— $ ^<»OJI1VDJO^ ^OPCAIIFOI?;^^ ^^•AHVHail# MUBRAtlYQc^ .53AEllNlVERy/A ^lOSAKCE^n* :OFCAllfO% '^ ^lUBRARYO^ ^VllE is '^/siiaAiNn-3ttv > - i ^OJUVJ-JO"^ ^^OJ ^0FCAllF0ft<6 ^OFC ^iO^ANCElfr '?5IIARY£5^ -*5^lllBRARYd^ ^OFCAIIFO%. 4S1I3AINII-3V\V >&Aavafln-^^ :10SANCEU-J}> ^lOSAKCElfj-^ ^5WE0NIVER% ^IIIBRARYO^^ ., ^itfOJIWDJO'^ %13DKVS0)'-^.^ wi _ _, _ ^OFCAllFOi?,^ ^.OFCAllfOi?>|[A "^^JAbvaan-^^^ -5 ,^— '» ^ £7 ^^WEUNIVERS/^ ^lOSANCFlfjv. ^ "^vTilJONVSOl^ ^lOSANCElf/^ <>^HIBRARYQc. ^immro/-^ ^/sa3AiNn3WV^ %ojnv>jo^ '^itfOdllVDJO'*^ <^\WEUNIVER% >- . %}«AINn3U\^ ^•OFfAllFOi?^ u s > ^OFCAllFOff^ o Jt?Aavaani^ c^lUBUARYQ^^ ^^OillVDJO'f^ AOFCAllFORjk, oe. > vr_ 1^ CI § 1 I r^ ^ &Aavaaii-# "^^^JAavaani^ ,#UNIVERy/A "^J^UDNVSO^ «A«EUNIVER% "^JJUONVSOl^ A>:lOSANCEl^x O ^lOSANCElfX^^ %a3AiNn-3WV^ ^\V\EUNIVER% ^lOSANCEl^ ^lUBRARYQ^r. ^^lUBRARYQc^ islation and of reproduction are reserved. ) gebkalch TO THE BELOVED MEMORY OF A RIGHTEOUS MAN WHO LOVED GOD AND TRUTH ABOVE ALL THINGS. A MAN OF UNTARNISHED HONOUR — LOYAL AND CHIVALROUS— GENTLE AND STRONG — MODEST AND HUMBLE — TENDER AND TRUE — PITIFUL TO THE WEAK — YEARNING AFTER THE ERRING — STERN TO ALL FORMS OF WRONG AND OPPRESSION, YET MOST STERN TOWARDS HIMSELF — WHO BEING ANGRY, YET SINNED NOT. WHOSE HIGHEST VIRTUES WERE KNOWN ONLY TO HIS WIFE, HIS CHILDREN, HIS SERVANTS, AND THE POOR. WHO LIVED IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD HERE, AND PASSING THROUGH THE GRAVE AND GATE OF DEATH NOW LIVETH UNTO GOD FOR EVERMORE. PREFACE. In bringing out these Volumes, thanks are due and gratefully offered to all who have generously given their help to the work ; — to the many known and unknown Correspondents who have treasured and lent the letters now first made public ; — to the Publishers who have allowed quotations to be made from Mr. Kingsley's published works ; — to the Artists, especially Sheldon Williams, Esq., and Frank Mason Good, Esq., of Hartley Wintney, whose sketches and photographs have been kindly given for the Illustrations of the book ; but above all to the friends who have so eloquently borne witness to his character and orenius. These written testimonies to their father's worth are a rich inheritance to his children, and God only knows the countless unwritten ones, of souls rescued from doubt, darkness, error, and sin — of work done, the worth of which can never be calculated upon earth — of seed sown which has borne, and will still bear fruit . for years, perhaps for generations to come, when the name of Charles Kingsley is forgotten, while his unconscious influence will endure treasured up in the viii Preface. eternal world, where nothing really good or great can be lost or pass away, to be revealed at that Day when God's Book shall be opened and the thoughts of all hearts be made known. Byfleet, October, 1876. F. E. K. NOTE, TO SECOND EDITION. In bringing out a Second Edition of this book, I wish to offer heartfelt thanks to Mr. Henry S. King for the loyalty to my husband's memory, and the delicate consideration for those whom he left, which have marked his undertaking of the work in the first place, and the manner in which he has carried it through the Press. I trust he will allow me to take this opportunity of expressing my deep obligation to him. F. E. K. Byfleet, Dec. 22, 1876. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. lAGE DiRTH AND Parentage— Inherited Talents — Removal from Devon- shire TO Burton-on-Trent — Clifton — Barnack and its Tra- ditions — First Sermon and Poems— Childish Character — Effect OF Fen Scenery on his Mind i CHAPTER II. 1830— 1838. Aged ii to 19. Life at Clovelly — School Life at Clifton — Bristol Riots — Their Effect on his Mind— Helston — Early Friendships — Letters from Rev. Derwent Coleridge and Rev R. C. Powles — Early Poems — Removal to Chelsea — Enters King's College, London . 15 CHAPTER III. 1838 — 1842. Aged 19 to 23. Life at Cambridge— Visit to Oxfordshire — Undergraduate Days- Decides TO Take Orders — Takes his Degree — Correstondence— Letters from Rev. E. Campbell and other Ca.mbridge Friends 41 CHAPTER IV. 1842—1843. Aged 23 to 24. Reads for Holy Orders— Correspondence— Ordained De.vcon— Settles at Eversley — Parish Work— Letters 63 X Contents. CHAPTER V. 1842— 1843. Aged 23 to 24. PAGE Curate Life — Letter from Colonel W. — Brighter Prospects —Cor- respondence Renewed — Promise of Preferment — Leaves Eversley 91 CHAPTER VI. 1844—18:17. Aged 25 to 28. Marriage— Curacy of Pimperne— Salisbury Cathedral— A Chalk Forest— Carlyle's Works — Wordsworth's Excursion — State of the Poor — Rectory of Eversley — Correspondence . . . 115 CHAPTER VH. 1848. Aged 29. Publication of "Saint's Tragedy" — Chartist Riots — Tenth of April — Politics for the People— The National Gallery and British Museum — Professorship of Queen's College — "Yeast" — Illness— Letter on Marriage .149 CHAPTER VHI. 1849. Aged 30. Winter in Devonshire— Ilfracombe — Lynmouth — Decides on taking Pupils — Correspondence— Visit to London — Social Questions — Fever at Eversley — Renewed Illness — Returns to Devonshire — Cholera in England — Sanitary Work — Bermondsey — ^Jacob's Island— Letter from Mr. C. K. Paul 193 CHAPTER IX. 1850— 1851. Aged 31 to 32. Resigns the Office of Clerk in Orders at Chelsea — Pupil Life at Eversley — Publication of "Alton Locke" — Letters from Mr. Carlyle — Writes for "Christian Socialist" — Troubled State of the Country — Burglaries — The Rectory Attacked — Correspondence on the Romish Question 231 Contents. xi CHAPTER X. 1851, Aged 32. PAGE HvrATiA— Christian Socialist — Letters on University Reform and Teetotalism — Opening of the Great Exhibition — Attack on "Yeast" in the "Guardian" and Reply — Lecture on Agri- culture — Occurrence in a London Church — Tour in Germany — Letter from Mr. John Martineau 261 CHAPTER XI. 1852. Aged 33. Strike in the Iron-Trade— Correspondence on Social and Meta- physical Questions — Rt. Hon. T. Erskine comes to Fir Grove — Parson Lot's Last Words — Hexameters — Poetry^ — Letter from Frederika Bremer 309 CHAPTER XH. 1853- Aged 34. The Rector in His Church — "Hypatia" Letters from Chevalier Bunsen — Mr. Maurice's Theological Essays — Correspondence with Thomas Cooper 357 CHAPTER XHI. 1854. Aged 35. Torquay— Seaside Studies— Sanitary Work— Lectures in Edin- burgh — Deutsche Theologie— Letter from Baron Bunsen — Crimean War — Settles in North Devon — Writes " Wonders of the Shore" and "Westward Ho!" 401 CHAPTER XIV. 1855- Aged 36. Bideford— Crimean War— Death of his friend Charles Blachford Mansfield — " Westward Ho ! " — Letters from Mr. Henry Drum- MOND and Rajah Brooke— Drawing Class for Mechanics at Bideford — Leaves Devonshire — Lecture to Ladies in London — Correspondence — Autumn at Farley Court — The "Heroes" written 437 xii Contents. CHAPTER XV. 1856. Aged 37. PAGE Winter at Farley Court — Letters to Mr. Bullar — Letter from A Sailor at Hong Kong — Union Strikes — Fishing Poem and Fishing Flies — Study of Phrygan/E — The Sabbath Question — Invitation to Snowdonia — Visit to North Wales — American Visitors — Preface to Tauler's Sermons 461 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Steel Engraved Portrait of Charles Kingsley . . Frontispiece. Eversley Rectory I'age 75 Eversley Church 359 The Great Fir Trees on the Rectory Lawn at Eversley . 501 CHAPTER I. Birth and Parentage— Inherited Talents— Removal from Devonshire TO Burton-on-Trent— Clifton — Barnack and its Traditions— First Sermon and Poems— Childish Character— Effect of Fen Scenery ON HIS Mind. VOL. I. And Nature, the old Nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying, "Here is a story book Thy Father has written for thee. " Come wander with me," she said, ' ' Into regions yet untrod. And read what is still unread In the Manuscripts of God." And Ire M-andered away and a\vay With Nature, the dear old Nurse, Who sang to him night and day The rhymes of the ITniverse. And whenever the way seemed long Or his heart began to fail, She would sing a more wonderful song, Or tell a more wonderful tale. Longfellow, CHARLES KINGSLEY: HIS LETTERS AND MEMORIES OF HIS LIFE. CHAPTER I. Charles Kixgsley, son of Charles Kingsley, of Battramsley in the New Forest, was born on the 12th of June, 18 19, at Hohie Vicarage, under the brow of Dartmoor, Devonshire. His family claimed descent from the Kingsleys of Kingsley or Vale Royal, in Delamere Forest, and from Rannulph de Kingsley, whose name in an old family pedigree stands as " Grantee of the Forest of Mara and Mondrem from Randall Meschines, ante 1128." Charles's father was a man of cultivation and refinement, a good linguist, an artist, a keen sportsman and natural historian. He was educated at Harrow and Oxford, and brought up with good expectations as a country gentleman, but having been early in life left an orphan, and his fortune squan- dered for him during his minority, he soon spent what was left, and at the age of thirty found himself almost penniless, and obliged, for the first time, to think of a profession. Being too old for the army, and having many friends who were owners of Church property, he decided on the Church, sold his hunters and land, and with a young wife, went for a second time to college, entering his name at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to read for Holy Orders. While there he became acquainted with Dr. Herbert Marsh, then Margaret Professor of Divinity, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough, a fine classic and first-rate German scholar. This last taste, combined with their mutual love of literature, attracted the two men to each other, and when Dr. Marsh was raised to a bishopric he took an early opportunity 4 Charles Kingsley. of getting Mr. Kingsley Into his diocese, and making him his Examining Chaplain. His first cure was in the Fens, from which he moved to Holne, in Devonshire. Charles's mother was the daughter of Nathan Lucas, of Farley Hall, Barbadoes, and Rushford Lodge, Norfolk, and was born in the West Indies. She was a remarkable woman, full of poetry and enthusiasm. Keenly alive to the charms of scenery, and highly imaginative in her younger days, as she was eminently practical in maturer life, she believed that impressions made on her own mind, before the birth of this child for whose coming she longed, by the romantic surroundings of her Devonshire home, would be mysteriously transmitted to him ; and in this faith, and for his sake as well as for her own, she luxuriated in the exquisite scenery of Holne and Dartmoor, the Chase, the hills, and the lovely Dart, which flowed below the grounds of the little par- sonage, and gave herself up to the enjoyment of every sight and soimd which she hoped would be dear to her child in after life. These hopes were realized, and though her little son left Holne when he was six weeks old, and never saw his birthplace till he was a man of thirty, it and every Devonshire scene and associa- tion had a mysterious charm for him through life. " I am," he was proud to say, " a West Country man born and bred." "We know, through the admirable labours of Mr. Galton," says Mr. Darwin in his " Descent of Man," " that genius which implies a wonderfully complex combination of high faculties tends to be inherited," and to prove this in the case of Charles Kingsley may not be altogether unimportant. " We are," he said himself, in 1865, when writing to Mr. Galton on his book on Hereditary Talent, where the Kingsley family are referred to, " We are but the disjecta membra of a most remarkable pair of parents. Our talent, such as it is, is altogether hereditary. My father was a magnificent man in body and mind, and was said to possess every talent except that of using his talents. My mother, on the con- trary, had a quite extraordinary practical and administrative power; and she combines with it, even at her advanced age (79), my father's passion for knowledge, and the sentiment and fancy of a young girl." .... Inherited Tastes. 5 From his father's side he inherited his love of art, his sport- ing tastes, his fighting blood — the men of his family having been soldiers for generations, some of them having led troops to battle at Naseby, Minden, and elsewhere. And from the mother's side came, not only his love of travel, science and lite- rature, and the romance of his nature, but his keen sense of humour, and a force and originality which characterised the women of her family of a still older generation. His maternal grandfather, sometime a Judge in Barbadoes, was a man of books and science, the intimate friend of Sir Joseph Banks and the distinguished John Hunter. He was also a great traveller, and had often crossed the Atlantic, in those days a more difficult work than it is now. He had estates in Demerara, he knew the West Indies intimately, and had been with his friend Lord Rodney, on board H.M.S. " Formidable," in his great naval engagement off St. Lucia in 1782, "on the glorious 12th of April, when he broke Count de Grasse's line, destroying seven French ships of war and taking their commander prisoner." — ("At Last," Vol. L p. 69). In 18 1 2, at the great eruption of the Souffriere of St. Vincent, when resident on his estate in Barbadoes, eighty miles distant, Judge Lucas gave proof of his powers of observation and of scientific induction, by at once detecting the cause of the great earthquake wave which struck the island, and of the sudden darkness which spread terror among its inhabitants. " I have a letter," says his grandson, " written by one long since dead, who had powers of de- scription of no common order," detailing the events of that awful day and night, and who, while the n.egrocs were shrieking in the streets, and even the white folks caught the panic, and were praying at home and in the churches as they had never prayed before, thinking the last day had come, was above the dismay and superstitious panic which prevailed ; "he opened his window, found it stick, and felt upon the sill a coat of soft powder. ' The volcano at St. Vincent has broken out at last,' said the wise man, ' and this is the dust of it.' So he quieted his house- hold and his negroes, lighted his candles, and went to his scientific books, in that delight, mingled with awe not the less deep because it is rational and self-possessed, with which he, like 6 Charles Kingslcy. other men of science, looked at the wonders of this wondrous world."— ("At Last," Vol. I., p. 89).* His grandfather's reminiscences of the old war times, and stories of tropical scenes, were the delight of Charles's boyhood, and gave a colouring to his life. They woke up in him that longing to see the West Indies, which was at last accomplished ; and as he sailed the same seas under more peaceful circum- stances, his enjoyment was enhanced by family associations and memories of the Past. But to return, Mr. Kingsley's next curacy on leaving Holne was at Burton-on-Trent, from whence he moved to Clifton, in Nottinghamshire, where he and his wife formed the acquaintance of the Penrose family. To this fact Miss Martineau alludes in her correspondence with his son 35 years later. " This evening I have heard of you in your infancy ! Is that not odd? The Arnolds have just returned after a two months' absence, and I went to Fox How to welcome them home. They have been into Lincolnshire, at the Penroses'. They say your parents were friends of the last generation of the Penroses, and they have been looking over some old letters, in one of which there is an account of a * These incidents are mentioned at the request of Mr. F. GaUon in reference to his work on " Hereditary Talent." " May I hope," he says in a letter to the editor, "that you will work out in some detail the genealogy of his remarkable family, and, if you will permit me the liberty, I would strongly urge that the sketch should be pretty exhaustive as regards the nearer kinsfolk, male and female, certainly including aunts and uncles on both sides, and preferably great aunts, uncles and cousins. When I say exhaustive, I mean that note should be made of every member - whose character differed in a decided degree, either in excess or deficiency, from mediocrity. Even a bald but accurate statement of this form is of much statistical value. ' Of great uncles .... were distinctly above mediocrity, while .... were below.' " In the many obituary notices that I read in the papers, I did not once notice any mention of what I venture to think, partly on your husband's own verbal account to me, was the most important hereditary peculiarity in his character, namely, his descent on the mother's side from a pure West Indian family, of, I am afraid to say, how many generations. He mentioned that he revelled in the heat of the Tropics, as in a climate congenial to his nature, and of course the phrase of ' at last ' must have been largely inspired by an instinctive longing for tropical scenes and sensations. ' ' Very faithfully yours, " Francis Galton. " Rutland Gate, London, Dec. 24, 1875." Barnack and its GJiost Chamber. 7 stormy passage of a river (the Trent in flood), when your mother's chief anxiety was about her 'little delicate Charles,' whom she wrapped in her shawl, going without it herself. So now, perhaps we know something about you that you did not know yourself." While curate of Clifton, the Bishop of Peterborough offered his friend the living of Barnack, one of the best in the diocese, to hold for his own son Herbert, then only 17. Such trans- actions were common in the church in those days, and Mr. Kingsley, thankfully accepted the offer, and held the living for 6 years. Barnack Rectory was a fine old house, built in the fourteenth century, and thither the family removed. It contained a celebrated haunted room called Button Cap's, into Avhich little Charles on one occasion was moved when ill of brain fever, which he had more than once, as a child. This naturally excited his imagination, which was haunted years afterwards with the weird sights and sounds connected with that time in his memory. To this he traced his own strong disbelief in the existence of ghosts. For, as he used to say to his children in later years, he had heard too many ghosts in old Button Cap's room at Barnack, to have much respect for them, w^hen he had once satisfied himself as to what they really, were. On being questioned about having been born there by Mrs. Francis Pclham, he gave her his matured opinion of Button Cap in the following letter : EvERSLEV Rectory, Jiotc 2, 1864. " Mv DEAR Alice,^ " Of Button Cap — he lived in the Great North Room at Barnack (where I was »of born). I knew him well. He used to walk across the room in flopping slippers, and turn over the leaves of books to find the missing deed, whereof he had defrauded the orphan and the widow. He was an old Rector of Barnack. Everybody heard him who chose. Nobody ever saw him ; but in spite of that, he wore a flowered dressing-gown, and a cap with a button on it. I never heard of any skeleton being found; and Button Cap's history had nothing to do with murder, only with avarice and cheating. "Sometimes he turned cross and played Polter-geist, as the Ger- mans say, rolling the barrels in the cellar about with surprising noise, 8 Charles Kingsley. which was undignified. So he was ahvays ashamed of himself, and put them all back in their places before morning. " I suppose he is gone now. Ghosts hate mortally a certificated National Schoolmaster, and (being a vain and peevish generation) as soon as people give up believing in them, go away in a huff — or perhaps some one had been laying phosphoric paste about, and he ate thereof and ran down to the pond; and drank till he burst. He was rats. " Your affect. Uncle, " C. Kingsley." Of this celebrated room, the present rector of Barnack writes that when some years since the Rectory was rebuilt, " I carefully kept Button Cap room, which is well built, as four- teenth century buildings generally are, and it is of that age. Button Cap is still dreaded by some of the old parishioners, and is a mystery to the young, who see the name painted on the bell which rings from it. No one in our time has consented to sleep in it, at least of the domestic class, and it has been a school-room for my children — deserted at night." Charles was a precocious child, and his poems and sermons date from four years old. His delight was to make a little pulpit in his nursery, arranging the chairs for an imaginary con- gregation, and putting on his pinafore as a surplice, give little addresses of a rather severe tone of theology. His mother, unknown to him, took them down at the time, and showed them to the Bishop of Peterborough, who thought them so remarkable for such a young child, that he begged they might be preserved : predicting that the boy would grow up to be no common man. These are among the specimens his mother kept. FIRST SERMON. [Four years old.] " It is not right to fight. Honesty has no chance against stealing. Christ has shown us true religion. We must follow God, and not follow the Devil, for if we follow the Devil we shall go into that everlasting fire, and if we follow God, we shall go to Heaven. When the tempter First Sermon and Poems. 9 came to Christ in the Wilderness, and told him to make the stones into bread, he said, Get thee behind me, Satan. He has given us a sign and an example how we shoukl overcome the Devil. It is written in the Bible that we should love our neighbour, and not covet his house, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor his wife, nor anything that is his. It is to a certainty that we cannot describe how thousands and ten thousands have been wicked ; and nobody can tell how the Devil can be chained in Hell. Nor can we describe how many men and women and children have been good. And if we go to Heaven we shall find them all singing to God in the highest. And if we go to hell, we shall find all the wicked ones gnashing and wailing their teeth, as God describes in the Bible. Fk humanity, honesty, and good religion fade, we can to a certainty get them back, by being good again. Religion is reading good books, doing good actions, and not telling lies and speaking evil, and not calling their brother Fool and Raca. And if we rebel against God, He will to a certainty cast us into helhj And one day, when a great generation of people came to Christ in the Wilderness, he said, Yea ye generation of vipers !" FIRST POEMS. [Four years and eight months old.] SONG UPON LIFE. Life is, and soon will pass ; As life is gone, death will come. We — we rise again — In Heaven we must abide. Time passes quickly ; He flies on wings as light as silk. We must die. It is not false that we must rise again ; Death has its fatal sting, It brings us to the grave. Time and Death is and must be. MORNING. When morning's beam first lights us, And the cock's shrill voice is undone, The owl flies from her retreat, And the bat does fly away, And morning's beam lightens every spray, The sun shows forlh his splendid train. lo diaries Kings ley. Everybody is rising ; Boys and girls go to school ; Everybody is at work ; Everybody is busy. The bee wakes from her sleep to gather honey, But the drone and the queen bee lie still In the hive, And a bee guards them. Be busy when thou canst ! WINTER EVENING. Again it is come ; The owl stays awhile in his nfist, But flies out soon. Now darkness covers all the sky, And covers houses, plains and hills ; Everybody is still. Now it darkens — now it rains — The bursting thunder lightens all ; Where the windows broken standing, And the floors are broken all. NIGHT. When the dark forest glides along. When midnight's gloom makes everybody still. The owl flies out, And the bat stretches his wing ; The lion roars ; The wolf and the tiger prowl about, Antl the hyena cries. Little can be gleaned of the nursery life at Barnack, except from an old nurse who lived in his father's family, and who remembers Charles as a very delicate child between six and seven years old, subject to dangerous attacks of croup, and remarkable for his thirst for knowledge and conscientiousness of feeling. "I have never forgotten one day," she says, "when he and his little brothers were playing together, and had a difference, which seldom happened. His mother, coming into the room, took the brothers' part, which he resented, and he said he wished she was not his mother. His grief afterwards was great, and he came crying bitterly to the kitchen door to ask me to take him up to his room. The housemaid enquired Early Letters. ii what was the matter, and said his mamma would be sure to forgive him. * She has forgiven me, but don't cant, EHzabeth (I saw you bkish). It is'nt mamma's forgiveness I want, but God's.' Poor little fellow, he was soon upon his knees when he got into his mother's room where he slept." A boy friend, now a clergyman in Essex, recalls him about this time, repeating his Latin lesson to his father in the study at Barnack, with his eyes fixed all the time on the fire in the grate. At last he could stand it no longer ; there was a pause in the Latin, and Charles cried out, " I do declare, papa, there is pyrites in the coal." Among the few relics of the Barnack days is a little love letter written when he was five or six years old, which has lately come to light, having been carefully trqasured for fifty years by a lady who was often staying with his parents at that time, and who captivated the child by her kindness and great beauty. Bamack. " Mv DEAR Miss Dade, — " I hope you are well is fanny well ? The house is com- pletely changed since you went. I think it is nearly 3 months since you went. Mamma sends her love to you and sally browne Herbert and geraled (his brothers) but I must stop here, because I have more letters of consequenece to write & here I must pause. " Believe me always, " Your sincere friend, " Charles Kingslev." To Miss Dade. The subject of his childish aftection recalled herself to him thirty years later, and the answer contains the only other mention of Barnack in his own hand. Farley Court, November 25, 1855. " Mv DEAR Madam, — " Many thanks for your most kind letter, wliich awoke in my mind a Inmdred sleeping recollections. Those old Barnack years seem now like a dream — perhaps because having lost the two brothers who were there with me, anecdotes of the place have not been kept up. Yet 12 Charles Kingslcy. I remember every stone and brick of it, and you, too, as one of the first persons of whom I have a clear remembrance, though your face has faded, I am ashamed to say, from my memory. " But I am delighted to hear that my books have pleased, and still more that they have comforted you. They have been written from my heart in the hope of doing good ; and now and then I have (as I have now from you) testimony that my life as yet has not been altogether useless " I am just bringing out a Christmas book for my children with illustrations of my own. Will you accept a copy, and allow me to renew our old friendship ? . . . . You speak of sorrows, and I have heard you have past through many. God grant that a quiet evening may succeed, for you, a stormy day. I am shocked at the amount of misery in a world which has, as yet, treated me so kindly. Yet it is but a sign that others are nearer to God than I, and therefore more chastened. " Yours ever truly, "C. KiNGSLEY." In 1830, when Charles was eleven years old, his father had to give up Barnack to his successor. Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley's parish work is still remembered there with affectionate respect, and they and their parishioners parted with mutual regret. In after years Professor Hall speaks of " Charles's excellent father as a type of the old English clergyman where the country gentle- man forms the basis of the character which the minister of the gospel completes. Of such a class," he says, " were the Bishop (Otter) of Chichester, Mr. Penrose, and Mr. Kingsley." Having caught ague in the Fens, Mr. Kingsley was advised to try the climate of Devonshire, and moved his family to Ilfra- combe. But the Fen scenery was never obliterated from Charles's mind. It was connected, too, with his earliest sporting re- collections, for his father, while an excellent parish priest, was a keen sportsman, and as soon as the boy was old enough, he w^as mounted on his father's horse in front of the keeper on shooting days to bring back the game bag. Wild duck, and even bittern and bustard, were to be found in those days before the draining of the P'en, and butterflies, of species now extinct, were not uncommon, and used to delight Fen Scenery. 13 the eyes of the young naturalist. The sunsets of the Great Fen, all the more striking from the wide sweep of horizon, were never forgotten, and low flat scenery had always a charm for him in after life from the memory of those days. To them he refers in an eloquent lecture giv^en to a Mechanics' Institute at Cambridge on the Fens, in 1867, when he speaks of a certain sadness as pardonable to one who has " watched the destruction of a great natural phenomenon, which had turned ' a waste howling wilderness ' (the Great Fen was such in his boyhood), into a Garden of the Lord, where All the land in flowery squares Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind Smells of the coming summer. " And yet," he adds, "the fancy may linger without blame, over the shining meres, the golden recd-beds, the countless water-fowl, the strange and gaudy insects, the wild nature, the mystery, the majesty — for mystery and majesty there were— which haimted the deep fens for many hundred years. Little thinks the Scotsman, whirled down by the Great Northern Railway from Peterborough to Huntingdon, what a grand place, even twenty years ago, was that Holme and Whittlesea, which is now but a black unsightly steaming flat, from which the meres and reed-beds of the old world are gone, while the corn and roots of tbe new world have not as yet taken their place. But grand enough it was, that black ugly place, when backed by Caistor Hanglands and Holme Wood and the patches of the prime^'al forest ; while dark green alders, and pale green reeds, stretched for miles round the broad lagoon, where the coot clanked, and the bittern boomed, and the sedge-bird, not content with its own sweet song, mocked the notes of all the birds around ; while high overhead hung motionless, hawk beyond hawk, buzzard beyond buzzard, kite beyond kite, as far as eye could see. Far off, upon the silver mere, would rise a puff of smoke from a punt, invisible from its flatness and white paint. Then down the wind came the boom of the great stanchion gun ; and after that sound, another sound, louder as it neared ; a cry as of all the bells of Cambridge and all the hounds of Cottesmore; and overhead rushed and whirled the skein of terrified wild-fowl, screaming, piping, clacking, croaking, — filling the air with the hoarse rattle of their wings, while clear above all sounded the wild whistle of the curlew and the trumpet note of the great wild swan. They are all gone now. No longer do the ruffs trample the sedge into a hard 14 Charles Kings ley. floor in their fighting rings, while the sober reeves stand round, ad- miring the tournament of th^ir lovers, gay wth ruffs and tippets, no two of them alike. Gone are ruffs and reeves, spoonbills, bitterns, avosets ; the very snipe, one hears, disdains to breed. Gone, too, not only from the Fens, but from the whole world, is that most exquisite of butterflies — Lyccena dispar — the great copper ; and many a curious insect more."* This picture was stamped on the boy's young mind, not only from what he had seen himself, but from the descriptions his father delighted to give his children of life in the Fens ; and thus the seeds Avere sown of the story of Hereward the Wake, written in after years, but produced by the scenes and traditions of this period of boyhood. * " Prose Idylls," pages 95, 96. CHAPTER II. 1830— 1838. Aged ii to 19. Life at Clovelly — School Life at Clifton— Bristol Riots — THfeiR Effect ON HIS Mind — Helston — Early Friendships — Letters from Rev. Der- went Coleridge and Rev. R. C. Powles — Early Poems— Move to Chelsea — Enters King's College, London. The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction : not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest ; Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast : — Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise ; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanish ings ; Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realised, High instincts before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised ; But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing ; Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence ! truths that wake, • To perish never ; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor Man nor Boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy ! Wordsworth. CHAPTER II. While the late rector of Barnack was staying at Ilfracombe, Sir James Hamlyn Williams, of Clovelly Court, presented him to the living of Clovelly, which he held till he removed to the rectory of St. Luke's, Chelsea, in 1836. Here a fresh life opened for Charles, whose impressions of nature had hitherto been gathered from the Eastern Counties and the scenery of the Fens. A new education began for him, a new world was revealed to him. The contrast between the sturdy Fen men and the sailors and fishermen of Clovelly — between the flat Eastern Counties and the rocky Devonshire coast, with its rich vegetation, its new fauna and flora, and the blue sea with its long Atlantic swell, filled him with delight and wonder. The boys had their boat and their ponies, and Charles at once plunged into the study of conchology, under the kind and scientific teaching of Dr. Turton, who lived in the neighbour- hood. His parents, both people of excitable natures and poetic feeling, shared in the boy's enthusiasm. The new elements of their life at Clovelly, the unique scenery, the impressionable character of the people and their singular beauty, the courage of the men and boys, and the passionate sympathy of the women in the wild life of their husbands and sons, threw the fresh charm of romance over their parish work. The people sprang to touch the more readily under the influence of their new rector — a man, who, physically their equal, feared no danger, and could steer a boat, hoist and lower a sail, ' shoot ' a herring net, and haul a seine as one of themselves. His ministrations in church and in the cottages were ac- ceptable to dissenters as well as church people. And when ^the herring fleet put to sea, whatever the weather might be, the 1 8 Chaidcs Khigsley. Rector, accompanied by his wife and boys, would start off " down street," for the Quay, to give a short parting service, at which " men who worked," and "women who wept," would join in sing- ing out of the old Prayer Book version the I2ist Psalm as those only can, who have death and danger staring them in the face ; and who, " though storms be sudden, and waters deep," can say, " Then thou, my soul, in safety rest, Thy Guardian will not sleep ; ****** Shelter'd beneath th' Almighty wings Thou shalt securely rest. " * ****** Such memories made this Psalm, in its rough versification, more dear and speaking to Charles in after life than any hymn ancient or modern of more artistic form. Such memories still make the names of Mr. and Mrs. Kingslcy a household word in Clovelly. A life so full of romantic and often tragic incidents must needs leave its mark on Charles's mind ; and thus he refers to it, " One morning I can remember well how we watched from the Hart- land Cliffs a great barque, which came drifting and rolling in before the western gale, while we followed her up the coast, parsons and sportsmen, farmers and Preventive men, with the Manby's mortar lumbering behind us in a cart, through stone gaps and track ways, from headland to head- land The maddening excitement of expectation as she ran wildly towards the cliffs at our feet, and then sheered off again inexplicably ; her foremast and bowsprit, I recollect, were gone short off by the deck ; a few rags of sail fluttered from her main and mizen. But with all straining of eyes and glass we could discern no sign of men on board ; .... and then, how a boat's crew of Clovelly fishermen appeared in view, and how we watched the little black speck crawling and struggling up in the teeth of the gale, till, when the ship had rounded a point into smooth water, she seized on her like some tiny spider on a huge un- wieldy fly ; and how one still smaller speck showed aloft on the main- yard, and another — and then the desperate efforts to get the topsail set — and how we saw it tear out of their hands again and again, and again ; * Brady and Tate's Version of the Psalms. The SJiipwrcck. 19 and almost fancied we could hear the thunder of its flappings above the roar of the gale, and the mountains of surf which made the rocks ring beneath our feet ; — and how we stood silent, shuddering, expecting every moment to see whirled into the sea from the plunging jerk one of those same tiny black specks, in each of which was a living human soul, with sad women praying for him at home !".... And, after describing, or rather painting, every movement of the ship and her salvors as she rounded the headlands, the spectators keeping pace on the top of the cliff till they suddenly, he goes on to say, " staggered down the woodland walls upon such a piece of Chiaroscuro as would have baffled Correggio or Rem- brandt himself. Under a wall was a long tent of sails and spars, filled with Preventive men, fishermen, Lloyd's underwriters, lying about in every variety of strange attitude and costume ; while candles, stuck in bayonet- handles in the wall, poured out a wild glare over shaggy faces and glittering weapons, and piles of timber, and rusty iron cable, that glowed red-hot in the light The ship was breaking up ; and we sat by her like hopeless physicians by a death-bed side to watch the last struggle, and the ' effects of the deceased.' I recollect our literally warping ourselves down to the beach, holding on by rocks and posts. There was a saddened awe-struck silence even upon the gentleman from Lloyd's with the pen behind his ear. A sudden turn of the clouds let in a wild gleam of moonshine upon the white leaping heads of the breakers, and on the pyramid of the Black Church Rock, which stands in summer in such calm grandeur gazing down on the smiling bay, with the white sand of Braunton and the red cliffs of Portledge shining through its two vast arches ; and against a slab of rock on the right, for years after dis- coloured with her paint, lay the ship, rising slowly on every surge, to drop again with a piteous crash as the wave fell back from the cliff and dragged the roaring pebbles back with it under the coming wall of foam. You have heard of ships at the last moment crying aloud like living things in agony? I heard it then, as the stumps of her masts rocked and reeled in her, and every plank and joint strained and screamed with the dreadful tension." .... And again, another scene, which would come before him in contrast with the still summer brightness of Clovelly in August, of "the old bay darkened with the grey columns of the water-spouts, stalking across the waves before the northern gale ; and the tiny herring-boats fleeing from their nets right for the breakers, hoping more mercy even from those iron walls of rock than from the pitiless howling waste of spray behind them \ and that merry beach beside the town covered with shrieking women and old men, casting themselves on the pebbles in fruitless agonies of prayer, as corpse after corpse swept up at the feet of wife and child, till in one c 2 20 Charles Kings ley. case alone, a single dawn saw upwards of sixty widows and orphans weeping over those who had gone out the night before in the fulness of strength and courage. Hardly an old playmate of mine but is drowned and gone. Their graves are scattered far and wide, By mount, by stream, and sea. " One poor little fellow's face starts out of the depths of memory as fresh as ever, my especial pet and bird's nesting companion as a boy — a little, delicate, precocious, large-brained child, who might have written books some day if he had been a gentleman's son ; but when his father's ship was wrecked they found him, left alone, of all the crew, just as he had been lashed to the rigging by loving and dying hands, but cold and stiff, the little soul beaten out of him by the cruel waves before it had time to show what growth there might have been in it."-* .... Such were the scenes which coloured his boyhood, were re- flected in his after life, and produced " The Song- of the Three Fishers," a song not the mere creation of his imagination, but the literal transcript of what he had seen again' and again in Devon- shire. " Now that you have seen the dear old Paradise," he said to his wife, after her first visit to Clovelly Court in 1854, "you know what was the inspiration of my life before I met you." The boys had a private tutor at home, till, in 183 1, Charles and his brother Herbert were sent to Clifton to a preparatory school under the Rev. John Knight, who describes him as " affectionate, gentle, and fond of quiet," which often made him leave the boys' school-room and take refuge with his tutor's daughters and their governess ; capable of making remarkable transla- tions of Latin verse into English ; a passionate lover of natural history ; and only excited to vehement anger when the housemaid swept away as rubbish some of the treasures collected in his walks on the Downs. The Bristol Riots, which took place in the autunin of 1831, were the marked event in his life at Clifton. He had been a timid boy previous to this time, but the horror of the scenes which he witnessed seemed to wake up a new courage in him. * "North Devon Prose Idylls," pages 291 — 293. Bristol Riots. 21 When giving a lecture at Bristol in 1858, he describes the effect of all this on his mind. "It was in this very City of Bristol, twenty-seven years ago," he says, " that I received my first lesson in what is now called ' social science,' and yet, alas, ten years elapsed ere I could even spell out that lesson, though it had been written for me (as well as for all England) in letters of flame, from one end of the country to the other, " I was a school-boy in Clifton up above. I had been hearing of political disturbances, even of riots, of which I understood nothing, and for which I cared nothing. But on one memorable Sunday afternoon I saw an object which was distinctly not political. It was an afternoon of sullen autumn rain. The fog hung thick over the docks and lowlands. Glaring through that fog I saw a bright mass of flame — almost like a half-risen sun. That, I was told, was the gate of the new gaol on fire — that the prisoners had been set free ; — that . But why speak of what too many here recollect but too well? The fog rohed slowly upward. Dark figures, even at that great distance, were flitting to and fro across what seemed the mouth of the pit. The flame increased — multiplied — at one point after another ; till, by ten o'clock that night, one seemed to be looking down upon Dante's Inferno, and to hear the multitudinous moan and wail of the lost spirits surging to and fro amid that sea of fire. "Right behind Brandon Hill — how can I ever forget it? — rose the central mass of fire, till the little mound seemed converted into a vol- cano, from the peak of which the flame streamed up, not red above, but delicately green and blue, pale rose and pearly white, while crimson sparks leapt and fell again in the midst of that rainbow, not of hope, but of despair ; and dull explosions down below mingled with tlie roar of the mob, and the infernal hiss and crackle of the flame. " Higher and higher the fog was scorched and shrivelled upward by the fierce heat below, glowing through and through with red reflected glare, till it arched itself into one vast dome of red-hot iron, fit roof for all the madness down below — and beneath it, miles away, I could see the lonely tower of Dundie shining red — the symbol of the old faith, looking down in stately wonder and sorrow upon the fearful birth-throes of a new age. " . . . . But to return. It was on the Tuesday or Wednesday after, if I recollect right, that I saw another, and a still more awful sight. Along the north side of Queen Square, in front of ruins which had been three days before noble buildings, lay a ghastly row, not of corpses, but of corpse-fragments. I have no more wish than you to dilate upon 2 2 Charles Kings ley. that sight. But there was one charred fragment — with a scrap of old red petticoat adhering to it, which I never forgot — which, I trust in God, I never shall forget. It is good for a man to be brought once at least in his life, face to face with fact, ultimate fact, however horrible it may be ; and have to confess to himself, shuddering, what things are possible upon God's earth, when man has forgotten that his only welfare is in living after the likeness of God. " Not that I learnt the lesson then. When the first excitement of horror and wonder were past, what I had seen made me for years the veriest aristocrat, full of hatred and contempt of those dangerous classes, whose existence I had for the first time discovered. It required many years — years, too, of personal intercourse with the poor, to explain to me the true meaning of what I saw here in October twenty-seven years ago ; and to learn a part of that lesson which God taught to others thereby." * While Charles was at Clifton, his parents were still undecided whether to send him to a public school. There was some talk of both Eton and Rugby. Dr. Hawtrey, who had heard through mutual friends of the boy's talent, wished to have him at Eton, where doubtless he would have distinguished himself. Dr. Arnold was at that time head-master of Rugby, but the strong- Tory principles and evangelical views of his parents (in the former, Charles at that time sympathised) decided them against Rugby — a decision which their son deeply regretted for many reasons, when he grew up. It was his own conviction that nothing but a public school education would have overcome his constitutional shyness, a shyness which he never lost, and which was naturally increased by the hesitation in his speech. This hesitation was so sore a trial to him that he seldom entered a room, or spoke in private or public without a feeling, at moments amounting to terror, when he said he could have wished the earth would open and swallow him up there and then. At that time the Grammar School at Helston was under the head-mastership of the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ; and Mr. Kingsley decided to send his son there. There Charles formed the dearest and most lasting * "Miscellanies," vol. 11. , p. 319. Great Cities and tlieir Influence for Good and Evil. School Life at Helston. 23 friendship of his life, with Richard Cowley Powles, afterwards Fellow and Tutor of Exeter College, Oxford, and who in 1869, to the great joy and comfort of his old schoolfellow, became one of his parishioners at Wixcnford, in Eversley. At Helston, too, he found as second-master the Rev. Charles A. Johns, afterwards himself head-master, who made himself the com- panion of his young pupil, encouraging his taste, or rather passion, for botany, going long rambles with him on the neigh- bouring moors and on the sea coast, in search of wild flowers, and helping him in the study which each loved so well. In later years, when both were living in Hampshire, Mr. Johns laboured successfully for the cause of physical science in the city of Winchester, where his name will long be remembered in conjunction once more with that of his former pupil and distin- guished friend. Of Charles's school life both Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Powles have contributed their recollections, which shall be given in their own words. REV. D. COLERIDGE TO MRS. KINGSLEY. Hanwell Rectory, October"], 1875. " . . . . Charles and Herbert Kingsley were brought to Helston Grammar School, in Cornwall, in the year 1832, by their father the Rev, Charles Kingsley, then Rector of Clovelly, in Devon. Herbert died of heart-disease, brought on by a severe attack of rheumatism in 1834 Charles was a tall, slight boy, of keen visage, and of great bodily activity, high-spirited, earnest, and energetic, giving full promise of the intellectual powers, and moral qualities, by which he was afterwards distinguished. Though not a close student, he was an eager reader and enquirer, sometimes in very out of the way quarters. I once found him busily engaged with an old copy of ' Porphyry and lamblichus,' which he had ferreted out of my library. " Truly a remarkable boy, original to the verge of eccentricity, and yet a thorough boy, fond of sport, and up to any enterprise — a genuine out-of-doors English boy. *' His account of a walk or run would often display considerable eloquence — the impediment in his speech, already noticeable, though 24 Charles Kings ley. not, I think, so marked as it afterwards became, rather adding to the effect. We well remember his description of a hunt after some pigs, from which he returned (not an uncommon occurrence) with his head torn with brambles, and his face beaming with fun and frolic. In manner he was strikingly courteous, and thus, with his wide and ready sympathies, and bright intelligence, was popular alike with tutor, school- fellows, and servants. " His health was generally very good, but in the summer of 1834 he had a violent attack of English cholera, which occasioned the more alarm as the Asiatic form of that malady had reached Helston. He bore it bravely, and recovered from it, but I believe that the apprehen- sion this occasioned led to his removal earlier than was intended, the distance from London to the extreme west of Cornwall being felt by his parents to be too great. " After he left Cambridge he sent me the manuscript of his tragedy of 'Elizabeth of Hungary' for my criticism and approval. This was the last occasion in which I stood to him in any degree in the relation of a tutor or adviser. From this time I saw him only at intervals ; but when I paid him, as Canon of Westminster, my first, and, as it proved, alas ! my last visit, on the 17th of November, 1874, he fiung his arms about my neck, exclaiming, ' Oh ! my dear old master ! my dear old master !' nor was he less affected at the sight of Mrs. Coleridge — Valcat in (Sternum " Derwent Coleridge." REV. R. C. POWLES TO MRS. KINGSLEY. WlXENFORD, Oct. 30, 1875. " You wish, I am told, to have some slight notice, such as may be comprised in brief space, of the early life of my most dear friend, your husband, and you wish that I should write it. Such a notice I should never have presumed to volunteer : not that my recollections of your husband's boyhood are not full and vivid ; but because I feel my inability to pourtray with anything like proper force those details of his school life to which his later career added a double interest. But what you wish I will at least try to do. "It was at Helston, in January, 1833, when we were each in our fourteenth year, that Charles and I first became acquainted. He and his brother Herbert had been spending the Christmas holidays at school, and I was introduced to them, on my arrival from London, before any of our schoolfellows had returned. I remember the long. The Boy the Father of the ]\Iaii. 25 low room, dimly lighted by a candle on a table at the further end, w here the brothers were sitting, engaged at the moment of my entrance in a course of (not uncharacteristic) experiments with gunpowder. " Almost from the time of our first introduction Charles and I became friends, and subsequently we shared a study, so that we were a good deal together. Looking back on those schoolboy days, one can trace without difficulty the elements of character that made his maturer life remarkable. Of him more than of most men who have become fLimous it may be said, ' the boy was father of the man.' The vehement spirit, the adventurous courage, the love of truth, the impatience of injustice, the quick and tender sympathy, that distinguished the man's entrance on public life, were all in the boy, as any of those who knew him then and are still living will remember ; and there was, besides, the same eagerness in the pursuit of physical knowledge, the same keen o])servation of the world around him, and the same thoughtful temper of tracing facts to principles, which all who are familiar with his writings recognize as among his most notable characteristics. " For all his good qualities, Charles was not popular as a school-boy. He knew too much, and his mind was generally on a higher level than ours. He did not consciously snub those who knew less, but a good deal of unconscious snubbing went on ; all the more resented, perhaps, because it was unconscious. Then, too, though strong and active, Charles was not expert at games. He never made " a score " at cricket. In mere feats of agility and adventure he was among the foremost ; and on one of the very last times I ever saw him he was recalling an old exploit in which he had only two competitors. Our play-ground was separated by a lane, not very narrow, and very deep, from a field on the opposite side. To jump from the play-ground wall to the wall opposite, and to jump back, was a considerable trial of nerve and muscle. The walls, which were not quite on a level, were rounded at the top, and a fall into the deep lane must have involved broken bones. This jump was one of Charles's favourite performances. Again, I remember his climbing a tall tree to take an egg from a hawk's nest. For three or four days he had done this with impunity. There came an afternoon, however, when the hawk was on her nest, and on the intruder's putting in his hand as usual the results were disastrous. To most boys the sur- prise of the hawk's attack, apart from the pain inflicted by her claws, would have been fatal. They would have loosed their hold of the tree, and tumbled down. But Charles did not flinch. He came down as steadily as if nothing had happened, though his wounded hand was streaming with blood. It was wonderful how well he bore pain. On one occasion, having a sore finger, he determined to cure it by cautery. 