of humanity, that justice should be fully exercised.” “ Nothing can be more just and moderate,” said the Times in reviewing Lord Shaftesbury’s speech, “than what he says about punishment; 5 ’ in fact, all England was furiously agreed in its demand for a stern penalty. Although Kingsley had neither personal friend nor relative among the sufferers, he felt keenly the awful wickedness of the Mutiny. The story of Cawnpore will always be regarded with horror by civilised men, but when the tidings of the massacre first reached home, the feeling was, of course, much keener than it can be now. The year after the Mutiny — that is, in I 8 5 8 — not only did evil tidings, but far worse came to our shores ; for in that year diphtheria first appeared among us. This scourge of childhood had been previously unknown in Britain, and it therefore excited as much alarm as the plague had formerly done. The terror and danger were equally a call to Kingsley, who, like all men of strong nature, was an intense lover of little children. He went about his parish carrying with him the remedies, which he taught his people by example how to employ. Since the cessation of miracles in the world, such service is as much a part of the Gospel as preaching, and by it Kingsley performed loyal service for God. In the same year of grace — that is, in *1858 — Kingsley published a volume of poems, which met with a more favourable reception from the critics than MISUNDERSTOOD. 63 his previous books had received. During the next year — that is, in 1 859 — Kingsley also first began to receive favourable notice from high quarters, for on Palm-Sunday of that year he preached before the Queen and Prince Consort at Buckingham Palace. Although Kingsley had been an ardent advocate ol the suffering poor, his tastes were especially aris- tocratical, and he feared God not more than he honoured the Queen. For, while it is natural in a free country that the head of the State should be freely criticised, loyal men should be careful not to speak evil of the ruler of their people. A form i>f government is essential to happy life, and rests upon Divine authority. So that government rests not upon the consent of the nation only, but also, the nation having consented to the particular form of government that may have been selected, the head of the State rules by Divine authority. Kingsley was not a courtier in any other sense than that in which his hero, Sir Richard Grenville, was a courtier, although he had instinctively the old-world loyalty for rank and station. Hence it was a personal gratification as much as an honour which he had earned when he was appointed one of the Queen’s chaplains, and when in that capacity he preached in his turn before the Court. His merit was becoming clear and recognised, for the Prince Consort was a keen judge of character, and had he lived he would probably have advanced Kingsley to further honours than he attained. But such is the 64 MEN WITH A MISSION. irregularity of the system of moral government under which we live, that often the recognition and reward of merit come when they are too late to be enjoyed. God, indeed, has not promised to reward virtue in the present condition of affairs, and He often permits virtue to suffer unrewarded and vice to sin unchecked, because He has a long eternity in which to adjust and to explain all that is perplexing here. It is worthy, too, of notice, how as he grew older, Kingsley more and more recognised the Divine Hand which is slowly working out in the world the purpose of righteousness, even by adverse things. This truth of the Divine sovereignty and rule is, after all, that which the mind most requires for its comfort during the seasons of perplexity which come to us all at times. CHAPTER VIII. THE SOLDIER IN A BLACK COAT; OR , NO PEACE HERE . “ I have been from my childhood always of a rumorous and stormy nature.” — L uther. “ Low, wretched, and dismal as they are, we see in them the nursery of the Christian faith ; and truly it is in keeping, for if the Founder of our religion was born in a stable, we must not be sur- prised that His humble and despised followers had no better shelter than the tombs.” — Lord Shaftesbury on the Catacombs. “The fires were kept constantly supplied with human fuel by monks, who knew the art of burning Reformers better than that of arguing with them. The scaffold was the most conclusive of syllogisms, and used upon all occasions. Still the people remained unconvinced. Thousands of burned heretics had not made a single convert.” — Motley on the Dutch Republic. APPOINTED PROFESSOR— DEATH OF HIS FATHER— IS PRAYER OF ANY AVAIL ? — WATCHED WITH RAT’S EYES— DEATH OF PRINCE ALBERT— SCIENCE NOT OPPOSED TO THE BIBLE. In the year i860 another honour fell to Kings- ley’s lot, for then Lord Palmerston, perhaps at the instigation of Lord Shaftesbury, who was his son-in- law, offered Kingsley the post of Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge. Kingsley at once accepted the position, and the more 66 MEN WITH A MISSION . readily because it brought him into contact with the student youth of the University. Although some of the college authorities had been prejudiced very much against him on account of his books, yet when he went up in the summer in order to take his M.A. degree, Kingsley was very kindly received. He was much gratified by this favourable reception, which indeed was almost essential to his doing any good among the young men. The pleasure of this appointment was, however, speedily dashed by a bereavement which fell upon him during the fall of the same year. For an acid is always mixed in the sweetest cup to prevent the injurious effects which might follow from too much sweet in our lot. To Kingsley the loss was a very great one, for with the death of a father the home is for ever destroyed. Nothing can compensate for the loss which is, of course, the greater the better the departed has been beloved. From the time of his father’s death until her own death Kingsley’s aged mother lived with him at Eversley. During the year i860 Kingsley once more en- raged the orthodox, who did not perhaps under- stand his meaning, or perhaps were unable to look beyond the present. The summer of the year was a very wet one, and mindful only of the present seen effects of the rain, many religious men began to pray for fine weather. Kingsley understood better what benefit the rains were to our country, and he preached a sermon upon the subject, which he after- THE SOLDIER IN A BLACK COAT . 67 wards published. The cholera had been for a long time threatening an outbreak, but the heavy rains averted the calamity by cleansing the drains and sewers, and thus removing much dangerous matter which would have produced or fed the disease. The smaller evil he felt to be as nothing when compared with the larger benefit, and he said so. Some expres- sions in the sermon, it is to be regretted, with regard to prayer were open to serious misapprehension, for some people supposed from them that Kingsley objected to special prayer. This was not the case, but believing as he did most intensely in the Divine Wisdom with regard to all the events of life, Kingsley rightly believed that although men may not be able to detect the purpose which is behind the Divine action, yet, after all, what God sends is actually, and essentially, the very best for us. This principle requires guarding, for we are permitted and even commanded to pray ; in all things by prayer and supplication is the Divine rule and standard, but there is one view of prayer which would make man the ruler of his own destiny. Of course, no one in- tends to do this, but in effect this is sometimes done, and against this want of submission to God’s will Kingsley sturdily protested. In such matters we are as little children, but Tupper has beautifully expressed what is perhaps the truth of the question : — “ Thus, 0 worshipper of reason, thou hast heard the sum of the matter : And woe to his hairy scalp that restraineth prayer before God. 68 MEN WITH A MISSION . Prayer is a creature’s strength, his very breath and being : Prayer is the golden key that can open the wicket of mercy ; Prayer is the magic sound that saith to Fate, ‘ So be it ; ’ Prayer is the tender nerve that moveth the muscles of Omnipotence ; Wherefore pray, O creature, for many and great are thy wants. Thy mind, thy conscience, and thy being, thy rights command thee unto prayer, The cure of all cares, the grand panacea for all pains, Doubt’s destroyer, ruin’s remedy, the antidote to all anxieties ; So then God is true, and yet He hath not changed. It is He that sendeth the petition, to answer it according to His will.” In the autumn of the year i860 Kingsley went up to Cambridge for his first residence. His in- augural lecture was subsequently printed as a book under the title of “ The Roman and the Teuton.” The students at Cambridge took readily to him, and pronounced that, whether they agreed with Kingsley or not, they liked him. And this because Kingsley aimed at practical benefit in all that he said and did. “ Did you ever hear me preach ? ” Coleridge is said to have once asked a man. “ I never heard you do anything else,” was the somewhat sarcastical reply. Kingsley also was always preaching ; that is, he sought by all means and at all times to in- culcate the great principles of righteousness, and to illustrate their consequences in daily life. And men love to be faithfully dealt with in God’s name, if only the preacher be true to his Master and Lord. Kingsley’s life well accorded with his own teachings, and although, to quote a South Sea phrase, “ he was THE SOLDIER IN A BLACK COAT . 69 watched with rat’s eyes,” there was no crookedness in him. Hence his preaching became attractive to young men, and under his skilful treatment history became a living and eloquent portrait gallery in which one might — “Justify the ways of God to men.” Our Saviour is a justification of this method of teaching, for He took His texts from the incidents of daily life and the scenes of nature, which were thus made types and parables of nobler and Divine things. Of course, in all, Christ and His atonement are the central truth which explains and gives meaning to every secondary truth, but it is good not to forget that some needful truths are beauti- fully taught to us in nature which are preparatory for the greater revelations of grace. It was a tribute both to Kingsley’s personal merit and also to his ability as a tutor, that at the express desire of the Prince Consort, the Prince of Wales was entrusted to his care for the study of modern history. In February 1861 Kingsley formed a private class, which consisted of eleven members, at his own house in Cambridge. The Prince of Wales rode over every morning to attend this class, and his diligence and dignified courtesy quite won his tutor’s heart. Kingsley had also learned to love the Prince Consort, whose noble qualities were only dimly dis- cerned by the nation when he was taken away from 70 MEN WITH A MISSION . us, and it was therefore a personal bereavement to him when Prince Albert died. Then at last Eng- land, who had never previously understood the Prince, awoke to a sense of his high qualities, and intense sympathy was roused among all classes for the be- reaved Queen. It is doubtful if history supplies another similar example of national sorrow at the death of a ruler as was witnessed when Prince Albert died. Death is busy everywhere, but men, by the wise arrangement of Providence, must not stay their labour because of weeping, and indeed the Divine medicine of work is one of the appointed remedies for bereavement. Kingsley, therefore, in spite of his sorrow, during this year finished his children’s book which is entitled “ The Water-Babies.” Geology had long been a fascinating study to Kingsley, as it cannot but be to any one who has sufficient patience to master the initial difficulties. The testimony of the rocks he had regarded and interpreted to others, and the study of stones had been, almost as much as botany, his favourite relaxa- tion. In the year 1862 his contributions to this science (which as yet is probably only in its infancy) were favourably recognised by the highest authority, for he was then elected as a Fellow of the Geological Society. All through his ministry Kingsley con- tended that there was no necessary antagonism between science and the Scriptures, nor indeed can there possibly ever be so. It is, of course, customary to regard the believers of revelation as chiefly in fault THE SOLDIER IN A BLACK COAT. 7 1 for this hostility, bat although they have had much to answer for upon this account, they are by no means the sole offenders. There has been, upon the part of some men of science at least, a disposi- tion to square the supposed teachings of science, so as to damage the authority of the Bible. But that book is authenticated by evidence which is peculiar to itself, and which cannot be gainsaid, and while human interpretations of it may be erroneous, the divine facts and principles that are contained in it cannot be wrong. It is far better to await higher light than to assume a contradic- tion which in many cases, it is to be feared, is merely alleged as a mask for personal neglect of the Gospel and its claims. After all, many of the supposed contradictions may be dealt with upon the principle of the countryman who described a harmony of the Gospels as an attempt to make four men agree who had never fallen out ! God may be safely left to take care of what He Himself has revealed, and further search will onlv disclose deeper harmonies than ever have been known before. All knowledge is good, and if it be held devoutly, it may contribute to the growth of the spirit in truth and righteousness. Fighting, therefore, the battle of science against a narrow ecclesiasticism which will not admit the progress of mind, and combating, on the other hand, the dog- matism which ignores the Bible, Kingsley did his best to lead both to a higher view of God. 72 MEN WITH A MISSION . So he went his way quietly, as, on the whole, most lives are spent, until, in the year 1863, he was privileged to attend the wedding of the Prince of Wales. This was certainly the most popular royal wedding that had been seen for a long period in Britain, and Kingsley was much affected by it, for he devoutly loved his pupil. The affection was reciprocated, and when, in the following summer, the Prince and Princess of Wales visited Oxford, it was the express wish of the Prince that his tutor should receive the degree of D.C.L. But such intense opposition was made to this suggestion upon the part of those who obeyed Pusey as leader that the purpose was abandoned. The alleged reason for this persecution was the asserted im- moral tendency of Kingsley’s books. Whereas he had but portrayed facts which none but persistent eye-shutters could ignore, and had sought in his own way to remedy evils which were too great for others to do more than forget. Kingsley felt the blow keenly, but he bowed to it in the spirit which King David manifested when Shimei cursed him : “ So let him curse, because the Lord hath said unto him, Curse David.” CHAPTER IX. 'GAINST POPES OF VARIOUS DEGREE. “ Oh how skilful grows the hand That obeyeth love’s command ! It is the heart, and not the brain, That to the highest doth attain, And he who followeth love’s behest Far exceedeth all the rest.” — Longfellow. 11 Ah, alas ! how many weeds In my heart I’ve cherished, And how many precious seeds Through neglect have perished ! ” — Dowding. “God’s Jacobs wrestle with God, but none shall wrestle with them and prevail.” — Spurgeon. “ THRASH THEM WELL ’’—CONTROVERSY WITH NEWMAN— VISIT TO SPAIN— THE TWO REVELATIONS— THE FRANCO- GERMAN WAR— ATTACKED AGAIN. The interpreter who accompanied the first mis- sionaries into Basuto Land suggested one day that the best method of converting his fellow-country- men would be to thrash them well ! 66 1 will help you,” said he, “ and you shall see how well I can handle my whip. The only way of getting any- 73 74 MEN WITH A MISSION . thing into these fellows is by blows.” This has been the long-accepted method of the Papacy, and such is its spirit to-day. It goes without saying that such a man as Kingsley was could not avoid a conflict with the far-reaching power of Romanism. The whole system, in its aggressive inroads into home life, and especially in its offensive and degrading teachings with regard to marriage, aroused his martial ardour, and he did his utmost to combat it as a national peril. It was not, however, that Romanists in themselves were hateful to Kingsley ; for, on the contrary, he fully admitted the virtues and patriotism of many of them ; but Papacy, as a crafty enemy of married life, and especially as a political menace, incensed him. He was, moreover, consulted by many persons who were lured by the tempting baits that such a system offers to distressed souls, while others earnestly seeking for help and light upon the greatest of all questions asked him for aid which he could not refuse. In almost all his books Kingsley returned to the attack upon the system which, through the Tractarian revival, then seemed likely to subdue all England ; and, as will be seen, he even crossed swords with Cardinal Newman himself, who was not only a Papal dignitary, but also one of the most accomplished controversialists of the day. Every effort counts in such a mortal conflict, and Kings- ley was able to save very many persons from the strong delusion and the remorseful awakening which reconciliation with Rome involves for those ’ GAINST POPES OF VARIOUS DEGREE. 75 who are deluded into the spider’s web. Hating the Papal tyranny as one of the worst forms of existing superstition, Kingsley unwittingly found himself involved, in the year 1865, in a controversy with Cardinal Newman. He was without a doubt out- matched, for his antagonist was one of the most subtle disputants of the day, but probably most Englishmen felt that Kingsley lost no honour in the unequal struggle. Weary and unwell, Kingsley accepted an invita- tion to pay a visit to Spain. The Iberian Peninsula will always be interesting to Britons, if only for its connection with Wellington ; but quite apart from this special interest, it presents to a student of human nature peculiar features which are nowhere else so prominent. Its decline and fall are one of the most signal instances of the decay which follows the Saviours curse. Some day a better Gibbon will point out the lessons of Spain’s downfall as a pre- sent-day appeal to human needs, and a lesson for human care and study. This change of scene did Kingsley much good, although it was not a sufficiently long holiday to restore him to perfect health once more. In these days of rapid living, men are tempted to forget that there are laws of health which cannot be disobeyed, and which, if neglected, avenge themselves upon the transgressor. During the autumn of this same year of grace Kingsley added to his other employments, for he was then appointed one of the select preachers 76 MEN WITH A MISSION. for the University of Cambridge. He then de- livered four sermons upon the life of King David, and these discourses awakened considerable interest among the graduates. The life-story of the man after God’s own heart will always be of spiritual importance to all Christian people, and among all the heroes of faith David continues to hold the chief place. These and other labours so much exhausted Kingsley, that he was compelled to take another complete rest, which he obtained upon the eastern coast of England. Yet, while his physical and mental exhaustion prevented his attempting for a time any further service, Kingsley continued keenly sensitive to the solemn realities of the Gospel. To him the truths of revelation were solid realities, and God was ever intensely present and vivid to his imagination. It was this realisation of God’s nearness which made science such an attrac- tive study to Charles Kingsley ; he felt keenly that which Cowper has said of the true man : — “ He looks abroad into tlie varied field Of nature, and though poor, perhaps, compared With those whose mansions glitter in his sight, Calls the delightful scenery all his own. His are the mountains, and the valleys his, And the resplendent rivers ; his to enjoy With a propriety which none can feel But who, with filial confidence inspired, Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye, And, smiling, say, * My Father made them all.' Are they not his by a peculiar right ? And by an emphasis of interest his ? Whose eye they fill with tears of holy joy, ’ GAINST POPES OF VARIOUS DEGREE . 77 Whose heart with praise, and whose exalted mind With worthy thoughts of that unwearied love That planned and built and still upholds a world So clothed with beauty for rebellious man ? ” With such a belief it is no wonder that Kingsley was able to drink delight from all nature, and that in spite of ill health he continued to work at what he believed to be his peculiar mission. His circle of friends was narrowed during the year 1865 by the death of Dr. Whewell, who had been, during a long life, a leader in every movement for university progress and reform. But Cambridge possessed a new interest for Kingsley, because his eldest son was now studying there under his father’s eye. The gentry of the town and its vicinity also welcomed Kingsley heartily to their homes, so that his residence in Cambridge was extremely pleasant to him. His affectionate, open spirit fascinated his hosts, and from the stores of his ready mental wealth he drew that which unconsciously enriched them in heart and home. Such men as Kingsley are utterly unconscious of the enormous influence for good which they exert upon their friends and cir- cumstances, but they are the choicest gifts of God to the world. Nor, amid the honours which were beginning to crowd out of his memory the con- tempt and suspicion with which he had been for long years regarded by the upper classes, did Kingsley neglect or forget the poor. Indeed, a deepening interest in them marked his extending 73 MEN WITH A MISSION . influence over their wealthier brethren, and he did not relax his efforts in order to benefit them. In his own parish of Eversley, Kingsley did his utmost in order to brighten the lives of those who are familiar with forms of distress and anxiety that are unknown to the classes who are relieved from the pressure of poverty. To the labouring poor of the agricul- tural districts life is intensely weary and hopelessly barren, and Kingsley was one of the earliest pioneers in the efforts which are now being made with so much success in every parish in order to educate and interest the poor. He instituted a series of penny readings, which were interspersed with con- certs for them, and he employed all other available methods of awakening the torpid mental energies of the people. A narrow and ignorant religionism, which leaves out of sight the triumphs of art and music, cannot attract or help the miserable masses ; for while it is true that something more is required for the social and moral regeneration of the people than good music or a knowledge of the English poets, it is also true that these things are handmaids of the Gospel, and may be made both subservient to its pur- poses and helptul to its mission. Kingsley believed in the use of every lawful means in the best of all services; he was indeed all things to all men, as was St. Paul, if by any means that he might save some. “ Let us glorify the room,” one was accus- tomed to say when he drew up the blinds, that the sunlight might stream in ; Kingsley believed that ’ GAINST POPES OF VARIOUS DEGREE . 79 every ray of sunlight came from God, and he wel- comed all that would brighten the dreary lives of men. It was this spirit that won for Kingsley the intense love which many men who ordinarily despised Christian ministers felt for him ; he was able to strike points of union which made them regard him as a friend. And, above all things, he was real, and had no cant in him. His political insight was keen and his instincts acute, but Kingsley was sometimes grossly mistaken with regard to political matters. For example, during the summer of the year 1866 he took part in a banquet which was given at Southampton to Eyre, who, as Governor of Jamaica, had pro- voked a rebellion, which he had afterwards repressed with needless cruelty. The majority of educated Englishmen felt that Eyre had also been guilty of a foul crime in his execution of Gordon, who was personally obnoxious to him, but Kingsley, perhaps deluded by Carlyle, publicly expressed his sympathy with him. This may perhaps be partially attri- buted to the fact that Eyre stood alone and con- demned by almost the whole body of the nation, but it is a pity that Kingsley was upon the wrong side. With regard to the Franco- Prussian war, Kingsley was in sympathy with his fellow-countrymen, for he heartily rejoiced at the Prussian successes. The sympathies of most Britons were entirely with Germany in her resistance of the unprovoked and cruel invasion which Napoleon attempted for pur- So MEN WITH A MISSION. poses of his own; he, with many others,, realised also what a menace to the well-being and liber- ties of Europe the triumph of France would mean, and for that reason, among others, Kingsley re- joiced at her defeat. At the same time, his saga- cious eye detected that Germany should, for her own future safety, and in order to prevent any such attack as Napoleon had planned, demand the annexation of Alsace. Peace in his own life was not, however, to continue long, for during the next year ( 1 868 ) he was so much disturbed by the attacks that were made upon him, that he seriously thought of resigning his professor- ship. His lectures were then the subject of a keen and bitter attack, which was the expression of personal spite, and Kingsley felt that no other course was open to him but to resign his post. But the sage counsel of disinterested friends induced him to suspend his action for a year, if for no other reason than to prevent the triumph of those who had hoped thus to expel him from his position of influence. Kingsley, to his advantage, possessed the terrible calmness under attack which is a char- acteristic of our nation ; for that awful British silence which has again and again awed our enemies is a potent moral force of no small value in controversy. And, like a wise man, he was too busy to waste his time in personal squabbles while so much remained for him to do. The Saviour’s reply to persistent and hateful opposition was to continue His work, 5 GAINST POPES OF VARIOUS DEGREE. 