26 Charles Kings! cy. He heated the poker red-hot in the school-room fire, and cahnly ap})lied it two or three times till he was satisfied that his object was attained. " His own endurance of pain did not, however, make him careless of suffering in others. He was very tender-hearted — often more so than his school-fellows could understand ; and what they did not understand they were apt to ridicule. And this leads me to notice what, after all, I should fix on as the moral quality that pre-eminently distinguished him as a boy, the generosity with which he forgave offence. He was keenly sensitive to ridicule; nothing irritated him more; and he had often excessive provocation from those who could not enter into his feelings, or appreciate the workings of his mind. But with the moment of offence the memory of it passed away. He had no place for vindictive- ness in his heart. Again and again I have seen him chafed to intensest exasperation by boys with whom half an hour afterwards he has mixed with the frankest good humour. " How keen his feelings were none of his surviving school-fellows will forget, who were with us at the time his brother Herbert died. Herbert had had an attack of rheumatic fever, but was supposed to be recover- ing and nearly convalescent, when one afternoon he suddenly passed away. Charles was summoned from the room where we were all sitting in ignorance of what had just taken place. All at once a cry of anguish burst upon us, such as, after more than forty years, I remember as if it were yesterday. There was no need to tell the awe-struck listeners what had happened. "Thus far I have spoken rather of Charles's moral than of his intel- lectual qualities. I must add something of these latter. His chief taste was, as I have hinted, for physical science. He was fond of studying all objects of the natural world, but for botany and geology he had an absolute enthusiasm. Whatever time he could spare from less congenial studies, and from ordinary play-gi-ound games, which never specially attracted him, he gave to these. He liked nothing better than to sally out, hammer in hand and his botanical tin slung round his neck, on some long expedition in quest of new plants, and to investigate the cliffs within a few miles of Helston, dear to every geologist. "For the study of language he had no great liking. Later on, Greek and Latin interested him because of their subject-matter; but for classics, in the school-boy sense of the term, he had no turn. He would work hard at them by fits and starts — on the eve of an examination, for instance ; but his industry was intermittent and against the grain. Nor do I think he had any such turn for mathematics as led him to make the most of the opportunities we had for that branch of study. His passion was for natural science, and for art. With regard to the former Love of Art and Poetry. 27 I think his zeal was led by a strong religious feeling — a sense of the nearness of God in His works. Thus he writes at sixteen years of age to one of two friends, in whose intercourse with each other he was much interested : ' Teach her a love of nature. Stir her imagination, and excite her awe and delight by your example. Point out to her the sublime and terrible, the lovely and joyous, and let her look on them both with the same over-ruling feeling, with a reference to their Maker. Teach her to love God, teach her to love Nature. God is love ; and the more we love Him, the more we love all around us.' In the same letter occurs a passage bearing on art. It shows that, so far as he had then gone, the writer had definite views and conceptions of his own on subjects of which boys of his age — I am speaking of forty years ago — had hardly begun to think at all. ' I love paintings. They and poetry are identical — the one the figures, the other the names of beauty and feeling of every kind. Of all the painters Vandyke and Murillo are to my mind the most exquisitely poetical. Rubens is magnificent, but dreadful. His " Day of Judgment " is the most awful picture I ever saw. It rapt me in awe and horror, and I stood rivetted for many minutes in astonishment. What must the original at Dusseldorf be, in which the figures are as large as life ! ' " My letter has been long enough already, but I should like, if I may, to add a fragment or two of Charles's verse compositions of the same date as the letter quoted — i. e., when he was sixteen. Apart from the circumstances under which they were written, these little poems have an interest for me which others will share. They show the pains he took to describe exactly what he saw, instead of running off into the vague generalities and common-places with which young versifiers often think to take poetry by storm. In the following lines and in others of quite his earliest efforts there is much of the musical cadence that gives such a charm to his later poems, and here and there an expression and a figure which he did not disdain to reproduce in the song which has made him famous wherever English literature is read. TREHILL WELL. There stood a low and ivied roof, As gazing i-ustics tell, In times of chivalry and song 'Yclept the holy well. Above the ivies' branchlets grey In glistening clusters shone ; While round the base the grass-l^laJes briglit And spiry fox-glove sprung 28 Charles Kings Ley. The brambles cling in graceful bands, Chequering the old grey stone With shining leaflets, whose bright face In Autumn's tinting shone. Around the fountain's eastern base A babbling brooklet sped, With sleepy murmur purling soft Adovvn its gravelly bed. Within the cell the filmy ferns To woo the clear wave bent ; And cushioned mosses to the stone Their quaint embroidery lent. The fountain's face lay still as glass — Save where the streamlet free Across the basin's gnarled lip Flowed ever silently. Above the well a little nook Once held, as rustics tell, All garland-decked, an image of The Lady of the Well. They tell of tales of mystery, Of darkling deeds of woe. But no ! such doings might not brook The holy streamlet's flow. O tell me not of bitter thoughts, Of melancholy dreams, By that fair fount whose sunny wall Basks in the western beams. When last I saw that little stream, A form of light there stood, That seemed like a precious gem, Beneath that archway rude : And as I gazed with love and awe Upon that sylph-like thing, Methought that fairy form must be The fairy of the spring. " With these extracts, dear Mrs. Kingsley, my letter must end. More than ever I feel how little qualified I am to do what you wish, but what I could I have done " R. Cowley Powles." Botanical Taste. 29 To his mother Charles writes during the early days of his school-Hfe : — " I am now quite settled and very happy. I read my Bible every night, and try to profit by what I read, and I am sure I do. I am more happy now than I have been for a long time ; but I do not like to talk about it, but to prove it by my conduct. " I am keeping a journal of my actions and thoughts, and I hope it will be useful to me." The following characteristic letters to his mother will show the intensity of the boy in his favourite pursuit, prophetic of the intensity of the man in after life in every thing he took up. Helston, May 16, 1835. " I have just received your letter about the plants, and I wish to tell you that you must not send the new plant away without either finding me some more, or keeping one piece. I entreat you, get me a bit. It can hardly be an arum, and they ought to be able to find out whether it is an orchis or not. Between you and I, Mr. C.'s botany must be at a very low ebb if they cannot. " Dry me as much spurge as you can — as much bird's-nest orchis, and plenty of tway-blade, of which there are quantities in the long walk — all the Arabis to be found ; woodruff. Marsh marigold, and cockle. What do you mean by this last ? " Give my love to Emily Wellesley, and ask her to dry me some Adoxa. The plant in the moors is in flower now. Menyanthes trifoliata is its name, and we have found it here long ago. I question whether that is really ' Arabis stricta;' 'hirsuta' it is very likely to be. If it is ' stricta,' it is a most noble prize; but Mr. C. ^\Tong-names his plants dreadfully, between you and I. If you go to Bragela you will find a very large red-stalked spurge, ' Euphorbia amygdaloides ' growing by the path, before you enter the wood, as you come up from the beach — pray dry me some of this. I have found Spergula subulata, Vicea angustifolia, Asplenium lanceo- latum ! ! ! Scilla verna, Arenaria verna, Teesdalia nudicaulis, Orni- thopus perpusillus, Carex strigosa, Carex ^den, and several others, of all of which I can give Emily specimens. I believe there are only two other habitats for Asplenium lanceolatum known. " I am only sorry we are not going to Ireland, but I shall make the most of my time at Plymouth, and on the South Downs, where I shall be certain to get excellent plants. The orchids are unequalled on the South Downs. 30 Charles Kings ley. " We must make an excursion to Hastings — dear old Hastings — again, if possible. I long to see it again. " Mr. Johns and I have been settling our Plymouth walks together, and I hope to get some excellent plants there. " I have written to Lady Louisa (Cadogan), but the verses (Hypotheses Hypochrondriacas) are too long to send. I will bring them when I come. I have seen the Adoxa there with my own eyes in the parsonage lane. " I should like to see the South Downs again. Pshaw ! what am I writing ? My head is all a jumble between Ireland and Brighton and the Plymouth people. When I go to Brighton I shall cut away by myself for miles and be out the whole day. I will have most noble fun. Would it not be a good plan to spend the rest of Miss C.'s money, out of which I bought the conspectus, in buying ' Galpine's Botany ? ' It is a little pocket edition, about as big as a prayer-book, for excursions, and a most excellent work ? I must have some work of the kind for my walks. I hope it will be a dry summer ; and I think there is every chance of it, from the very wet spring we have had " Nothing can move me. I do not care about the arrangements ; and it seems likely that Plymouth and the South Downs will be as good a catch as Ireland alone. I have no more room, " P.S. — Keep me one specimen of the new plant, George and Vince (Calmady) must look about for more nests. Let them ask Tom Moore if he can get me a woodpecker's nest. Remember this— there are plenty about. Good-bye." TO THE SAME. Helston, Feb. 24, 1836. " I write to tell you that I am quite well and veiy happy. I have finished * Psyche as you asked me. There is no botany yet, but I have been studying a little mineralogy and geology. Tell Papa I have a very good specimen of hornblende rock from the Lizard, and that I have found in great quantities a very beautiful mineral, but whether it is schorl or aximite, I cannot determine. Tell him the gradations of mica, slate, and Grmnuackc slate are very beautiful and perfect here, " I am getting on in algebra. I am studying equations, and Mr. Coleridge says he is pleased at my liking it so much. . , . Both Cowley and I are looking forward to our holidays in London, . , . Mrs, Cole- ridge says she had heard from her sister, Avho saw you on the quay superintending the embarkation of the packages, and that Mr. Drake has taken possession. " P.S. I read my Bible, as you told me, every evening." * "Psyche, a Rhapsody," page 32. Early Poems, 31 His poetical compositions, which were many at this time, were all given to his friend Mr. Powles, who has carefully preserved them. Charles kept no note of them himself, and would not have thought them worth keeping. But one more mu-st be added, as it shows the working of the boy's mind at fifteen. He called it himself HYPOTHESES HYPOCHONDRIACS. And should she die, her grave should be Upon the bare top of a sunny hill, Among the moorlands of her own fair land, Amid a ring of old and moss-grown stones In gorse and heather all embosomed. There should be no tall stone, no marbled tomb Above her gentle corse ; — the ponderous pile Would press too nidely on those fairy limbs. The turf should lightly lie, that marked her home. A sacred spot it would be — every bird That came to watch her lone grave should be holy. The deer should browse around her undisturbed ; The whin bird by, her lonely nest should build All fearless ; for in life she loved to see Happiness in all things — And we would come on summer days When all around was bright, and set us down And think of all that lay beneath that turf On which the heedless moor-bird sits, and whistles His long, shrill, painful song, as though he plained For her that loved him and his pleasant hills, And we would dream again of bygone days Until our eyes should swell with natural tears For brilliant hopes — all faded into air ! As, on the sands of Irak, near approach Destroys the traveller's vision of still lakes. And goodly streams reed-clad, and meadows green ; And leaves behind the drear reality Of shadclcss, same, yet everchanging sand ! And when the sullen clouds rose thick on high Mountains on mountains rolling — and dark mist Wrapped itself round the hill-tops like a shroud, When on her grave swept by the moaning wind Bending the heather-bells — then would I come And watch by her, in silent loneliness, And smile upon the storm — as knowing well The lightning's flash would surely turn aside. Nor mar the lowly mound, where peaceful sleeps All that gave life and love to one fond heart I 32 Charles Kingsley. I talk of things that are not ; and if prayers By night and day availed from my weak lips, Then should they never be ! till I was gone, Before the Aiends I loved, to my long home. O pardon me, if aught I say too much ; my mind Too often strangely turns to ribald mirth, As though I had no doubt nor hope beyond — Or brooding melancholy cloys my soul With thoughts of days misspent, of wasted time And bitter eelings swallowed up in jests. Then strange and fearful thoughts flit o'er my brain By indistinctness made more terrible, And incubi mock at me with fierce eyes Upon my couch : and visions, cnide and dire, Of planets, suns, millions of miles, infinity, Space, time, thought, being, blank nonentity, Things incorporeal, fancies of the brain, Seen, heard, as though they were material, All mixed in sickening mazes, trouble me, And lead my soul away from earth and heaven Until I doubt whether I be or not ! And then I see all frightful shapes — lank ghosts Hydras, chimeras, krakens, wastes of sand, Ilerbless and void of living voice — tall mountains Cleaving the skies with height immeasurable. On which perchance I climb for infinite years, broad seas. Studded with islands numberless, that stretch Beyond the regions of the sun, and fade Away in distance vast, or dreary clouds. Cold, dark, and watery, where wander I for ever ! Or space of ether, where I hang for aye ! A speck, an atom — inconsumable — Immortal, hopeless, voiceless, powerless ! And oft I fancy, I am weak and old And all who loved me, one by one, are dead. And I am left alone — and cannot die ! Surely there is no rest on earth for souls Whose dreams are like a madman's ! I am young And much is yet before me — after years May bring peace with them to my weary heart ! C. K. " Psyche, a Rhapsody," was written at this time : — " The maiden sat in her woodland home, by a clear cold well, whence a tiny streamlet murmured forth over bright pebbles. She loved not the haunts of man, nor the noise of the world, but the secret song of the wild birds among the boughs, and the whistle of the plover on the hills j and all the pleasant sounds of seeming life that fill the Psyche — a Rhapsody. 33 summer air, were to her melody unutterable ; and her heart felt invisibly drawn towards those wild birds, for she loved them for their happiness' sake ; so she loved all living things, and nought harmed her, for she wronged none, and a strange spell was upon her. " When the dark hills were shrouded in the night mist, and the shadows of the forest boughs fell thick upon the dappled turf, then would she sit by her own blue fountain, and gaze wistfully on the pale evening star that hung enshrined far away in its own liquid azure ; then it seemed that she saw more than mortals see ; for there were dim workings of a mighty spirit within, and restless longings to mingle with the unseen beings which people the bright realms' she gazed upon. " Then felt she that there was more in her soul than could be satisfied with such pleasures as earth gave ; and she longed for things holier and purer, and for a love tl^^it should never satiate, a peace that should never be broken. " And as she looked on the quiet face of the evening sky through the chequered lattice-work of the dark leaves, it seemed as though the clear blue formed itself into shapes, and beings appeared on the vault of Heaven, whose forms were not defined, though their presence was telt. And she gazed up into the dark depths of ether, pausing with mingled awe and joy, till the dim vision faded slowly into the dusky air and she turned away and wept .... for she was chilled at heart and lonely, and a sickening sense of dreariness came over her, \\'hen she felt herself a stranger in a world for which she had no ties And her restless yearnings after future things increased " And the song of the wild birds, and the whisper of the woodland breezes soothed her no longer ; the bright glades of the forest pleased her not ; she loved not the broad beams of the blessed sun ; for they showed to her that world from which she longed to turn, but she loved to sit by the quiet brook at the still eventide, when the birds were mute, and darkness came down upon the everlasting hills that lay around her home, and to muse on that love for which she yearned. " And she arose in the early dawn, ere the sun had broken on the earth, and wandered forth to seek pure and perfect love. " And she passed forth through the forest, over hill and dale, and from the mountain's side she looked down upon the long valleys, where a thousand many-voiced rills hurried down amid grey crag and purple heather ; and she listened to their soft tongues as they called to one another with the voice of gladness at their manifold meeting, even as the souls of those that have long parted on earth glide into each other in heaven And as she listened she was hai)py, and she said, ' Is not love here ? ' VOL. I. D 34 Charles Kingsley. '' And she looked again, and the hawk struck the dove in the heather, and the fox seized the hare among the brakes, and the trout in the stream rose to the flies on the dimpUng wave. "And she turned away and wept, for love was not here. " Then she passed on in her weary way through ancient cities, where the wealth and the glory of the world was heaped, for a strange desire was on her to seek for love through things above and things below, until she should rest in it for ever. " And she wandered on ; and from some houses came forth the glare of lamps, and the noise of song and revelry ; but with it curses and shouts of strife ; and from others the moans of anguish,' and the shrieks of despair. " And she shuddered, and turned away. " And she saw a lordly one upon his throne, and round him kneeled tens of thousands, and his looks were majesty, and his tongue justice ; and they bowed the head before him, and praised him, and the voice of the multitude swelled up like the roar of the troublous ocean. The treasures of the world gleamed around him, and the dim alcove of receding pillars showed far palaces of gorgeous sheen ; and the iairest and the wisest stood around him ; and she pressed forward, for the spell was on her, and she said, ' Surely here is love.' " And her eyes were opened, and she saw him tremble and sicken at heart through fear and remorse, and his lii:is faltered, and his brow darkened. " And love was not here. " Then she entered a lowly house ; and in it an old man lay asleep — so still, that it seemed at first sight as though his spirit had fled ; his white hairs strayed thinly over his broad forehead, and his countenance was placid, as the face of one who hath died amid pleasant dreams ; and a fair girl leant over him watching him with beaming eye as he slept — and the maiden gazed also — for her heart was moved with pleasure. " But the old man spoke in his dreams, and muttered with unmean- ing visage and fixed eye, words dark and mysterious, and his talk was like the murmur of an evil conscience. '•' And she turned and fled, for her soul sickened. " Then she saw a fair dame, with many children around her, looking up at her with quiet smiles, and clinging as the nestling to the dam. And her dark eye gleamed, for well she weened that she had found that she sought. " But she looked again, and there were anxious fears for what should be, and fearful lockings forward to days that might come, and to dangers that might nip the young buds of the morning, ere they had blossomed Psyche. 35 forth, and their fruit was ripened. And slie was sad ; for love was not perfect here. " Then she gazed upon two fond ones, as they lay with their fair limbs wreathed round each other, and their lips mingled in sleep, like young roses that bend to each other's dewy petals over the same fountain ; while their white breasts heaved together in mutual throbs ; and they smiled in their slumbers, for the dreams of love are sweet. But she looked, and she perceived in their dreams that there was one chill thought .... that such bliss might not last for ever. And the big tears rose in their bright fountains, for she felt that the bliss that endures not leaves a chill behind. " And she passed on through the dwellings of man ; and she saw that whatever good there might be among them, yet evil had tainted it all. " And she turned and said, ' I will seek love elsewhere.' " Then she wandered forth by the green ocean, and she gazed upon the frothy waves, as they chased each other up the smooth beach ; and the pleasant breeze came over the rippling waters, through whose pellucid depths the shells twinkled on the furrowed sand ; and the sea-birds played about over the sea, or sat rocking on its bosom ; and the bright sun fell on the waves in a rainbow of many-hued lights. " And she said love is here ; and she watched with joyous eyes the simple birds that floated on the glistening waters, happy and fearless ; and she envied them for a moment, but it was but for a moment ; for the sky blackened, and the whistling wind swept over the long wave-tops, catching up their crests in drifts of sheeted foam. . . . And the bright lightning struck the sea, beating back the startled waves, and diving down in a bolt of flame into the eddy its stroke had made. Another and another flash, and a wild cry — the wavy lightning glared over the sea with fiendish light, and she saw a galley rising on the head of a mountain wave, mastless and oarless ; she turned away her eyes in horror ; another wild shriek — she heard but the roar of the chafing wave and the howl of the fitful wind. The galley Avas gone, and the approach- ing wave threw the sea-bird, dripping with foam and rent with lightning, among the frothed pebbles at her feet. And she wei)t bitterly. " And she went wearily back to her own blue well, and her heart was heavy ; for she had wandered far and wide, and had not found that love for which she sought, and she felt dreary and lone ; for she had seen that in nought was love perfect here, but that all was tainted with grief and misery. *' Yet she thought that love was over all, but that man, at whose crimes and sorrows she had been shocked and terrified, had marred the fair work of earth, and driven love Ixack to heaven. ' And He,' she D 2 o 6 Charles Kingsley. thought, ' who made the bright sun and the fair earth, surely loves His work, and though all is stained with evil here, love is with Him above.' " And she gazed up again on the blue sky, and she heard a gentle voice, as a father's to his child — " * Even so it is. God is Love.' " The birds missed her at eventide, and she was seen by her blue '\\ell no more ! " "C. K." TO HIS MOTHER. Helston, Jau. 1836. " I received your letter this morning A\ith mingled pleasure and sorro\^•, for, as much as I am j)leased with the plan you have in view for me, I cannot but be sorry at leaving Helston, where I am already very haj^jpy. " I hope the tutor you will give me will be a Cambridge man, as I wish to get up as much mathematics as I can, without interfering with my classics before I go to college. Mr. Coleridge says that composition is at present of the greatest importance to mc, and that I must prin- cipally cultivate that before I go to college, as one is not supposed to know any mathematics before one goes, whereas one is expected to have obtained all requisite classical knowledge at school. " Gi\e my love to Papa and all the children. " I am ever your affectionate boy, " C. K." He speaks, when at College, of these school-days as " , . . . the dreamy days of boyhood, when I knew and worshipped nothing but the physical ; when my enjoyment was drawn not from the kindness of those around, or from the consciousness of good, or from the intercourse of mankind, but from the semi-sensual delights of ear and eye, from sun and stars, wood and wave, the beautiful iiuxnimatc in all its forms. On the unexpressed and incomprehensible emotions which these raised, on strange dilatation and excitement, and often strange tenderness and tears without object, was my'boyhood fed. Moral sense I had not so strongly as men oi great minds have. And above all, I felt no allegiance to the dispensation of fear, either from man or more than man. Present enjoyment, present profit, brought always to me a recklessness of moral consequences, which has been my bane I should tell you next, how the beauty of the animate and the human began to attract me, and how after lonely wanderings and dreamings, and contemplation of e\'ery work of art, and e\ery specimen of life which fed me with the elements of Removal to Chelsea. 37 beauty, the Ideal began to expand, dim but glorious, before my boyish eyes. I would tell you how I paused on that height awhile, nor thought that beyond there lay another Ideal — the reflected image of God's mind ; but that was reser\-ed for a later j^eriod. Here I sought happiness awhile, but still unsatisfied " 111 1836 the happy free country life of Clovelly was exchanged for London work and the rectory of St. Luke's, Chelsea, to which Lord Cadogan had presented Mr. Kingsley. There the family settled, and Charles was entered, as a day student, at King's College, London, where, says Dr. Barry, the present principal, in a recent letter : — " He became a member of the General Literature Department of the College — that is, the department for those who were simply pursuing a liberal education (with a much larger admixture of mathematics, modes, languages, and physical science, than was then usual), after leaving school before settling to a profession or going to the university. ... It vas a great pleasure to me, he adds, to have been able to invite one to whose writings I owe so much, to preach for us at the College in 1873, and to allow us to add his name to our list of Honorary fellows " It was a great grief to Charles to leave the West Country and the society of those who were all ready to help him in his botanical and geological studies, and in picking up the old tra- ditions of the neighbourhood. The parting with his ciear friend Cowley Powles, the loss of the intellectual atmosphere of Mr. Coleridge's house and his valuable library, and, above all, of the beautiful natural surroundings of both Helston and Clovelly, v.rs bitterly felt. The change to a London rectory, with its ceaseless parish work, the discussion of which is so wearisome to the young, the middle-class society of a suburban district as Chelsea then was, the polemical conversation all seemingly so narrow and conventional in its tone, chafed the boy's spirit, and had anything but a happy effect on his mind. His parents were busy from morning till night, the house full of district visitors and parish committees. In short, Chelsea was a prison from which he thankfully escaped two years later to the freer life at Cambridge. 38 Charles Kings ley. To his dear friend and schoolfellow at Helston he thus pours out his heart — Chelsea Rectory. " I find a doleful difference in the society here and at Helston, paradoxical as it may appear We have nothing but clergymen (very good and sensible men, but), talking of nothing but parochial schools, and duties, and vestries, and curates, &c., &c., &c. And as for women, there is not a woman in all Chelsea, leaving out my own mother, to be compared to Mrs. Coleridge ; and the girls here have got their heads crammed full of schools, and district visiting, and baby-linen, and penny clubs. Confound ! ! ! and going about among the most abominable scenes of filth, wretchedness, and indecency, to visit the poor and read the Bible to them. My own mother says the places they go into are fit for no girl to see, and that they should not know such things exist I regret here, then, as you may supi)ose, Mrs. D., and Mrs. C. ; but, alas ! here are nothing but ugly splay-footed beings, three-fourths of whom can't sing, and the other quarter sing miles out of tune, with voices like love- sick parrots. Confound ! ! ! I have got here two or three good male acquaintances who kill the time ; one is Sub-Secretary to the Geological Society " As you may suppose all this clerical conversation (to which I am obliged to listen) has had a slight effect in settling my opinions on these subjects, and I begin to hate these dapper young-ladies-preachers like the devil, for I am sickened and enraged to see ' silly women blown about with every wind,' falling in love with the preacher instead of his sermon, and with his sermon instead of the Bible. I could say volumes on this subject that should raise both your contempt and indignation. I am sickened with its day-by-day occurrence.* As you may suppose, this hatred is narpudtv, hereditary, and the governor is never more rich than when he unbends on these point.s. "Tell Mr. Johns I am very much obliged to him for his letter, but that I do not understand the likeness of the panicle, which Hooker says Festuca duriuscula has ' subsecund, subcoarctate,' whereas the branches of mine are diffuso patent, and wholly secund. " F. Duriuscula has the spikelets of six flowers ; mine from three to four. My leaves are neither ' plane ' nor subsetaceous, but convolute * These early experiences made him most careful in after life, when in a parish of his own, to confine all talk of parish business to its own hours, and never, as he called it, to " fa/i s/ioJ> " before his children, or lower the tone of conversation, by lotting it degenerate into mere parochial and clerical gossip. Kings College. 39 above and below. You can show him this message. Tell him I shall write to the Calmadys for more of the Orobanche minor, as my specimens perished from damp ; and that I have an Orob. minor ? from Langdon, growing among Daucus maritimus, which has the calyx valves erect ; the flower was a pale purplish blue. Remember me to Mr. and Mrs. Coleridge, &c., &c. And now, since you must be utterly tired with my stupid ei)istle, I ha\-e done. Valeas tgitiir, Corculum nieiDn.'" For the next two years he had what he called hard grinding work at King's College, walking up there every day from Chelsea, reading all the way, and walking home late, to study all the evening. In his spare hours, which were few and far between, he comforted himself for the lack of all amusement by devouring every book he could lay hands on. His parents were absorbed in their parish work, and their religious views precluded all public amusements for their children : so that the only variety in Charles's life was during the summer holidays, when his father took him to Durham to stay at his friend Dr. Wellesley's, or to Clovelly. Of his first visit to Clovelly he writes thus to his mother : — Clovelly, August 24, 1837. " We have been here now nearly a week already, and yet I can hardly persuade myself that time has passed so quickly ; but the rainy days we have had lately have given me very little to look back upon, and from which to judge of the lapse of time. " I have seen e\er)body down the village, and have met everywhere with all kinds of enquiries for you and after you — when you were coming — and how you were. I wish you had come down with us and gladdened the poor peoijlc here, who love you so dearly, with a sight of you; you need not have feared the sea, for we had a calm and delight- ful passage down, with a bright sun and a smooth sea — just what you would have enjoyed. " Though I have not written to you, I have not forgotten }ou And to prove my remembrance of you, I am reading my Bible and my Paley, and my mathematics steadily, and am learning poetry by heart. Moreover, I am keeping a journal, full of thoughts and medita- tions ^n(\ prose poetry, for I am not alone enough to indite verses — as I have not had any walks by myself. However, I hope that the fine weather (which now appears to be returning) will draw out my poetical thoughts again. I am exceedingly well here — quite a different being since I came, and my only fear is that I shall not stay long enough. 1 40 Charles Kingsley. wish it were possible for me to stay a month or six weeks, and then come back to King's College quite fat and fresh from the country, and all ready for work. Papa has just heard from Sir James, who has given him the use of the boat and the black pony Tell Charlotte that I am getting her some sea-weeds, and that we are going to Braunton, and will get her some shells The dear old place looks quite natural, and yet somehow it is like a dream when I think of the total revulsion that two days' journey has made in me, and how I seem like some spirit in the metempsychosis Avhich has suddenly passed back, out of a new life, into one which it bore long ago, and has recovered, in one moment, all its old ties, its old feelings, its old friends, and pleasures ! O that you were but here to see, and to share the delight of your affectionate son, "C. K." At King's College he was once more the companion of Mr. Powlcs and also of Sir Herbert Edwardes. Archdeacon Browne, one of his tutors there, in referring to this period, writes : — Dec. 24, 1875. " I have never forgotten the happy intercourse which I had in former days with your lamented husband, when he attended my lectures at King's College. I well remember his zeal, taste, and industry in his classical studies, and that he always took a high place in the exami- nations. He read with me, with the greatest interest and profit, the princiiDal Greek and Latin writers; and I well remember, some time after he was known to fame, his expressing to me his gratitude for having introduced him to the study of the works of Plato, which he said had a great influence on his mind and habits of thought. I know that the subject of modern history and philosophy greatly engaged his thoughts, which subjects, together with other kindred ones, he studied at King's College." " I have," says the Rev. T. G. Hall, also one of his tutors there, "a most vivid recollection of your good husband, and recall even now the place he always occupied on my left hand, and his appearance and manners. I own his subsequent career astonished me, for as a youth he was gentle and diffident even to timidity." CHAPTER III. 1838-42. Aged 19-23. Life at Cambridge — Visit to Oxfordshire — Undergraduate Days- Decides to take Orders — Takes his Degree — Correspondence- Letters FROM Rev. E. CAMI-IiELL AND OTHER CAMBRIDGE FrIENDS. As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood, And ebb into a former Hfe, or seem To lapse far back in some confused dream To states of m3-stical simihtude ; If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair, Ever the wonder waxeth more and more. So that we say, " All this has been before. All this hath been, I know not when or where." So, friend, when first I look'd upon your face, Our thought gave answer each to each, so true — Opposed mirrors each reflecting each — That tho' I knew not in what time or place, Methought that I had often met with you, And either lived in cither's heart and speech. Tennyson (Early Sonnets). CHAPTER III. In the autumn of 1838 Charles Klngsley left King's College, London, and went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he soon gained a scholarship, being first in his year in the May Examinations, and in the joy of his heart he writes home : — Magdalene College, May 31, 1839. " You will he delighted to hear that I am first in classics and matliematics also, at the examinations, ^vhich has not liappened in the College for several years. I shall bring home prizes, and a very decent portion of honour — the King's College men (K. C. London) are all delighted. I am going to stay up here a few days longer if you Avill let me. Mr. Wand has offered to help me with my second year's subjects, so I shall read conic sections and the spherical trigonometry very hard while I am here. I know you and mama Avill be glad to hear of my success, so you must pardon the wildness of my letter, for I am so happy, I h.ardly know what to say. You know I am not accustomed to be successful. I am going to-day to a great fishing party at Sir Charles Wale's, at Shclford." " The prize he refers to was a fine edition of Plato in eleven volumes. " His selection of such a book," says Mr. Mynors Bright, an undergraduate friend, afterwards senior tutor of Mag- dalene, in a recent letter to the editor, " Speaks well for his judgment and taste. I recollect one of the examiners, a Fellow of the College, telling me, that whatever papers Kingslcy sent up to any examination always showed marks of talent. As you must know, he was always of an excitable temperament. I recollect his telling me that he first began to smoke at Cambridge, and that it had a wonderful effect on his nervous system, and enabled him to work. He did not get a Fellowship, because there was no vacancy for him, till he obtained one which, no doubt, was more pleasing to him. 44 Charles Kingsley. When he was about to return as Professor to Cambridge, I was very much amused one mornhig, on saying to the College cook, ' We have a great man coming to us again, Mr. Kingsley ; do you recollect anything of him ? ' He thought a minute, and then answered : ' Mr. Kingsley — Mr. Kingsley. Yes, I recollect him. I used to feed a dog of his, and he used to come and say ' (trying to imitate Kingsley's voice), ' You con — founded beast, why can't you earn your own living, and not oblige me to pay for you ! ' " In the summer of 1839 tlio Rector of Chelsea took duty, for the sake of country air and change, near some intimate friends, at the village of Checkenden, in Oxfordshire, and settled in the little parsonagJ house for two months with his wife and his family, Charles, then an undergraduate of Cambridge, Gerald in the Royal Navy (since dead), a daughter, and tw^o schoolboys. On the 6th of July, Charles and his future wife met for the first time. " That was my real wedding day," he said, some fifteen years afterwards. He was then full of religious doubts ; and his face, \\'\\\\ its unsatisfied hungering look, bore witness to the state of his mind. It had a sad longing expression, too, as if he had all his life been looking for a sympathy he had never found — a rest which he never w^ould attain in this world. His peculiar character had not been understood hitherto, and his heart had been half asleep. It woke up now, and never slept again. For the first time he could speak with perfect freedom, and be met with answering sympathy. And gradually as the new friendship (which yet seemed old — from the first more of a recognition than an acquaintance) deepened into inti- macy, every doubt, every thought, every failing, every sin, as he would call it, was laid bare. Counsel was asked and given, all things in heaven and earth discussed ; and as new hopes dawned, the look of hard defiance gave way to a wonderful humility and tenderness, which were his characteristics, with those who understood him, to his dying day. He was just like his own Lancelot in Yeast, in that summer of 1839 — ^ bold thinker, a bold rider, a most chivalrous gentleman — sad, shy, and serious habitually ; in conversation at one Visii to OxfordsJiire. 45 moment brilliant and impassioned ; the next reserved and un- approachable ; by turns attracting and repelling, but pouring forth to the friend whom he could trust, stores of thought and feeling and information on every sort of unexpected subject which seemed boundless. It was a feast to the imagination and intellect to hold communion with Charles Kingsley e\'en at the age of twenty ; the originality with which he treated a subject was startling, and his genius illuminated every object it approached, whether he spoke of " the delicious shiver of those aspen leaves," on the nearest tree, or of the deepest laws of humanity and the controversies of the day. Of that intercourse truly might these friends each say with Goethe — " For the first time, I may well say, I carried on a conversation ; for the first time, was the inmost sense of my words returned to me, more rich, more full, more comprehensive from another's mouth. What I had been groping for, was rendered clear to me ; what I had been thinking, I was taught to see. . . ." The Oxford Tracts had lately appeared, and, though he dis- cussed them from the merely human and not the religious point of view, he fiercely denounced the ascetic view of sacred human ties which he foresaw would result from them. Even then he detected in them principles which, as he expressed years afterwards in his preface to Hypatia, must, if once adopted, sap the very foundation of the two divine roots of the Church, the ideas of family and national life. , Two months of such intercourse passed away only too quickl}', and though from this time for the next four years and a half, the fnends met but seldom, and corresponded at rare intervals, a new life had dawned for both, which neither absence nor sorrow, difference of religious opinions, opposition of friends, or ad- verse circumstances, could extinguish. Before he left Oxford- shire he was so far shaken in his doubts, that he promised to read his Bible once more — to pray — to open his heart to the Light, if the Light would but come. All, however, was dark for a time, and the conflict between hopes and fears for the future, and between faith and unbelief, was so fierce and bitter, that when he returned to Cambridge, he became reckless, and nearly gave up all for lost : he read little, went in for excitement 46 Charles Kingslcy. of every kind — boating, hunting, driving, fencing, boxing, duck- shooting in the Fens, — anything to deaden the remembrance of the liai)py past, which just then promised no future. More than once lie liad nearly resolved to leave Cambridge and go out to the Far West and live as a wild prairie hunter ; to this he refers when for the first time he found himself on the prairies of America In 1874. But through all, God kept him in those dark days for a w'ork he little dreamed of. He had many friends In the University who took delight in his society, some for his wit and humour, others for his sympathy on art, and deeper matters, but they knew nothing of the real state of his mind. " He was very popular," writes an intimate undergraduate friend, " amongst all classes of his companions, he mixed freely with all, the studious, the idle, the clever, and the reverse, a most agreeable companion, full of information of all kinds, and abounding in conversation. Whatever he engaged in, he threw his whole energy into ; he read hard at times, but enjoyed sports of all kinds, fishing, shooting, riding, and cards." A letter from the Rev. E. Pitcairn Campbell, gives a graphic account of their undergraduate life just then. Aston Lodge, November, 1875. " My first acquaintance with your husband was formed sometime in the year 1840. " We happened to be sitting together one night on the top of one of those coaches which in our time were subscribed for by a number of men 10s. or ;/^i each for various expeditions into the Fens — for instance, when Whittlesea lay broadly under water — Sir Colman Rash- leigh, the Dykes of Cornwall, or other driving men taking the manage- ment, wearing wonderful coats and hats, and providing the horses. I remember the drive very well. The moon was high, and the air was frosty, and we talked about sport and natural history, whilst the corno- pean professor astonished the natives with what he called Mr. Straw's (!) walzes. " At last we got upon fishing, and I invited your husband to come to my rooms to view some very superior tackle which had been left me by a relative. He came at once, inviting me to join him in some of his haunts up the Granta and the Cam, where he had friends dwelling, and hospitable houses open to him. Undergraduate Recollections. 47 '* I never shall forget our first expedition. I was to call him, and for this purpose I had to climb over the wall of Magdalene College. This I did at two a.m., and about three we were both climbing back into the stonemason's yard, and off through Trumpington, in pouring rain all the way, nine miles to Duxford. " We reached about 6.30. The water was clouded by rain, and I in courtesy to your husband yielded my hea\'ier rod in order that he might try the lower water with the minnow. " He was, however, scarcely out of sight, before I spied, under the alders, some glorious trout rising to caterpillars dropping from the bushes. In ten minutes I had three of these fine fellows on the bank — one of them weighed three pounds, others two pounds each. \^q, caught nothing after the rain had ceased. " This performance set me up in your husband's opinion, and he took me with him to Shelford, where dwelt Sir Charles Wale. It was at Shel- ford that I executed the feat to which he refers in his Miscellanies.* " The Times coach used to take us up to breakfast, and many a good trout rewarded our labours. Then we dined with Sir Charles at five P.M., and walked back to Cambridge in the evening. Oh ! what plea- sant talk was his, so full of poetry and beauty ! and, what I admired most, such boundless information. " Besides these expeditions we made others on horseback, and I think at times we followed the great Professor Sedgwick in his adven- turous rides, which the livery stable-keepers called jolly-gizing !f The old professor was generally mounted on a bony giant, whose trot kept most of us at a hand-gallop. Gaunt and grim, the brave old Northern man seemed to enjoy the fun as much as we did — his was not a hunting seat — neither his hands nor his feet ever seemed exactly in the right place. But when we surrounded him at the trysting-place, even the silliest among us acknowledged that his lectures were glorious. It is too true that our method of reaching those trysting-places was not legitimate, the greater number preferring the field to the road, so that the unhappy owners of the horses found it necessary to charge more for a day's jolly- gizing than they did for a day's hunting. " There was another professor whose lectures we attended together, but he was of a different type and character — one who taught the gentle art of self-defence — a negro of pure blood, who appeared to have more joints in his back than are usually allotted to humanity. In carrying * Chalk Stream Studies, Prose Idylls, p. 83. t Professor Sedgwick gave Geological Field Lectures on horseback to a class in the neighljourhood of Cambridge. 48 CJiarlcs Kill OS ley. out the science which he taught, we occasionally discoloured each other's countenances, but we thought that we benefited by these lectures in more senses than one. We had our tempers braced, yea, even our Christian charity ; for instance, when we learnt to feel as we knew we ought for those who had just punished us. " To crown our sports, we have now only to add the all-absorbing boating, and, dear Mrs. Kingsley, you will ha\e reason to think that we have so filled up our time, as to have little left for legitimate study ; and so, alack, it was with me, but not so, I fancy, with your husband. How- ever idle we both were at first, he took to reading in sufficient time to enable \\m\ to realise the degree he wanted After his examina- tion, 1 altogether lost sight of your husband until, about the year 1865, I wrote to him and enquired if the passage in the Chalk stream studies did not refer to me. I long to find his reply — it was a charming letter." Now began his difficulties in theology about the Trinity, and other important doctrines. lie revolted from what seemed to liim then, the " bigotry, cruclt>% and quibbling," of the Athanasian Creed, that very Creed which in after years was his stronghold ; and he could get no clergyman to help liim with advice he could rely on, on these points. Speaking of the clergy with whom he came in contact, and of his religious doubts, he writes, " This is not so much beyond reason, as it is beyond the proper bounds of induction. From very insufficient and ambiguous grounds in the Bible, they seem unjustifiably to have built up a huge superstruc- ture, whose details they have filled in according to their own foncies, or alas ! too often according to their own interest Do not be angry. I know I cannot shake you, and I think you will find nothing flippant or bitter — no vein of noisy and shallow blasphemy in my doubts. I feel solemn and sad on the subject. If the philosophers of old were right, and if I am right in my religion, alas ! for Christendom ! and if I am wrong, alas ! for myself! It is a subject on which I cannot jest I will write soon and tell you some of my temptations." Cambridge, N'cn'evihcr, 1S40. " I have struggled to alter lately, and my alteration has been remarked with pleasure by some, with sneers by others. * Kingsley, they say, is not half as reckless as he used to be.' .... There is Doubts and DiJJiadties. 