81 and this is probably always the best course for His followers to take. It requires great self-restraint and strong patience to be able to do this, but it, after all, is the best answer to our enemies. A terrible home-sorrow fell upon Kingsley in this year of 1868, for then his eldest son left home in order to begin a new life amidst the prairies and tropical forests of South America. The breaking- up of a home is always acute anguish to parents who love their children, and Charles Kingsley felt bitterly the first break in his happy family circle. Of course families must be scattered, that thus the world may be influenced for right and for good, but the process is a very painful one to the parents. For just as a field is converted into a meadow by sporadic patches of grass, which grow out until they have changed the whole face of the country, so by the separate action of those who were once united in Christian families will the world be won for Christ and possessed by His Spirit. It is, of course, good for the world, but the benefit is, as all good things must be in this world, purchased at the cost of much pain. F CHAPTER X. APPRECIATED TOO LATE j OR , TRUE AFTER ALL . '* In His will is our peace.” — Dante. “ To meet, to know, to love, to part, Is the sad tale of many a human heart.” — Coleridge. ‘‘He extremely resembled a rural George the Fourth, with nn expansive, healthy, benevolent eagerness of sympathy in his face, and greatly resembled him as a type of British character.” — Pr.e- terita. CANON OF CHESTER — TAKING- ROOT ONCE MORE— “ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTING ! ’’—LAST WORDS— INTO NEW AND HIGHER SERVICE. The year 1869 saw Kingsley relinquishing his duties as Professor at Cambridge. He left the University, having secured many valuable friend- ships during his brief course there, besides contri- buting not a little to the education of many young men whose after-life was richly influenced by his teaching. In December 1869 Mr. Kingsley with his daughter started for the West Indies, in accepta- tion of an invitation from his friend, Sir Arthur 82 APPRECIATED TOO LATE . 33 Gordon, who was then Governor of Trinidad. With him Kingsley spent the Christmas of 1869, and having at last realised his fondest hopes and gazed upon the fairyland of which he had dreamed from his childhood, he returned home refreshed and reinspired for the brief period oi service that was yet before him. He returned also to new honour, for by Mr. Gladstone’s influence he had been appointed Canon of Chester, and on the 1st of May 1870 Canon Kingsley went up for his first three months’ residence there. “ Chester,” says George Borrow, “is an ancient town with walls and gates, a prison called a castle, built on the site of an ancient keep, an unpretending- looking red sandstone cathedral, two or three handsome churches, several good streets and certain curious places called rows. The Chester row is a broad arched stone gallery running parallel with the street within the facades of the houses ; it is partly open on the side of the street, and just one storey above it. Within the rows, of which there are three or four, are shops, every shop being on that side which is farthest from the street. All the best shops in Chester are to be found in the rows. These rows, to which you ascend by stairs up narrow passages, were originally built for the security of the wares of the principal merchants against the Welsh. Should the mountaineers break into the town, as they frequently did, they might rifle some of the common shops, where their 84 MEN WITH A MISSION . booty would be slight, but those which contained the more costly articles would be beyond their reach. For at the first alarm the doors of the pas- sages up which the stairs led would be closed, and all access to the upper streets cut off from the open arches, of which missiles of all kinds, kept ready for such occasions, could be discharged upon the in- truders, who would be soon glad to beat a retreat/' 7 Kingsley was soon at home in this ancient city, and its warm-hearted people speedily became as devotedly attached to him as the west country folk had been. During his residences in Chester, Canon Kingsley, as we must now call him, added to his official duties special efforts on behalf of the young men of the town. He started for their benefit a class to which he taught his favourite science of Botany. This effort was crowned with singular success, and so much encouraged him that in the course of the following year (1871) he ventured to add a series of Geological lectures and studies to his Botanical lectures. And he dared to speak out to his young men upon the special perils to which vigorous immature youth is exposed ; his protest which was then publishedagainst gambling might be widely scattered with advantage to-day. It were to be wished that similar subjects would oftener engage the attention of the Christian Church, for they constitute the most serious perils to its existence Kingsley's mind was eminently practical, and that in religion as well as in other things. This was APPRECIATED TOO LATE . 85 seen in the effect which was produced upon him by the serious illness of the Prince of Wales. For some days the fever seemed as if it must prove fatal, and Kingsley shared to the utmost the na- tional anxiety which was felt as the life of the Prince hovered in the balance. As soon as Kingsley learned that the Prince was out of danger, he took care to point out how preventible such diseases were, if only the rules of health were observed. In a thanksgiving sermon which, as one of the Royal chaplains, Canon Kingsley preached at the Chapel - Royal, London, he pressed those views upon his audience. For Kingsley believed in the sacredness of life, and in the duty which lies upon every one to preserve it as long as may be. He himself had need of a faithful counsellor to check him in his too arduous efforts, for in 1872 symptoms of paralysis appeared as a result of over- work. It has been said that in a certain northern city most men who have succeeded in obtaining a competence die early from lack of definite and use- ful employment. It is to be feared, however, that few are thus stricken down when compared with the multitudes who are worn out by the fearful pace at which they must live. With a great num- ber of persons, existence is a slow death in order to secure the means which are required to live, and nature rings her alarm-bells in vain. Kingsley might have prolonged his life had he been con- tent to vegetate for a few years, but, after all, long 86 MEN WITH A MISSION . life is by no means the highest nor even an unmixed good. Many a man survives his reputation or his power to benefit others, who, had he died before this torpor came upon him, would have been canon- ised as a martyr and a hero. Yet, on the other hand, it may be questioned if a man has a right by excessive labour to deprive his family of the comfort of his presence, for upon those who are left behind falls the bitterness of grief when a good man goes to his rest. With Canon Kingsley the end of his life was rapidly drawing near, although he knew it not. One of Frith’s pictures is entitled, “ All over but the shouting,” which also was true in this case. But just as earthly things were slipping from his grasp, honour came to Kingsley when it was too late for him to enjoy or to employ it with ad- vantage. In the year 1873 Kingsley was appointed Canon of Westminster, an honour which relieved him from pecuniary anxieties, and also gratified him intensely. Dean Stanley was then at the Deanery, and very heartily he welcomed his father’s friend to Westminster. For two years only Kings- ley enjoyed the privileges which the new position afforded to him for fulfilling his life-work, and then he passed beyond the veil. Monod said that upon his tombstone he should like to have the words written, “ Here endeth the first lesson.” Kingsley’s first lesson ended in the year 1875. On the 29th of November 1874 Canon Kingsley APPRECIATED TOO LATE. preached in Westminster Abbey, and the next day he took a slight chill. He disregarded this, and with his wife he returned home to Eversley. There the greatest sorrow which can befall a mortal man threatened him, for it seemed as if his wife must be taken from him. He did his utmost to console and to support her for the terrible struggle which every one dreads, without for a moment dreaming that he himself must pass through the dark valley first and alone. He was too much alarmed and distressed at the magnitude of the threatened calamity to think of himself, and he was consequently some- what careless of his personal comfort. The cold now settled upon him, and it speedily developed into pneumonia. On the morning of the 23rd of January 1875 he passed away, and so gentle was the parting that the watchers beside his bed knew not the exact moment when he began to live in the truest sense. Then, as is often the case, men began to appreciate him, and his burial was a national tribute to his worth and value. He was buried, at his own express wish, in the churchyard at Eversley. “ The churchyard,” says a recent writer, “ is entered through a picturesque wycli- gate, and the short approach is by an avenue of cypresses. In a corner of this crowded and sequestered God’s acre, a monument is placed over the grave of Charles Kingsley. The name and date of his death, January 23, 1875, are carved upon the pedestal, and around the head of the 88 MEN WITH A MISSION. cross are the words, “ God is Love.” The grave is close to the boundary-wall, and is overshadowed by one of the outlying branches of a venerable Scotch fir in the Rectory grounds, which are separated from the churchyard by a low iron railing.” CHAPTER XI. DEAD, BUT YET SPEAKING. “ If man be only born to die, Whence this inheritance of hope ? Wherefore to him alone were lent Riches that never can be spent ? Enough, not more, to all the rest, Eor life and happiness was given ; To man, mysteriously unblest, Too much for any state but heaven.” —Montgomery. “ The absence of years has only served to deepen in me the con- viction that no gift can be more valuable than the recollection and the inspiration of a great character working on our own. I hope that you may all experience this at some time of your life, as I have done.” — Dean Stanley. HERO-WORSHIP— GOOD IN THE WORST AND BAD IN THE BEST OF MEN— KINGSLEY’S FAULTS OF DEFECT CHIEFLY— HIS INFLUENCE LIKELY TO LAST. It is scarcely possible for any one to study the life and works of such a man as Charles Kingsley without incurring, during the reading, a danger of something that is very much like that of hero- worship. This is even true of many who are not good men, because we can discover in the very worst of men traces of good, which may perhaps 89 9 ° MEN WITH A MISSION. humiliate us to find how much superior to our- selves in some things men whom we condemn and despise have been. This is one of the benefits of biography, and this it is which makes it so prac- tically useful to all men who will but use it wisely. The lives of evil men are thus not only beacons to warn us from doing wrong, but they are also examples to shame us from some faults that they escaped. With great and good men, on the other hand, it may be disappointing, but it is also assuring to us, when we discover that they were not perfect, but that, on the contrary, they blundered as we may do. It is not, therefore, in any captious spirit that we should seek to see wherein they erred, in order not only that we may not follow them in wrong-doing, but that we may, in spite of our own errors, be inspired to do in our lives what they did upon a larger scale in theirs. Most men are easily divisible into classes ; and Christian teachers are associated into parties which are sharply defined. Canon Kingsley was, however, a class by himself, and we cannot assign to him a position within any recognised party lines. He was certainly not an Evangelical, although traces of his early training lingered, perhaps unconsciously, in him. His mental architecture and his likings for sport unfitted him for the position of a profound theologian. He also lacked altogether the high qualities which Hooker and other great divines possessed. Yet Kingsley’s influence is far greater DEAD, BUT YET SPEAKING . 9i than even Hooker himself upon the active religious thought of our time. For Englishmen do not so much care for doctrinal controversies as for practi- cal life, and just because he exposed real evils and attempted to grapple with present-day sins, Kingsley was popular. His faults as a theologian were indeed rather in defect than in excess ; for while he evidently held the vicarious atonement of our Lord, he un- wisely did not assign to it the prominence which it holds in the Scriptures. Kingsley followed Maurice almost slavishly, and that perhaps accounts for his mental deficiencies. And upon the future-life ques- tion Kingsley took up a position which he undoubt- edly believed to be true, and imagined, as those who hold similar views often do, that declamation and invective can prove that which requires argument. The question is not to be settled by an appeal to human feelings, for human feelings, after all, must be adjusted to Divine facts. Whatever God does must be right, and to express one’s opinions in the tone that Kingsley and George Macdonald have sometimes employed, amounts to constructive blas- phemy. Kingsley as a religious teacher is the exponent of strong common- sense, and manliness, which dis- regards drapery, and realises the fact that the Gospel is a living message for to-day. Latimer two hundred years ago thus expressed this truth in his famous sermon on “ The Plough.” “ Christ is a continual sacrifice in effect, fruit, operation, and virtue; as 92 MEN WITH A MISSION. though He had from the beginning of the world, and continually should to the world’s end, hang still on the cross ; and He is as fresh hanging on the cross now to them that believe and trust in Him as He was fifteen hundred years ago, when He was crucified.” The Evangelical party has also too much left the care for the present life to Secularists, and here Kingsley corrected them. It is, indeed, as a social reformer, and an advocate for the helpless and friendless, that Kingsley was chiefly eminent. He helped to fight the battle of the Chartists, of the victims of our vicious trade system, of the agricultural labourers, and of others who had no other friend. His books are not only a picture of the times which they represent, but they are ex- pressions of the threatening evils which muttered and rumbled below the surface of society, and in some measure do so still. But, above all things, Kingsley was a man of God ; and even when we differ from him, it is with a painful sense of how inferior we are to him in some things that are especially Christian traits of character. His life was full of holy impulses to earnest activity, and therefore he may be accounted as pre-eminently a man with a mission. And we all have a similar trust committed into our charge for which, indeed, we shall give an account — we are entrusted with much of the comfort and the power to serve of our brethren. Only when we rise to a lofty con- ception of our powers and seek God’s help to enable DEAD, BUT YET SPEAKING . 93 us to use them rightly can we win the high praise that, like Kingsley, we have served our generation. As a delineator of character we must assign a very high place to Kingsley. His conceptions of the ideal life were very pure and lofty, and he was careful to maintain his own standard all through his writings. In his books it is true that there are some facts and some characters which shock and offend the susceptibilities of nervous Christian people. But these things are to be found in the world in which we live, and similar imperfections may be seen in those who perhaps live next door to us. The eye to see these things is not possessed by all men ; and one feels that the artist vision is a part of a novelist’s equipment. “ I do not see these things in Nature,” said a lady to Turner the artist ; and he replied, “ No, Madam ; don’t you wish that you could see them ? ” The power of seeing is not possessed by all persons, for only the prophet is de- scribed as one “ who has had his eyes opened.” The gift has its penalty, it is true, for there is much that pains in a keen inspection both of life and of those who live it around us. Kingsley saw our glorious constitution, and those who suffered under it, and saw, too, that they were men of flesh and blood, who felt keenly the wrongs that were inflicted upon them. To him “ the people ” were so many reproductions of himself, with power to love, to hate, to suffer, and to know God. He dared to associate with infidels and political agitators, and he found that these men had 94 MEN WITH A MISSION. some reason for complaint, for both the Church and the Government had ill-used them. It required some courage for a clergyman to do as Kingsley did ; nowadays such conduct would win praise rather than the reverse, but the authorities thought otherwise when Kingsley set himself to understand the evils that he hoped to lessen. That he did see them, and accurately portray them, we are assured by those who knew the evil dens, the foulness of which he exposed, and the consequent suffering for which he sought a remedy. Since Kingsley began his work a social revolu- tion has indeed been wrought in England, and he has been not the least of the workers who have secured victory. Upon the whole, it seems to us that the true w r ork of Kingsley was accomplished by means of his novels, which, since their recent reissue in a popular form, have been sold by millions. They, and not the sermons, are being read in all quarters, and their opinions are being assimilated by many who say little about them, and thus “ he being dead, yet speaketh.” It may seem to be superfluous to enumerate them, but the publishers were certainly wise in placing “ Westward Ho !” at the head of their list. Kingsley intensely hated the Jesuits, as indeed every thoughtful patriot must do, and he spared no scorn in order that he might warn his readers against their seductions. “ Admit the simoom if you will,” says Dr. Wylie DEAD , BUT YET SPEAKING. 95 in his sketch of the Jesuits. “ As it sweeps along over our land, it will strip tree and field, and lay their blossoms in the dust; but the next spring will restore their perished honours. Admit the plague if you will. It will make many a corpse, it will dig many a grave, and call forth on the high- way the mournful pomp of many a funeral proces- sion ; but a few years will pass, and again the merry laugh of boyhood and girlhood will be heard on our streets, and new forms, stately and stalwart, will arise to fight our battles and plough our fields and carry on the business of life. But let the Jesuit enter, and it will be the dread spectacle seen by the apocalyptist when he beheld and, ‘ Lo, a pale horse, and he that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him/ It is not the bodies of living men merely that the Jesuits will trample into the grave. It is the manhood, the virtue, the patriotism, the piety, of the land which he will waste and trample down. All that is lovely, and noble, and good, will wither and die under the sirocco breath of Jesuitism.” These words are not the utterance of a tyro, but of a man who may almost claim to be a specialist upon this subject, and they are therefore entitled to the most profound respect. Kingsley felt as Dr. Wylie does, and he wove his teaching into a tale in which the effects of Jesuit 'teaching and the natural results of Bomanism are vividly shown. It is true that at present there is terrible apathy in England 96 MEN WITH A MISSION. upon these matters. Mr. Stead is smitten with intense affection for the Papacy and Cardinal Man- ning, and those who do not agree with him regard the Papacy as they do the Mormons or the believers in the Identity of the English nation with the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel. It will require, we fear, some signal catastrophe, perhaps a revival of persecution, to prove to the present generation that the Papacy is unchanged, and is as much a menace to individual piety and national greatness as it ever was. It may be objected that such important truths should not have been committed to a novel, but that they required a more dignified vehicle. Yet no one complains of the method by which a patient is cured, or a child enticed away from the tiger’s lair ; so long as the peril is averted and the people are saved, the method may be safely left to the doer’s own judgment. It may be given to one to accom- plish his life-purpose by “ Mighty deeds and great,” while another may employ ornaments of rhyme ; Kingsley chose the romance. Scattered up and down the book there are exqui- site sentences that embody sentiments which are as important to-day as they were at the time that they were first penned. For example, upon one page of “ Westward Ho ! ” we find these noble sentences : — “ ‘ The prerogative of a man is to be bold against himself ’ DEAD, BUT YET SPEAKING. 97 “ ‘ How, sir ? ’ iC ‘ To conquer our own fancies , Amy as, and our own lusts , or our ambition , in the sacred name of duty ; this it is to be truly brave and tmdy strong , for he who cannot rule himself, how can he rule his creed and his fortunes ? * ” He describes also a man “ who wanted but one /& step to greatness, and that was this, that in his hurry to ride all the world he forgot to ride himself.” The next passage that we select from the same book supplies the keynote of Kingsley’s teaching : — “ * I have tried to hint to you two opposite sorts of men. The one trying to be good with all his might and main, according to certain approved methods and rules which he has got by heart, and, like a weak oarsman, feeling and fingering his spi- ritual muscles over all day, to see if they are grow- ing. The other, not even knowing whether he is good or not, but just doing the right thing without thinking about it, as simply as a little child, because the Spirit of God is with him. If you cannot see the great gulf fixed between the two, I trust that you will discover it some day/ ” Which sentence might stand as a text for all Kingsley’s novels. In each there is exhibited the contrast between the unconscious piety of the man who is often despised as an outsider and a publican, and the obtrusive self-conscious religion of the man who wearies himself and others about self-inspec- tion and puerile trivialities instead of striving to do G 98 MEN WITH A MISSION . his duty through the strength that comes through faith in Christ. “ Westward Ho ! ” abounds in passages that might be read and quoted with ad- vantage oftener than they are. Tor example, there is an awful amount of truth in the sarcastical sen- tences : “‘Go to, lad ! Slander thy equals, envy thy betters, pray for an eye which sees spots in every sun, and for a vulture's nose to scent carrion in every rose-bed. If thy friend win a battle, show that he has needlessly thrown away his men ; if he lose one, hint that he sold it ; if he rise to a great place, argue favour ; if he lose it, argue Divine justice. Believe nothing, hope nothing, but endure all things, even to kicking, if aught may be got thereby ; so shalt thou be clothed in purple and fine linen, and sit in kings’ palaces, and fare sump- tuously every day / ” There are, alas ! many who can say with Salterne : “ ‘ I am a man who has all his life tried the crooked road first, and found the straight one safer after all/ 99 Kingsley's own conception of his office he has depicted in graphic words thus : — “ ‘ No wonder that young men, as the parsons com- plain so loudly, will not listen to the Gospel while it is presented to them by men on whom they can- not but look down ; a set of soft-headed fellows who cannot dig and are ashamed to beg ; and, as my brother has it, must be parsons before they are men.' “ ‘ Ay,' said Frank ; ‘ and even though we may excuse that in Popish priests and friars, who are DEAD , BUT YET SPEAKING. 99 vowed not to be men, and get their bread shame- fully and rascally by telling sinners who owe a hundred measures to sit down quickly and take their bill and write fifty ; yet for a priest of the Church of England (whose business it is not merely to smuggle sinful souls up the backstairs into heaven, but to make men good Christians by making them good men, good gentlemen, and good Englishmen) to show the white feather in the hour of need, is to unpreach in one minute all that he had been preach- ing his life long/ ” In our judgment the book is wholly good, and will impart vigour and act as a tonic to any young man who will read it through once or twice thought- fully and carefully, not only in order to obtain amuse- ment from it, but also in order to allow its iron and steel to impregnate his mind and soul. Next to “ Tom Brown’s Schooldays,” which it naturally much resembles, there is no manlier book in our language, and its bracing spirit is contagious and beneficial, as all who have read it must confess. Next in importance as a moral force we should place “ Alton Locke,” which, if read side by side with Thomas Cooper’s life, will be felt by all to be a truth- ful picture — perhaps a portrait. It is true that there are some passages which, if taken from their con- nection, are untrue in fact, but the book as a whole is one which should and will enlarge the heart, and dispose it to see brethren and friends where perhaps it previously only saw foes. IOO MEN WITH A MISSION. As a work of art, “ Hypatia ” is generally con- sidered the best of all Kingsley's works, but we have never been able to kindle under it as we have always done under “ Westward Ho ! ” For one thing, the teachings of the book upon the after-life are, we believe, unscriptural ; an d for another thing we have no great admiration of Arsenius nor even for Cyril. “ Two Years Ago” is a work of another character, and it contains some passages that Kingsley never surpassed. The character of Tom Thurnall resem- bles Kingsley in many points ; he is, indeed, the nineteenth century Esau. For Esau does not hunt much now, but he still glories in his strength, and does not think much about God or the life to come. He knows nothing about them ; he does not pray, nor feel any desire to do so, because he is absorbed in the practical duties of life. The manner in which Kingsley deals with this type of character is splen- did ; we are charmed as Tom Thurnall at last comes to feel his defect and to seek God. We hear that the vivid and awful description of the night that Vavasour spent upon Snowdon led to the conversion of a wanderer who had lost his way through life, and we do not wonder at it, for the word-painting is awful and grand, resembling, indeed, one of Martin's pictures. With “Hereward the Wake” we confess that we find no sympathy whatever. The tale is a sad one, and we fancy that the topic was not so congenial DEAD , BUT YET SPEAKING. ioi to Kingsley as were the subjects of his previous stories. That it is readable, and will do good, we can quite believe, for we cannot imagine that Kingsley could write anything that would not be interesting and beneficial in some degree, but it certainly is far below “ Westward Ho ! ” or even “ Alton Locke,” in diction, and in its possession of that subtle somewhat that we may define as the soul of a book. Of his other works no mention need be made here, for long after his essays and sermons cease to be read, Kingsley's novels will be read and studied. For human life is much the same in every age, and its sufferings are essentially the same, as also the remedies for its misery are identical for all. Wesley in his journals tells us about a revenue officer who while dying gasped out feebly, “ I — want — Christ.” This is the real want of all men, and of the world at large ; they — want — Christ ; and it is the business of all who love Christ to bring Him into living contact with the dying seeking myriads. We believe that, in his own way, Kingsley did bring Christ to men, and that because of this his novels will live and exert a beneficial influence for years to come. As to whether he might not have accom- plished more had he not held certain beliefs that he felt bound to publish, is quite another question : let us remember that the coxswain of the lifeboat who has expended his energies in bringing some of the shipwrecked safely to shore cannot very well be 102 MEN WITH A MISSION. censured because others who stood upon the shore suppose that he might have rescued more. Dean Stanley, who understood and consequently loved Kingsley, in the funeral sermon that he preached for his friend at Westminster Abbey speaks thus of his character : “ I would fain recall some of those higher strains which, amid manifold imperfections acknowledged by none more freely than himself, placed him unquestionably among the conspicuous teachers of his age, and gave to his voice the power of reaching souls to which other preachers and teachers addressed themselves in vain. . . . He was what he was, not by virtue of his office, but by virtue of what God made him in himself. ... He was sent by Providence, as it were, far off to the Gentiles — far off, not to other lands or other races of mankind, but far off from the usual sphere of minister or priest, to ‘ fresh woods and pastures new/ to find fresh worlds of thought and wild tracts of character in which he found a response for himself because he gave a re- sponse to them. . . . Scholar, poet, novelist, he yet felt himself to be, with all and before all, a spiritual teacher and guide. . . . Amidst all the wavering inconstancy of our time, he called upon men of his generation, with a steadfastness and assured conviction that of itself steadied and re- assured the minds of those for whom he spoke, to stand fast in the faith.” DEAD, BUT YET SPEAKING. 