49 another benefit you have conferred upon me — carelessness for the opinion of the unworthy. Formerly, by a strange paradox, which I see in too many minds, I was servile to the opinions of the very persons I despised. I had no rule of morality, felt and believed. My morals were only theoretical, and public opinion even more than self interest, my only God. But now .... that I have found a centralizing point connecting my theoretical notions of morality with my affections and my emotions, I begin to find that there is an object to be attained in morality beyond public esteem and self mterest — namely, the love and the esteem of the good, and, consequently, of God himself. The love and the esteem of the Deity, which I conceive is almost the same thing as loving good for its own sake, I cannot fully appreciate yet, or rather my natural feelings of the just and the beautiful, have, as you say, been dimmed by neglect." .... Chelsea, December, 1840. " You cannot conceive the moments of self-abasement and self- shame I have. I dare not commune with myself and say to my own mind, ' Thus and thus wert thou made, bright and strong to mount up with wings like an eagle, even to the threshold of God's throne, and thus and thus have I fettered thy struggles and disregarded thy entrea- ties for liberty and light Still with all my remorse and shame and agitation, I do feel that I am improving — all this misery is neces- sary. I can return into the way of truth by no other path. My own philosophy and the wisdom of the heathens of old, hold out no other mode of retracing my steps than the thorny road of tears and repentance which the Christian belief acknowledges. But you believe that you have a sustaining Hand to guide you along that path, an invincible Protector and an unerring Guide. I, alas ! have no stay for my weary steps, but that same abused and stupified reason which has stumbled and wandered, and betrayed me a thousand times ere now, and is every moment ready to faint and to give up the unequal struggle. I am swimming against a mighty stream, and I feel every moment I must drop my arms, and float in apathy over the hurrying cataract, which I see and hear, but have not spirit to avoid. Man does want something more than his reason ! Socrates confessed that he owed all to his daemon, and that without his supernatural intimations, right and wrong, the useful and the hurtful were enveloped in mist, and that he alone smoothed to him the unapproachable heights which conducted to the beautiful and the good. So he felt ; but I have no spiritual Guide. I am told that before I can avail myself of the benevolence of Him in VOL. I. E 50 Charles Kings! cy. whom you trust, I must believe in His Godhead and His Omnipotence. I do not do this. And it is a subject on which I cannot pray. 1 cannot say with the French atheist, ' O God (if there be a God !) ' I cannot entreat Him on the chance of His possessing a power which I do not beheve He possesses. At least so all the books and clergymen tell me. Solve this for me, for you are not bigoted by the solemn triflings of the schools If I ever believe Christianity, it will be in that spirit in which you believe it. There is no middle course. Either deism, or the highest and most monarchical system of Catholicism ! Between these two I waver. If I become an 'Oxford Tractist,' i.e. a true Churchman, I become necessarily a steady and conscientious Tory — they are inseparably connected ; they are the same principle, the one applied to the political, the other to the religious constitution of mankind ! " . . . . Speaking of the Love of Nature, he says : "Once this constituted my whole happiness; in the 'shadowy recollections ' and vague emotions which were called up by the inanimate creation, I found a mine of mysterious wealth, in which I revelled while I knew not its value. The vast and the sublime, or the excitement of violent motion, affected me almost to madness; I have shed strange tears, I know not why, at the sight of the most luscious and sunny prospects. But ' there has passed away a glory from the earth.' Though I feel the beauty more exquisitely than ever, I do not feel the emotions which it produced. I do not shun society as when a boy, because man and his coarseness and his folly seemed only to disarrange my world of woods and hills, and stream and sea, peopled not with actual existences, but with abstract emotions which were neither seen nor heard, while their presence was felt." January, 1841. " . ... I have an instinctive, perhaps a foolish fear, of any thing like the use of religious phraseology, because I am sure that if these ex- pressions were used by any one placed as I now am to me, I should doubt the writer's sincerity. I find that if I allow myself ever to use, even to my own heart, those vague and trite expressions, which are generally used as the watchwords of religion, their familiarity makes me careless, or rather dull to their sense, while their specious glibness makes me prove myself alternately fiend or angel, hurrying me on in a mass of language, of whose precise import I have no vital knowledge. Animal Excitability. 51 This is their effect on me. We know too well what it often is on others. Believe, then, every word I write as the painful expression of new ideas and feelings in a mind unprejudiced by conventionality in language, or (I hope) in' thought. ... I ask this because I am afraid of the very sus- picion of talking myselt into a fancied conversion. I see people do this often, and I see them fall back again. And this, perhaps, keeps me in terror lest I should have merely mistaken the emotions of a few passionate moments for the calm convictions which are to guide me through eternity. .... I have, therefore, in order to prevent myself mistaking words and feelings for thoughts, never made use of technicalities. "I have not much time for poetry,* as I am reading steadily. How I envy, as a boy, a woman's life at the corresponding age — so free from mental control, as to the subjects of thought and reading — so subjected to it, as to the manner and the tone. We, on the other hand, are forced to drudge at the acquirement of confessedly obsolete and useless know- ledge, of worn-out philosophies, and scientific theories long exploded — while our finer senses and our conscience are either scared by sensua- lity or suffered to run riot in imagination and excitement, and at last to find every woman who has made even a moderate use of her time, far beyond us in true philosophy. " I wish I were free from this university system, and free to follow such a course of education as Socrates, and Bacon, and More, and Milton have sketched out." .... Cambridge, Fehniary, 1841. " I strive daily and hourly to be calm. Every few minutes to stop myself forcibly, and recall my mind to a sense of where I am — where I am going — and whither I ought to be tending. This is most painful discipline, but wholesome, and much as I dread to look inward, I force myself to it continually I am reading seven to eight hours a day. I have refused hunting and driving, and made a solemn vow against cards. My trial of this new mode of life has been short, but to have begun it is the greatest difficulty. There is still much more to be done, and there are more pure and unworldly motives of improvement, ])ut actions will pave the way for motives, almost as much as motives do for actions " You cannot understand the excitement of animal exercise from the mere act of cutting wood or playing cricket to the manias of hunting or shooting or fishing. On these things more or less most young men live * During these years of trial and suspense he wrote little poetry. "Twin Stars" and "Palinodia" are all that mark the time. 52 Charles Kingslcy. Every moment which is taken from them for duty or for reading is felt to be lost — to be so much time sacrificed to hard circumstance. And even those who have calmed from age, or from the necessity of attention to a profession, which has become custom, have the same feelings flowing as an undercurrent in their minds ; and, if they had not, they would neither think nor act like men. They might be pure and good and kind, but they would need that stern and determined activity, without which a man cannot act in an extended sphere either for his own good, or for that of his fellow-creatures. When I talk, then, of excitement, I do not wish to destroy excitability, but to direct it into the proper channel, and to bring it under subjection. I have been reading Plato on this very subject, and you would be charmed with his ideas " Of the existence of this quality (excitability) there can be no doubt, and you must remember the peculiar trial which this " (alluding to the necessity for hard reading and giving up all amusement for the time being) " proves, to a young man whose superfluous excitement has to be broken in like that of a dog or a horse — for it is utterly animal." ***** At this time his physical strength was great. He walked one day from Cambridge to London, fifty-two miles, starting early and arriving in London at 9 P.M., with ease ; and for many years afterwards a walk of twenty or twenty-five miles in a fresh country was a real refreshment to him. Speaking of "renewed violent struggles to curb" himself, which made him " feel more agonizingly weak than ever," he says : Cambridge, February, 1841. "As for my degree, I can yet take high honours in the University, and ought to get my fellowship ; but I was very idle — and very sinful — ■ my first year. *' I attend morning chapel at eight ] read from nine to one or two ; attend chapel generally again at five. I read for some hours in the even- ing. As for my studies interesting me, if you knew the system and the subjects of study, you would feel that to be impossible I wish to make duty the only reason for working, but my heart is in very different studies." .... May, 1841, " My only reasons for working for a degree are that I may enter the world with a cQX\.dXxs. prestige which may get me a living sooner. . . . Several of my intimate friends here, strange to say, are going into the Rcadhig and Resolutions. 53 Church, so that our rooms, when we are not reading, are full of clerical conversation. One of my friends, the son of the English Minister at Turin, goes up for ordination next week. How I envy him his change of life. I feel as if, once in the Church, I could cling so much closer to God. I feel more and more daily that a clergyman's life is the one for which both my physique and morale were intended — that the profes- sion will check and guide the faulty parts of my mind, while it gives full room for my energy — that energy which had so nearly ruined me ; but will now be devoted utterly, I hope, to the service of God. My views of theoretical religion are getting more clear daily, as I see more completely the necessity of faith. What a noble mind Novalis's must have been. Do you know his works ? or have you read the review of them in Carlyle ? If not, pray do To publish a translation of them will be one of the first results of my German studies, after my degree " I forgot to thank you for the books. I am utterly delighted with them." The books referred to were Carlyle's works, and Coleridge's "Aids to Reflection." Carlyle's " French Revolution," sent by the same friend, had had a remarkable effect on his mind before he decided upon taking holy orders, in establishing and intensifying his belief in God's righteous government of the world. The " Miscellanies," and " Past and Present," followed it up, and were most useful to him, as was Maurice's " Kingdom of Christ," which she sent at a later period. Sully, Jioie 12, 1841. " My birth-night. I have been for the last hour on the sea-shore, not dreaming, but thinking deeply and strongly, and forming determinations which are to affect my destiny through time and through eternity. Before the sleeping earth and the sleepless sea and stars I have devoted myself to God ; a vow never (if He gives me the faith I pray for) to be re- called." .... A great change had long been coming over him, to which in a previous letter he points when he speaks of himself as *' Saved — saved from the wild pride and darkling tempests of scepti- cism, and from the sensuality and dissipation into which my own rash- ness and vanity had hurried me before I knew you. Saved from a hunter's life on the Prairies, from becoming a savage, and perhaps worse. 54 diaries Kings ley. Saved from all this, and restored to my country and my God, and able to believe. And I do believe, firmly and practically, as a subject of prayer, and a rule of every action of my life." .... The Rev. James Montagu, Rector of Hawkwell, an old college friend, writing to the editor in 1876, refers to this period thus : " Our old Cambridge intercourse was to me very pleasant. There was something in dear Charles's young days then, which drew me (his senior by some six or eight years) very much to him. There was gro\\'ing up in his brain, then indistinct and shadowy, much of that which came out in riper manhood. There was a dreaminess about him at times which caused remarks to be made about him. I have had it said to me, 'You seem to be much with Kingsley, is he not a little odd and cracky?' and I can remember my answer — ' It would take two or three of our heads to mend the crack.' He would come up to my rooms with, 'Are you busy, Monty?' 'Not too busy for a chat with you, Kingsley.' And then I must tell you how artfully and cunningly I used to slip paper and pencils within his reach ; for I knew his wont to go on sketching all sorts of fanciful things, while we worried our young heads over other dreams as fanciful. Many of those pleasant memories come cropping out at times, though long years have past — and long years make memory weak. Since those days, from his busy life, our intercourse was but slight. I have not forgotten the few pleasant days spent at Everslcy ; nor shall I ever lose the pride I feel in being called Charles Kingsley's friend." His every day college life, his love of art, and drawing powers are recalled by another friend, now distinguished himself, as architect of St. Paul's Cathedral, Frank Penrose, Esq., F.S.A., &c. &c. " My first acquaintance with Charles Kingsley was at South Clifton, Lincolnshire, when I must have had some romps with him as a little boy, say in 1823 ; but I saw nothing of him from that time till he came up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, as a freshman, in October, 1838, with me, and I welcomed him as something more than a casual acquaintance. We began duly attending the College lectures, and I saw at once that he was a man of no ordinary talents. I was ultimately the best of my year in mathematics; but, if I remember rightly, he at first held his own on those subjects, and it was by his own vacating the ground that the Undei'gradtiate Days. 55 tortoise gave him the go-by in that department I was ahvays interested in your husband's conversation, and he was, I think, the only man in Cambridge with whom I ever got any art talk In the boating department he was under my command, as captain of the Mag- dalene Boat Club, in 1840-41 ; he never, to the best of my behef, rowed in the races of our first boat. In those of the second boat he did constantly, and was regular on practising days What I remember best are his sketches of figure subjects — his showing me his Cambridge English verse prize poem, The Crusades. It was unsuccessful, but it showed the latent poetic genius. " I must add his dog Muzzie, a clever, sedate-looking grey Scotch terrier, of whom he was very fond. My last shall be a negative point, and you will not think it unacceptable. I never saw him do any thing that I should have any objection to tell you." " ' We were both very idle,' said Mr. J. Barstow, * in those days — he idler than I apparently, for he often asked me to finish his papers for him, that he might have something to present to our common tutor. He lived very much alone. I think he was fonder of the saddle than the boats ; and I saw but little of him, but I liked and admired much what I saw.' " ' I have never met your husband,' writes the Hon. and Rev. Lewis Denman, Rector of Willian, 'since we were at College together. Although not of his way of thinking on many points, I have heard much of him, and one thing I have heard is — that 'he walked in his house with a perfect heart.' My impression of your husband as an undergraduate at Cambridge is, that he was a most genial and kindly person, with a good deal of wit, and a most loyal enthusiasm for his college. The Magdalene Boat was in our time twice second on the river, and never lower than seventh. He was never, I think, in the first boat, but I well remember the sort of joviality that used to exist, greatly owng to him, in the second boat. " ' I think we none of us expected he would get his first-class, and we were both surprised and delighted at his success. He has certainly jus- tified his then examiners by his writings since.' " . . . . TO HIS MOTHER. Camisridge, 1S41. " I send you my Sunday evening letter this term, as a refresher to my own mind as well as yours. I am now settled to reading for the next 56 CJiarles Kiiigslcy. five weeks, or more, if my private tutors do not go do^vn; fit the expira- tion of that time I shall be really glad to stay in Chelsea or anywhere else to read hard till the commencement. " I am going to try what keeping every chapel will do to my mind. I am sure it ought to sober and c^uiet it. I now really feel the daily chapels a refreshment, instead of an useless and antiquated restraint, as I used to consider them. I spent Thursday at Shclford. I had great fun. Tell papa I hooked a trout so large that I was three-quarters of an hour playing him, and that he grubbed the hook out of his mouth after all. Of course he will say that I was a clumsy fellow, but this brute would have puzzled the ghost of Isaac Walton. " Do not, dearest mother, make yourself unhappy about and me. I am young and strong .... and she will be strong too. Have no fears for us — we can wait, and endure, and dare, and be happy beyond the grave, if not on this side." During the spring of this year he decided on the Church as his profession instead of the law. His name had been down at Lincoln's-inn, but circumstances and his own convictions altered his plan of life, a change which he never regretted for a moment. TO HIS MOTHER. Shelford, Cambridge, June 2t„ 1841. " 1 have been reading the Edinburgh Review (April, 1841), on No. 90 of the Tracts for the Times, and I wish I could transcribe every word, and send it to . Whether wilful or self-deceived, these men are Jesuits, taking the oath to the Articles with moral reservations which allow them to explain them away in senses utterly different from those of their authors. All the worst doctrinal features of Popery Mr. Newman professes to believe in. God bless you, dearest mother. I feel very happy, and very much inclined to what is good — more so, per- haps, and more calmly so, than I ever felt before. God grant that this may last. I saw Bateson to-day, and settled with him as to hours, &c. Drosier comes up the day after to-morrow, and I then begin with him." .... TO THE SAME. (Written just before his degree.) Cambridge, Nov., 1841. " . . . . That degree hangs over my thoughts like a vast incubus, keeping me down, and every moment which is not devoted to my " Old in his Youth" 57 foolish studies, seems wasted. Alas ! that it should be so ! but I can endure another month, and then feel myself at last free Send down to Holne and make all requisite enquiries, for I wish for the ' Far West' as soon as the leaves begin to show. My lodgings in Devonshire ought not to cost much. " It will be like a second childhood, a fresh spring in my life, for I felt very wintry till lately. I feel deeply what Manfred says of ' an order Of mortals on the earth, who do become Old in their youth, and die ere middle age, Some perishing of pleasure — some of study — Some worn with toil— some of mere weariness — And some of wither'd, or of broken hearts.' " I feel that if I had not one hope, I were one of those — my heart is much older than my years — I feel that within, which makes me far more happy, or more miserable than those around me, but all of it belonging to a much later age than mine — I shall be an old man before I am forty — thank God for it ! ... . " . . . . My heart is very full, I am rather lonely, but it is foolish to droop in my prison, when liberty will so soon be here. " God bless you and , and if you rejoice that you have born a man into the world, remember that he is not one like common men — neither cleverer nor wiser, nor better than the multitude, but utterly different from them in heart and mind — legislate for him accordingly. " Your own boy, " C. KiNGSLEY." Dr. Bateson, Master of St. John's College, Cambridge, his tutor much beloved, whose kindly reception of him when he returned as Regius Professor of Modern History in i860, was a source of grateful joy to him, thus recalls the undergraduate, to whom his help was so important : St. John's, Dccembct; 1875. " Charles Kingsley came to Cambridge sufficiently well prepared. He was almost immediately made a scholar of Magdalene, and he was prizeman at the college examination of freshmen in June, 1839. " I look back with much satisfaction, and shall always reflect with pride on my engagement to serve him in the capacity of classical private tutor. 58 Charles Kingslcy. He was my pupil for his three first terms, from October, 1838, to Mid- summer, 1839, and again from October, 1840, to the end of the Long Vacation, 1841. Being appointed in the Michaelmas term of that year an examiner for the classical tripos for the following year, for which he was to be a candidate, I was unable to continue my engagement for a longer time. " It is too true, as no one lamented more than himself, that from various causes he made but an indifferent use of the opportunities which his residence in Cambridge afforded him, at all events for the greater part of the time. In this respect he differs little from many of the men of poetic genius who have been undergraduates at our univer- sities. Whether it is that our system of training and of frequent examinations, has something in it which is repulsive and uncongenial, or that their fervid and impulsive natures are unable to brook the restraints of our discipline, certain it is that many youths of most brilliant promise, who have lived to achieve great things in after years, have left our colleges with but little cause to congratulate themselves on time well spent or talents well employed. My own relations with Charles Kingsley in those early days were always agreeable, although I was unable to induce him to apply himself with any energy to his classical work, until quite the close of his undergraduate career. Then, indeed, he seemed an altered man. With wonderful ability and sur- prising quickness during the last few months he made rapid strides, and I can well remember admiring his papers, more especially those of Latin prose and verse, which he sent up for the classical tripos. They exhibited excellence and power, due far more to native talent than to industry or study, and raised him to a place in the first class of the classical tripos. For after all his degree was a good one, as senior optime in mathematics, and a first class in classics ; but I must add that it was nothing compared to what might have been attained by a man of his powers. If he had worked as an undergraduate with only a small portion of the industry and energy which he exhibited after he left Cambridge, there was no academic distinction that would not have been within his reach." Charles now writes to an Oxford friend : Cambridge, February 6, 1842. " .... I have been seriously grieved to hear that you are ill, and I am miserable when I think that you are wearing out mind and body by the over-exertion which I hear you are using for your degree. Are you not disquieting yourself after a vain shadow ? Are you not, Vahte of University Honours. 59 like Duns Scotus of old, going ' perdere substantiam propter acci- dentiam,' to throw away for an arbitrary rank in the university, and the temporary e'clat of doing what many do every year, (I mean getting your first class and fellowship), are you not, I say, going to throw away for this your health and the vigour of your mind? Remember that your talents are a loan from God, which must not be abused by over-exercise, and that it is a sin to do anything now, which shall make you hereafter less able to exert yourself. If you are now led away by the ambition of the moment to ' propter vitam vivendi perdere causas,' can you justify yourself to your own heart ? Remember that discipline is not education, only the preparation for it, and that your university studies are only useful, so far as they strengthen your mind to learn, judge, and systema- tize for itself after you leave college. I look forward for you to a long life of honour and usefulness in the church, in which I am sure you will gain all the glory which you ought to wish for, that of having fought the church's battles on earth ; and it will make me very unhappy to see you settling into the misanthropic, and unpractical fellow of a college, without ties and with a comparatively small sphere of usefulness to that which you might attain, by denying your ambition for a time, and so sparing your health for the more important labours of an ambassador of God. Leave college, for God's sake, as soon as you can ; you have been too long there already Pray to God to save you from the temptations of morbid melancholy and unavailing regret. Go more into the world — amuse yourself— learn men .... look round you and see how much you have still left you of the sources of happiness. . . . Your heart is still young. You have not yet lost the elasticity of youth. Do not wilfully destroy it by the concentration of your over- strained faculties on any single pursuit. Force yourself into society — irksome as it may be, it is unmanly to refuse it as it is to put aside a medicine for its nauseous taste. And if ' man delights you not, nor woman either,' go back to the fields and woods — seek God in them, and they will teach you the philosophy of harmony and peace. If you study men, let it be from themselves and not from books, and above all do not meditate " /xr) irepX o-nvrov i'XXe TTjv yvMfJLrjv del, AXX' dnox^i^a ti]v (})povTid^ (Is Tov clepa." There are times when to think is injurious, and therefore wrong, and such a crisis is yours now. And go to the Bible — there is peace there, and a wisdom which will teach you to look liglitly on the honours of an arbitrary standard of distinction — if it hangs as a cloud, however bright, between you and your God. " I do not know whether you will be offended, but my letter is per- fectly spontaneous. I do not ask you to answer it. If you are angry, answer me — if your heart is too full, be silent." .... 6o Charles Kingsley. TO THE SAME. Cambridge, February 13, 1842. "As I was musing the fire kindled, and so I speak on the first sheet of paper I could find in a Trinity man's rooms. I am sin- cerely happy to find that you have no fears for your health, and the latter part of your letter still more delighted me, for what would health have been to you in despair ? As for your degree, leave it in God's hands. Wise, commonplace i)iece of advice that, but no less a true and a practical one. There is some peculiar purpose in this threatened dis- appointment of yours (if after all it shall turn out to be one), and that purpose, if you submit, is the ulterior benefit of your mind. And I even, short-sighted mortal as I am, see, or seem to see, much good about to accrue to your mind, even from disappointment in your degree. You have been, I fear, too much accustomed to consider university honours as the end and aim of a man's life, instead of seeing in them a mere trial for studies higher and severer, as well as more beneficial, for the science of unfolding the great mystery of our being, the -nodiv km -nol of our wonderful humanity, for the inquiry into the duties and the capabilities of mankind, and its application to their and our own perfection. A discipline which shall enable us hereafter to make ourselves and all around us, wiser, better, and happier. This is the object of, or, rather, the only good to be derived from, university education ; and if your studies have any other aim, they are useless and hurtful ; useless, because they do not benefit the surrounding mass of mankind, who expect from you not the mere announcement of your having taken a first class, but the active and practical influence of your wisdom and piety in guiding them upwards, and smoothing the rugged road of life for them ; hurtful, because they turn away your mind to their arbitrary standard of ex- cellence, from the great hope, God ; from the great question ' What are we, and why are we born ? ' from the great object that we may be perfect even as our Father in Heaven is perfect Do not imagine that I speak without sympathy of your honourable ambition; I wish to see it more worthily directed. I have felt it myself, and cir- cumstances, more than my own reason, have weaned me from it. I have been toiling almost as hard as you, and in fact much harder than my health would allow, for the last six months, but not because I felt distinction here an object, but because having a battle to fight with the world — a bride to win as a penniless adventurer from rich relations, I found it necessary to attack Mammon with weapons which he could feel and appreciate ; and the first weapon thrown in my way was the tangible proof of talent and application, and claim to attention, implied in a good Sabbaths foi^ the Mind. 6i degree. All through life, I fear, or, at least, all through youth, age, and perhaps till we shake oif the earthly husk, we must more or less use the weapons of the earth, if we would keep ourselves in the station in which alone we can improve ourselves, and do good; but these weapons should be only used as the student uses bodily exercise, to put his' animal health into that soundness which shall enable him completely to employ his mental vigour. Now whether you will understand this long and absolute ethic, I do not know, but I mean sense and friendship, whether I have expressed it or not. My brains, however, are in such an over-worked and be-Greeked state, that I cannot answer for always talking sense just now. My degree, I have got—/. ^- men of this day affect. It is very often a mere form of laziness and untidiness !....! should be ashamed of being weak. I could not do half the little good I do do here, if it Avere not for that strength and activity which some consider coarse and degrading. Many clergymen would half kill themselves if they did what I do. And though they might walk about as much, they would neglect exercise of the arms and chest, and become dyspeptic or consumptive. Do not be afraid of my overworking myself. If I stop, I go down. I must work How merciful God has been in turning all the strength and liardihood I gained in snipe shooting and hunting, and rowing and jack-fishing in those magnificent fens to His work ! While I was following my own fancies. He was preparing me for His work. I could wish I were an Apollo for His sake ! Strange idea, yet it seems so harmonious to me ! ... Is it not an awful proof that matter is not necessarily evil, that we shall be clothed in bodies even in our perfect state ? Think of that ! . . It seems all so harmonious to mc. It is all so full of God, that I see no inconsistency in making my sermons while I am cutting wood, and no ' bizarrerie ' in talking one moment to one man about the points of a horse, and the next moment to another about the mercy of God to 84 Charles Kingsley. sinners. I try to catch men by their leading ideas, and so draw them off insensibly to my leading idea. And so I find — shall I tell you ? you know it is not vanity, but the wish to make you happy in the thought that God is really permitting me to do His work — I find that dissent is decreasing ; people are coming to church who never went anywhere before ; that I am loved and respected — or rather that God's ministry, which has been here deservedly despised, alas ! is beginning to be respected ; and above all, that the young wild fellows who are considered as hopeless by most men, because most men are what they call ' spoony Methodists,' i. e., effeminate ascetics, dare not gainsay, but rather look up to a man who they see is their superior, if he chose to exert his power in physical as well as intellectual skill. "So I am trying to become (harmoniously and consistently) all tilings to all men, and I thank God for the versatile mind He has given me. But I am becoming egotistical." This was one secret of his influence in Eversley : he could swing- a flail with the threshers in the barn, turn his swathe with the mowers in the meadow, pitch hay with the hay-makers in the pasture. From knowing every fox earth on the moor, the " reedy hover " of the pike, the still hole where the chub lay, he had always a word in sympathy for the huntsman or the old poacher. With the farmer he discussed the rotation of crops, and with the labourer the science of hedging and ditching. And yet while he seemed to ask for information, he unconsciously gave more than he received. At this time Mr. Maurice's " Kingdom of Christ " was put into his hands. It was in a great crisis of his life, and he always said that he owed more to that book than to any he had ever read, for by it his views were cleared and his faith established. It may seem strange to some that Carlyle's works should have laid the foundation to which Coleridge's " Aids " and Maurice's works were the superstructure : but so it was. The friend who gave them all to him, as by instinct, little thought that Chevalier Bunsen, in his " Hyppolytus " * at a later period, would strike the point of contact between these three authors which explains their effect on Charles Kingsley's mind. " England," says Bunsen, " has in this century returned to the course * " Hyppolytus and his Age," vol. ii. p. 21-23, ^y Christian Charles Josias Bunsen, 1852. Bunsen on Schools of Thought. 85 rather indicated than traced by Bacon. History has here to name — first, the genius of Coleridge, greater still by his inspiring influence than his own writings. The progress in this line is marked, in two diverging directions and schools, by Frederick Maurice and by Thomas Carlyle." .... As Maurice may be called the Semitic exponent of the deepest elements of English thought and life in this field, Carlyle, as a philosopher on history, .... may be designated its Anglo-Germanic prophet. He considers it his principal vocation to point out that all real progress, and all development in history, are due, as far as man is concerned, to the inward truth and reality in man, and in the highest degree, to the 'heroes of mankind.' Both individuals and nations who act against that reality fulfil their destiny in perishing. Although his exposition and that of Maurice may appear diametrically opposed to each other, the continental inquirer, will easily discern in both the same national instinct to consider real life and action as the final object of man, as the highest reality of thought, and the safest, if not the only safe standard of truth." * * "The system of thought of the first (Maurice), as contained principally in his 'Kingdom of Christ,' his 'History of Ethic Philosophy,' and his ' Lectures on the Rehgions of the World,' may with reference to the present enquiry, be said to have its centre in the following ideas. Maurice believes that the conscience of men in the present day is at war with the popular theology, and that this theology, as well among Romanists as Protestants, as well in England as on the Continent, is ineffectual, because it contemplates humanity, not as created and constituted in Christ, but as a fallen Evil state, out of which Christ came to redeem a certain number of those who believe in Him. This theology he holds not to be that of the Bible, or of the Church, as represented in the Creeds of Christendom. The Bible represents Man as formed in the image of God ; the Fall as the rebellious effort of the individual Man to deny that glory for himself, i.e., to deny his human condition. This denial, beginning with the first man, is continued in all his descendants ; the flesh of each struggling against that law of kind under which God has placed it. The Bible is an orderly history of God's Education of a particular race to understand the divine constitution of humanity, and the possibility of a man, by faith, living according to it. This Education does not contradict pagan records, but explains them, and shows how the living Word was in all places and in all times the light of Men. Christ, not Adam, represents humanity, Christ's redemption is in the revelation of humanity in its trae state and glory. The faith of a man is in the privilege which God has conferred on his race. Since the appearance of Christ, the Kingdom of God is come and coming : we live in it. The incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, the gift of the Spirit, the formation of Churches, were the preparation for a judgment upon the old world, a judgment answering strictly to the anticipations of it in the Apostolical Epistles. Then began the New Dispensation, or Kingdom of God, based upon the full revela- tion of His name, the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, a kingdom for men as men. The baptized Church is the witness of this kingdom. God has educated the nations by it, precisely in the same sense and under the same limitations as He educated the nations in the old world by the Jews. The Old Testament 86 Charles Kings ley. Circumstances now caused a long break in this correspon- dence, but the faith and patience with which the trial was met may be seen in these parting words, or perhaps still more in some rules, intended for one eye only, but from which ex- tracts have been made, in the hope they may help others who have the same thorny road to travel, without such a friend and guide. EVERSLEY, August, 1 842. "... Though there may be clouds between us now, yet they are safe and dry, free from storm and rains — our parted state now is quiet grey weather, under which all tender things will spring up and grow, beneath the warm damp air, till they are ready for the next burst of sunshine to hurry them into blossom and fruit. Let us plant and rear all tender thoughts, knowing surely that those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. ... I can understand people's losing by trusting too little to God, but I cannot understand any one's losing by trusting too much to Him !,..." " There are two ways of looking at every occurrence — a bright and a dark side. Two modes of action — Which is most worthy of a rational being, a Christian and a friend ? It is absurd, as a rational being, to torture one's self unnecessarily. It is inconsistent in a Christian to see God's wrath, rather than His mercy in everything How to avoid this morbidity of mind — by prayer. ' Resist the devil and he will flee from you ' By turning your mind from the dark view. Never begin to look darkly at a subject, without checking yourself and saying, ' Is there not a bright side to this ? Has not God promised the bright side to me? Is not my happiness in my own power? Do I not know that I am ruining my mind and endangering the happiness of those dear to me — by looking at the wrong side ? ' Make this your habit. Every gift of God is good, and given for our happiness ; and we sin if we abuse it. To use our fancy to our own misery is to abuse it and to sin — the realm of the possible was given to man to hope, and not to fear in If (in sorrow) the thought strikes you that we are pun- ished for our sins — mourn for them, and not for the happiness which remains to us an explanation of the conditions of national life, which is just as precious and necessary in the New Dispensation as in the Old. The New Testament explains the full law and glory of humanity. If a nation cannot fulfil the idea of the Old Testament by acknowledging a righteous invisible king over it, it will sink into godless absolutism. If humanity does not acknowledge its constitution in Christ, ft will sink into godless democracy." Bunsen's " Ilyppolytus." Ibid. Parting Words. 87 they have prevented. Rather thank God that He has stopped us in time, and remember His promises of restoring us if we profit by His chastisement. " In cases of love to God and working to His glory in the first and second intention read Taylor's * Holy Living.' But eschew his Popish fallacy about duties as different froin perfections. Every step in love and to God, and devotion to Him is a duty ! That doctrine was invented to allow mankind to exist, while a few selfconceited shut themselves up in a state of unnatural celibacy and morbid excitement, in order to avoid their duty, instead of doing it. Avoid the Fathers, after Origen (including him), on this account — their theories are not universal .... "... We may think too much! There is such a thing as mysti- fying one's self ! Mystifying one's self is thinking a dozen thoughts in order to get to a conclusion, to which one might arrive by thinking one ; getting at ideas by an unnecessarily subtle aud circuitous path : then, because. one has been through many steps, one fancies one has gone deep. This is one form of want of simplicity. This is not being like a little child, any more than analysing one's own feelings. A child goes straight to its point, and it hardly knows why. When you have done a thing, leave it alone. You mystify yourself after the idea, not before. Second thoughts may be best before action — they are folly after action, unless we find we have sinned. The consistent Christian should have no second thoughts, but do good by the first impulse. How few attain to this. I do not object to subtlety of thought : but it is dangerous for one who has no scientific guide of logic, &c. " Aim at depth. A thought is deep in proportion as it is near God. You may be subtle, and only perceive a trifling property of the subject, which others do not. To be deep, you must see the subject in its rela- tion to God — yourself — and the universe ; and the more harmonious and simple it seems, the nearer God and the deeper it is. All the deep things of God are bright — for God is light. The religion of terror is the most superficial of all religions. God's arbitrary will, and almighty power, may seem dark by themselves, though deep, as they do to the Calvinists ; but that is because they do not involve His moral character. Join them with the fact that He is a God of mercy as well as justice ; remember that His essence is love;— and the thunder-cloud will blaze with dewy gold, fiill of soft rain, and pure light ! " Again : remember that habit, more than reason, will cure one both of mystifying subtlety and morbid fear ; and remember that habits are a series of individual voluntary actions, continued till they become involuntary. One would not wish to become good by habit, as the Aristotle-loving Tractarians do ; but one must acquire tones of mind by 88 Charles Kingslcy. habit, in cases in which intellectual, not moral obliquity, or constitutional ill-health is the cause of failure. " Some minds are too ' subjective.' What I mean is, that they may devote themselves too much to the subject of self and mankind. Now man is not ' the noblest study of man.' (What lies the trashy poets of Pope and Johnson's age tell, which are taken as gospel, and acted upon, because the idol said so !) God is the noblest study of man. He is the only study fit for a woman devoted to Him. And Him you can study in three ways. " I St. From His dealings in History. This is the real Philosophy of History. Read Arnold's ' Lectures on Modern History.' (Oh ! why did that noblest of men die ? God have mercy upon England ! He takes the shining lights from us, for our National sins !) And read as \\Q. tells us to read, not to study man \ la Rochefoucault, but God k la David ! " 2nd. From His image as developed in Christ the ideal, and in all good men — great good men — David, Moses, St. Paul, Hooker, the four Oxford martyrs, Luther, Taylor, Howard. Read about that glorious Luther ! and like him strive all your life to free men from the bondage of custom and self, the two great elements of the world that lieth in wickedness I Read Maurice for this purpose, and Carlyle. " 3rd. From His works. Study nature — not scientifically — that would take eternity, to do it so as to reap much moral good from it. Superficial physical science is the devil's spade, with which he loosens the roots of the trees prepared for the burning ! Do not study matter for its own sake, but as the countenance of God ! Try to extract every line of beauty, every association, every moral reflection, every inexpressible feeling from it. Study the forms and colours of leaves and flowers, and the growth and habits of plants ; not to classify them, but to admire them and adore God. Study the sky ! Study water ! Study trees ! Study the sounds and scents of nature ! Study all these, as beautiful in them- selves, in order to re-combine the elements of beauty \ next, as allegories and examples from whence moral reflections may be drawn; next, as types of certain tones of feeling, &c. ; but remain (yourself) in God- dependence, superior to them. Learn what feelings they express, but do not let them mould the tone of your mind ; else by allowing a melan- choly day to make you melancholy, you worship the creature more than the Creator. No sight but has some beauty and harmony ! " Read geology — Buckland's ' Bridgewater Treatise ' and you will rise up awe-struck and cling to God ! " Study the human figure, both as intrinsically beautiful and as ex- pressing mind. It only expresses the broad natural childish emotions, Parting Words. 89 which are just what you want to return to. Study 'natural language' — I mean the 'language of attitude.' It is an inexhaustible source of knowledge and delight, and enables one human being to understand another so perfectly. Draw, — learn to draw and paint figures. No one with such freedom of touch in landscape and perception of physical beauty requires anything but a few simple rules, and some common attention to attitudes, to draw exquisitely. If you can command your hand in drawing a tree, you can in drawing a face. Perfect your colour- ing .... It will keep your mind employed on objective studies, and save you from morbid introversion of mind — brooding over fallen man. It will increase your perception of beauty, and thereby your own har- mony of soul and love to God ! " Practise music. — I am going to learn myself, merely to be able to look after my singers .... Music is such a vent for the feelings " Study medicine .... I am studying it ... . Make yourself thoroughly acquainted with the wages, wants, and habits, and prevalent diseases of the poor Avherever you go. " Let your mind freely forth. Only turn it inwards at prayer time, to recollect sins of which you were conscious at the time, not to look for fresh ones. They are provided against by prayer for pardon of unintentional sins. "What wisdom in our Church ! She knew that if she allowed sin hunting, people would fancy, like some Dissenters, that pretending everything they had done was sinful, was a sign of holi- ness ! " Let your studies, then, be objective entirely. Look forward to the future with hope. Build castles if you will, but only bright ones, and not too many — better to live in the Past. We cannot help thanking God for that ! Blessed Past ! Has not God led us like sheep through the desert ? Think of all He has done for us Be happy. . . . Weep, but let them be tears of thankfulness. " Do not be too soHcitous to find deep meanings in men's words. Most men do, and all men ought to mean only what is evident at first sight on their books (unless they be inspired or write for a private eye). This is the great danger of such men as Novalis, that you never know how much he means. Beware of subtlety again. The quantity of sounding nonsense in the world is incredible ! If you wish to be like a little child, study what a little child could understand — nature ; and do what a little child could do — love. " Use your senses much, and your mind little. Feed on Nature, and do not try to understand it. It will digest itself. It did so when you were a baby the first time ! Look round you much. Think little and read less ! Never give way to reveries. Have always some employ- QO Charles Kingslcy. ment in your hands When you are doing nothing at night, pray and praise ! " See how much a day can do ! I have since nine this morning, cut wood for an hour ; spent an hour and more in prayer and liumiHa- tion, and thereby estabUshed a chastened but happy tone, which lasts till now ; written six or seven pages of a difficult part of my essay ; taught in the school ; thought over many things while walking ; gone round two-thirds of the parish visiting and doctoring ; and written all this. Such days are lives — and hajjpy ones. One has no time to be miserable, and one is ashamed to invent litde sorrows for one's self while one is trying to relieve such griefs in others as would kill us, if we gave way or fancied about them ! " Pray over every truth, for though the renewed heart is not 'desperately wicked,' it is quite 'deceitful ' enough to become so, if God be forgotten a moment ! . . . " Keep a common-place book, and put into it, not only facts and tlioughts, but observations on form, and colour, and nature, and little sketches, even to the form of beautiful leaves. They will all have their charm, all do their work in consolidating your ideas. Put everything into it. . . . Strive to put every idea into a tangible form, and write it down. Distrust every idea which you cannot put into words ; or rather distrust your own conception of it. Not so with feelings. Therefore write much. Try to put everything in its place in the great system seeing the realities of Heaven and Earth." CHAPTER V. 1S42— 1843, • Aged 23-24. Curate Life — Letter from Colonel W. — Brighter Prospects — Correspon- dence Renewed— Promise of Preferment — Leaves Eversley. "And show That life is not as idle ore, But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipped in baths of hissing tears, And batter'd with the shocks of doom To shape and use." Tennyson. CHAPTER V. A YEAR passed by of silence and self-discipline, hard reading and parish duties. That sorrow was doing its work, his own words to his parents will testify. "... Christianity heightens as well as deepens the human as well as the divine affections. I am hapjDy, for the less hope, the more faith God knows what is best for us, and very lucky that He does, for I am sure we do not. Continual resignation, at last I begin to find, is the secret of continual strength, ' Daily dyi/ig,' as Behmen interprets it, is the path of daily living. . . ." His mother now paid him a visit, and she gives this account of his surroundings : — EvERSLEY Cross, 1S42. " Here I am, in a humble cottage in the corner of a sunny green, a little garden, whose flower-beds are surrounded with tall and aged box, is fenced in from the path with a low white paling. The green is gay with dogs, and pigs, and geese, some running frolic races, and others swimming in triumph in a glassy pond, where they are safe from all intruders. Every object around is either picturesque or happy, fulfilling in their different natures the end of their creation Surely it must have been the especial providence of God that directed us to this jilace ! and the thought of this brightens every trial. There is independence in every good sense of the word, and yet no loneliness. The family at the Brewery are devoted to Charles, and think they cannot do enough for him. The dear old man says he has been praying for years for such a time to come, and that Eversley has not been so blessed for sixty years. Need I say rejoice with me. Here I sit surrounded by your books and little things which speak of you." 94 Charles Kingsley. To his collee can to the patriarchial and feudal spirit towards them * "... And religion, that is, truth, shall be the only thing in our house. All things must be made to tend to it ; and if they cannot be made to tend to God's glory, the belief in, and knowledge of the spiritual world, and the duties and ties of humanity, they must be turned out of doors as part of ' the world.' One thing we must keep up, if we intend to be anything like witnesses for God, in perhaps the most sensual generation since Alaric destroyed Rome, — I mean tlie continual open verbal reference of everything, even to the breaking of a plate, to God and God's providence, as the Easterns do. The reason why God's name is so seldom in people's mouths is not that tliey reverence Him, as they say, too much to talk of Him (! ! !), but because they do not think of Him ! " About our Parish. No clergyman knows less about tlic working of a parish than I do ; but one thing I do know, that I liave to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and to be instant in that, in season and out of season and at all risks And therefore I pray daily for the Spirit of love to guide us, and the Spirit of earnestness to keep us at work. For our work must be done by praying for our people, by preaching to them, in church and out of church (for all instruction is preaching — vide * He carried out this principle in daily life, and at his death all the servants in his house had lived with him from seventeen to twenty-six years, and those who had left the rectory previously, had left to marry and go to homes of their own. 1 1 o Charles Kings ley. Hoohr — by leading them to jTray and worship in the liturgy, and by setting them an example ; — an example in every look, word, and motion, — in the paying of a bill, the liiring of a servant, the reproving of a child. " We will have no innovations in ceremony. But we will not let public worship become ' dead bones.' We will strive and pray, day and night, till we put life into it, till our parish feels that God is the great Idea, and that all things are in Him, and He in all things. The local means, to which so much importance is attached now-a-days, by those very sects who pretend to despise outward instruments, I mean the schools, charities, &c., I know nothing of, in Pimperne. But we must attend to them (not alter them), and make them tools for our work, which is to teach men that there is a God, and that nothing done without Him is done at all, but a mere sham and makeshift. We must attend the schools and superintend the teaching, going round to the different classes, and not hearing them the letter, but trying by a few seasonable words to awaken them to the spirit ; this is the distinction which is so neglected between the duty of the parson and his wife, and that of the schoolmaster and mistress The Church Catechism must be the main point of instruction. Of the Bible, the Proverbs and the Gospels, with parts picked from the leading points of Old Testament history, are all they need know. They will soon learn the rest, if they can master the real meaning and spirit of Solomon and St. John. Few have done that, and therefore the Bible is a sealed book to the very people who swear by it, /. e., by some twenty texts in it which lay down their favourite doctrines plainly enough to be patched into a system, and those not understood skin deep. Let us observe the Ember days, . . . praying over the sins of the clergy, one's own especially .... en- treating God's mercy on the country, as children of a land fast hurrying to ruin in her mad love of intellectuality, mammonism, and false liberty ! and to avert some portion of the coming evil from Church and nation I see the dawn of better knowledge. Puseyism is a struggle after it. It has failed — already failed, because unsound ; but the answer which it found in ten thousand hearts shows that men are yearning for better things than money, or dogmas, and that God's Spirit has not left us. Maurice is a struggle after it — Thomas Carlyle is a struggle — This book of Bosanquet's ('The Perils of the Nation') is a struggle — All more or less sound, towards true Christianity, and therefore true national prosperity. But ^yill they hear the voices which warn them ? . , . . " But now I must bid good night, and read my psalms and lessons and pray ' Books, and the Bible. 