103 Nothing need be added to these noble words, except to express a wish that it may be the testi- mony of those who come after us that our influence upon them has been what Kingsleys influence has been to many, wholly for good. “Life is a serious thing,” says the German Schiller ; a conviction of its intense seriousness should compel us to right and worthy efforts to employ it for the highest purposes. “ I cannot do without the man Christ Jesus,” was Kingsley’s heartfelt confession, and in the faith and convic- tion that prompted it are the secret of his manliness and usefulness. This faith in Christ Jesus counter- acted his errors, strengthened his heart, and made him one of the successful workers in the world. “ They who would be something' more Than they who feast and laugh and die will hear The voice of duty as the note of war, Nerving their spirits to great enterprise, And knitting every sinew for the charge. Who do, and who have done, All that has ever aided man to free Himself imperfectly from grosser self, And made his seeing pure ; — such souls sublime Will never want for blessed joy in work, Working for Duty, which can never die.” Woolner. THE END. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON. MEN WITH A MISSION. LORD LAWRENCE. MEN WITH A MISSION New Series of Popular Biographies by the Rev. JAMES J. ELLIS. Illustrated. Small Crown 8vo. Price One Shilling each . HENRY MORTON STANLEY. WILLIAM TYNDALE. CHARLES KINGSLEY. HUGH LATIMER. JOHN HOWARD. THOMAS CROMWELL. DAVID LIVINGSTONE. VISCOUNT WOLSELEY. LORD LAWRENCE. LORD SHAFTESBURY. London : James Nisbet k Co., 21 Berners Street, W. LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSE I* OP ILLINOIS. LORD LAWRENCE ( From Photograph by Messrs. Elliott & Fry MEN WITH A MISSION. LORD LAWRENCE. BY REV. JAMES J. ELLIS, AUTHOR OF “MARKED FOR DEATH,” “THE MESSAGES OF CHRIST,” ETC. ETC. “ A name and a fame above the blight Of earthly breath, Beautiful — beautiful and bright, In life and death.” — H emans. LONDON : JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. PREFACE. John. Lord Lawrence, was not only the saviour of India and a type of lofty statesmanship, but one of those men whose natures are essentially noble, and therefore, quite apart ‘from his deeds, a study of his character will always be instructive to men. He was peculiarly British in his loyalty to right, in his simple modesty, and in his contempt for all the embroidery that sometimes is used to conceal baseness and folly. The moral influence of such men, as he was, upon both European and native character, must be im- mensely beneficial — indeed, a missionary influence of the highest type and kind. For there are two ways of commending a truth ; the one is by urging it upon the understanding and heart, with all the arguments that a strong sense of its value can dictate ; and the other is by so living it that others may desire it for the strength and force that it is Vlll PREFACE . seen to impart to its possessor. It is well if both virtues are combined, and both lip and life com- mend the truth ; but when they are not, the elo- quence of the life is far more convincing than that of the lips. Lord Lawrence, during the whole of his long career, exhibited to the races of India the spectacle of a man who endeavoured under all circumstances to do the right, to walk in the narrow path of duty even when duty possibly meant death ; and, above all, of one who strove to set “ It ought ” above “ It pays.” Such lives should never be forgotten, for they are the most convincing sermons that can ever be preached to men. India has been the training-school and home of many heroes, but among them all there are none among her many princely men, whose claims to reverence and honour surpass the merits of him whom Britain proudly honours as the man “ who tried to do his duty.” Harking ay, London. February 1891 . CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. l 8 ll-l 829 . THE SON OF THREE KINGDOMS ; OR, EDUCATED BY KICKS. PAGE ‘ educated by kicks”— the young champion— know- ing WHEN TO BE SILENT— 1 “ A SOLDIER I WAS BORN, AND A SOLDIER I WILL BE ” — ENCOURAGING GOOD WORKERS IS HELPING GOD I CHAPTER II. 1829-1846. GOOD WORK BRINGS GOOD LUCK. “A COUNTRY WITH NO CASTLES ’—TRACKING THIEVES —WHEN HE IS ANGRY— “THE CALAMITY ”— THE ENG- LISH RULE IN DANGER— “A NICE OLD GENTLEMAN ” II T CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. 1846-1856. A FRIEND TO THE PEPPER-POT ; OR , THE MAN WHO KNEW HIS OWN MIND. PAGE “ A STRAIGHTFORWARD RUNNER ” — “ IT WILL BE ALLRED SOON”— “I WANT TO PUT MY OWN STAMP ON IT ”— MURDER IN SPORT— “ONLY A BIT OF GLASS ”— A PEPPER-POT— LAWRENCE K.C.B 26 CHAPTER IV. 1856- 1857. "PRESS ON J PRESS ON/” OR , PACE IS POWER. “ON A VOLCANO ’’—TRUE TO HIS SPOKEN WORD — NO ARREARS— TO STAND STILL IS FATAL— THE TELE- GRAMS— “ BETTER QUICKLY, SO IT BE WELL DONE ” . 39 CHAPTER V. 1857- 1858. THE MAN WHO TRIED AND WHO DID HIS DUTY . ENLARGING ONE’S IDEA OF HUMANITY— A GLOW OF WORK — DEATH OF SIR HENRY— “ THESE ARE MY MONKEYS ” —A PASSING CLOUD— STORM OF DELHI— “ CLEMENCY CANNING ” 52 CONTENTS . xi CHAPTER VL 1857-1864. THE MAN WHO STOOD SENTRY OVER HIMSELF. PAQfi STANDING SENTRY OVER HIMSELF— “ THE CAMPBELLS ARE COMING”— “DO YOU FEAR GOD OR THE MESS?”— CHRISTIAN THINGS IN A CHRISTIAN WAY— “WON’T SOMETHING HAPPEN WHEN HE GOES ? ”— SENT OUT AS GOVERNOR-GENERAL— SIMPLICITY AND KINDNESS TO CHILDREN 64 CHAPTER VII. 1864-1879. THE MAN WHOSE WORD WAS AS GOOD AS A TREATY. UNPLEASANT WORK— JUST AND KIND— HOME AGAIN — AT WORK— PEERAGE— VIEW OF LIFE AND WORK . 75 LORD LAWRENCE. CHAPTER I. THE SON OF THREE KINGDOMS ; OR, EDUCATED BY KICKS. “I was wayward, bold, and wild, A self-willed imp, a grandame’s child ; But, half a plague and half a jest, Was still endured, beloved, caressed.” — Scott. “Nothing is lost on him who sees With an eye that feeling gave ; Bor him there’s a story in every breeze, And a picture in every wave.” — Moore. “For thyself thou wast not born, but to fulfil the inscrutable decrees of thy Creator. Let thy safety-word be ‘ Onward.’ If thou tarry, thou art overwhelmed. Courage ! ”■ — George Borrow. i 8 1 1-1829. “ EDUCATED BY KICKS ’’—THE YOUNG CHAMPION— KNOWING WHEN TO BE SILENT — “ A SOLDIER I WAS BORN, AND A SOLDIER I WILL BE ’’—ENCOURAGING GOOD WORKERS IS HELPING GOD. “For my part, my education consisted in kicks. I never was taught anything,” said Sir Henry Law- A 2 MEN WITH A MISSION. rence, the heroic defender of Lucknow, and of course with some exaggeration. “ I was flogged every day of my life at school except one, and then I was flogged twice,” adds his younger brother, John, Lord Lawrence, of whose life we shall treat. Which training, although less pleasant than the sugar-candy and plum-cake nurture, at present too much in vogue, was most suitable for such boys. A certain amount of kicking must go into every life, and a man shows what he is t)y the manner in which he endures the process. Some men, indeed, are kicked out of existence, as was poor Keats ; but others become stronger for trouble, until they are able to endure opposition, like Johnson, who, asked how he felt when his work was hissed, replied, “Like the Monument.” Johnson had been well kicked in early life, and he therefore could stand a stray stroke or two from the heels of ignorance. John, Lord Lawrence, was born on the 4th of March 18 1 1, at Richmond in Yorkshire. Three kingdoms may claim him as their offspring, for while he was born in England, his parents were Irish of Scotch descent. His mother was a descendant of John Knox, of whom the Regent Murray said as he looked into his grave, “ There lies he who never feared the face of man.” “Both my father and mother possessed much THE SON OF THREE KINGDOMS. 3 character,” said Lord Lawrence. “She had great administrative qualities. She kept the family to- gether and brought us all up on very slender means. When I was going out to India, she made me a speech somewhat to the following effect : c I know you do not like advice, and so will not give you much. But pray recollect two things — Don’t marry a woman that has not a good mother, and don’t be too ready to speak your mind. It was the rock on which your father shipwrecked his prospects.’ ” A noble woman, and a wise one also, with a touch of that toughness and talent that are a part of the Scotch character. The husband of this heroine, Alexander Lawrence by name, had made his way steadily to the rank of colonel. He also had received a training of kicks, and only by sheer valour and persistence did he at last obtain his rank. At the siege of Seringa- patam he had headed the forlorn hope, and when the storming party halted to fire, he had led them through the breach, and thus secured the city. He was supposed to be dying when the ship started for England, but the Colonel would not be carried to the boat. He said to his wife “ Catherine, stand aside ! ” and folding his cloak about him, the sick veteran marched himself down to the boat. An almost Spartan, with a tender love for his children that prevented his discipline from repress- ing their noble aspirations. 4 MEN WITH A MISSION . “ If you are ever brought before a court-martial, sir, never let me see your face again,” said he to his eldest son when he left home for India. A man so sturdy in his poverty, that when a wealthy friend, wishing to aid the Colonel, offered to adopt two of his children, he resented the help and said, “ God gave me the children, and meant me to keep them, not to give them away to other people.” Altogether a strong, kindly man, with a keen sense of duty, and a most steadfast determination to perform it at all costs — the very man to survive kicking and to return it with interest. “My father’s a clebber fellow,” said Nasmyth when a boy ; and so might his sons have said of Colonel Alexander Lawrence. And they might have added far more ; for he was not only clever, but, as far as his light went, a Christian after a robust type and fashion. John Lawrence was the sixth son of this noble couple, and during his childhood he was trained by one of the best sisters ever granted to man. Max Muller says that the word “ sister ” denotes one who pleases or consoles. Letitia Lawrence was in this sense a true sister to her brothers. Two of hischildish troubles especially concentrated her love upon John. First, one day she found that a hot coal had lodged between his cap-strings and his cheek ; the sorrow and suffering this caused to the child endeared him to his gentle sister. Then, at the age of five years he had a bad attack of oph- THE SON OF THREE KINGDOMS. 5 thalmia. This necessitated his confinement to a darkened room for more than a year. His sister and nurse tended him with loving care, and he, with subtle delicate tenderness, could distinguish by its feeling the hand of either. Verily a child of some gentleness. Of this nurse Lord Lawrence delighted to relate an adventure which happened when he was ten years of age. The family were at Ostend, and John obtained permission to accompany her to a provision shop. The nurse proffered a £$ note in payment for goods she purchased, which note the shopkeeper chose to believe stolen. This worthy took the poor woman before a magistrate, where- upon, in as loud a voice as he could manage, little John Lawrence spoke up thus: “Why, sir, it’s our old nurse Margaret; she is a very good woman, and all that she says is quite true. I came to the market with her to buy our food, and papa gave her the money. I think that if you will let her go you will do right, as my papa knows that what I say is quite true.” The child’s advocacy and downrightness were successful, and he carried off the nurse in triumph. At the age of eight John Lawrence was sent tc school at Clifton, Bristol. There one winter’s day he and a schoolfellow attempted to climb the St. Vincent’s rocks, not then spanned by the Suspen- sion Bridge. Snow covered the ground to the depth of two or three inches, but the boys were not daunted by the peril. Their hands were be- 6 MEN WITH A MISSION. numbed, but they had then gone too high to be able to descend safely. They therefore climbed higher, looking to see that they had hold, but not able to feel. Somehow they gained the top of the Down, and then, without a word about the peril, the two friends silently continued their walk. Altogether a silent, resourceful, patient, just man, who would finish what he began, was this John Lawrence. Two other incidents are recorded of this school- life. His brother, Henry, was at the same school, and one day the schoolmaster fiercely denounced one of the ushers. He termed him “ a viper that lie (the master) had harboured in his bosom ! ” Waxing more wroth, and consequently more reck- less in his speech, this teacher said that one boy who had sided with the unfortunate usher was an “ assassin who had wounded his master.” John, astounded at this awful speech, asked his brother Henry who this dreadful criminal could be. With the superior wisdom of six added years, Henry said calmly, “ I am the assassin ! ” On another occasion Henry got up early one morning. “ Where are you going ? ” asked J ohn, who slept in the same room. “ To Brandon Hill to fight Thomas, the bully of the school.” “ May I come too ? ” “ Yes, if you like,” answered Henry. “ Who is to be your second ? ” asked J ohn. THE SON OF THREE KINGDOMS . 7 “ You, if you like.” Thomas did not keep the appointment, and so the fight did not come off after all. Many people on principle believe that all fight- ing is wrong. In judging of this incident, we must remember that the Colonel counselled his boys thus : “ If a boy strikes you, and you do not hit him back, you are no son of mine.” Henry was a noble boy of whom Mrs. Lawrence was justly proud. His mother, while he was an infant, was asked if she had brought home any diamonds from his birthplace, Matura, in Ceylon, where they then abounded. In reply she called her nurse and child into the room. Mrs. Lawrence pointed to the child and said, “ This is my Matura diamond ! ” While a schoolboy he once hurled a stone that smashed a pane of glass. He went at once to the principal and reported the offence. “ I’ve come to say, sir, that I’ve broken a window.” “ Henry will distinguish himself,” said a friend to his sister Letitia. “ All your brothers will do well, I think, but Henry has such steadiness and resolution, that you’ll see him come back a general. He will be Sir Henry Lawrence before he dies.” Ho one thought about predicting a brilliant future for John, and yet he was quite Henry’s equal. At the age of twelve John was sent to college at Londonderry, in Ireland. Here he stayed for two years. “ To patrons I owe nothing. The man who de- 8 MEN WITH A MISSION . pends upon patrons will probably have a smooth way down to failure and nothingness,” says Dr. Parker, with great truth. John Lawrence never had a patron, nor did he require one, but he had many friends. One friend especially he had, a friend who had already secured appointments for his three brothers. This friend offered John Lawrence a post in the Indian Civil Service. It was a good chance, and a chance of doing good service and of proving his capacities is all that a young man ordinarily requires, but does not always obtain. But the choice was not to John’s mind. “ A soldier I was born, and a soldier I will be,” he declared. But his sister’s counsels at length prevailed, and, in spite of his military instincts, John Lawrence went to the East India College for civil servants at Haileybury. Here he distinguished himself, but, like most other heroes, he was not precocious or noteworthy. He was “ that tall thin Irishman,” “ a rough diamond, but a diamond,” and so forth. Little did men know that the rugged, uncouth youth was to be worth an army to England, and by his skill and persistence to trample out the terrible mutiny that was to test and change the British rule. “ His after fate no man can guess ; Let none despond, let none despair.” Dean Howson calls attention to the phrase which is used about St. Paul (Acts ix.), “ He is a chosen vessel.” “ The word itself expresses simply what is THE SON OF THREE KINGDOMS. 9 made for some use, and is absolutely helpless and dead except so far as it is applied to such use.” John Lawrence was indeed a chosen vessel, for he was a soul that was formed for a use, but the use was not as yet seen. Wherefore, 0 friend and brother, take comfort ; your special characteristics qualify you for a service peculiarly your own, for you too are formed for a purpose which will help on the work of God among men. Unless you find your special mission and perform it, you will be helpless and dead. Beau Nash lived to invent a neckcloth, to wear a white hat, and to die in contempt ! J ohn Lawrence was a vessel used to preserve an empire. Is it not a noble ambition to somehow gladden life by doing good and trampling down evil ? For we too are born that we may repress the mutiny of sin, and bring in the reign of righteousness, mercy, and peace. John Lawrence, while at college, used his time well, and he attributed all his success to his sister’s gentle incentive and counsels. Was not part of his after success, therefore, of her achievement ? And should she not be remembered as having encouraged a worker to do his best ? On the Assyrian sculptures there are men who are depicted as encouraging those that pull at the ropes. They themselves touch not a rope, but by voice and gesture they incite others to do their very best; and in doing this they do more to IO MEN WITH A MISSION . move the mass than if they took their place in the ranks. There are some feeble sickly lives that seem con- tinued below for no other reason than that they may incite others to service. Letitia Lawrence was of this high nobility, and in the next life she cannot miss her reward. May it be ours not only to pull at the ropes, but to encourage those who also work ; — to put heart into them, as the Assyrian said. CHAPTER II. GOOD WORK BRINGS GOOD LUCK. “ He ruled them ; men may rule the worst By ever daring to be first.” — B yron. “ I know that obedience is noble, but danger is nobler still.”— IIypatia. “ There are few positions, however difficult, from which dogged resolution and perseverance may not liberate you.” — Lavengro. 1829-1846. “A COUNTRY WITH NO CASTLES ” — TRACKING THIEVES — WHEN HE IS ANGRY— “THE CALAMITY ”— THE ENGLISH RULE IN DANGER— “A NICE OLD GENTLEMAN.” “Though I have had kind invitations enough to visit America/’ says Ruskin in “ Prseterita,” “ I could not even for a couple of months live in a country so miserable as to possess no castles.” India also possesses no castles, but it has a great historic past, which, for some reason or other, has charmed and influenced the successive races who have ruled that great dependency. If “ Britain, carrying sword and flame, Won an empire, lost her name,” 11 12 MEN WITH A MISSION. at the first, she has long since nobly redeemed her errors by heroic efforts to benefit the races who live there subject to her rule. On the 2nd of September 1829, John Lawrence left Portsmouth for India. With him sailed his elder brother, Henry, and his sister, Honoria. The Lawrence family were tenderly attached to each other, and it was a mutual joy for the exiles thus to travel together. But they were only together for a time, for on the 9th of February 1830 they reached Calcutta, and then Henry went on to the Horth-West frontier to join his regiment of foot- artillery, while John remained at Fort William in order there to study the native languages. Left alone, John Lawrence felt so despondent and lonely, that he would have been glad of any chance of returning again to England. At length, having passed the needful examination, he was, at his own request, gazetted to Delhi. The very position of Delhi marks it out as the meeting-place of nations and the battle-ground of India. In this city there then survived the debauched court of the once powerful Mogul Emperor. With mistaken gene- rosity, the English had permitted to this sovereign a mock state which was ere long to threaten the existence of their rule in India. Ho more arduous post could have been found than that of Resident in such a city as Delhi ; a city which ruled an area of about 800 square miles, inhabited by about 500,000 of the most restless, fanatical, and GOOD WORK BRINGS GOOD LUCK . 13 brave of all the native races. Here John Lawrence remained for five years as assistant - judge and magistrate. At the termination of this period of probation he was placed in charge of the Northern Division of the Delhi district. This is the great battle-plain of India, the Belgium of the Peninsula. The chief station of this territory is Paniput. His primary duty was to see that the land-tax, which forms the staple revenue of the Indian Government, was paid, and subordinately to this he was required to see justice done ; indeed, generally to rule the province. The natives soon found that “ Jan Larens Sahib ” was not a man to be trifled with. They had been accustomed to cheat the revenue with impunity ; such a deed was not to be thought of now. A village that, relying upon its strong walls, had long refused to pay the tax, was suddenly surrounded during the night-time, and all the cattle as they went forth to pasture were turned back. In vain did the natives plead for exemption ; they were told that the money must be paid or the cattle must remain within the village. The threat was suffi- cient ; before sunset the money was forthcoming, and the cattle were permitted to go forth to the pastures. Such intense interest did Lawrence feel in his work, that when once he lay ill in bed he was only roused from what might have been his last sleep by the news that a beggar had complained that under 14 MEN WITH A MISSION . the rule of Larens Sahib rogues were punished, and taxes were paid ; in short, it was a hard thing for criminals to live at all. This speech stirred the apparently dying man to new vigour and life. Work to such a man was positive happiness, and he did his duty well. It is related that during this period he went in haste to a burning village. One old woman refused to leave her flaming house because no one could carry out a sack of corn which was her worldly all. John Lawrence himself seized the sack and carried it to a place of safety, and then the woman was willing to leave the burning house. And yet next day he could not even lift the sack from the ground. Many stories are related of his vigilance, skill, and success in tracing out crime. Thus in March 1835 news came that an English officer had been shot, and no clue existed as to the murderer, except that it was hinted that a neighbouring Kajali had a private quarrel with the deceased officer. Lawrence visited this chiefs house, and noticed that a horse stood tethered in the court- yard. His keen eye detected some marks on the hoofs, and it flashed upon him that the horse’s shoes had been reversed. One of his natives observed that between the front and hind hoofs there was a difference of a straw’s breadth. This was the exact difference in the tracks that had been seen near the place where the crime had been committed. Then it was learned that a servant of the Rajah’s was GOOD WORK BRINGS GOOD LUCK . *5 absent, and gradually the crime was brought home to the man. Another time he set out to capture a notorious robber, but when he reached a river he found that the ferryboats had been removed. “We must swim it,” he said; but his followers were afraid of the quicksands in the river-bed. “Well, you cowards may do what you like, but I am going,” said Lawrence, and he plunged into the stream. His example was infectious, and the timid natives took to the water. One of them, however, was well nigh drowned in the passage ; Lawrence saw his danger, and turned back and saved his life. When they arrived at the village, the murderer ran along the flat roofs of the houses pursued by Law- rence. The man leaped from the roof with safety, but his pursuer dislocated his ankle by too big a jump, and so lost his prey. Tidings came one day that a widow had been robbed, of a large sum of money. Just before, she had been excused from paying a tax on the ground of her supposed poverty. The native police dis- covered that there was a hole in the wall through which a hand had been thrust, and thus the door had been opened. The tracks of two thieves were discovered leading to the house, and from the tracks it appeared that only one had left it. The track of this one man led up to a house in which the widow’s nephew lived. The nephew, however, had never been into his cunt’s house, and* 16 MEN WITH A MISSION . knew nothing of the treasure, which had been stored in two pots hidden beneath the ground. But no traces of the thief could be discovered for a long time, until one of the men declared that an eye had glistened from the air-hole of some vaults. These cellars were examined, and the thief was at length detected. The money was concealed in the vault near him, and it was discovered and restored to the widow, who carried it off, because she refused to intrust it to a bank. In 1837 Lawrence left the scene of these adven- tures, and went back to his former subordinate position in Delhi. Within three months he was promoted to be acting magistrate and collector in the city itself. This post he held for six months, and then he was placed in charge of the southern division of Delhi territory. Two thousand square miles, containing a population of seventy thousand souls, were thus subject to his rule. Half of these were Hindus and half were Mohammedans. The character of the people may be seen from their favourite adage, “ The buffalo belongs to him who holds the bludgeon/’ The Mohammedans of this district petitioned to be allowed to kill a cow that they might indulge in the luxury of fresh meat. Lawrence gave the permission, whereupon, after in vain attempting violence, the Hindoos put in practice “the plan of campaign,” and boycotted the Muslims. They refused to open their shops, and maintained this GOOD WORK BRINGS GOOD LUCK . 17 attitude for twenty-two days. But they had to deal with a strong man. Lawrence himself im- ported grain and sold it to the natives, and thus, in due time, he brought the mutineers to reason. In November 1838, John Lawrence, being now known to be a capable man, was sent to take charge of Etawa, a district near Agra and Mynpoorie. Here a recent terrible drought had produced the nameless and numerous horrors of famine, in addi- tion to the misery which is the ordinary and appa- rently inevitable lot of the poor. Near the house in which he resided there stood the shrine of an idol. This was supposed to be the goddess of small-pox, then as now, the scourge of India. Mothers presented their children to this block of wood, at the same time substituting the offering of a male lamb for the child, thereby hoping to secure its exemption from the scourge. The crafty priests were not dismayed if the child, which was thus atoned for, died ; all that could be done then w T as to increase the offering the next time that the parents visited the shrine ! Alas for those whose hope in life rested on a block of wood ! “ They bear him upon the shoulder, they carry him, and set him in his place, and he standeth ; from his place shall he not remove ; yea, one shall cry unto him, yet can he not answer, nor save him out of his trouble ” (Isaiah xlvi. 7). This station was one of the worst that Lawrence ever occupied, yet he was equal to it, and did not n i8 MEN WITH A MISSION . suffer liis energies to rust. One of his friends inquired of one of the .natives if John Lawrence worked well, and if he made his subordinates work. “ Doesn’t he ? ” replied the man. “ When he is in anger his voice is like a lion’s roar, and the pens tremble in the hands of the writers all round the room.” Evidently a man whom it was as well not to offend, and who knew how to make himself feared by the slothful and evil-doers. Towards the end of the year 1839 Lawrence was seized with jungle-fever. For more than a month his life was in peril ; indeed, one evening the doctor took leave of his patient believing that he would die during the night-time. But the next morn- ing the doctor found John Lawrence sitting at his desk hard at work upon his accounts. A sort of man who would not tamely submit, and who could rouse himself so as to throw off disease. This was like Hannington, who was more than once left in the road as dead, and who astonished his bearers by walking into the camp. “ Black men would lie down by the side of the road,” said they, “ and die like a sheep.” This is one difference between the black and white, the strong energy and daunt- less will-power of the latter. John Lawrence did not regain his strength very readily, and he therefore returned to England as an invalid. He must have been of a splendid phy- sique, for on his first voyage out, while enfeebled GOOD WORK BRINGS GOOD LUCK . 19 by sickness, he would lift and hold out at arm’s length a cannon-ball that few of his fellow-pas- sengers could lift. In June 1840 he reached our shores, and, in- valid as he was, not only to find health, but also during his two years of furlough to find that best of blessings — a good wife. Many changes had occurred during his absence in India. He found that his widowed mother was then residing at Clifton. During his absence in India his favourite sister, Letitia, had married a clergyman named Hayes. During his stay in England he looked out for what he jocosely called “ the calamity/’ by which term he meant a wife. This “ calamity ” he found in Harriette Catherine Hamilton, the daughter of an Irish clergyman. Happily, his marriage, which took place in August 1841, proved no calamity to him, but, as he himself said, “ the most important, and certainly the happiest step in my life. . . . My wife has been to me everything that a man could wish or hope for.” Bosworth Smith relates an incident which is most significant and cannot be left out. “ John Lawrence was sitting one evening in his drawing- room at Southgate with his wife, his sister Letitia, and other members of the family, and all of them were engaged in reading. Looking up from his book, in which he had been engrossed, he dis- covered, to his surprise, that his wife had left the 20 MEN WITH A MISSION. room. ‘ Where’s mother ? ’ said he to one of his daughters. ‘ She’s upstairs,’ replied the girl. He returned to his book, and looking up again a few minutes later, put the same question to his daugh- ter, and received the same answer. Once more he returned to his reading, and once more he looked up with the same question on his lips. His sister Letitia here broke in, ‘ Why, really, John, it would seem as if you could not get on for five minutes without your wife.’ ‘ That’s why I mar- ried her,’ replied he.” Altogether such a man as not only was able to rule wild natives and to restore order in a turbu- lent province, but also to make a home wherever he was. Such a man deserved a happy home, and he had one. The bride and bridegroom visited various places on the Continent. They were at Naples when the news of the massacre at Cabul came home to Eng- land. George Lawrence, the elder brother of John, was among the army which was reported as destroyed. John Lawrence at once hurried back to London. Here he was taken seriously ill, and the doctors forbade him to return again to India. “ If I can’t live in India, I must go and die there,” he replied. Accordingly, on the ist October 1842; he left Southampton with his young wife, and on 14th November of the same year they reached Bombay. Ten days were spent in sight-seeing, and then they GOOD WORK BRINGS GOOD LUCK. 21 started for the North-West Provinces. They were compelled to abandon the direct and shortest route, and go through the Central Provinces, which were then but little known. Both husband and wife were ill, but they pushed forward to their destina- tion through every obstacle. At Cawnpore, afterwards of ill fame, they stayed a month with Richard Lawrence, the youngest of the Lawrence brothers. Soon after they met George Lawrence, who, with other survivors, had escaped from a perilous im- prisonment in Afghanistan. George advised his brother to go to Delhi, where he was known, and this counsel was taken. Upon his way thither John Lawrence learned that he had been appointed civil and sessions judge for the period of one month. Before the termination of the month John Lawrence was appointed to a district not far from Paniput. His headquarters here were at Kurnal. Here he met with his brother Henry, who came to him for help to suppress an insurrection in a neighbouring state. Kurnal was at the time a pest-house, and that owing entirely to English blunders. As a safe- guard against famine, canals had been cut, but these had been neglected, and had become a source of disease. Then, too, rice had been largely cultivated, and the marshy land needful for its growth came right up to the bungalows. Two evils especially excited his indignation, one of 22 MEN WITH A MISSION. which was the system of borrowing from the natives their carts and beasts of burden whenever the Govern- ment and court moved to the hills. No money ade- quately compensated the owners for this forcible detention of what they often required for harvest- work. Then the awful degradation of the Hindoo women excited his indignation ; he rightly saw that this lay beneath every other question of social or religious reform. No nation can rise higher than its estimate of women, and its social and moral con- dition is best gauged by the purity, influence, and moral force of its mothers, wives, and daughters. Another miserable class was the lepers, one of whom actually petitioned that he might be buried alive, after the cruel custom of his people. The man himself sent a petition, and then personally urged his request. Lawrence of course refused to permit this to be done, but the man was actually buried alive. In November 1843 John Lawrence was ap- pointed magistrate and collector of Delhi and Pani- put. This was a welcome addition to his income, •which now had to provide for Kate, his eldest child, who was born June 1843. Thus gradually and slowly John Lawrence made his way from the ranks to a position of trust and authority, which, however, was anything but an adequate reward for his long services. In his case, as with all other noble men, there came at length the opportunity, which he knew well how to seize. GOOD WORK BRINGS GOOD LUCK . 23 On the 1 ith of November 1845, Lord Hardinge, then Governor-General of India, met him. Lord Hardinge had to inherit the wrong-doing of Lord Ellenborough, and to provide against the discontent which had arisen from our annexation of Scinde. As a consequence of this ill-feeling, on the nth of December the Sikhs took up arms, and a force of 60,000 soldiers and 40,000 camp-followers, with I 50 heavy guns, entered British territory. No one had expected this attack, but the British were ready for their brave foes. Two divisions of the British army were attacked at Moodkee by the Sikh force. The Sikhs were repulsed, but they had profited so well by their training under French and Italian officers that the British waited for reinforcements before attempting to assail the Sikh main body. This was entrenched in the form of a horseshoe at the village of Ferozepore. The earth- works were defended by a hundred pieces of artillery. At four o’clock in the afternoon Lord Gough ordered his army to storm these entrenchments. The Sikhs knew how to work their guns, and their infantry stood firm and hurled back the attack of their assailants. This was a new experience to the British, and during the night it seemed as if the spell of their ascendancy had been broken. The Governor-General well understood the peril of the crisis ; he did his utmost to inspirit his troops, and he himself led them to an attack upon one huge gun that had made havoc in their ranks. 24 MEN WITH A MISSION . The next day the Sikhs were defeated, and their reserve force retreated instead of attacking the British, who had been thirty-six hours without food. During this night of horrors, General (then Colonel) Havelock was found asleep with his head pillowed on a bag of gunpowder. Lord Hardinge reproved him for the rash act. “ I am so tired/’ he said. The evening saw the Sikhs in full retreat. During this critical time John Lawrence had worked hard to provide the army with needful stores. On the ioth of February the Sikhs were once more in motion, and at Sobraon they were met and defeated with great slaughter. The Punjab was now at Lord Hardinge’s mercy ; he annexed part of it, the Jellunder Doab, and John Lawrence was appointed commissioner of the new district. This dangerous honour involved great personal danger, and it required the highest administrative abilities ; it had come to him as a reward for the manner in which he had performed the work that he found ready to hand. Carlyle’s advice to Dean Stanley might have been spoken to John Lawrence, for he certainly acted upon it. “ Dearly beloved Roger, whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.” “ High offices in Church or State may fill even ordinary men with a force beyond themselves.” “ Every position in life, great or small, may be made as great or as little as we desire to make it.” GOOD WORK BRINGS GOOD LUCK . 25 In all, and in spite of all his anxieties, John Lawrence retained his love for fun. Sometimes this took the form of a practical joke, as when he drove his elephant beside another on which rode the Military Secretary of India, a gentleman whose temper verged upon the irritable. Lawrence bade one of his friends enter the sec- retary’s howdah, saying that the secretary was a very nice old gentleman, who would welcome him with open arms. In order to prevent himself from falling between the elephants, the man had to clasp the “ nice old gentleman ” round the neck ; whereat the victim roared, and when he learned who had devised the trick, he shouted, “ I’ll pay off Master J ohn for this ! ” Altogether a most estimable person, but by no means the man to appreciate Jans Larens Sahib and his fun. CHAPTER III. A FRIEND TO THE PEPPER-POT ; OR, THE MAN WHO KNEW HIS OWN MIND. “ Tt never was our guise To slight the poor, or aught humane despise.” — Homer. “All truth is calm, Refuge and rock and tower ; The more of truth the more of calm ; Its calmness is its power. Calmness is truth, And truth is calmness still ; Truth lifts its forehead to the storm Like some eternal hill.” — H. Bonar. “Every man truly lives so long as he acts his nature, or some way makes good the faculties of himself.” — Religio Medici. 1846-1856. “A STRAIGHTFORWARD RUNNER” — “IT WILL BE ALL RED SOON”— “I WANT TO PUT MY OWN STAMP ON IT”— MURDER IN SPORT— “ONLY A BIT OF GLASS ” — A PEPPER- POT— LAWRENCE K.C.B. 4 T HOPE that I shall be always straightforward,” said Bishop Fraser ; and his biographer testifies that 26 A FRIEND TO THE PEPPER-POT . 27 one of the strong points of his character was that he was always thus natural. The like may be said of John Lawrence ; and his promotion to a high post only developed these characteristics. As a ruler he had no airs, and he was downright and without deceit in all that he did. He indeed required all his strength, for the province which had been handed over to him was in a deplor- able condition, and in addition to exhaustion and smouldering discontent, one district of it bristled with hill-fortresses, which were all so many possible perils whenever any chance of harming the British occurred. He settled down at once to his work, and im- pressed the chiefs with his three requirements. He made them repeat them aloud, so that there might be no mistake about his meaning ; they were : “ Thou shalt not burn thy widow ; thou shalt not kill thy daughters ; thou shalt not bury alive thy daughters.” Such a man must either be obeyed or resisted ; and while the province generally submitted to his strong rule, in the hill-country three hundred Sikhs determined to make a stand for independence. They closed the gates of their chief fortress and fired upon the English officers. Lawrence hurried to the spot, and, to the amazement of the garrison, he brought some heavy guns over the sharp rocks. This speedily brought the besieged to their senses, and without losing a man Lawrence obtained more than the fort. He showed that he could and would 28 MEN WITH A MISSION . be obeyed, and this, after all, is the chief and first requirement of a ruler. The first proof of his ascendancy was that, in spite of immemorial custom, the natives were per- suaded to pay their taxes in money rather than in kind, a measure which was fraught with momentous consequences to them. A greater difficulty, which was, however, grappled with as bravely, was the practice of infanticide. The people refused to discontinue this horrible custom. “ You must do it or give up your lands,” said Lawrence to one chief, and the man surrendered his lands rather than promise not to kill his infant daughters. One great danger his keen instincts discovered, but unhappily his counsels were not heeded. He advised that, instead of drawing our Sepoys from Oude, the hill-tribes should be enlisted. Had his warning been heeded, the mutiny might have been averted. But although his advice was not taken, his ser- vices were highly valued by the Governor-General. His brother, Henry Lawrence, had been exhausted by his labours at Lahore, and, while he was absent on sick leave, John Lawrence got through his own work, and added to it his brother’s duties. They were not light, for now Runjit Sing was dead. Lahore, the capital city of the Punjab, was during the lifetime of the great Sikh chief at peace with the British. The chief who built up the great Sikh A FRIEND TO THE PEPPER-POT . 29 dominion once asked for a map of India. After looking steadily at the vast extent of the British possessions, which were coloured red, he said sadly, “ It will soon all be red.” At his death an infant son was acknowledged as Rajah, although the real power remained in the hands of the boy's mother. The Sikhs despised but tolerated this woman, and in desperation she and her paramour, Lai Sing, pro- voked the first Sikh war, which rent from them the territory which John Lawrence now ruled. Henry Lawrence was placed at Lahore, the Sikh capital, in order to control the tyranny of the Queen-mother, and generally to prevent mischief. This work John Lawrence now took up, although his views differed from those of his brother. John Lawrence believed that there was an utter want of truth and honour in all the Sikh chiefs, and he did not scruple to say so. Unmoved by the threats of the Queen-mother, he brought her paramour to trial for treasonable practices, and when he was convicted, banished him from the Punjab. But in all and through all he longed, for various reasons, to get back to his own government. “ It is a new country,” he said, “ and my assistants need looking after. I want to put my stamp upon it , that in after times people may look back and recall my Raj with satisfaction.” It was a noble wish, and it was fulfilled ; all India, indeed, still bears the stamp of Lord Lawrence's rule, and that rule was good. Every man puts his stamp 30 MEN WITH A MISSION. upon his friends, his work, and his age ; some do so only to mar a better impression. One of the Assyrian bricks recently discovered bears the imprint of a dog’s foot ; while it was yet wet clay, a dog trod on it and left his stamp, a stamp that obliterated the royal mark. Many lives, without intending harm, do no more than stamp a dog’s foot upon the superscription and signet of the King, and that by inattention and neglect. What is the stamp that we imprint ? A dog’s foot or the likeness of God ? The Queen-mother had long been known to be engaged in treacherous and treasonable negotiations with the enemies of Britain, at length she contrived at once to insult both the Resident and her nobles. This led to her deposition, and henceforward the British Government acted as guardian of the boy- prince. This did not remove all the difficulties of the Resident, for the Sikh nobles, with assumed sim- plicity, declared that they possessed no money, and therefore could not pay the money they had promised towards the expenses of the occupation. They ven- tured to ask that the whole sum might be remitted ! On the 3rd of April 1848 Lawrence left Lahore, which was given into the charge of Sir Frederick Currie. Before many days had passed men regretted his absence. Two English officers w r ere murdered, and, as the deed was not at once avenged, before long the Sikhs rose as one man in rebellion. A A FRIEND TO THE PEPPER-POT. 3 1 fatal spirit of inactivity marked the British prepara- tions, and at the desperate battle of Chillianwallah our troops were all but defeated. The moral effect of such a battle was indeed terrible ; it seemed possible that John Lawrence’s Sikh province would also join the revolt. Had a less energetic ruler been at the head of affairs, it would probably have done so ; but John Lawrence stamped out every firebrand before it had time to kindle a blaze. Lord Dalhousie, the new Governor-General, fully realised the perils that threatened his empire, and he did his utmost to temper the rash valour of Lord Gough, the English commander-in-chief. On the 2 1st of February 1848 Lord Gough won a great victory at Gujerat, in which he annihilated the Sikh military power. The Sikh nation was disarmed, and Lord Dalhousie resolved to annex the whole of their dominions. Although he had fully made up his mind, the Governor-General asked John Lawrence, “ What is to be done with the Punjab now ? ” “ Annex it now,” was the reply. Lord Dalhousie named one difficulty after another that he considered made annexation imprudent, but he met with the laconic reply, “Annex it now; annex it now ” On the 29th of March the annexation was pro- claimed, and the Government of the new dominion was vested in a Board of Commissioners. Henry 3 2 MEN WITH A MISSION. Lawrence had resisted annexation, and, as a protest against what he could not prevent, he had placed his resignation of office in the hands of the Governor-General. Lord Dalhousie not only re- fused to accept this resignation, but he induced Henry Lawrence to withdraw it, and to become President of the new Board. With him John Lawrence and Charles Mansell were associated, the latter as a counterpoise to the brothers, who held different views as to the end and method of government. Henry was aristocratic and inclined to favour the old Sikh nobility ; John Lawrence, on the contrary, was democratic and disposed to tax every man alike. The Punjab, although it had acknowledged Sikh supremacy, was as diverse in its population as in its physical features. One strong robber chief had subdued the various races that had inhabited the country of the five rivers, and his policy had two main objects. He intended to be supreme as a military ruler and to collect treasure. He taxed everything that his subjects possessed, and yet he kept no accounts save those that were recorded upon a notched stick. The Board had therefore to lay down the first principles of government, in order that upon this foundation a stable fabric might be reared. As a precautionary measure, the population were dis- armed, although the hill-tribes were permitted to retain their weapons. In order to defend the new A FRIEND TO THE PEPPER-POT. 33 territory ten regiments of cavalry and ten of infantry were raised from among the natives of the district. Two bodies of police, one semi-military and the other detective, further aided the Board, who feared that the recently discovered crime of Thuggery was terribly prevalent within their dominion. In Arnold’s “ Dalhousie” it is related that one Thug, when asked how many persons he had murdered, replied, “ How can I tell ? Do you remember, Sahib, every animal you have killed in the chase ? Thuggee is our sport ! ” In the Punjab the whole of the Sweeper caste were Thugs, and not until a thousand were exe- cuted was the crime put down. The Sweeper caste had long been regarded as outcasts, and had indeed been thus driven to crime. The Board, not content with the suppression of this horrible crime, endeavoured to transform these murderers into decent members of society, and with such success that many of them were afterwards employed both at Delhi and at Lucknow as sappers and miners. Among the treasures of the newly-acquired king- dom was the famous Koh-i-noor. It vras intrusted to the care of J ohn Lawrence ; he thrust it into his vest-pocket, and forgot all about it in the many other matters that claimed his attention. Six weeks after, a message came from Lord Dalhousie asking for the jewel, which was to be sent home to Queen Victoria. Then it flashed upon him that he had C 34 MEN WITH A MISSION . left it in his vest-pocket. He sent for his servant and asked about the parcel. I put it in one of your boxes/’ said the man. “ Open it,” said John Lawrence, as the servant produced the parcel that contained the treasure. “ There is nothing but a bit of glass/’ said the man, in real or assumed ignorance. In December 1852 the rule of the Joint Board came to an end. Sir Henry Lawrence was trans- ferred elsewhere, and his brother John ruled alone under the title of Chief Commissioner of the Punjab. “ I have all my life been a hard worker, and it has now become a second nature to me,” said John Lawrence. “ I work, therefore, as much from habit as from principle.” He certainly had enough now to tax his powers to the very utmost. During the days of joint rule he and his brother Henry had held somewhat diverse views upon matters of government, as might have been expected from two such high- spirited, independent thinkers. Sir Henry Lawrence was one of the kindest of men, and he was deeply loved by all who knew him, but by none so much as by his brother. The differences of opinion between the brothers were founded upon principle, and neither could well depart from what he believed to be the best method of ruling without conscientious objections. Hence it was on the whole better that John Lawrence was left in charge of the great territory, but it was a sore pang to every one when Sir Henry went away. A FRIEND TO THE PEPPER-POT. 35 As we have seen, John Lawrence was a masterful man, as indeed all his race were. “ I am glad of your opinion, and of course very glad of your pen,” he said to a young man who had come to him as secretary. “ But remember, it will be my policy and my views, not yours. Your day may come — it is mine now ; every dog will have its day.” Upon the whole, this is always best; for men respect strength, and only a strong man can use power beneficially. A weak man invariably falters, hesitates, and injures others by his sheer timidity ; weakness lies at the root of most of the world’s political blunders and crimes. And John Law- rence realised Buskin’s idea of kings as busy men, “ who not only did more, but in proportion to their doings got less than other men.” His appetite for work was enormous, and with a keen unerring in- sight he went right to the heart of any subject that he considered. He seemed to know the shortest way not only to manage any negotiation, but also to speak out his mind and to get his will fulfilled. He suitably impressed Lord Dalhousie, who, although imperious, ambitious, and exacting to others, was kind to John Lawrence. Some one said of the Governor-General, “ The Lord Sahib is a pepper-pot ; ” but he reserved his pepper for others than the Chief Commissioner of the Punjab. It is true that Lord Dalhousie insisted that in the Punjab, as in all other parts of his dominion, his will should be absolute. John Lawrence freely protested against 3 6 MEN WITH A MISSION . what he believed to be unwise in the Governor- General’s policy, but he loyally endeavoured to obey what were sometimes, in his judgment, unwise orders. In fact, unlike as they were, the two men had much in common, and although Lord Dalhousie was far below his subordinate, he was something more than a pepper-pot. He had a high concep- tion of duty, and he set himself resolutely to work out what he believed to be the wisest policy for the provinces that had been intrusted to him. Hence when, in the autumn of 1854, negotiations were opened with the ruler of Afghanistan, and the Afghans specially asked for John Lawrence, although the step taken was against his judg- ment, he acceded to the request. On the 20th of March 1855 he met the son of the ruler of the Afghans, and concluded a treaty with him. This treaty provided that there should be perpetual friendship between the English and Afghans. The latter desired an assurance of assist- ance against the Russians should that nation in- vade their territories, but this was refused. The Afghans desired Peshawur, but although John Law- rence looked upon this post as a weakness in our defence, he could not surrender it. John Lawrence thought but little of the treaty that was then made ; he said sardonically “ that there was no harm in it,” and that is more than can be said of many others. Part of John Lawrence’s success as an adminis- trator was due to his ability and success in sur- A FRIEND TO THE PEPPER-POT . 