1 1 1 October, 1842. •' . . . I nuist write to you, for my heart is full. I have been thinking over the great question — How we are to learn, and what we are to learn ? Are we to follow blindly in the steps of others ? No ! Have they not thought and acted for iSoo years? and see what has come of it ! How little is known — how little is done—how little love there is ! "And yet must we not remember that this dissatisfaction at existing evil (the feeling of all young and ardent minds), this struggle to escape from the ' circumstance ' of the evil world, has a carnal counterfeit — the love of novelty, and self-will, and self-conceit, which may thrust us down into the abysses of misrule and uncertainty ; as it has done such men as Shelley, and Byron, and * * * ■"■ *; trying vainly every loophole, beating against the prison bars of an imperfect system ; neither de- graded enough to make themselves a fool's paradise within it, nor wise enough to escape from it through Christ, 'the door into the sheepfold,' to return when they will, and bring others with them into the serene empyrean of spiritual truth — truth which explains, and arranges, and hallows, and subdues everything? " We must forth, we must live above the world, if we would wish to enjoy the pure humanity which it fetters. And how? We cannot go without a guide, that were self-conceited ; but what guide shall we take ? Oh, I am sick of doctors and divines ! Books ! there is no end of them; mud, fire, acids, alkalis, every foreign ingredient con- taminating pure truth ! Shall we listen to the voice of God's spirit alone ? Yes ! but where ? Has He not spoken to those very book- makers? And hath not every man his own gift? Each hero the appointed witness of some peculiar truth ? Then, must we plunge again into that vast, muddy, blind, contradictory book-ocean ? No ! Is there not one immutable book ? One pure written wisdom ? The Bible, speaking of God's truth iu words meant for men. There may be other meanings in that book besides the plain one. But this I will believe, that whatever mysticism the mystic may find there, the simple human being, the lover of his wife, the father of children, the lover of God's earth, glorying in matter and humanit}', not for that which they are, but that which they ought to be and will be, will find in the Bible the whole mystery solved — an answer to every riddle, a guide in every difficulty. Let us read the Bible as we never read it before. Let us read ever\- word, ponder every word ; first in its plain human sense : then, if in after years we can see any safe law or rule by which we may find out its hidden meaning (beside the mystic of a vague and lawless imagination, which makes at last everything true to him who thinks it so. and all uncertain, because all depends upon 1 1 2 Charles Kingsley. accidental fancy, and private analogies); — if we can find a rule, let us use it, and search into the deep things of God, not from men's theories, but from His own words. I do see glimmers of a rule, I see that it is possible to find a hidden meaning in Scripture — a spiritual, catholic, universal application of each word — that all knowledge lies in the Bible ; but my rule seems as yet simple, logical, springing from universal reason, not from private fancy. The mystic allegorical style of inter- pretation used by the fathers and mystics, Popish and Protestant, seems to me the carnal counterfeit of that style. These are but glimpses, but so vast and coherent when they come — and so simple ! And the path seems attainable by God's spirit, and within the compass of a life. And why do we wish to know these things ? Not from the mere desire of knowing. We may seek to know God Himself only from curiosity. Yes ! "But in the present day a struggle is coming. A question must be tried — Is intellectual Science, or the Bible, truth ; and All Truth ? And if the Bible be the great treasure-house of wisdom, does it speak in its fulness to the mass, or to the few ? Are the Fathers and the Tractarians, or the Germans, or the modern Puritans right, and wherein lies the difference between them ? " Then comes again the hungry book-ocean, with its million waves, crying, 'Read! Read! Give up doing, that you may think. Across me is the only path to the isles of the blest, to the temple of wisdom, to the threshold of God's throne ? ' And there we must answer again, * Not so ! ' Oh that we had wings as doves, then would we flee away and be at rest— at rest from the noise of many waters; and rise up on wings into the empyrean of truth ; for it is through the air, not across the sea, that Heaven lies, and Christ is not yet on earth, but in Heaven ! There- fore, we will not listen when men tell us that we can reach Him by weary voyaging on the ocean of intellect. We will wait till He catches us up to Him in heaven to return with Him to earth again, when there shall be no more sea. (Revelation xxi. i. What does that mean ? Here is a specimen of this patristic allegorical use of texts — which I give way to for illustration, but dare build no doctrine upon, as they did, for such use of them is all private fancy, dependent on no law of reason. And the Romanists and Tractarians, trying to support the lawless allegorizing of the Fathers, have been forced to invent " the general consent of tradition" theory.) Ay, better to stay humbly on earth among the duties and affections of humanity, in contact with, and acting on, the material and visible, contented to walk till wings are given us wherewith to fly. Better far ! for while we labour, dressing and tilling the garden which God has given us, even though sin have made us ashamed, and our bodieS; and souls, and spirits become defiled in our daily work, Healthy Materialism. 1 1 3 and require to be washed in Christ His blood ; and though there are thorns and briars in the garden, and our fairest flowers will sometimes fade, and the thorns may enter into our flesh and fester, and disease may not be extinct within us; — better, even thus, to stay and work, saying — ' Here at least we are safe, for God hath appointed this place to us ! ' And even though on earth, the heaven will be above us in our labours, the heaven of eternal truth and beauty, to which we may look up, and take comfort, and draw light and guidance, and learn to walk in the light. And the breeze of God's Spirit shall fan our weary brows ; and the cheering voices of our fellow labourers shall call to us through dark thickets, and across broad lawns ; and every bird, and bud, and herb will smile on us and say, ' Ye have not despised us, ye have dwelt among us, and been our friend. Therefore, when we are renewed, we will rejoice with you !' Oh ! will it not be better thus to wait for the renewal, and learn to love all things, all men — not as spirits only, not with ' a love for poor souls ' as the cant saying is, (that unappreciable, loveless abstraction) but — as men and women, of body, soul, and spirit, made each one being, and therefore all to be loved ? Is it not better thus to love intellect as well as spirit, and matter as well as intellect, and dumb animals, and trees, and rocks, and sun, and stars, that our joy and glory may be fuller, more all-embracing, when they are restored, and the moan which the earth makes day and night to God, has ceased for ever ? " Better far, than to make ourselves sham wings, and try to fly, and drop fluttering down, disgusted with our proper clement, yet bound to it, poor selfish isolated mystics ! " This is healthy materialism, for there is a truth even in materialism. The man has hold of a reality who says — ' This earth is, aftei" all, to me the great fact.' God is the great fact, objectively, in the pure truth of things ; but He can only become the great fact to us, subjectively, by our acting on the truth, that matter, and all its ties — so interwoven with our spirits and our spiritual ties that it is impossible to separate them — that this earth, I say, is the next greatest fact to that of God's existence, the fact by which we know Him. This is the path the Bible takes. It does not lay down any description of pure Deity. It is all about earth, and men, and women, and marriage, and birth and death, food and raiment, trees and animals \ and God, not as He is in Himself, but as He has shown Himself in relation to the earth, and its history, and the laws of humanity. And all attempts at arriving at the contemplation of God as He is in Himself, appear to me as yet to have ended in forgetfulness of the Incarnation, and of the laws of humanity, and lastly of God Him- self, because men, not content ^^ith the mixed idea of God which the VOL. I. I 1 14 Charles Kingsley. Bible gives, have turned from it to contemplate a 'pure '(?) imagination of their own inventing. — All trying to substitute sight for faith. For we do not and cannot yet know what God is. No man can approach to Him ! " What is my conclusion from all this ? for I have not wandered, though I seem to have done so. " That our safe plan will be, as young and foolish children, first to learn the duties of daily life, the perfect ideal of humanity, from the Bible, and prayer, and God's earth ; and thus to learn and practise love. Then if we are required to combat error verbally, we will make cautious voyages on the book-ocean ; — reading one book at a time, and knowing it thoroughly ; not adhering to any party ; not caring of what creed our author is, because we shall read not to learn creeds and doctrines, but to learn men, to find out what it was in their hearts which made them take up those creeds and doctrines, that we may understand the patho- logy of the human soul, and be able to cure its diseases. This is the true spiritual mode of reading, and I see enough for us for the next year or two in three books — Maurice, Kant, St. Augustine. I will know the heart of that St. Augustine. How he came to be at once so right and so wrong, so far-sighted and so blind. And I must have better rules of pure reasoning than I have at present, so Kant must be read But I wish to read hardly anything but the Bible, for some time to come ; for till wc have felt all the ties of humanity, we shall be unfit to judge of much that we must look at, both in God's work, and God's earth, and men's foncies " CHAPTER VI. 1844 — 1847. Aged 25 28. Marriage— Curacy of Pimperne— Salisbury Cathedral — A Chalk Forest — Carlyle's Works — Wordsworth's Excursion — State ok the Poor —Rectory of Eversley— Correspondence, 1 2 Schiller at Jena, a fcio months after his 7!iaiHage. "... Life is quite a dififerent thing by the side of a beloved wife, tlian so forsaken and alone, even in summer. 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. What a life I am leading here! I look ■with a glad mind around me ; my heart finds a perennial contentment without it ; my spirit so line, so refreshing a nourishment. My existence is settled in harmonious composure — not strained and impassioned, but peaceful and clear. I look to my future destiny with a cheerful heart ; now when standing at the wished-for goal, I wonder with myself, how it has all happened so far beyond my expectations. Fate has conquered the difficulties for me ; it has, I may say, forced me to the mark. From the future I expect everything ..." Thomas Carlyle, Life of Schilhr. CHAPTER VI. Early in 1 844 Charles Kingsley was married to Fanny, daugh- ter of Pascoe Grenfell and Georgiana St. Leger his wife. He had settled to take possession of the curacy of Pimpcrne, in Dorset- shire, in the following spring, but the living of Eversley falling vacant at that time, a strong effort was made by the parishioners to get the curate who had worked among them so indefatigably appointed rector. While the matter was pending, he went down into Dorsetshire for a few weeks alone to do the duty, staying either at Durweston Rectory or at Blandford, during which interval the following letters were written : — Salisbury, March 28, 1844. " I have been walking round the cathedral — oh ! such a cathe- dral ! Perfect unity, in extreme multiplicity. Sewell would glory in it, as an illustration of his favourite fancy. The first thing which strikes you in it (spiritually, I mean) is its severe and studied calm, even to ' primness ' — nothing luscious, very little or no variation. Then you begin to feel how one it is ; how the high slated roof and the double lancet windows, and the ranges of graduating lancet arches filling every gable, and the continued repetition of the same simple forms even in the buttresses and string courses, and corbel tables, and the extreme harsh angular simplicity of the mouldings— all are developments of one idea, and the idea so well expressing the tone of its date, the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries, I suppose, when the ' revival ' of the age of St. Francis, St. Dominic, and dear St. Elizabeth had formed itself, from the many private fancies of its great minds, into one clear dark system of stern, elegant, soul-crushing asceticism. And then from the centre of all this, that glorious spire rises— the work of a slightly later hand— too huge, I believe, for the rest of the cathedral, its weight having split and crushed its sui)porters. Fit emblem of the result of curbing systems. The moment tlie tower escapes above the 1 1 8 Charles Kings ley. level of the roof, it bursts into the wildest luxuriance, retaining the general character of the building below, but disguising it in a thousand fantastic excrescences — like the mind of man, crushed by human systems, and then suddenly asserting its own will in some burst of extravagance, yet unconsciously retaining the harsh and severe linea- ments of the school in which it had been bred. And then its self-willed fancies exhaust themselves, and it makes one final struggle upward, in a vast simple pyramid like that spire ; emblem of the return, the revulsion rather, to ' pure ' and naked spirituality. And when even that has dwindled to a point, it must end — if it would have either safety, or permanence, or shelter, or beauty — as that spire ends, /;/ t/ic Cross ! " Oh ! that cathedral is an emblem, unconscious to its builders, of the whole history of Popery from the twelfth century to the days when Luther preached once more Christ crucified for us ! — For ever above us, yet for ever among us. " That cathedral has one peculiar beauty. It rises sheer out of a smooth and large grass field, not struggling up among chimneys and party-walls, but with the grass growing to the foot of the plinth. Those blundering Iconoclasts have knocked the beautiful west front to pieces. I hope they meant well : I fear not. "■ It is lucky I took down my tackle, for I am promised a day's trout fishing to-morrow. Oh ! lucky me !" . . . . Salisbury, March 31, 1844. "... I spent a delightful day yesterday. Conceive my pleasure at finding myself in Bemerton, George Herbert's parish, and seeing his house and church, and fishing in the very meadows where he, and Dr. Donne, and Izaak Walton, may have fished before me. I killed several trout and a brace of grayling, about three quarters of a pound each — a fish quite new to me, smelling just like cucumbers. The dazzling chalk-wolds sleeping in the sun, the clear river rushing and boiling down in one ever-sliding sheet of transparent silver, the birds bursting into song, and mating and toying in every hedge-row — everything stirred with the gleam of God's eyes, when ' He reneweth the face of the earth !' I had many happy thoughts ; but I am very lonely. No time for more, as I am going to prayers in the cathedral." DuRWESTON Rectory, April i, 1S44. " Settled at Durweston, for the present. S. G. O. very clever and instructive. I am learning so much from him, and he seems to be doing great good. God grant I may be half as useful in my generation as he is ! Chalk Downs. 1 1 9 " Went to Pimpeme yesterday : did two duties, baptisms and churchings, there ; and wandered between churches where loc wandered in 1843. . . . Is it not glorious weather? The road from here to Pimperne, over the downs, is about three miles of the most beautiful turf and natural woodland, through Cranborne Chase. I never was before on a chalk forest. It is very peculiar, and most beautiful. I like it better than Devon and Welsh moorland — it is more simple, and yet not so severe — more tender in its soft greys and greens, yet quite as sublime m the vast unbroken curves and sweeps of the open downs. I cannot express myself. I should like to preach a sermon on chalk downs, and another on chalk streams. They are so purely beautiful. And here I am till my Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, sends for me to Eversley ! How merciful of Him to let me labour on where I ha\-e been already, instead of sending me away to some place I do not know. " I looked into and read much of ' Henry Martyn's Life' (East Indian missionary) last night. My mind is in a chaos about him. Sometimes one feels inclined to take him at his own word, and believe him, as he says, a mere hypochondriac : then the next moment he seems a saint. I cannot fathom it. Of this I am certain, that he is a much better man than I am. " The children here send a shower of loves. God grant that we may spend Easter together." Blandford, April 17, 1844. "... More and more I find that these* writings of Carlyle's do not lead to gloomy discontent — that theirs is not a dark but a bright view of life : in reality, more evil speaking against the age and its inhabitants is thundered from the pulpit daily, by both Evangelical and Tractarian, than Carlyle has been guilty of in all his works ; but he finds fault in tangible original language — they speak evil of every one except their own party, but in such conventional language that no ear is shocked by the oft-repeated formulae of * original sin ' and ' unconverted hearts,' and so on ; and the man who would be furious if Carlyle had classed him among the ' valets' bears with perfect equanimity the information of Mr. B •"■•■•■", that he is a 'vessel of wrath,' or of Dr. p***, that he has put himself beyond the pale of Christ's atonement by sin after baptism. Let us in all things take Dr. Johnson's golden rule : ' First clear your mind of cant ! ' " * " The Miscellanies," and " Tast and Present." I20 Charles Kings ley. April 19. " . . . Oh ! blissful future. Oh ! dreary present. Yet do not think I repine : this separation, though dreary, is not barren. Nothing need be barren to those who view all things in their real light, as links in the great chain of progression both for themselves and for the universe. To us all time should seem so full of life : every moment the grave and the father of unnumbered events and designs in heaven, and earth, and the mind of our God Himself — all things moving smoothly and surely, in spite of apparent checks and disappointments, towards the appointed end ! Oh, happy Eversley ! how we shall read, and learn, and work there ; how we shall find there that these few months of unrest have not been thrown away, that in them we shall have learnt what might have escaped us in the quiet routine of a parish, and yet which are wanted there — as weeds and waterflowers show themselves in the rapid eddies, while they are buried deep in the still reaches of the river. That I may return on Monday, is still my hope. On Friday I go to Pimpernc, do two services, and preach and give the Sacrament to two sick people. On Sunday the same, and then come back in the evening to help S. G. O." PlMPERNE, April 21, 1844. " The text I shall take for the next sermon Avill be, ' Christ — the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.' The mutability of all that is human, so much complained of: — " I St. Christ, the witness to us that our spiritual part and its aftcc- tions, our flesh too, and our very existence as a race, are, in spite of temporary changes, permanent and eternal. " 2nd. The witness to us that however earthly things may disappoint us by change, there is One changeless friend. The idea is but half worked out, but I will send you the sermon " I ha\e been reading Wordsworth's ' Excursion,' with many tears and prayers too. To me he is not only poet, but preacher and prophet of God's new and divine philosophy — a man raised up as a light in a dark time, and rewarded by an honoured age, for the simple faith in man and God with which he delivered his message ', whose real nobility is inde- pendent of rank, or conventionalities of language or manner, which is but the fashion of this world and passes away. " I am trying, in my way, to do good ; but Avhat is the^use of talking to hungry paupers about heaven ? ' Sir,' as my clerk said to me yesterday, ' there is a weight upon their hearts, and they care for no hope and no change, for they know they can be no worse off than they are.' And so they have no spirit to arise and go to their Father ! Those who lounge Rector of Eversley. 1 2 1 upon down beds, and throw away thousands at Crockford's and Almack's — they, the refined of this earth, have crushed it out of them. I have been very sad lately seeing this, and seeing, too, the horrid effects of that new Poor Law. You must be behind the scenes to see the truth, in places which the Malthus's and 's know nothing of" .... (After speaking of past sorrows, he adds) : " yet must not all be made perfect through suffering ? If the craft and subtlety of the devil and man, and all the misrule and ignorance of this age pressing it upon us, only serves to keep us in the path — to prevent self-will and extravagance, and compel us to exert self-help and find God-help — if it press upon us the know- ledge of ourselves and our fellow creatures and our God — why should we complain of it ? Are we not in all things more than conquerors, if we not only overcome the world, but plunder it of all that is good in it ; more than conquerors again, if we not only overcome the world, but improve the world ? Our field may be small, but it is a field : tillage is possible, a crop is possible — who can tell whither the wind may waft its seeds when the crop is ripe ? " S. G. O. is deep in statistics and abuses. Heaven knows, when there are so many abuses, we ought to thank a man who will hunt them out. I will never believe that a man has a real love for the good and beautiful, except he attacks the evil and the disgusting the moment he sees it ! Therefore you must make up your mind to see me, with God's help, a hunter out of abuses till the abuses cease — only till then. It is very easy to turn our eyes away from ugly sights, and so consider our- selves refined. The refined man to me is he who cannot rest in peace with a coal mine, or a factory, or a Dorsetshire peasant's house near him, in the state in which they are I am deep in ' The Perils of the Nation.'