37 rounding himself with able subordinates. He had a fine eye for a man, even for a troublesome man, so long as there was character in him. It is related that he said of a man who had been a sore trouble to him, “ Never mind ; he has got ‘ go/ he has got zeal ; ” and hence, being a judge and a tolerant ruler of men, he not only did good work himself, but he trained a distinct school of good workers, who afterwards became leaders of others, as he had been of them. In the year 1855 Mrs. Lawrence was taken seriously ill. It seemed as if she must go home to Europe ; but when she recovered a little she declared that she could not exist in England with- out him. Their children, save two, had been sent home out of danger, but she remained to comfort her husband in the death-grapple with Mohamme- dan fanaticism which was rapidly approaching. On the 17th of February 1856 he went down to Calcutta, and there he met with his brother Henry for the last time. The brothers spent three happy days together, and then they parted to meet no more until their life-work was done. On the last day of February 1856, Lord Dal- housie handed over his office to Lord Canning. Before he left India Lord Dalhousie annexed Oude, and, with the approbation of his Council, he sug- gested that the Punjab with Scinde should be made a separate province, of which John Lawrence should be the ruler. MEN WITH A MISSION. 58 When he reached Ceylon, Lord Dalhousie learned that his friend had received the distinction for which the Governor- General had especially asked, and that he was now Sir John Lawrence. Lord Dalhousie himself returned home to die. During his term of office he had moved English rule in India on a century, if not more. “ I was very miserable in parting from you all,” he wrote to Sir John Lawrence. “ Of all I leave behind me, no man’s friendship is more valued by me, no man’s services are so highly estimated by me as yours. God bless you, my dear John. Write to me as you promised, and believe me now and always,” &c. So one worker follows another, and by different men the great purposes of Providence are served, and sin and iniquity are put down among men. CHAPTER IV. « PRESS ON.' PRESS ON.'” OR, PACE IS POWER. “ Tell us of no vauntful Glory, Shouting forth her haughty storj 7 . All life long his homage rose To far other shrine than those. * In hoc signo,’ pale or dim, Marked the battle-field for him.” “He had perceived the presence and the power Of Greatness ; and deep feeling had impressed Great objects on his mind, with portraiture And colour so distinct, that on his mind They lay like substances, and almost seemed To haunt the bodily sense.” — Wordsworth. “Some men are like a tiled house, are long before they take fire ; but once in flame, there is no coming near to quench them.” — Thomas Fuller. 1856-1857. “ON A VOLCANO ’’—TRUE TO HIS SPOKEN WORD— NO ARREARS —TO STAND STILL IS FATAL— THE TELEGRAMS— “ BETTER QUICKLY, SO IT BE WELL DONE.” “ For my part, I am sitting upon a volcano/ ” said the Emperor Alexander of Eussia, who was after- wards murdered by his subjects. Which thing was 39 40 MEN WITH A MISSION. true of British rule in India in 1856, although few at the time understood the premonitory rumblings that spoke of concealed forces out of sight. It was true, as Disraeli’s epigram puts it, that the unex- pected happened. Lord Dalhousie had left India little more than a year when the great mutiny came. Lord Canning, the new Governor-General, was utterly unlike his predecessor ; he had come out not to enlarge, but to consolidate the hugli empire that was enlarging at an alarming rate. He had no thirst for a scientific frontier, but he soon found himself, against his will, engaged in a w 7 ar with Persia, who was acting as cat’s-paw for Russia. Herat was the chestnut, and it was the policy of India that the coveted city should neither belong to Persia nor Russia. On the 11th of July 1856, an ultimatum was sent from London intimating that an advance by Persia upon Herat would be construed into a declaration of war. Lord Canning shared Sir John Lawrence’s opinion, that in the event of a war England should make a naval demonstration on the shores of the Persian Gulf, and land a force there which should co-operate with an Afghan army marching to Herat. This would avoid the perils of an advance through Afghanistan. Sir John Lawrence, when asked as to who was the best man to command the proposed expedition, suggested his brother, Sir Henry Lawrence. a He “ PRESS ON/ 41 has great natural ability, immense force of char- acter, is very popular in his service, has large poli- tical acumen, and much administrative ability/’ he says. “ I doubt if there is a military man in India who is his equal in these points. He is also in possession of his full vigour both in mind and body; and there is not a good soldier in the Punjab, or perhaps in Upper India, of the Bengal army but would volunteer to serve under him.” This advice was not taken, but, with John’s ap- proval, General Outram was selected for the post. On the 1st of January 1857, Sir John Lawrence met the Ameer of Afghanistan within the Khyber Pass. This negotiation was a task of great risk, and Lawrence knew that he was thrusting his head into the lion’s mouth, but he felt it to be his duty not to hesitate. Before leaving his escort, he left word that if any firing were heard within the Pass, the British troops were to rush in and rescue their leader. The Afghans received their visitor with a royal salute ; the officer in command of the British heard the firing, but he wisely refrained from obey- ing the order, which act of discretion, it is thought, saved the lives of the envoy and his attendants. During the negotiations a message arrived to the effect that 5000 troops were to be landed upon the Persian shores. This was communicated to the Afghan chiefs, who agreed, for a subsidy, to co- operate with them. When the terms had been agreed upon, Lord Lawrence informed the Ameer 42 MEN WITH A MISSION. that in the treaty with Persia he would be con- sidered. This delighted the Afghans, but they forgot to ask for the promise in writing. “ But,” said Lawrence, who was the soul of honour, “ I con- sider that my verbal assurance pledges Government as much as a written article.” Himself scrupulously truthful, and hating a lie, as every true Englishman must and always will, Sir John properly despised the Afghan falsehood and trickery, which they pretended to consider clever. The Ameer, for example, told his guest that he was very poor because he always spent much more money than he received. “ How do you get on, then?” asked Sir John. “ Why, you see,” replied the Afghan, “ I borrow each year from the money-lenders, who are gene- rally Persians. They know that as soon as I am dead my sons will spring at each others’ throats, that there will be general anarchy, and that they will lose everything. So when they press me for payment, I call them together, and putting on a long face, tell them that I am being killed by anxiety about money. They see it is better to forgive the debt, and keep themselves and me in life and pros- perity a little longer. And so we all start afresh!” There is a Persian proverb which says that a stone that is fit for the wall is never left out of the way ; although Sir Henry Lawrence was not to attack Persia, a new post was found for him. In February 1857 he was sent to Oude as Chief “PRESS ON! 43 Commissioner. “He went to Oude not without feelings of ambition/' says a friend, “but princi- pally from a high sense of duty, whilst he had the strongest medical opinion of the necessity of an immediate change to Europe, and when suffering, as he told me, from c a dozen different complaints. 5 55 Indeed, his doctors only consented to sanction his going to Lucknow on condition that in the following November he went to England. The greatest sorrow that can befall a man had darkened Sir Henry's life, for he had just before lost his dearly loved wife. With the chastening of this sorrow upon him he went to Lucknow, to make the heroic stand which is one of the most thrilling stories in our national annals. His brother John wrote him a long letter of counsel as to how best to manage the huge and troublesome dominion that had been intrusted to him. From this we extract the following sen- tences, which are good counsel for every worker : “ The only point in particular which seems to me of value is your mode of doing your own work. In civil administration the great secret appears to me to consist in avoiding arrears. To do this, you must always keep at the wheel, and endeavour as far as possible to work off daily all which comes in. Though in the whole year you may get through all your work, much will depend on its being done in the way I describe. Your own office people cannot get through it properly unless it 44 MEN WITH A MISSION. comes in and goes out like a running stream ; and this is still more important for the working of the subordinate departments ; ” which counsel is good for every one who would really work and accom- plish as much work as is possible. John Lawrence himself was terribly overworked, and ill in consequence. His reputation for work was spread through India, and the consequences of such strenuous exertion had procured for the debility produced by a break-down, the name of a “ Punjab head.” He had intended to pay a visit to Cashmere, but at the wish of the Governor-General he remained where he was. And it was fortunate that he did so, for now the mutiny broke out. From the beginning of the year there had been ominous signs, which, first seen in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, had afterwards been observed a thousand miles away. From pro- vince to province “ chupatties ” or pancakes of flour and water had passed from village to village and from province to province through the North- West Provinces of India. In Delhi itself placards had been posted up proclaiming a holy war against the Christians. It was evident that Hindoos and Muslims were meditating an attack upon the hated foreigners. Among the native army there were also symp- toms of mutiny. Fires broke out in various can- tonments, the work evidently of incendiaries. In PRESS ON/ this mood the Sepoys were eager to take offence, and when lubricated cartridges were served out to them, malice suggested that having been greased with the fat of the cow and the pig, they were intended to outrage the religious feelings of both Hindoo and Mohammedan. When the Government endeavoured to conci- liate them and permitted the Sepoys themselves to mix the fat wherewith the cartridges were to be greased, it was next maliciously suggested that the flour of their food was mixed with the bone-dust of the same animals. Many causes contributed to this result, but it was evident that sooner or later the death-struggle must come. On the 1 2th of May a telegram from Delhi reached Lawrence which ran, “ The Sepoys have come in from Meerut and are burning everything. Mr. Todd is dead, and we hear several Europeans. We must shut up.” Hot a word did he speak about this mishap during the whole of that day ; he well realised the magnitude of the danger, and made up his mind to meet and conquer it. His first care was to preserve his own province, the Punjab, which contained a larger army than all the other five districts of our rule. Fifty thou- sand of these troops were natives, and only eleven thousand were Europeans. Ten years had not elapsed since the Sikhs had well-nigh defeated the British. What if they were to rise again and wrest the Punjab from the hands of their new masters ? 46 MEN WITH A MISSION . The native army would in all probability take part with them, and the chances of a successful resist- ance appeared to be very small. The European defenders of the Punjab were massed chiefly on two points — one part at Peshawur watching the Afghans, and the other near Umballa, at the foot of the Himalaya Hills. At the first place there were three, and at the latter four regiments. But the men who served under Lawrence were each of them worth a regiment ; they had caught the spirit of their leader, and did not once quail before the storm. It was decided to disarm the native regulars and to rely upon the irregulars and police to keep order. A spy reported that the Sepoys at Lahore were up to their necks in mutiny, and Lawrence’s men dealt at once with the peril. Three regiments of foot and one of cavalry were to be disarmed, and that by five companies only of the 8ist regi- ment, who had with them but twelve guns. The next morning the troops were paraded and the Sepoys ordered to surrender their arms. The English line fell back, and showed the guns that were loaded with grapeshot. “ Eighty-first, load ! ” — after a moment’s hesitation the Europeans obeyed, and the natives submitted. Post after post was then secured ; it was evident that in the Punjab the authorities were vigilant, knew their own minds, and meant to die hard. John Lawrence himself had been suffering from “ PRESS ON/” 47 neuralgia. His temples had been rubbed with aconite to deaden the pain, and the remedy had well- nmh blinded him. The excitement of the time temporarily threw off the pain. He at once wrote urgent counsels to the commander-in-chief and to the Governor-General. He at least knew what was to be done, and he intended that others should do it if possible. He insisted that the mutinous soldiers should be disarmed forthwith, and that then a great effort should be made at any cost to recover Delhi. “ In revolutions like the present,” said he, “ our only safety is to advance : to stand still is fatal.” He did advance, and prevented, as far as possible, others from standing still. “ It is want of action rather than the want of means which may prove disastrous to us,” he said. In great perils pace is always power in morals as it is in mechanics, and Lawrence well knew the value of promptitude in dealing with such a crisis. “ Between Meerut and Calcutta,” he said, “ we have but five regiments of Europeans, scattered over the country at wide intervals. What is to become of them and all our countrymen if we only hold our own at points where we are strong ? ” “ Lawrence not only got through Herculean labours himself, but sternly forced all malingerers to do their duty. He, with the authority of a master-mind, flashed message after message of abrupt command wherever the electric shock was necessary. One of 48 MEN WITH A MISSION . the earliest victims of the struggle had sank, it was said, killed by an attack of Lawrence’s telegraphic messages.” The military authorities had been strangely loth to believe in their danger, and now they would not be hurried. At length Lawrence succeeded in spurring them into effort, and General Barnard marched towards Delhi. Upon the capture or successful resistance of that city depended the existence of our empire. A siege-train joined the expedition, and only by a miracle escaped delay, or worse. It reached the broad flood of the Biver Sutlej, which was rapidly rising and threatening the bridge of boats. The guns were hurried forward and crossed the river, and only just before the bridge was swept away. A mutinous native regi- ment that had intended to seize the cannon came just too late, for the bridge was gone. At length Barnard reached Delhi, and on the 7th of June the British met the mutinous Sepoys in fair fight and utterly routed them. Thirteen guns were captured, and a small force of 3000 men with twenty field- guns and a small siege-train sat down to capture a city of 150,000 inhabitants who were defended by fortifications that had been devised by British skill. Yet, difficult as the task seemed, men like Lawrence felt that it must be performed, for if Delhi held out, India would be lost to England. During this struggle Lawrence took the lead, as might have been expected when one remembers his high qualities. “ I like issuing orders by “PRESS ON/ 49 telegraph,” he said, “ because they cannot give me their reasons, nor ask for mine.” He fully realised the desperate conflict in which he was eugaged. One of his friends reports thus : “ ‘ I think there is a chance, Thornton/ he said to me; and as he said it I thought he looked the man to make it so. If he died, I felt that he would die hard ; and if our lives were saved, I felt then, and I feel still, that it was to him we should owe and have owed them,” says a friend who was with him. John Lawrence, while he strove for the best, prepared for the worst ; he had sent his wife and children away out of danger, and made all needful preparations for the probable fate before him. All the time of this awful strain, he was suffering from acute neuralgia. Some of the English gave him great anxiety by their tardiness and criminal lethargy. At Peshawur he was well served, and by men who knew the magnitude of the danger. “ You know on what a nest of devils we stand,” said one officer to his chief. “ Once let us take our foot up, and we shall be stung to death.” “ Peshawur once gone,” said a Sikh chief, “ and the whole Punjab will roll up like this,” and he rolled up his robe from the hem to the centre. The men who held Peshawur knew this, and they promptly disarmed the mutineers, with the usual result that other natives rallied to their aid. It is pleasing to note that while resolute in his determination to suppress mutiny, Lawrence would D 5 ° MEN WITH A MISSION. not give way to panic or slay more mutineers than was needful to make an example. At Jellundur there were three native regiments which Lawrence urged should be disarmed, but General Johnstone, who was not under the Com- missioner’s orders, not only refused to do this, but he even handed over the treasure-chest to the keep- ing of the suspected men. The result was what Lawrence feared ; the Sepoys mutinied, murdered some of their officers, and then marched off towards Delhi. Before them rolled the deep river Sutlej, and General Johnstone was urged to follow and to attack them. But he was not a man to be hurried, and he lingered until pursuit was hopeless, and then he followed at a safe distance. Meanwhile the mutineers had crossed the river in a few crazy boats, occupying about thirty hours in the passage. A young civilian with a single gun attacked them after they had crossed, but General Johnstone made no attempt to harass or assail their march. This in- activity was terribly painful to Lawrence. He could not understand it. “Push on, push on,” was his motto and it was indeed the wisest policy ; but there are some natures that are sluggish and cannot under- stand the value of time. There runs a story which relates that a High- lander and his wife came down south in order to see a railway train. After it had passed them the man drew breath and said, “ Eh ! but what need for so much hurry ? ” PRESS ON/ Sometimes moments mean lives, and that both in the individual and national life. If it be wise to act at all, it is always better to lose no time about it. “ Push on ” is the only method to retain the suc- cesses already won, as well as to secure more. Men who say, “ Push on,” and act it, will often correct their errors and transform blunders into triumphs. At any rate, other things being equal, they are like- liest to prosper. Ethelred the Unready has, however, still many descendants both in moral and spiritual things. Those who linger, and who, like Napoleon III., no sooner make a decision than they begin to unmake it, are too numerous. And it would be as well, seeing that the tortoise-pace is not always the best possible under all circumstances, yea, it would be wise for some one to write a companion fable showing how the hare who did not go to sleep not only won the prize, but avoided some dangers, secured many pleasures, and generally did better than the slow tortoise. Oh, for the praise of quickness, that is yet good work ; of the man who not only does well, but does it as speedily as may be ! CHAPTER Y. THE MAN WHO TRIED AND WHO DID HIS DUTY . “ That which we are, we are ; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” “ His face deep scars of thunder had entrenched, and care Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows Of dauntless courage.” — Milton. 1857-1858. ENLARGING ONE’S IDEA OF HUMANITY— A GLOW OF WORK —DEATH OF SIR HENRY— “THESE ARE MY MONKEYS 55 — A PASSING CLOUD — STORM OF DELHI — “ CLEMENCY CANNING.” “ By an old Indian, I mean a man full of curry and of bad Hindustani, with a fat liver and no brains, but with a self-sufficient idea that no one can know India except through long experience of brandy, champagne, gram-fed mutton, cheroots, and hookahs,” wrote Sir Charles Napier in a fit of petu- lenee. If the portrait be like any of the British 52 THE MAN WHO DID HIS DUTY. 53 officials, which may well be doubted, it certainly was unlike Lawrence or the men whom he had gathered round him. John Lawrence did know India, and he had brains in abundance, and therefore he was able to save the empire, which was melting away like snow in summer-time. An instance of his thoughtful kindness is thus related. He had sent down his famous Guide corps to Delhi, and understanding the anxiety of many of them who were married, he promised to bring their wives and families to a place of safety, where he would see after their well-being himself. By the Guides he sent a kind message to his brother Henry, saying, “ He has a terrible job down there at Lucknow. Ah ! well Henry had a greater grip on men than I ever had ! ” Alas ! the message was never delivered, nor was the generous appreciation of his brother’s work ever told on earth. Yet it was kind of him so to speak of Sir Henry’s task. Well says one of John’s officers, “ There was nothing mean or small in his nature ; no spite or malice. He was the biggest man I have ever known. We used to call him ‘King John’ on the frontier, and it is as such I still love to think of him.” The man who enlarges ane’s idea of humanity, and who deserves the title of king from those who also can, is surely a moral force of the highest quality. There are indeed men who be-dwarf and be-little us ; we feel humiliated that such meanness, selfishness, 54 MEN WITH A MISSION. or wickedness should exist. Such men as John Lawrence exert a wholesome influence over all the race, as a banner aids an army in battle. “ As for Henry and John Lawrence,” wrote one who knew both of the brothers, “ they were earnest spirits, each meaning right from the bottom of his heart. There was a glow of work and duty round us all in the Punjab in those days, such as I have never felt before or since. I well remember the reaction of feeling when I went on furlough to England, the want of pressure of any kind, the self-seeking, the want of high aims, which seem to dull and dwarf you. You went back again lowered several pegs, saddened altogether. The atmosphere was different.” It is not given to every man to sustain an empire upon his Atlas-like shoulders, but it is possible for all to impart this glow to duty, and thus to help on the triumph of virtue and righteousness. One politic act of John Lawrence’s needs atten- tion. He sent to all the Sikh chiefs who had rebelled nine years before. He told them that now was an opportunity of retrieving their charac- ters. They came with their retainers, and Law- rence sent them on to Delhi. The mutineers, too late, attempted to induce these Sikhs to join them. Lawrence’s Sikh friend had advised him, “ You had better employ them, or they may go against you.” In spite of Lawrence’s efforts, Delhi did not fall. THE MAN WHO DID HIS DUTY. 55 The little band of assailants was attacked in vain ; but although they repulsed their enemies, Delhi still held out against them. In the opinion of many it might have been easily captured at an early stage of the operations, but every delay added to its strength. Every day fresh bands of mutineers poured into the city ; it seemed as if the English besiegers must be overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers. Yet even among the mutineers the name of Jans Larens was terrible, and they strove to main- tain their courage by parading a huge captive from Cashmere as the dreaded King John himself. King John had meanwhile to deal with mutiny close at home, and he resolved not to wait until it had fully developed. He drew up the disaffected regiment, and was about to address them, when, by accident, a gun went off. The mutineers at once broke their ranks and rushed towards the entrench- ments. The artillery had orders to fire if this happened, in order to prevent the mutineers from entrenching themselves. They were prevented from firing by Brigadier Campbell ; had they done so, Lawrence would have been killed. He, anxious only to avoid bloodshed, rushed amidst the mutineers, and after a time he induced them to lay down their loaded arms. At Jhelum, one of his stations, his subordinates were not so fortunate. The officer in command did not obey his orders, and attacked the mutineers in front of their lines instead of in the rear, where 56 MEN WITH A MISSION. there were no defences. Hence the assailants were repulsed. This momentary success incited another body of Sepoys to revolt. They offered one of their officers a handsome salary if he would make common cause with them ; and after killing some of their officers, about a thousand of them marched off to Delhi. They were not permitted to reach this centre of revolt, for one of Lawrence’s lieutenants met and defeated them. Lawrence was a man who looked at facts in their true relation to each other, and he strove to look ahead. He was himself sparing every man and gun from the Punjab, and now he began to con- sider what should be done if Delhi managed to make good its resistance. “ I look for neither fame nor abuse,” he said ; “ all I wish to do is my duty, and save our rule and those connected with it.” But his plan was sneered at afterwards by those who did not know, as Lawrence did, the whole truth. He resolved to intrust Peshawur to the Afghans, who would thus be induced to refrain from hostilities, and to concentrate all the European soldiers within the line of the Indus. This he would hold until aid came to commence the reconquest of India. On the 6th of August 1857 news came from Lucknow that Henry Lawrence was dead. “ There is no man in India who perhaps at this time could not have been better spared,” said John. “ The blow came like a clap of thunder upon us. THE MAN WHO DID HIS DUTY. 57 I believe that he has not left an abler or a better soldier behind him. His loss just now will be a national calamity.” Henry Lawrence had gone to his government resolved to do his utmost to justify the confidence lie felt in the natives ; but his keen insight soon detected the peril of an outbreak, and he began to provide against it. He purchased grain, accumu- lated guns and ammunition, formed outworks, and prepared to make a stand at the Residency of Lucknow. With a force of only 700 Europeans and 7000 natives of doubtful fidelity, he resolved to defend the Residency and a fort called Muchee Bawn about four miles distant. Some of the natives endeavoured to dissuade Sir Henry from these preparations, and one man sug- gested that if a number of monkeys were kept at the Residency and fed by Brahmins, this would make the British rule powerful in India. “ Come with me and I will show you my monkeys,” said Sir Henry. He led the man to a battery, and laying his hand on a gun he said, “ See, here is one of my monkeys ; that is his food,” and he pointed to a pile of shot ; “ and this is the man who feeds them,” pointing as he spoke to a soldier. “ Go tell your friends of my monkeys.” During the siege he had taken up his position in a room which, although favourable for observa- tion, was much exposed to the enemy’s fire. He was urged to remove to a less exposed position, and 53 MEN WITH A MISSION . promised to do so on the following day. This was on the 2nd of July ; in the evening he returned exhausted and lay down upon a bed. He said that after two hours’ rest he would have his things moved. While listening to a paper which w r as read by Colonel Wilson, a shell entered the room. He knew himself that the wound was mortal. He was carried into a less exposed position, and on the 4th of July he died, exhorting the garrison “ never to give in.” He especially desired that no epitaph should be placed upon his tombstone, save the phrase that has since become one of our national watchwords : “ Here lies Henry Lawrence , who tried to do his duty.” “ This text I should like,” he added ; “ ‘ To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against Him.’ Is it not in Daniel ? It was on my dear wife’s tomb.” The grand epitaph is upon the tombstone in front of the Residency. No nobler tribute could have been offered to any man than that he tried to do his duty. “ Some years afterwards,” says Bosworth Smith, “ when his younger brother returned as Governor- General to India, he visited the sacred spot ; and I have been told that the expression on his weather- beaten countenance as he stood by the grave in silence was a sight never to be forgotten by those who witnessed it.” THE MAN WHO DID HIS DUTY . 59 A native chief had said at the commencement of the mutiny, pointing to a cloud passing over the sun, “The mutiny will be just like that fleeting cloud.” Alas ! the cloud did not pass away ; it blotted out the heavens. It is true that from the city of Delhi there came news of dissensions and of quarrels, but the mutineers knew well that their murders and treasons could not be forgiven, and in spite of their turmoils they continued the fight. On the 4th of September the siege-train reached the British camp, and by the 1 3th it had made difficult but practicable breaches in the walls. The mutineers upon this began to prepare ramparts behind the breaches, and before these could be finished it was resolved to storm the city. At three o’clock on the morning of the 14th four parties made for the guilty city. “ Our batteries redoubled their roar while the columns were taking up their respective positions, throwing shells to drive the enemy away as far as possible from the breaches. The morning was just breaking ; the thunder of our artillery was at its loudest, when all at once it hushed. Every one could hear his heart beat.” The fighting continued through the day, and when night fell, three of the columns had fought their way into the city, but they had not won it. Our troops, flushed with conflict, drank heavily, and thus were at the mercy of their foes. Happily the mutineers did not know of this, and on the follow- ing day vast quantities of intoxicating drink were 6o MEN WITH A MISSION . destroyed, after which on the 16th fighting was resumed. By the 20th Delhi was won, but at an awful price. Still it was captured, and that without the aid of reinforcements from England. After the fall of the city, an English officer named Hodgson slew the young princes, and thus the Mogul dynasty passed away. The deed was cruel and unwarranted ; it was, indeed, the personal un- authorised act of a man not too willing to obey orders ; but it was, after all, just. The fall of Delhi was the death-blow to the mutiny; henceforward it w T as only a question of time; the elements of mischief one after another were trampled out. Had the advice of Sir John Lawrence been taken, the city might have been captured before the mutiny had taken firm hold; then, perhaps, the agonies of Lucknow and of Cawnpore might have been saved. When at last the British general did order the assault on the city, it was solely at the compulsion of King John. Yet the delay was excusable, for the enterprise was a desperate one, and at the time of the storm the British did not number, including their native allies, more than 11,000 — a mere handful to hurl against strong fortifications held by 40,000 desperate men. Yet the desperate attempt was the truest prudence, and the result manifested the wisdom of Jan Larens’s policy. THE MAN WHO DID HIS DUTY. 61 Captain Norman, one of the assailants, concludes his narrative of the siege thus : — “ How Sir John Lawrence supported and reinforced the army, at the risk of denuding the country under his government of troops that he most urgently required; how vigorously he aided the operations in every way, has already been acknowledged by the Govern- ment of India. To him the army of Delhi, as well as the British nation, owe a deep debt of gratitude, which by the former certainly will never be forgotten.” The Governor- General himself bears this testi- mony : — “ The merits of the officers to whose courage and ability the preservation of the Punjab is due have been set forth by their distinguished chief, Sir John Lawrence, with a fulness that leaves little to be added. Of what is due to Sir John Lawrence himself no man is ignorant. Through him Delhi fell, and the Punjab, no longer a weakness, became a source of strength. But for him the hold of England over Upper India w’ould have had to be recovered at a cost of English blood and treasure that defies calculation. It is difficult to exaggerate the value of such ability, vigilance, and energy at such a time.” This was high praise, but not too high, for it would be quite impossible to overstate the value of the services rendered by the one man in high position who not only kept his head clear, but whose un- erring persistence kept others in the path of duty. 62 MEN WITH A MISSION. But although Delhi had fallen, Sir John had much to do in repressing risings in various other districts. The long delay in capturing the city had emboldened many who were waiting to see which side won, and thinking that the foreign rule had passed away, they rose against the British. Lady Lawrence heard of the plot, and at some peril it was defeated. A more difficult task was that of repressing the mad cry for revenge which came from England. Even Lord Shaftesbury, speaking at Wimborne, had said : “ The retribution that follows these crimes must be equal to the nature and extent of the crimes themselves. I maintain that justice, pure simple justice, demands we should exact of these men that compensation which is due to that crime, unparalleled in the history of mankind/’ This was mild indeed when compared with the shrieks for revenge that arose from various quarters. The Governor- General, Canning, earned the derisive title of “ Clemency Canning ” for his disposition to be just, and John Lawrence was at one with him in his policy. With red-handed murderers or with armed rebels John Lawrence would not treat, but he de- manded that when once the rebels were defeated they should be fairly tried before they were exe- cuted. Unfortunately others thought otherwise, and he heard that in Delhi the troops were looting the city and that natives were shot without any proof of guilt. A gallows was erected in Delhi on which THE MAN WHO DID HIS DUTY. 63 a batch of ten or a dozen men were hanged merely because they looked like soldiers. On the 24th of February 1858 he himself reached Delhi. His strong measures speedily put a stop to the wholesale executions, and when in the end of March he left the city, the reign of panic and of cruelty was over. Kingsley says that there is a demoniac element in human nature ; now and then it reveals itself, as it did during the mutiny panic. It says not a little for Sir John Lawrence’s high character that he was void of this, and not disposed to tolerate it in others. He was himself ill and worried, but he could not leave his post while there was still danger. But he sent home his wife and two children, and remained behind to complete his task of reorgani- sation. CHAPTER VL THE MAN WHO STOOD SENTRY OVER HIMSELF . <£ Famed from shore to shore, For valour much, for hardy suffering more.” — Odyssey, “ So we through this world’s waning night Shall hand in hand pursue our way, Shed round us order, love, and light, And shine unto the perfect day.” — Yeast. “ Give me prudent piety ; Give contempt of earthly toys, Appetite for heavenly joys.” “Men’s works have an age like themselves, and though thej outlive their authors, yet have they a stint and period to their duration. This only' is a work too hard for the teeth of Time.” — Thomas Browne. 1857-1864. STANDING SENTRY OVER HIMSELF— “THE CAMPBELLS ARE COMING “ DO YOU FEAR GOD OR THE MESS ? CHRIS- TIAN THINGS IN A CHRISTIAN WAY-“ WON’T SOMETHING HAPPEN WHEN HE GOES ? ’’—SENT OUT AS GOVERNOR- GENERAL— SIMPLICITY AND KINDNESS TO CHILDREN. “ Why, what could I do ? The black fellows set my dooly down on the top of the mountain, and as it was dark I leaped out, took my arms and stood 64 THE MAN WHO STOOD SENTRY. 65 sentry over myself the whole night.” The speaker was an English soldier who was reproved for ex- posing himself to cold during the first Afghan campaign. He stood sentry over himself: which thing is greatly needed by every man at some time or another, and perhaps never more than when the need is least felt. It is the highest prerogative of a man to mount sentry over himself, and thus he can watch over others. It must have required heroic self-command to have restrained himself as John Lawrence did while he waited for the reinforcements that came slowly from England. The Government at first failed to realise the danger, but at length Palmerston deter- mined upon despatching relief, and sent for Sir Colin Campbell. “ When will you be ready to start for India ? ” he asked. “ To-morrow,” was the prompt reply, and as a matter of fact the hero started on the following night. Delhi having fallen, the mutiny now centred at Lucknow, where Havelock and Outram were be- sieged. The Highlanders had fought their way into the Residency ; when they had reached the be- leaguered heroes they had been strangely affected. They had broken their ranks to shake hands with the women whom they had saved from death, and lifted the children in their arms, passing them from rank to rank to be kissed by rough but tender lips. They had reinforced the garrison, but as the enemy E 66 MEN WITH A MISSION. were present in overwhelming force, Outram had resolved to stand at bay until he was reinforced. Campbell’s first business was to relieve this be- leaguered garrison. He marched to do so with men who were mad with rage at the cruelties of Cawnpore. Two incidents of the relief are noteworthy : one was the heroic enterprise of Mr. Kavanagh, a civilian, who passed from Lucknow through the mutineers in order to guide Campbell into the city. By a mistake committed by his companions, Kavanagh found himself in the midst of the enemy ; but after several hairbreadth escapes, he reached the English lines in safety. He received the Victoria Cross for his gallantry. The other is the oft-told tale of Jessie Brown. She had sunk on the ground overcome with fatigue, when she sprung to her feet and exclaimed, “ Dinna ye hear it ? Dinna ye hear it ? Ay l I’m no dreamin’ ; it’s the slogan o’ the Highlanders ! We’re saved ! We’re saved! ” The men ceased firing, and Jessie cried “ Courage! Hark to the slogan — to the Macgregor, the grandest of them a’ ! Here’s help at last.” The men listened, but the Colonel shook his head. Jessie sank to the ground, and once more she cried in a loud voice ; “ Will ye no believe it now ? The slogan has ceased, indeed ; but the l Campbells are cornin’ — d’ye hear ? — d’ye hear ? ” They did hear, and with sobs and tears, such as ; men only shed when their dear ones are delivered THE MAN WHO STOOD SENTRY . 67 from danger. The bagpipes replied to their cheer in the heart-stirring strain, “ Should Auld Acquaint- ance be Forgot ? ” Colin Campbell delivered the beleaguered garri- son, and after several victories, he received reinforce- ments from his old friend, John Lawrence. But on the 28th of February 1858 Sir Colin, after a retreat in order to gather fresh strength for a spring, advanced again to crush out all that remained of the Mutiny. Lawrence’s wishes were not respected by the Governor-General. He urged that an offer of pardon should be made to such of the mutineers as had not actually murdered British women and children. This was not done, but, on the contrary, a Government proclamation declared that almost all the land in Oude was confiscated. This severe measure was allowed to remain inoperative, but it served no useful purpose except to drive the enemy to desperation. It produced, as John Law- rence predicted, a guerilla warfare. Colin Campbell, Outram, and other enlightened men agreed with Lawrence, but so far they were not able to move Lord Canning from his course. Special commissioners still tried prisoners drum- head fashion, and, eager for bloodshed, taunted those who pleaded for mercy. These last were mocked and insulted by their blind and cruel associates. “ What am I to do ? ” one of them, who in vain had remonstrated with his comrades, asked of Outram. 68 MEN WITH A MISSION. “ Do you fear God or men ? ” was the noble reply. “ If you fear God, do as you are doing, and bear the insults that are heaped upon you. If you fear man and the mess, let them hang their number every day.” The result of these mistaken measures was, that knowing that every man among them must die, the mutineers held together, and eluded their pur- suers. They seized Gwalior, a strong fortress in Rajputana, in which they found much treasure. This was wrested from them, and for a time the Mahratta states did not rise, as it was feared that they would do. Still the mutineers were a troublesome factor, which prevented the pacifica- tion of India. Had an offer of mercy been made to the least guilty, Lawrence believed that it would have broken up this compact force. He had himself some i 5,000 disarmed Sepoys within his province ; some of them he sent home, and others, who had only been disarmed as a pre- caution, were once more entrusted with weapons. Out of the faithful remnants of the mutinous regi- ments he formed a new regiment, which was called the “ Faithfuls.” He rewarded those who had been true to us, and repaid the forced loan by means of which he had borne the cost of suppressing the mutiny, and that within a year after contracting the debt. One utterance of his at this period deserves to be remembered by all rulers. He said, “ Chris- THE MAN WHO STOOD SENTRY . 69 tian things done in a Christian way will never, the Chief Commissioner is convinced, alienate the heathen. About such things there are qualities which do not provoke distrust nor harden to resist- ance. It is when un-Christian things are done in the name of Christianity, or when Christian things are done in an un-Christian way, that mischief and danger are occasioned.” Here may be the place to speak a little about the causes of this unexpected and terrible convul- sion which shook the very foundations of British Buie in India, and well-nigh annihilated it. “To understand the origin of the Mutiny,” says Wilson, “ one must understand the administration of Lord Dalhousie and fairly estimate the last acts of his Viceregal career. Of these none had a more serious effect on the minds of the Native courts than the annexation of Oude. Inasmuch as Dal- housie was personally a strong opponent of annexa- tion, the presumption is that the step, objectionable as it seems, was inevitable. Oude was misgoverned by a vicious but feeble-minded prince, and the people were tortured not only by his besotted tyranny, but by the exactions of a corrupt aristocracy. Dalhousie had covered India with railways, canals, roads, and telegraphs. He had introduced a cheap postal system, by which a letter from Peshawar to Cape Comorin, or from Assam to Kurrachee, was carried for three-farthings, one-sixteenth of the old charge. He had reformed the Civil Service ; he had 7o MEN WITH A MISSION . improved education and prison-discipline ; he had passed laws that went to the root of family life, such as those permitting Hindoo widows to marry again, and relieving persons who changed their re- ligion from forfeiture. As for his wars and annexa- tions, he had the “ tyrant plea necessity.” When leaving Calcutta he said mournfully, and with a trace of misgiving as he looked back on his brilliant achievements, “I have played out my part, and while I feel that in my case the principal act in the drama of my life is ended, I shall be content if the curtain should now drop upon my public career.” But the great work done by Dalhousie had not been done without friction between the paramount power and its subjects and vassals. It was indeed thought in England that Dalhousie handed India over to Lord Canning in a state of profound tranquillity. “ Yet, looking deeper than the surface,” says an able writer on Indian history, “ there were latent causes of uneasiness which largely pervaded the minds of the Native classes of all ranks and creeds.” Cobden thought thus, for in 1857 he wrote to Bright, saying, “From the moment that I had satisfied myself that a feeling of alienation was constantly increasing with both Natives and the English — we had some striking evidence to this effect before our Committee in 1853 — I made up my mind that it must end in trouble sooner or later ” Colonel Meadows Taylor says : “ The material pro- gress of India was unintelligible to the natives in THE MAN WHO STOOD SENTRY. 71 general. A few intelligent and educated persons might understand the use and scope of railways, telegraphs, steam-vessels, and recognise in them the direction of a great Government for the benefit of the people; but the ancient listless conservatism of the population at large was dismayed by them. ‘ The English/ it was said, ‘ never did such things before ; why do they do so now ? These are but new devices for the domination of their will, and are aimed at the destruction of our national faith, caste, and customs. What was it all to come to ? Was India to be like England ? The earlier Com- pany’s servants were simple but wise men, and we respected them ; we understood them, and they us ; but the present men are not like them ; we do not know them, nor they us/ No one cared per- haps very much for sijch sentiments, and few — very few — English heard them ; but they will not be forgotten by those who did.” In addition to these secret mutterings, there were probably Russian intrigues, and rumours about the British disasters in the Crimea. Moreover it was the centenary of the battle of Plassy, which had laid the foundations of British Rule in India. The astrologers at that time had predicted a century of foreign rule, after which they predicted a Native dominion. As one of the public ceremonies of New Year’s Day in India is the recital of the Almanack, this fact was kept before the minds of the dis- satisfied and disaffected, and made them more so. 72 MEN WITH A MISSION . Unfortunately our Native army was nominally five times larger, instead of as now, double the British force. Even this large proportion of five natives to one European was not maintained, for, instead of six white regiments distributed between Calcutta and Allahabad, there were but two. And this at a time when the Sepoy was known to be dis- affected and brooding over the fact that his gains were lessened, and, contrary to his wish, he was re- quired to serve abroad. “ Thus/' says Wilson, “ we had in 1857 the following conditions prevailing in India : ( 1 ) A popular belief was current in every village that the last year of the British raj had come ; (2) the Native courts were suspicious that the an- nexation of Oude was an indication of the fate that was in store for them; (3) the high-caste natives, whether in the army or in civil life, were suspicious that the Government desired to defile their caste and sap the foundations of their religion. The country was therefore in such an inflammable condition that the first spark that fell on it would produce an explosion.” Besides all these causes there was the question of religion. The East India Company had truckled to the Brahmins and had openly subsidised idolatry. It had, in fact, ruled irreligiously in order to pro- pitiate the Native chiefs. Its policy had been directly to secure gain, and so long as a large return were obtained it cared nothing for the ignorance of the heathen THE MAN WHO STOOD SENTRY. 73 From the first the Company had been hostile to missionary effort, and it only permitted the mission- aries of the religion it professed to honour to enter India under the strong compulsion of Parliament. Its heathen rule forbade the chaplains to speak to Sepoys, or to teach them when they craved for religious instruction, and the result was that God permitted the Mutiny. No other view seems at all to meet the needs of the case than that which views it as a direct punishment for the policy of those who were supposed to believe other than as they avowed. For, while no Government ought to attack directly the religion of its subjects and dragoon them even into a reception of a better faith, still less ought it, from motives of policy, to pander to systems degrad- ing and utterly base. Had the Government of India permitted the missionaries and chaplains to instruct their Sepoys, and withheld all direct endowment of heathenism, the Mutiny and its horrors might have been avoided. For Christianity contains no demoralising prin- ciple, and it cannot tend to weaken the hold of a Government that is founded upon righteousness. It may limit the operations that have hitherto filled money-bags, but it will more than compensate for this by opening new channels of revenue, and by establishing government upon right bases. England is in India that she may tend the native races, and not only impart to them her civilisation, 74 MEN WITH A MISSION. but also the Book and its creed from which all her material and social progress has sprung. “ Instead of a knowledge of the Bible as the basis of the Christian religion,” says Colonel Davidson, “ being a source of danger to our rule in India, I believe it would be an element of strength. Our Hindoo subjects would know then that they cannot be hocus-pocussed into Christians by means of greased cartridges or any other such methods. Our very concealment of the nature of our religion, and the pains our Government have taken to hide it from thbm, has awakened suspicions which evil-disposed persons know too well how to use in the cause of disloyalty. Besides, the Bible belongs to the natives of India as much as it does to us. It is God’s message to them, and w T hile we instruct them in science and human knowledge, if we keep it back we do it at our own peril. It is a book many parts of which they can understand better than we do. It is an Oriential book peculiarly suited to their taste.” The unanimous voice of England called for a change in the government of India, and obtained it. The great company of merchant adventurers lost their dominion, which passed to the British crown. On the 17th of October 1858, therefore, John Lawrence became a servant of the crown. “ As for myself, the best reward I can have is the success which has crowned, not my efforts merely, but those THE MAN WHO STOOD SENTRY. 75 of us all in the Punjab. It is something to think that one has not lived in vain, and has proved useful in one’s generation,” he said. He had been made K.C.B., a baronet, and privy councillor, and one of the last acts of the India Company was to award him £2000 per year, when- ever he retired from the service. Many of his friends thought that a peerage ought to have been awarded to the saviour of India. While Sir John Lawrence acknowledged that he should have prized this recognition of his services, he said, “ I have lived long enough and seen suffi- cient to teach me that the best reward any man can have is the feeling that he has done his duty to the best of his ability.” For seventeen years he had not taken a day’s rest, and now that order was in some degree re- stored, he resolved to visit his native land. Before he went, his dominion was created a lieutenant- governorship. It is related that the day before Sir John Law- rence left for England, one of the natives said with undisguised terror, “Won’t something happen when he goes ? ” a tribute to his services which is all the more remarkable because it was unconscious. Before he left India, on the 8th of February 1859, he turned the first sod of the first railway in the Punjab, that he had ruled so well. On the 26th of February he started for home, and, in spite of his desire to avoid display, he found that it was 76 MEN WITH A MISSION. impossible for him to remain unknown. The whole nation rose to do him honour; for at last, in spite of his own modesty, his solid services were known by a people who have always been just to merit. Lawrence received the congratulations and hon- ours that were showered upon him with the same heroic simplicity with which he had sustained danger. Prosperity he estimated at its true use, therefore it did not spoil him. The roots of his character went deeply, and his heart of oak was the same in the sunshine as in the pitiless storm. He settled down in a pleasant house at South- gate, near London, and there many happy memories of him linger. The poor and the deserving found in him a ready friend, and all the more a friend because he seemed to be quite unconscious as to his own greatness. His biographer relates two anec- dotes which are worth repeating. Sir John was travelling to London with a friend, and he himself carried a large hamper to the rail- way station. He refused to entrust it to any one, saying that its contents were too valuable. When the two were seated in a cab, Lawrence said that the hamper contained a pig of valuable breed ! He was taking it as a present to a friend. During his last days, while out for a walk, he saw some early strawberries in a shop-window. He wished for some, but when he heard that they were half-a-guinea a basket he declined to purchase THE MAN WHO STOOD SENTRY. 77 any, declared that he had never spent so much money upon himself, and left the shop. Not that he was mean, but he had no sense of self-importance and no selfishness in him. His intimate friends spoke of him as a sincere Christian of the Cromwell type, and a man whom it was a means of grace to have known. In 1858 he became a member of the newly formed India Council, an office that, however good for the Council, was not his chief and fitting em- ployment. He was not a man to run in a file of packhorses, but a charger that had been used to battle alone. It had been long the custom to select the chief ruler of India from the peerage. With one excep- tion, no civilian since the days of Warren Hastings had ever held such rank. The almost unanimous opinion of Britain was that when Lord Canning retired, Lawrence should have succeeded him. Lord Elgin, who became Viceroy, died after a brief rule, and as there seemed to be danger on the North- West frontier, it was decided to send out King John. On the 30th of November 1863 the news was communicated to him, and on the 9th of Decem- ber he left London for India. A touching story is related of this parting. A little boy had come to gladden the Southgate home, and had taken full possession of the father’s heart. It dawned upon the Viceroy that while in India lie would miss all the charming beauties of child- O 78 MEN WITH A MISSION . hood, the deep delights that are folly to all but the parent, and he burst into tears and said, “I shall never see Bertie again.” For the great man, with all the flint in his nature, was yet kind and gentle at heart, as was seen in his journey ; for when, on shipboard, he observed that a child was much neglected by its mother, Sir John Lawrence would play with this child for hours, because he said that he felt quite sure it did not want anything from him ; a phrase which, while it was a sarcasm upon his fellow- passengers, veiled his own deep love for children as children. On the 1 2th of January 1864 he landed at Calcutta, and received a hearty welcome. Yet his simple manners and Cromwellian bearing offended some of the empty nobodies of Calcutta. He dis- pensed with most of the escort required by former rulers, in order to save the men from the heat of the sun, saying, “ If I can't go to church with two troopers as my escort, I am not fit to be Governor- General of India.” Sir John would walk to church, and fling his great white umbrella in the porch, and without any pomp walk to his pew. The Viceregal servants, and those who were in league with them, soon found that they had to deal with a man who could not be robbed, and who would not tolerate the peculations that had been long committed with impunity. As a consequence, THE MAN WHO STOOD SENTRY . 79 the “ backstairs gossip ” papers, then a peculiarity of India, attacked him with scurrilous severity. He nobly refused to reply to these libels ; indeed, no answer could with dignity have been given to such traders in gossip and mean anglers for fame. One story may be told of his kindness and con- sideration. An ostrich had taken up its home in the Viceregal Park at Barrackpore. The park- keeper’s child found an ostrich egg, and she buried it in a box of sand, which during the daytime stood in the sun. At night a hen brooded over the egg, which was hatched in due time, much to the horror of the hen. A new park-keeper took the ostrich away from the child, who fell ill from grief at the loss of her pet. Some one informed the Viceroy of the circumstance, and by return of post he ordered the ostrich to be given back to the girl. On the 13th October 1864 he held the great council, w 7 hich has become famous as the Great Durbar of Lahore. All the great tributary princes of the North-West territory whom he had conquered or befriended came to Lahore, attended by crowds of followers. Altogether some 80,000 armed men, or, with their followers, above 700,000 souls as- sembled to meet him. It was a scene of barbaric splendour. Among them all King John moved con- spicuously a born leader of men. On the 1 8 th he harangued the assembled chiefs in Hindustani, and presented them with gifts of honour. He had privately counselled the chiefs So MEN WITH A MISSION. personally, and without a doubt the Durbar tended greatly to consolidate our Indian Empire. The ascendancy that Lawrence easily obtained over all natures contributed to aid him now, and he employed his opportunity well in convincing the Asiatics that their interest and safety demanded a steady loyalty to British rule. For good or for evil we are in India, and the rule of a man like Sir John Lawrence renders our control one of beneficence, and therefore likely to last. For no- thing is more certain than that no kingdom survives its worth ; it is impossible that it should live longer than as it acts for good and righteousness. As the subject races are morally trained and taught the use of their powers will the supreme authority be more firmly fixed upon solid and lawful bases, and the British power remain in the East. CHAPTER VII. THE MAN WHOSE WORD WAS AS GOOD AS A TREATY. “ Oh, holy hope and high humility, High as the heavens above ! These are your works, and you have showed them me, To kindle my cold love.” “ With steady mind thy course of duty run 5 God never does nor suffers to be done Aught but thyself wouldst do couldst thou perceive The end of all events as well as He.” “ The whole system of life goes on this principle of selling one- self ; then the question of estimates should for ever occur, ‘ My time for this and this ,* ” — John Foster. 1864-1879. UNPLEASANT WORK— JUST AND KIND— HOME AGAIN— AT WORK— PEERAGE— VIEW OF LIFE AND WORK. From the Great Durbar the Viceroy turned to less pleasant work. A terrible cyclone had swept across the country, carrying devastation wherever it passed. Huge trees were torn up, large ships were driven on shore or sunk, houses were hurled down as if 8 2 MEN WITH A MISSION . iliey had been made of pasteboard, and the loss of life was appalling. He at once hastened down to Calcutta, and on his way he called at Delhi. He spent two days in the city that he had won, and thence he went on to the capital. Hitherto his wife had remained in England; on the 7th of December she reached Calcutta, bringing her two eldest and her youngest daughters. The other children remained at Southgate in charge of Mrs. Hayes, the beloved sister who had been the Viceroy's counsellor. This arrival of his wife changed the whole of John Lawrence's life : he felt as did Schiller when the latter said, “ Life is quite a different thing beside a beloved wife. . . . Beautiful nature ! I now for the first time fully enjoy it, live in it. The world again clothes itself around me in poetic forms ; old feelings are again awakening in my breast." In the following January the eldest son of Sir Henry Lawrence, while engaged in an expedition to Thibet, slipped over one of the precipices and was lost. The care of Sir Henry’s grandson fell now upon the Viceroy, and nobly he fulfilled his trust. As a worker Sir J ohn was most systematic ; he went resolutely through every task in its turn. It is related that he was at work upon an immense pile of documents, and feeling, as all men feel at times, the need of some rest, he went out into the garden. He erected two Aunt Sallies, and naming them after the parties about whom he had been THE MAN WHOSE WORD HELD GOOD. S3 reading, he fired off six shots at each, and then returned to his reading with the remark, “ How I wish I could finish this case off as I have finished them ! ” An instance of his matter-of-factness is thus told. A church was being erected, and wastefully ; that is, a large amount of money had been expended upon a steeple which was still unfinished. The interior of the church was left untouched, and when the Viceroy was asked to subscribe towards finishing the structure, he replied Cromwell-like, “ You might as well ask me to subscribe to get a man a hat who hasn’t got breeches ! ” A very plain-spoken man that ! An applicant for employment asked the Viceroy when Chief Commissioner about the health of Lady Lawrence. “ You did not come all the way from Eawal Pindi to ask that ; what do you want ? ” asked King John. The man spoke out his desires. “ Now go and ask Lady Lawrence yourself how she is, and stay to luncheon,” was the reply. Verily a man who went the shortest way to a subject, and tolerated no lingering around any question. In the autumn of 1865 news reached India of the death of Mrs. Hayes, his beloved sister Letitia. Her brother erected a tablet to her memory in Southgate Church, which thus records his opinion of her : “ She was a noble and loving woman, who from youth to the last day of her life exercised a wonderful influence on all with whom she was 84 MEN WITH A MISSION. connected. This tablet is erected to her memory by her brother, Sir John Lawrence, to whom she is endeared by the recollections of a lifetime. ,, This personal loss was followed by a year of calamity. During 1866 there was a terrible com- mercial panic in India ; one after another the banks failed, and an appalling famine arose. It was well that a steady, resolute man was at the helm to take the vessel off the breakers. In Orissa nearly a million souls perished through famine, for the responsible Lieutenant-Governor re- fused to believe that there was any need for exertion until it was too late. In November 1866 Sir John Lawrence held a second Grand Durbar at Agra, and there in the name of the Queen he invested a number of Europeans and natives with the Star of India. One potentate who had been gazetted as a recipient of this honour was, in the Viceroy’s opinion, undeserving of any reward ; and although he yielded to the wishes of the Home Government, Lawrence plainly told the ruler what he thought about him. He could strike when needful as well as speak, as appeared in 1 867, when a prince, having ordered, or connived at, the murder of fourteen men, was deposed and banished forthwith. Whereat all < the princes doubtless trembled, for they knew that should they offend, this plain, strong man would deal out like justice to them. In the same year the Abyssinian expedition was fitted out from Lv?ia, THE MAN WHOSE WORD HELD GOOD . 85 and under the conduct of Sir Eobert Napier proved a brilliant success. On the 1st of November 1867 Sir John Law- rence held the third and last of his great Durbars. This was at Lucknow, where his heroic brother Henry had died. Seven hundred elephants formed part of the Viceregal procession. After the proces- sion of Talukdars, who had attacked the Eesidency, had filed past him, the Viceroy visited the spot whvire his brother’s body had been laid amidst a pitiless fire. Such moments are too sacred for intrusion, when the heart yearns in vain— “ For the touch of a vanished hand, For the sound of a voice that is still.” On the 28th of January 1868 the eldest daughter of Sir John Lawrence was married, and on the 25 th of the following month Lady Lawrence left for Eng- land with her other daughters. Concerning this parting Norman Macleod says of Sir John Lawrence, “ I was greatly touched by his goodness, and I loved him the more when I saw him weeping as he parted for one year only with his wife and daughters.” Men exhibit emotion variously ; it is indeed only a terrible sorrow that wrings tears from a man like J ohn Lawrence. Such natures as his love intensely, and suffer in proportion when they part from their dear ones. During the following year he laboured alone, — 86 MEN WITH A MISSION . his term of office expired on the nth of January 1869. A farewell banquet was given in the Town Hall of Calcutta in honour of the Great Vice- roy. On that occasion, in acknowledging the kind expressions that had fallen from the lips of the guests with regard to his life and work, Sir John urged, as a parting counsel, his countrymen “to be just and kind to the natives of India.” This sentiment, which was characteristic of the man, was received with storms of applause, and no phrase so well describes his rule ; he had been just and kind, both to the natives and to all with whom lie had come into contact. On the last day of his rule, Sir John stood with his son-in-law watching the troops preparing to welcome Lord Mayo, the new ruler. Colonel Randal asked his father-in-law as to what his feelings were now that he was about to surrender his authority. Sir John replied that thirteen years before he had asked precisely the same question of his friend Lord Dalhousie, who was about to give place to Lord Canning. “ I wish that I were Canning, and Canning I, and then wouldn’t I govern India ! ” was Lord Dalhousie’s quick response. For himself, Lawrence declared that he' did not desire to prolong his office, for he had felt the strain of work very much, and he feared if it con- tinued that he would not be able then to leave the work as it was at the time of speaking. He concluded with the grand words, “I never cared THE MAN WHOSE WORD HELD GOOD. 87 for,— I do not regret the resignation of all the state, pomp, power, or patronage which appertain to the office. It was a proud moment to me when I walked up the steps of this house, feeling, as I then did, that, without political interest or influence, I had been chosen to All the highest office under the crown, as the Viceroy of the Queen ; but it will be a happier moment to me when I walk down the steps with the feeling that I have tried to do my duty.” That grand word “ duty ” was to him what it had been to his brother, and what it has ever been to Britons. So long as duty is to our people what it has been in the past, so long shall we. continue to progress, and so long will our power solidify. For duty, after all, is the noblest watchword of life, and he alone is a hero who tries to do his duty. In whatever form duty comes to thee, even if it be but a menial task, let it be done well in the sacred name of duty. In whatever form the “ But ” comes into the life, bear it because it is thy duty so to do. What is chiefly wanting is the high ideal of duty which underlay the Puritan strength. Whatever faults they may have had, the Puritans were strenuous in their attempts to be true, real, sincere, and un- flinching in duty, whether they were in camp, pulpit, or at the stake. This is that which makes our nation what it is. “ England expects that every man this day will do his duty.” On the 19th of January 1869 Sir John Lawrence looked for the last time upon the great continent 88 MEN WITH A MISSION. for which he had spent his strength during a period of fifty years. During his voyage home Lord Lawrence stopped at Ceylon in order to visit the coffee-plantations. On the 15 th of March he landed in England, broken in health by the unceasing toil of years of strain and anxiety. He had indeed given slices of himself to India, and paid for her welfare by draughts of his life and vigour. Now at last the peerage, which ought to have been given to him before, was granted by his friend the Duke of Argyll. King John chose the title “ Lord Law- rence of the Punjab and of Grateley” as his style, the latter being the name of a small property that he had inherited from his sister. The Government were certainly not too liberal in their money grant; the annuity of £2000 which had been awarded him by the East Indian Company was commuted into a pension for his own and the succeeding life. Certainly the days for such out- rageous grants as the Churchills and others have received for their services have passed ; but between lavish waste and a due acknowledgment of what no Government ought to decline to reward, there is a vast difference. In the year 1870 Lord Lawrence became the first chairman of the London School Board, and his wise control did not a little to determine the course of not only that, but of other School Boards throughout the country. It is due to him that on the question THE MAN WHOSE WORD HELD GOOD. 89 of religious training the arrangement was made by which the Bible is read in Board Schools. Infidels and others object to this, but then they also object to the dog-tax and to other levies ; in fact, they object to everything. There are some people whose life-mission seems to be that of objecting; they are born to move amendments. All very wise in their measure, but on a question such as that then under discussion there can be but two opinions. If the Bible be the religion of Protestants, we can safely leave the book to make its meaning known to the young as to the older heart. It is largely due to Lord Lawrence that it was decided “ that the Bible should be read, and that there should be given such explanations and such instructions therefrom in the principles of morality and religion as are suited to the capacities of children.” Three years of service Lord Lawrence gave to the School Board, and then, in consequence of his bad health, he retired. Yet even in his weakness he continued to work for the neglected and suffering, for indeed work had become a very necessity of existence with him. In the year 1876 it seemed as if he must lose his sight ; his eyes had been long and severely tried, and now he had to pay the penalty for overwork. If Milton were heroic in writing his book at the 90 MEN WITH A MISSION. cost of his eyesight, was not Lawrence equally so in giving his eyes for India ? Love is worth nothing that has not an element of sacrifice in it, and patriotism is not worth the name that does not involve pain. The man in America who talked about the sacrifices that he had made for the Union in sending his stepson to the war is a type of man whose patriotism is from the lips outward. Lord Lawrence said nothing about his love for his kind and land, but for them he paid in eyesight and life. By a series of painful operations, he eventually regained some slight vision ; but his sight never was strong from that time. The policy that he had pursued in India was reversed by Lord Lytton and Lord Beaconsfield, and the false statements of the latter maddened the country into a demand for another Afghan war. It is scarcely probable that at the present date any Briton will justify the policy of the Government of that day, but at the time it was undoubtedly popular. Our nation is subject to periodical out- breaks of the Viking madness — a disposition to fight somebody or to destroy something. After a time the fever abates, and then the nation repents, for- sakes the tombs and the fiends and sits down clothed and in its right mind. It requires no small courage to interfere with the possessed at such times, for no chains have much virtue until the spasm has passed. THE MAN WHOSE WORD HELD GOOD . 91 Yet Lord Lawrence and his friends ventured to make the attempt, and although at the time the task was highly dangerous and hopeless, it contri- buted to bring about a sane fit in time. With a consummate mastery of facts, Lord Law- rence reviewed the whole question in the columns of the Times , and his predictions of what would fol- low if his advice were not taken have been unhap- pily justified. It only remains to be said that his policy, as that of all previous Governors of India had been, was to confine ourselves to India itself, to do our utmost to strengthen our hold upon its peoples, and to maintain relations with the Afghans as a friendly although neutral power. For a time the nation was deluded by Beacons- field’s epigram about a scientific frontier, for men are ruled by phrases — for a time. Experience shows the falsehood of the sham, and then the phrase is consigned to the Museum of Follies, to be labelled and gazed at by subsequent generations. On the 1 6th of November 1878, Lord Lawrence, as the chairman of the Afghan Committee, asked for an interview with the Prime Minister. This Lord Beaconsfield refused, with the flippant wit that at times he supposed to be argument. The verdict of history has and will more and more justify the position then assumed by Lord Lawrence ; it might almost be said that it has become part of the national policy. 92 MEN WITH A MISSION In June 1879 Lord Lawrence took a chill, which was not at the time realised as the beginning of the end. On the 19th of the same month he went down to the House of Lords, and the news- papers of the day commented on his feeble voice, though no one believed that the speaker was really dying. On the next day he went, in spite of his weak- ness, to the annual festival of the Asylum for Soldiers’ children at Hampstead. Himself the son and brother of soldiers, he felt a keen interest in all that pertains to a life of arms. It is related that a soldier’s widow, when dying, said that if only Lord Lawrence knew about her need, he would certainly see that her children did not starve. The poor woman’s brother sent word to Lord Lawrence about this dying request, and, with the ready sym- pathy that he ever manifested to those in need, Lord Lawrence spent his waning strength in obtain- ing homes for the orphans. On Friday the 26th of June 1879 the end of his life came, or rather the beginning of his higher and nobler service in the world of which we know so little. To the last he retained his strong affec- tion for his wife ; almost his last words were expres- sions of his love to her. “ Do you know me ?” she asked. “ To my last gasp, my darling,” he replied. “ Love is strong as death, many waters cannot quench love. Jealousy is cruel as the grave; the coals thereof are coals of THE MAN WHOSE WORD HELD GOOD. 93 fire which hath a most vehement flame, neither can the floods drown it ; if a man would give all the substance of his house for love it would utterly be condemned.** It now remains to view the life of Lord Law- rence as a whole, and to gather up, if possible, the important lessons that he is able to supply to all who come after him. He was evidently endowed with an iron consti- tution, and, what was better, with a strong spirit. His was not one of the india-rubber natures that take shape as they are touched ; there was little plastic or ductile in him. He was naturally of a hard, tough spirit, and all his faculties were of the same robust type. It is true that such natures miss the finer emotions ; they are unable, of course, to admire sesthetic pictures or furniture, and they cannot perceive the niceties of wisdom and beauty that abound in all the creation of God. For their minds are set to huge enterprises, and the diamond drill that is set to cut through Mont Cenis cannot be adjusted to cut gems for a lady’s trinket. Yet, while exquisite skill and taste will admire the delicacy of jewel-carving, the cutting of an alpine tunnel is more practically useful to men. Hard natures are wanted to cleave through the hard rocks, and to make the world happier and more fit for human abode. Or, to change the figure entirely, just as in God’s gardening the stones prevent the earth from caking, and so becoming barren, such natures render life 94 MEN WITH A MISSION more fruitful in good works, to benefit God and man. It is simply the truth that God’s providence requires such natures, and produces them for the completion and perfection of His work amongst men. If we may so say it, the bases of his nature were strong, and because they were so, John Lawrence was able to develop and to use the highest qualities of statesmanship. Sir Herbert Edwards, who knew John Lawrence well, speaks thus of his friend’s father (and chil- dren are their parents with a difference) : — “ In the natural powers and gifts which go to the mak- ing up of great men, he was as remarkable as any of his sons. But he lacked their advantages in early life. His merits and misfortunes won friends for them when friends can be of use. His deeds of personal valour, his wounds and scars, that gallant remnant of a hand with which he clasped his boys ; his fireside tales of old campaigns and things that men endure for king and country ; his high regard for truth and honour and contempt for knaves ; his heart, so tender to give, and so tough to go with- out ; his English sense of independence, come what might ; the very sternness of his discipline, and the gloomy story of his wrongs — these are all memories sunk like foundation-shafts under the careers of the old veteran’s children ; and we who would rightly honour them must begin by honouring him.” 1 1 “ Life of Sir Henry Lawrence.” THE MAN WHOSE WORD HELD GOOD. 95 This is certainly true, and hence it is true for all time that a great man of the highest type is the son of a hero. It is the loftiest proof of Colonel Lawrence’s character and worth that he had sons so noble and true. Lor if there be a crooked strand in a parent, it reappears in the children, just as family features are continued. The moral features of the old Colonel were those which, seen in a clearer light and under other conditions, were so admired in his sons. Well does the writer whom we have before quoted say, “ Nursed in the blow of Atlantic storms and buffeted by hardships all his life, the lot of Alexander Lawrence was just one of those which toughen households, and take noble venge- ance on an unkind world by rearing great sons and daughters.” Let us not complain of the limitations and hard- ships of our lot, for we know not what may be the Divine pleasure to accomplish by means of them. Then, too, we may attribute Lord Lawrence’s suc- cess to his appetite for work. It is true there are men whose inherited tendencies are all slothful, and it is a harder task for them than for others to do a man’s work with a man’s heart. But it is the law of life that we should work, and only in work do we realise and enjoy our existence. The pleasures of life and its prizes belong to its workers alone, and to them only as the result of toil. Work, then, and thou shalt be happy. With Lord 96 MEN WITH A MISSION . Lawrence, behind the peerage and the almost uni- versal admiration of good men lay years of diligent, painstaking, conscientious work. He won his place because he worked for it. A man may leap into a place of fame by a stroke of genius or a freak of fortune, but he will slip down as speedily unless work sustain and jus- tify success. For example, John Foster, when he published his four essays, was at once acknowledged as a pro- phetic genius, but behind those essays lay years of thoughtful preparation and toil. So, too, when Kingsley was complimented upon one of his works, he replied, “ I have spared no pains about it.” It is not too much to say that nothing noble is unattainable, if so be that men will but pay for it with sufficient and noble work. The conscientious discharge of his duties was as much the secret of Lord Lawrence’s success as the touch of genius which recognised opportunities and knew how to utilise them to the very best ad- vantage. His life-teaching to all men, young and old, is, “ Work, work, work with all thy might at what is worthy of thy strength.” There is work which is useless; call it not work but pastime. Work is the expenditure of strength, time, and talent for a worthy and useful purpose. In estimating his character, we must not fail to recognise the fact that John, Lord Lawrence, was THE MAN WHOSE WORD HELD GOOD . 97 governed by the highest principles. He was loyal to duty because it was duty, and not because of the advantage that it might be supposed to bring with it. In other words, the spring of his life was “ It is right/’ and not “ It pays.” In the end, “ It is right ” always brings “ It pays/’ for “ It pays ” is a deceit and a delusion. Eecently the proprietor of a certain journal was remonstrated with upon the course his paper had taken. “ True, it is wrong,” he said, “ but it pays ; yes, it pays.” There are few who care so boldly to avow their iniquity, but there is a danger lest an apparent present advantage should become the spring of life, and men work from policy instead of always acting from a sense of right. “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, Ruling thy king and thee, the King of Kings.” It was this that led John Lawrence to endeavour to suppress wrong-doing in his small province, to administer even justice upon a small scale, as he afterwards governed the larger dominion that came into his hands : — “ For right is right, as God is God, And right the day must win ; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin.” It is true that in many cases men do right and suffer for it, but seldom all through their lives. This is not, on the whole, a season of rewards and G MEN WITH A MISSION. punishments, but it is largely so. As a general principle, it is true that it is well with the right- eous doer, and never well with the wicked. There- fore trust in God and do the right. Underneath and above all there was his simple intense faith in God. To him the Bible itself was a living book, and he delighted to read it to the last. His principles were not the product, nor were they fed by religious books, but they sprang from and they were sustained by the Bible itself. Beli- gious books have a place and use, but only be- cause of the Bibline that they contain. The staple food of the highest life is found in the Bible, read not in tit-bits fashion, but diligently explored and studied as a whole, and as the expression of the one redemption by which sin is put away for all who believe. Within the boards of the Book there is room for the most delightful range of intel- lect, and, above all, by it we find Christ, who is the answer to every cry and the solace of every want of the human heart. As a man, we place John Lawrence in a very high position ; he was one of God’s noblemen by right of the loftiest creation, and by virtue of the highest merits. Such men propagate an uncon- scious electricity of virtue through home, family, and nation, the last results of which can never be estimated. As a statesman, John Lawrence is entitled to the high praise that history has condemned every depar- THE MAN WHOSE WORD HELD GOOD . 99 ture from the practice, and justified the solid reasons upon which he based his policy. Bosworth Smith, whose biography has become a classic, speaks thus of Lord Lawrence : — “ A man who never swam with the stream, who bravely strove to stem the current, and, regardless alike of popular and of aristocratic fame, pleaded with his latest breath for what he thought to be just and right. To the biography of men whose lives have been so strangely chequered, of men who have not so much made history, or become, as it were, a history in themselves, belongs of inherent right the highest interest and importance alike of history and of biography.” 1 Although it is not granted to every man to be heroic upon so vast a theatre, and with such evi- dent results as in Lord Lawrence’s career, it may well be a question as to whether he who is diligent, self-sacrificing, brave, and does his duty obscurely but well, does not merit as high praise, and may not in degree be as useful in the plans of God. For every life, even the smallest, has a use and is needful, else it would not have been a life. Up to the full measure of our strength, in the sacred name of right, let us seek to do our duty. 1 “ Life of Lord Lawrence,” PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON JAMES NISBET & CO.’S. SELECT LIST OF BOOKS SUITABLE FOR PRESENTS AND PRIZES, BY WELL-KNOWN AND POPULAR WRITERS. Profusely Illustrated and handsomely Bound in Cloth. A Complete List will be forwarded post free on application to the Publishers. WORKS by Mrs. MARSHALL. “Readers who value culture and refinement, but, above all, seek for truth and unction, will recommend her tales, especially for young ladies.” — Churchman. With numerous Illustrations. Price Five Shillings each. Extra Crown 8vo. NEW RELATIONS. A Story for Girls. THOSE THREE; or, Little Wings. EASTWARD HO ! A Story for Girls. LAUREL CROWNS ; or, Griselda’s Aim. A Story for Brothers and Sisters. HOUSES ON WHEELS. A Story for Children. Price Three Shillings and Sixpence each. Crown 8va IN THE PURPLE. DAPHNE’S DECISION ; or, Which Shall it Be ? THE ROSES OF RINGWOOD. A Story for Children. CASSANDRA’S CASKET. SILVER CHIMES; or, Olive. STORIES of the CATHEDRAL CITIES of ENGLAND POPPIES AND PANSIES. REX AND REGINA ; or, The Song of the River. DEWDROPS AND DIAMONDS. HEATHER AND HAREBELL. MISTRESS MATCHETT’S MISTAKE. A very old Story. SIR VALENTINE’S VICTORY, and other Stories. OUR OWN PICTURE BOOK. 151 Illustrations. Small 4to. Price Two Shillings and Sixpence each. DULCIBEL’S DAY-DREAMS; or, The Grand, Sweet Song. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. PICTURES ILLUSTRATIVE of the LORD’S PRAYER. With Appropriate Stories for Children. Medium 4to. THE LIFE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST FOR VERY YOUNG CHILDREN ; or, Little Sunny’s Sweet Stories of Old. With 12 Illustrations. Medium 4to. 4 James Nisbet & Co.’s List of Mrs. MARSHALL’S WORKS— continued Price Two Shillings each. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. OLIVER’S OLD PICTURES ; or, The Magic Circle. RUBY AND PEARL ; or, The Children at Castle Aylmer. A Story for Little Girls. STELLAFONT ABBEY ; or, Nothing New. Price One Shilling and Sixpence each. With Illustrations. Small Crown 8vo. MY LADY BOUNTIFUL. GOLDEN SILENCE ; Or, Annals of the Birkett Family of Crawford-under- Wold. WHEN I WAS YOUNG. MATTHEW FROST, CARRIER ; or, Little Snowdrop’s Mission. MICHAEL’S TREASURES; or, Choice Silver. MY GRANDMOTHER’S PICTURES. MARJORY; or, The Gift of Peace. GRACE BUXTON ; or, The Light of Home. THREE LITTLE BROTHERS. THREE LITTLE SISTERS. THE BIRTH OF A CENTURY ; or, Eighty Years Ago. THE STORY OF JOHN MARBECK : A Windsor Organist of 300 Years Ago. His Work and His Reward. Price One Shilling each. HEATHERCLIFFE ; or, It’s no • Concern of Mine. DAISY BRIGHT. THE LITTLE PEAT-CUTTERS; or, The Song of Love. PRIMROSE; or, The Bells of Old Effingham. TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY: A Story of Summer and Winter Holidays. BETWEEN THE CLIFFS ; or, Hal Forester’s Anchor,, A VIOLET IN THE SHADE. LIGHT ON THE LILY ; or, A Flower’s Message. A ROSE WITHOUT A THORN. A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK ; Being the Story of Lionel King, of Kingsholme Court,, Boohs for Young Readers. 5 By R. M. BALLANTYNE. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 5s. each. “The fathers, mothers, guardians, uncles, and aunts who wish to find an acceptable present for a healthy-minded boy cannot possibly go wrong if they buy a book with Mr. Ballantyne’s name on the title-page.” — Academy . THE HOT SWAMP : A Romance of Old Albion. THE BUFFALO RUNNERS : A Tale of the Red River Plains. CHARLIE TO THE RESCUE ! A Tale of the Sea and the Rockies. BLOWN TO BITS ; or, The Lonely Man of Rakata. A Tale of the Malay Archipelago. BLUE LIGHTS ; or, Hot Work in the Soudan. THE FUGITIVES ; or, The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar. RED ROONEY ; or, The Last of the Crew. THE ROVER OF THE ANDES : A Tale of Adventure in South America. THE YOUNG TRAWLER : A Story of Life and Death and Rescue in the North Sea. DUSTY DIAMONDS, CUT AND POLISHED : A Tale of Arab City Life. THE BATTERY AND THE BOILER ; or, Adventures in the Laying of Submarine Electric Cables. THE GIANT of the NORTH; or, Pokings Round the Pole, THE LONELY ISLAND; or, The Refuge of the Mutineers. POST HASTE : A Tale of Her Majesty’s Mails. IN THE TRACK OF THE TROOPS : A Tale of Modem War. THE SETTLER AND THE SAVAGE : A Tale of Peace and War in South Africa. UNDER THE WAVES ; or, Diving in Deep Waters. RIVERS OF ICE : A Tale Illustrative of Alpine Adventure and Glacier Action. THE PIRATE CITY : An Algerine Tale. BLACK IVORY : A Tale of Adventure among the Slavers of East Africa. THE NORSEMEN IN THE WEST ; or, America before Columbus. THE IRON HORSE ; or, Life on the Line. THE FLOATING LIGHT OF THE GOODWIN SANDS. ERLING THE BOLD : A Tale of the Norse Sea-Kings. 6 James Nisbet & Co.’s List of Mr, R M. BALLANTYNE’S BOOKS-continued. THE GOLDEN DREAM : A Tale of the Diggings. DEEP DOWN : A Tale of the Cornish Mines. FIGHTING THE FLAMES : A Tale of the London Fire. Brigade. SHIFTING WINDS : A Tough Yarn. THE LIGHTHOUSE; or, The Story of a Great Fight between Man and the Sea. THE LIFEBOAT : A Tale of our Coast Heroes. GASCOYNE, THE SANDALWOOD TRADER. THE WILD MAN OF THE WEST : A Tale of the Rocky Mountains. THE RED ERIC ; or, The Whaler’s Last Cruise. FREAKS ON THE FELLS : and Why I did not become a Sailor. : With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. each. HUNTED AND HARRIED. A COXSWAIN’S BRIDE ; or, The Rising Tide. And other T&Ibs THE GARRET AND THE GARDEN ; or, Low Life High Up : and JEFF BENSON ; or. The Y onng Coastguardsman. THE CREW OE THE WATER- WAGTAIL. THE MIDDY AND THE MOORS. LIFE IN THE RED BRIGADE. A Fiery Tale. THE PRAIRIE CHIEF. A Tale. THE ISLAND QUEEN ; or. Dethroned by Fire and Water,. THE MADMAN AND THE PIRATE. TWICE BOUGHT : A Tale of the Oregon Gold Fields. MY DOGGIE AND I. THE RED MAN’S REVENGE. PHILOSOPHER JACK : A Tale of the Southern Seas. SIX MONTHS AT THE CAPE. BATTLES WITH THE SEA; or, Heroes of the Lifeboat and the Rocket. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. THE KITTEN PILGRIMS ; or, Great Battles and Grand Victories. Crown 8vo. 2s. Price 3s. 6d. each. TALES OF ADVENTURE BY FLOOD, FIELD, AND MOUNTAIN. TALES OF ADVENTURE ; or, Wild Work' in Strange Places. TALES OF ADVENTURE ON THE COAST. Books for Young Headers. 7 MR. R. M. BALLANTYNE’S MISCELLANY of ENTERTAINING and INSTRUCTIVE TALES. With Illustrations. Is. each. Also in a Handsome Cloth Case, Price 20s. The “ Athenaeum ” says: — “There is no more practical way of communicating elementary information than that which has been adopted in this series. When we see contained in 124 small pages (as In Fast in the Ice) such information as a man of fair education should possess about icebergs, northern lights, Esquimaux, musk- oxen, bears, walruses, &c., together with all the ordinary incidents of an Arctic voyage woven into a clear connected narrative, we must admit that a good work has been done, and that the author deserves the gratitude of those for whom the books are especially designed, and also of young people of all classes. ” FIGHTING THE WHALES ; or, Doings and Dangers on a Fishing Cruise. II. AWAY IN THE WILDERNESS ; or, Life among the Red Indians and Fur Traders of North America. in. FAST IN THE ICE; Regions. or, Adventures in the Polar IV. CHASING THE SUN ; or, Rambles in Norway. v. SUNK AT SEA ; or, The Adventures of Wandering Will In the Pacific. VI. LOST IN THE FOREST ; or, Wandering Will’s Adven- tures in South America. 8 James Nisbet & Co’s List of MR. R. M. BALLANTYNE’S MISCELLANY— continued. VII. OVER THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS ; or, Wandering Will in the Land of the Red Skin. VIII. SAVED BY THE LIFEBOAT ; or, A Tale of Wreck and Rescue on the Coast. IX. THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS ; or, Captain Cook’s Adven- tures in the South Seas. x. HUNTING THE LIONS ; or, The Land of the Negro. XI. DIGGING FOR GOLD ; or, Adventures in California. XIL UP IN THE CLOUDS ; or, Balloon Voyages. XIII. THE BATTLE AND THE BREEZE ; or, The Fights and Fancies of a British Tar. XIV. THE PIONEERS : A Tale of the Western Wilderness, xv. THE STORY OF THE ROCK. XVL WRECKED, BUT NOT RUINED. xvn. THE THOROGOOD FAMILY. XVIII. THE LIVELY POLL : A Tale of the North Sea. Books for Young Readers. 9 By AGNES GIBERNE. ** Talcs that bear Miss Giberne's name are ‘ the best of the best.’ No writer excels her in this department of literature.” — Fireside News . ‘•That the story is Miss Giberne’s guarantees refinement and Christian principle. ” — Churchman. “ Miss Giberne's stories are always good. Her books are remarkable for their skilful construction and originality, and bright, clever dialogue.”— Newcastle Chronicle. THE DALRYMPLES. With Illustrations. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. “LEAST SAID, SOONEST MENDED.” 3s. 6d. “ A simple tale, well told.”— Guardian. “ To say that it is by Miss Giberne is at once to recommend the story highly to girls.” — Quiver. “ A well written and most interesting tale.” — Qlasgoto Herald. ‘ * A well written story. The moral is conveyed in a most interesting way, and as a mere tale it will well repay perusal." — Church Review. NUMBER THREE WINIFRED PLACE. 3s. 6d. “ A delightful story, and, we need hardly add— being Miss Giberne’s— is full of the highest and most profitable religious teaching.”— Record. “ A well constructed, thoroughly healthy tale.” — Aberdeen Free Press. “ Miss Giberne's book is for gentler readers. It appeals very delicately to their softer sympathies, and introduces them to one young girl at least who may serve as a model or ideal to them. It is written in a pleasing sympa- thetic style." — Scotsman. “The plot of the story is as ingenious as the treatment is effective, and it is told with great skill.” — Yorkshire Post. READY, AYE READY! 2s. 6d. “ A thoroughly good and deeply interesting story.” — Newcastle Chronicle. “ A charming story, which displays all this well-known writer’s knowledge of girls and their habits of mind." — Scotsman. MISS CON ; or, All Those Girls. 5s. “ Constance Conway is a charming heroine. Her diary is an admirable collection of character sketches." — Athenaeum. 10 James Nisbet & Co.'s List of AGNES GIBERNE’S WORKS -continued. ENJD’S SILVER BOND. 5s. “Enid’s nature is essentially heroic. . . . The other characters are cleverly sketched.” — Times. FIVE THOUSAND POUNDS. 2s. “Youthful readers have reason to thank MiSs Gibeme for having written this capital story.” — John Bull. ST. AUSTIN’S LODGE ; or, Mr. Berkeley and his Nieces. 5s. “A very good example of the author’s well-known style. It is carefully written, and is in all respects a conscientious performance.” — Academy. BERYL AND PEARL. 5s. “Characterised by unflagging vivacity and great dramatic power.”— Christian Leader. “ One of Miss Gibeme’s most delightful tales.”— Record. DECIMA’S PROMISE. 3s. 6d. “ One of the best and soundest books we have seen.” — Public Opinion. “The result of a disaster, Decima’s distress, and the behaviour of the parents, are touchingly told, and the whole case of conscience is admirably managed.” — Guardian. DAISY OF OLD MEADOW. 2s. “ There are few boys or girls to whom this story will not prove interesting reading.” — Court Circular. KATHLEEN. 5s. “ Worthy of high praise, thoroughly good and very interesting.”— Church Bells. “ A fascinating tale.” — Record. OLD UMBRELLAS ; or, Clarrie and her Mother. 2s. “The book is bright and lively, and will be read with pleasure and profit. "* — Christian. Books for Young Readers . 1 1 By Dr. MACAULAY. STRANGE YET TRUE. With many Illustrations. Extra crown Svo. 5s. • By S. M. S. CLARKEl (Mrs. Pereira). BARON AND SQUIRE. A Story of the Thirty Years’ War. From the German of N. Noeldechen. With Sixteen Illustrations. Extra crown 8vo. 6s. THE DUKE’S PAGE; or, “In the Days of Luther.” A Story for Boys. From the German. Sixteen Illustrations. Extra crown Svo. 5s. “ A spirited and attractive narrative.”— Literary Churchman. “ A capital story for boys.”— Guardian. “ This is one of the most fascinating historical tales we have ever read.”— British Weekly. “ Throughout incident succeeds incident, and the interest never flags until the end is reached. ” — Public Opinion. “ A very good story. . . . Of sterling value.” — Spectator. THE TRIVIAL ROUND ; or, Chapters of Village Life. With Illus- trations. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. “ A book that will interest and refresh dwellers in cities with this glimpse of a life in many respects different from their own.” — Academy. “ These scenes from village life will be a source of pleasure to very many readers. The story is ably worked out and pleasantly told.”— John Bull. By Rev. J. REID HOWATT. THE CHILDREN’S PULPIT. A Year’s Sermons and Parables for the Young. Extra crown 8vo. 6s. “The subjects are well selected; the style is always simple and forcible ; and the lessons which the preacher desires to impress upon the mind are such as every youthful reader may appreciate. The sermons have another merit — that of brevity.” — Scotsman. “ Simple, suggestive, and singularly happy in illustration and treatment.” — Word and Work. “ Short arrows are they, tipped with golden lessons, and pointed home to the deep and varied phenomena of child-life, and, above all, they are infused with the love of Christ.” — Bock. THE CHILDREN’S ANGEL. A Volume of Sermons to Children. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. “Fifty-three brief addresses to children. Direct, as such things should be; clear, as they must always be ; and interesting, as, if any good is to be done, they are bound to be — they contain a collection of truths which chil- dren ought to be taught, and the teacher is always bright and clear, which is saying a great deal.”— Church Bells. “ These sermonettes are eminently practical, while their homely style and freedom from cant are delightful.” — Christian Commonwealth. “ Brief, fresh, and often original in thought. A preacher to children will find many suggestions and ideas in these discourses.” — Literary Churchman. 12 James Nisbet & Co.’s List of By Lady KENNETT-BARRING-TON. BIBLE HISTORY FOR CHILDREN. With a Short History of Christianity after the Days of the Apostles. With Illustrations. Small crown 8vo. Is. 6d. “ This book is eminently adapted for children’s capabilities, and has the great advantage of keeping as nearly as possible to Bible language. It is an excellent little book.” — Christian Commonuealth. “ A little work that will commend itself to all who have to do with the religious training of the young. "—Church bells. “ The work is well and carefully done, the main current of the Bible story being rendered with point and brevity in the very spirit of the Scriptures.” —School Board Chronicle. By WILLIAM CHARLES METCALFE. STEADY YOUR HELM ; or, Stowed Away. With Six Illustra- tions. Extra crown 8vo. 5s. ABOVEBOARD. A Tale of Adventure on the Sea. With Six Illustrations. Extra crown 8vo. 5s. “This is a delightfully exciting tale of the adventures of two sailor lads, with icebergs, pirates, and similar horrors of the sea. Its chief defect is that it leaves off too soon, even at the end of more than 300 pages .”— Pall Mall Gazette. “ This story of a cruise is about as full of adventures as it can well be. There is plenty of * go ’ in the narrative, and the incidents succeed each other with a very plausible probability.” — Spectator. “ It is a long time since we have read anything racier, breezier, mere healthful and invigorating than Mr. Metcalfe’s fine sea story.” — Methodist Recorder. FRANK WE ATHERALL ; or, Life in the Merchant Marine. A Sea Story for Youth. Illustrated. Small crown 8vo. 2s. By Mrs. SAXBY. VIKING BOYS. With Four Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. THE LADS OF LUNDA. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. “ A perfect book for boys — generous, wholesome, manly in tone, and withal thoroughly young, fresh, and natural. We recommend the book heartily, not only to all boys, but to everybody who knows and likes brave boys.” — Guardian. “ A capital book. The tales are full of fun and pathos.” — Athenaeum. THE YARL’S YACHT. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. “‘The Yarl’s Yacht’ is even superior in interest to its predecessor.”— Standard. “Mrs. Saxby knows young people as few know them, and they will in return thoroughly appreciate her. As long as she writes such genuine, refreshing, happy family stories for them, they certainly will be most fortu- nate.” — Spectator. “ ‘ The Yarl’s Yacht 'is a delightful sequel to the Lada of Lunda.’ "—Times, Books for Young Readers. A 3 THE HOME OF A NATURALIST. By Jessie M. E. Saxby and the Rev. Biot Edmonston. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. “ We would fain linger long over the scenes which this excellent volume brings up before us. The authors have put together a very refreshing set of memories.’' — Saturday Reviexo. “Mr. Edmonston’s chapters on Shetland sport and fauna — the notes on the habits of the strange menagerie of pets that were gathered about the naturalist’s home, and of excursions after wild-fowl and seal in this re- motest nook of the British islands — are specially pleasing and well written, and should give the book a permanent interest and value in the eyes of naturalists." — National Observer. By the Rev. EDWARD J. HARDY, M.A. UNCLE JOHN’S TALKS WITH HIS NEPHEWS. Crown 8vo. Is. 6d. By the Rev. R. HARDY BRENAN, M.A. ALLURED TO BRIGHTER WORLDS ; or, Words to Boys. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. By EVA TRAVERS EVERED POOLE. LOTTA’S LIFE MISTAKE. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 2s. GOLDEN LINKS IN A LIFE CHAIN. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. GOOD-NIGHT ” THOUGHTS ABOUT GOD; or, Evening Read- ings for the Young. Small crown 8vo. Is. 6d. By DARLEY DALE. A TALE OF OUGHTS AND CROSSES; or, Mr. Holland’s Con- quest. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. SPOILT GUY. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. Is. 6d. “ A pretty tale, and contains excellent religious teaching.” — Church Sunday - School Magazine. CISSY’S TROUBLES. With Illustrations. Small crown 8vo. Is. 6d. “ A very charming story.” — Yorkshire Post. “ The book will be a favourite with young people, especially with our girls.** — Family Churchman. LITTLE BRICKS. With Illustrations. Small crown 8vo. Is. 6d. “ The story is fascinating from the interest which is excited and maintained It is written with power and insight.” — Courant. 14 James Nisbet & Co.'s List of By ELLEN L. DAVIS. HIGH AND LOWLY : A Story of Hearts and Homes. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. Is. 6d. YOKED TOGETHER: A Tale of Three Sisters. With Illustra- tions. Crown 8vo. 5s. “A quiet domestic story of deep interest, with several striking situations* described with considerable power .” — Leeds Mercury. A BOY’S WILL. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. Is. 6d. “The book is full of life and character, and would be a fitting gift alike to. the Sunday-school teacher and the scholar .” — British Messenger. By the Rev. GEORGE EVERARD, M.A. TOUR SUNDAYS: Fifty-Two Short Readings. Especially in- tended for Schoolboys. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. “YOUR INNINGS : ” A Book for Schoolboys. Sixth Thousand, Crown 8vo. Is. 6d. EDIE’S LETTER ; or, Talks with the Little Folks. 4to. 2s. 6d. By Miss HAVERGAL. STREAMLETS OF SONG FOR THE YOUNG. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d, MORNING BELLS. Being Waking Thoughts for the Little Ones, Royal 32mo, 9d. ; paper cover, 6d. LITTLE PILLOWS. Being Good Night Thoughts for the Little Ones. 32mo, 9d. ; paper cover, 6d. MORNING STARS; or, Names of Christ for His Little Ones. 32mo. 9d. THE FOUR HAPPY DAYS. 16mo. Is. BEN BRIGHTBOOTS, and Other True Stories. Crown 8vo. Is. BRUEY. A Little Worker for Christ. Crown 8 vo. 3s. 6d. Cheaper Edition, Is. 6d. ; paper cover, Is. MEMORIALS OF LITTLE NONY. A Biography of Nony Hey- wood, who was the First Collector for the Bruey Branch of the Irish Society. By her Mother. With Preface by Miss Haves- GAL, and a Portrait. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. Books for Young Readers. 15 By the Rev. J. R. MACDUFF, D.D. PARABLES OF THE LAKE; or, The Seven Stories of Jesus by the Lake of Galilee. A Sunday Book for Young Readers. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. THE STORY OF A SHELL. A Romance of the Sea: with some Sea Teachings. A Book for Boys and Girls. With Coloured Frontispiece and Other Illustrations. Small 4to. 6s. Cheaper Edition, paper cover, Is. ; limp cloth, 2s. THE STORY OF BETHLEHEM. A Book for Children. With Illustrations by Thomas. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. HOSANNAS OF THE CHILDREN. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 5s. THE WOODCUTTER OF LEBANON. A Story Illustrative of a Jewish Institution. 16mo. 2s. TALES OF THE WARRIOR JUDGES. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. THE CITIES OF REFUGE ; or, The Name of Jesus. A Sunday Book for the Young. 16mo. Is. 6d. FERGUS MORTON. A Tale of a Scottish Boy. 18mo. 9d. THE EXILES OF LUCERNA ; or, The Sufferings of the Waldenses during the Persecution of 1686. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. THE FOOTSTEPS OF ST. PAUL. Being a Life of the Apostle designed for Youth. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 5s. BBIGHTER THAN THE SUN ; or, Christ the Light of the World. A Life of Our Lord for the Young. With Illustrations by A. Rowan. Post 4to. 3s. 6d. ; in paper cover, Is. ; limp cloth, 2s. WILLOWS BY THE WATERCOURSES ; or, God’s Promises to the Young. 64mo. 6d. ; paper cover, 3d. James Nisbet & Co!s List of 16 By Rev. J. JACKSON WRAY. OLD CRUSTY’S NIECE. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. WILL IT LIFT? A Story of a London Fog. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. JACK HORNER THE SECOND. With Illustrations. Cr. 8vo. 2s. SIMON HOLMES, THE CARPENTER OF ASPENDALE. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. THE SECRET OF THE MERE; or, Under the Surface. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. GARTON ROWLEY ; or, Leaves from the Log of a Master Mariner. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. HONEST JOHN STALLIBRASS. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. THE CHRONICLES OF CAPSTAN CABIN. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6