. ..." Chelsea, May, 1844, " Alas ! there is no news of Eversley ; nor will be till God chooses. In the mean time have we not eacli other, and God's glorious earth, and God's love, past, present, and future ; all things are ours, and we are Christ's and Christ is God's. . . . And what more can we want ? . . . . I have put it all into God's hands. Be strong and He shall comfort thy heart, and put thou thy trust in the Lord " Sl'NDAY NUWIT. " You know, I suppose, all that I can tell you. I am to see Sir John Cope at Arthur's Club House, to-morrow afternoon, and, at all e\ents, shall return to you Monday, perhaps rector of Eversley! Forgive this short letter, as I am worn out ; but a bright future opens. Blessed be God " 122 Charles Kings ley Monday. '' All is settled at last. Sir John has given me the living, and is going to see the Bishop to-day, and I am to go down to Eversley to- morrow. He wishes me to settle there as soon as possible. God never fails those who put their trust in Him " "... The presentation is to be ready in a few days. I am tlien to be instituted here in town, and then, please God, we shall get to Eversley on Friday or Saturday. The packing, van, &€., and some little comforts before we take possession, I have settled. Con- gratulations, as you may suppose, are plentiful .... and I had the pleasure of bringing the news myself to Eversley I go to the Bishop of Winchester to-moirow. I took the whole duty at St. George's Hospital yesterday morning, and preached a charity sermon at St. Luke's in the afternoon, and at the old church in the evening ; and am very tired, body and mind My brain has been in such a whirl that I have had no time for deep thoughts. I can understand, by the events of the last few days, how the minds of men of business, at the xQxy moment they are wielding the vastest commercial or physical power, may yet be degraded and superficial. One seems to do so much in ' business,' and yet with how little fruit : 7oe busde, and God works. That glorious, silent Providence — such a contrast to physical power, with its blast furnaces and roaring steam engines ! " Farewell till to-morrow " He now settled as rector, at Eversley, with his wife ; and life flowed on peacefully, notwithstanding the anxieties of a sorely neglected parish, and the expenses of an old house which had not been repaired for more than a hundred years. Owing to the circumstances under which the living fell vacant, the in- coming tenant got no dilapidation-money, and had arrears of Poor's Rates and the pay of the curate to meet. The house itself was damp and unwholesome, surrounded with ponds which overflowed with every heavy rain, and flooded not only the garden and stables, but all the rooms on the ground floor, keep- ing up master and servants sometimes all night, baling out the water in buckets for hours together ; and drainage works had to be done before it was habitable. From these causes, and from the charities falling almost entirely on the incumbent, the living, though a good one, was for years unrcmunerativc ; but the young rector, happy in his home and his work, met all difli- Parish Work. 12 cultics bravely ; and gradually in the course of years, the land was drained ; the ponds Avhich ran through the garden and stood above the level of the dwelling rooms were filled up, and though the house was never healthy, it was habitable. New clubs for the poor, shoe club, toal club, maternal society, a loan fund and lending library, were established one after another. An intelligent young parishioner, who is still school- master, was sent by the rector to the Winchester Training College ; an adult school was held in the rectory three nights a week for all the winter months ; a Sunday school met there every Sunday morning and afternoon ; and weekly cottage lec- tures were established in all the out-lying districts for the old and feeble. The fact of there being no school-house had a good effect in drawing the people within the humanizing influences of the rectory, which was always open to them, and will ever be associated in the minds of young and old of this generation at Eversley, with the kind and courteous sympathy and the living teaching which they all got from their rector. At the beginning of his ministry there was not a grown-up man or woman among the labouring class who could read or write — for as boys and girls they had all been glad to escape early to field work from the parish clerk's little stifling room, ten feet square, where cobbling shoes, teaching, and caning went on together. As to religious instruction, they had had none. The church was nearly empty before the new curate came in 1842. The farmers' sheep, when pasture was scarce, were turned into the neglected churchyard. Holy Communion was celebrated only three times a year ; the communicants were few ; the alms were collected in an old wooden saucer. A cracked kitchen basin inside the font held the water for' Holy 'Baptism. At the atew, which was covered by a moth-eaten cloth, stood one old broken chair ; and so averse were the parish authorities to any change that when the new rector made a proposal for monthly communions, it was only accepted on his promising himself to supply the wine for the celebration, the churchwardens refusing to provide except for the three great festivals. This he continued to do till a few years since, when Sir William Cope 124 Charles Kingsley. undertook the office of rector's churchwarden, and at once put this matter on a right foothig. The evil results of such years of neglect could only be conquered by incessant labour, and the young rector's whole energies were devoted to the parish. lie had to redeem it from barbarism : but it was a gentle barbarism, for the people, though not intelligently responsive, were a kindly people, civil and grateful for notice, and as yet wholly uninjured by indiscriminate almsgiving. He was daily with them in their cottages, and made a point of talking to the men and boys at their field work, till he was personally intimate with every soul in the parish, from the women at their wash-tubs, to the babies in the cradle, for whom he always had a loving word or look. Nothing escaped his eye. That hunger for knowledge on every subject, Avhich cha- racterised him through life, and made him ready to learn from every labouring man what he could tell him of his own farm work or the traditions of the place, had put him when he was curate on an easy human footing with the parishioners and was one secret of his influence ; so that before the state of his health obliged him, in 1848, to take a curate, he had got the parish thoroughl)- in hand. It was from his regular house to house visiting in the week, still more than his church services, that he acquired his power. If a man or woman were suffering or dying, he would go to them five and six times a day — and night as well as day — for his own heart's sake as well as for their soul's sake. Such visiting was very rare in those days. For years he seldom dined out ; never during the winter months, when the adult school and the cottage readings took up six evenings in the week ; and he seldom left the parish except for a few days at a time to take his family to the sea-side, which occurred the more frequently from the constant illness produced by the damp rectory; but he was never easy away from his work. His only relaxation was a few hours' fishing in some stream close by. He never took a gun in hand, because from the poaching tastes of his people he felt it might bring him into unpleasant collision with them, and for this reason he never wished to be made a magistrate, lest he should have to sit on First Confirmation, 125 the bench in judgment on his parishioners. He could not afford to hunt, and when in after years he took a gallop now and then to refresh himself, and to see his friends in the hunting-field, where he was always welcome, it was on some old horse which he had picked up cheap for parson's Avork. " Another old screw, Mr. Kingsley," was said to him often by middle-class men, who Avere well aware that he could ride, and that he knew a good horse A\hen he saw it. They perhaps respected him all the more for his self-denial. At this time there Avere kennels in the parish ; the fox-hounds {now known as Mr. Garth's) were kept at Bramshill, Sir John Cope being Master. His stablemen were a very respectable set of men, and most regular at church ; and the rector, though he could not afford to ride, had always a friendly word with the huntsman and whips; his love of horses and dogs and knowledge of sport made an intimacy between them, and he soon won their respect and affection. Of this they gave early proof, for when the first confirmation after his induction was given out in church, and he invited all who wished to be confirmed to come down to the rectory for weekly instruction, the stud groom, a respectable man of five-and-thirty, was among the first to come, bringing a message from the whips and stablemen to say they had all been confirmed once, but if Mr. Kingsley wished it, they would all be happy to come again ! It had hitherto been the custom in Eversley and the neigh- bouring parishes to let the confirmation candidates get ov^cr as they could to some distant church, where the catechumens of four or five parishes assembled to meet the bishop. Conse- quently the public-houses were unusually full on confirmation- day, which often ended In a mere drunken holiday for boys and girls, who had many miles to walk, and had neither superin- tendence nor refreshment by the way provided for them. When he became rector, matters were arranged very differently for the Eversley people. Each candidate was prepared separately as well as in class, for six weeks beforehand, and for the six Sundays previous to the confirmation, the catechism, creeds, and office of confirmation explained publicly. On the day itself the young people assembled early for refreshment at the rectory, whence they started in two vans for Heckfield church. He himself 126 Charles Kingsley. went with the boys, and his wife or some trustworthy person with the girls, and never lost sight of them till they returned, the girls to their homes, the boys and young men, some of them married men, who, from long years of neglect, had never been confirmed, to the rectory, where a good dinner awaited them, and they spent the evening in wandering over the glebe, or looking at curiosities and picture-books indoors, ending with a few words on their duty. So henceforth the solemn day was always asso- ciated with pleasant thoughts and an innocent holiday, which made the young people more inclined to come to him the week following to be prepared for Holy Communion. The appearance and manner of the Eversley catechumens were often remarked on — the quiet dresses of the girls, and the neat caps provided for them. These seem trifling matters to dwell on in days when such things are done decently and in order in all parishes : but thirty-two years ago Eversley set the example on Confirmation as well as on many other days. His preaching was always remarkable. The only fault which Bishop Sumner found with the sermons he took up to show him when he went to Farnham for his Priest's Ordination, was that they were too colloquial : but it was this very peculiarity which arrested and attracted his hearers, and helped to fill a very empty church. His original mind and common sense alike revolted from the use of an unmeaning phraseology, and as all the facts of life were sacred to him, he was unfettered as to subject-matter and modes of expression. " The great difference," he said, in writing to his wife, *' which strikes me between St. Augustine and the divinity of our day, is his Faith. I mean the fulness and completeness of his belief, that every object and circumstance has a spiritual import, a direct relation to God's will and providence, and that in this import alone should the Christian look at anything. A faith like this, which explains all heaven and earth to a man, is infinitely above that half-faith of our present systems, which makes religion a thing apart, explains by it only a few phenomena of man's existence (whose number is limited by custom so closely, that thousands of subjects are considered unfit for the pulpit) ; and leaves the rest of the universe a terra iucognita to the religious thinker, to be travelled only by the Mammonite and the physical philosopher." Acquaintance zoith Mr. JMaurice. 127 During the summer of 1844 he made acquaintance with j\Ir. Maurice, to whose writings he owed so much ; and the ac- quaintance soon strengthened into a deep and enduring friend- ship. In the following letter he first ventured to consult him on his difficulties. ''My dear Sir, " I must apologise for addressing one so much my superior, and so slightly acquainted with me, but where shall the young priest go for advice, but to the elder prophet ? To your works I am indebted for the foundation of any coherent view of the word of God, the meaning of the Church of England, and the spiritual phenomena of the present and past ages. And as through your thoughts God's spirit has given me catholicity, to whom therefore can I better go for details on any of these points ? " Two things are very troublesome to me at present. The want of any philosophical method of reading the Scriptures, without seeing in them merely proofs of human systems \ and the great prevalence of the Baptist form of dissent in my parish. The latter I find myself unable to cope with, founded as it is on supra-lapsarian Calvinistic dogmas, which have been received into the heart as the deepest counsels of God. " I therefore beg the favour of your advice upon these two subjects, and feeling that much may be said that would not be written, I must beg, if I am not guilty of too great an intrusion, that you would grant me an interview with you in London. " I know that the request is informal according to the ways of the world, but I have faith enough in you to be sure that you will take the request for what it is, an earnest struggle to get wisdom at all risks from any quarter where it may be found." .... The reply was as follows, and is given by the kind permission of Mr. Maurice's executors. REV. F. D. MAURICE TO REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY, July 22, 1844. ''. . . I should be sorry not to give you the experience of any blunders I may have committed in past time, with such experience as has been the fruit of them, and it is sometimes easier to recover the different fragments of this experience, and to piece them together in writing than in speaking. 128 Charles Kings ley. " With respect to the study of the Scriptures, my own great error has been that I have formed and abandoned so many plans, any one of which, honestly pursued, miglit have led to good results. I fancy this is a pre\alent temptation, tliough I ha^•e yielded to it and suffered from it more than any of my acquaintances. As I would turn diseases to commodity, or, at least, as God is sometimes mercifully pleased to do this for us, I think I may say that all the deplorable waste of time which these changes have occasioned, has brought with it this compensation, that I have been solemnly and inwardly impressed with the truth, that the Bible, as a means of attaining to the knowledge of the living God, is precious beyond all expression or conception ; when made a substi- tute for that knowledge, may become a greater deadener to the human spirit than all other books. "The method of the Bible itself, and the means of its being over- looked, I think become more and more clear to us, as we keep this consideration before us. If it be a human history, containing a gradual discovery of God, which discovery awakens the very faculties and apprehensions which are to receive it, the treatment of it as a collection of notions, either about the invisible world or our own duty, must entirely mislead us in all our studies ; and whether we rate it high or low, whether we extol it as the one rule of faith, maintain its authority to be concurrent with that of Church tradition, or look upon it merely as a set of fragments containing the speculations of a certain nation about religious questions, the result will be much the same. In each case the end of the book will be lost, and therefore all the steps to that end will be confused and incomprehensible. But if once the teachers in our theological schools would have courage to proclaim theology to be the knowledge of God, and not the teaching of a religion, I am satisfied that the scientific character of the Bible could be brought out as conspicuously as its practical character, one being seen to be in- volved in the other. Then it would not be necessary to assert for theology its place as the scientia sciaitianini, or to bid others fall into their places in connection with it, and subordination to it ; nor would it be necessary to be perpetually proclaiming church authority in favour of such and such doctrines. The truths concerning God would be felt so essential to the elucidation of those concerning man and nature, the relations of one to the other would be so evident, there would be such a life infused into the features of human knowledge, and such a beau- tiful order and unity in the whole of it, that the opposition to them would be recognised as proceeding just as much from prejudice and ignorance, sure to disappear whenever there were not moral causes to sustain them, as the opposition to gravitation or any of the most Letter from Rev. F. D. Maurice. 129 acknowledged physical or mathematical princi])les. I do not mean tliat this effect would follow suddenly, or that the actual impediments to the gospel from human pride and wickedness would be less felt. I sup- ])Ose they would be more felt after it had followed. But we should not then be obliged to acknowledge that much of the resistance to the most l)recious i)rinciples may actually proceed from a love to some others, or even to those same ; we should not hear such a din of voices crying out for this thing and that ; and nearly forgetting God in their love for abstractions ; we should not see so much violent straining and per- verting of texts to serve a purpose j we should have much less idolatry of the Bible, and m%ch more reverence for it. And the hard-working clergy of our parishes, having been trained in such a school before they entered upon practical duty, would feel a clearness in their minds, a readiness for occasions, a power of bringing their studies to bear upon life, instead of being obliged, as is now so much the case, either to shut their eyes against any new light, or else to destroy and reconstruct their system each time that any is vouchsafed to them. But since our uni- versities afford us no teaching of this kind at present, we must try to profit by the helps which we have. Our actual work is, I think, the best of these helps. It forces us, whether we will or no, out of the routine of systems, and leads us to seek for something in scripture which is altogether unlike them. And though I would strongly urge every one not to lose sight of the idea of that system of which I have spoken, I would by no means recommend any one who was not working as a professed theologian in the schools, to spend his time in contriving how he may adjust his own reading to it. The use of it to him will be far greater if he recollects that it exists when he is reading a single book, or chapter, or text, than if he determines doggedly to follow out the traces of it from Genesis to Revelation. The subject of his studies, I should think, must be always best determined by the wants of his parish. In preaching, I have always found it best to follow the order of the services, taking my subject from the epistle, gosi)el, collect, or first lesson, and I think if we read on a plan, we can hardly find a much better one. The study of words also is, I think, of immense profit, especially of families of words, as e.g., StKmoo), wo-if, ea/in, octvvt], through an epistle, or through many. Schmidt's ' Goncordance' is worth much more, it seems to me, than Schleusner's or Bretschneiders Lexicons; though I do not mean to say they are of no value. I think, too, that it is desir- able, cautiously and deliberately to question ourselves about the leading idea of any Epistle ; I say cautiously and deliberately, because the mere taking up with customary formulas on the subject, such as that the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians are about justification, will, I VOL. I. K 130 Charles Kingsley. am satisfied, lead us astray. These Epistles are, I am convinced, strikingly different in their object and character. With respect to the Romans, the great mischief is, that commentators generally start from the third chapter, looking upon the first and second as merely an introduction or prologue, Avhereas any simple reader must perceive that St. Paul enters at once on his subject, and that it is really the (pavlpcoais Tr]s bLKaioavvrjs Tov dtov, and not an abstract theory of justification. " . . . It is difficult to speak on the second point in your letter — the Baptists in your parish — without knowing how far they are, or are not, practically Antinomian. In many places they are, and a very vulgar brutal sect of Antinomians. Mr. Hall, who was a Baptist, describes such a class of men as existing in his body, and attacks them with a fury which proves that they must have acquired great influence, and have been very numerous in his life-time. In that case I should not be inclined to argue with them against their ultra-Calvinism, or to show them how it strengthens them in their evil courses ; I would rather admit what they say when they refer man's goodness and conversion to the will of God, and press the assertion of the apostle ' This is the will of God, even your sanctification,' that all the purposes of God's decrees must be to make men righteous as He is, and that if the decrees to which they appeal do not produce this result, they are not His, but the devil's. And since their complaint of infant baptism must be on the ground that the children have yet given no sign of faith in God, you may, without any personality, or any direct allusion to themselves, ask how far the facts warrant us in expecting any better result from the mature conscious baptism. Supposing, however, they should be honest, earnest men, however outrageous may be their statements, I should be disposed rather to take advantage of their doctrine, than to repudiate it. ' You say tliat man's fall, and all other events, were parts of a great scheme of God. "Well ! I grant you that the fall did not in the least frustrate the scheme of God. I grant you that it is very wrong to speak as if He had merely devised a scheme as a remedy for the consequences of the fall. Christ was before all things, and by Him all things consist. In Him He created man, and His incarnation, though it came later than the fall, was really in God's purpose before it. What we preach is, that men, being endued with that flesh and blood which Christ took, are to be looked upon as objects of God's love, and that they are to be accused of setting at nought that love. We do not set aside election ; our baptism is the witness for it. By it we refer all things to God ; we testify that He chooses Avithout reference to their previous merits or holiness, and that all gifts and graces come from Him. Of course such a statement as this will be varied according to the capacities of the Patience and Faith. i.^.i auditor, and the nature of his objections ; but it is t])e kind of language I should use, and that not from any calculation as to the effects it might produce, but from believing it to be the truest and honestest. In supra- lapsarian Calvinism, there lies a deep recognition of God as a living being, an originating will, which the feeble, frittering phrases of Armi- nianism can provide no substitute for. The great misery of the Cal- vinist is, his constant substitution of the idea of sovereignty for that of righteousness, which is the one always brought before us in Scripture. I would seek to deliver him from that evil, but as far as possible keeping entire and unhurt that which he has already." .... We now return to his own letters. TO A FRIEND IN GREAT ANXIETY. EvERSLEY Rectory, August l, 1844. '' . . . Still there is always some way of escape to be found, if a man goes to the right place to look for it. And if not of escape, still of com- pensation. I speak that which I know, for twelve months ago I was hopeless, separated from unable to correspond with her even, burdened with difficulties, no hope of a living .... and yet through all filled with the most extraordinary conviction that my deliverance was at hand, and coming I knew not whence or how — at a certain time ; at which certain time it did come, from a quarter the most unexpected, and since then in spite of severe trials within and Avithout, blessing has been added to blessing. A few months ago the rector of Eversley absconded and resigned his living, to which I to my utter astonishment Avas presented for life ! Of my own comfort I will not talk. Of the path by which I attained it I will. It was simply by not struggling, doing my work vigorously (or trying to do it) where God had put me, and believ- ing firmly that His promises had a real, not a mere metaphorical mean- ing, and that the x., xxvii., xxxiv., xxxvii., cvii., cxii., cxxiii., cxxvi. — cxlvi. Psalms and similar, are as practically true — carnally true, if you will, for us as they were for the Jews of old. I know that I am right. I know that God is not only the God of our spirits, but of our bodies — of our married happiness — of our purses— of our least amusements — and that the faithlessness of this day, and the Manichseism of this day, as of all ages, has been what prevents men from accepting God's promises in their literal sense, with simple childish faith, but drives them to spiritua- lize them away — i.e. make them mere metaphors, which are after all next door to lies. " My dear friend, I may incur the blame of intruding advice where unnecessary, but I do not dare be silent. I have much more, much 132 CJmrles Kings ley. deeper things to talk to you of. I see dimly, yet surely, in your present discontent, the germ of much good — of wider views, perhaps of more satisfying tastes. Believe me, it is a true saying, and not a melancholy one, that through much tribulation most men (not all, I believe) must enter into the Kingdom of God. Where (iod has made such a mind and heart as yours, He will not let it stay on the threshold of Christianity ; He will sicken you with all the beauties of her outer courts ; He will lead you on, scourge you, if it be necessary, into the very adyta, then up to the highest holiest pinnacle of that church, from whence alone we can see man's workings far below, and look across the far ocean towards the happy isles, where dwell the heroes of the earth, at the feet of their hero-king and Saviour. " If you would be among them ; if you would not be a mere laissez- faire perpetuator of the decaying, much less a restless reviver of the obsolete, you must walk in the path which they have trodden. You must get at the ' open secret ' ' Quid su?nus et quare viduri gignimur, which so few, even among the highest religionists now know. You must get to see through the accidents, the customs, the dilettantisms, fair and foul, which overcrust humanity, and look at man and man's destiny, as God constituted it. You must leave self — forget self— you must discip- line self till she lays down, and ceases clamouring for a vote in the parliament of men. You must throw off the proud system-seeking intel- lect which haunts us all, and tries to round off heaven and earth with a fresh theory every year. You must cast off the help of man, and con- struct a religion for yourself from the bible ; or if you very wisely think this, as I do, a sheer impossibility, you must use the help of all men, all schools, all sects, all ages, all histories — enter into all, sympathise with all — see God's Spirit working variously, yet surely in all. And then you will begin to find what the peace is, which passeth all understanding. You will be able to float down the stream of time, contented to fulfil your destiny, satisfied with the particular ripple on which God has cast your lot, and sure that some day all riddles shall be unfolded, all wrongs set right, and God justified, in every movement of this seeming chaos of life ! I say — this you must do — because I do not think your mind can find peace in doing less. " The dose of opium which will put the baby to sleep will only excite and irritate the stronger passions of the man ! Therefore go on to the perfection, which tribulation always indicates as God's destiny for a man, who has not fallen impenitently into habitual sin " Let me hear from you, and take the earliest opportunity of intro- ducing you to my dear wife, who returns most cordially the kind wishes which you sent to her." On Secession to Ro7ne. 133 TO REV. R. COWLEY TOWLES. E^•ERSLEY Rectory, Jidy, 1844. "... A working man writeth not — is a fact, if not a right and lawful truth. And as I am a very working man with 750 sheep in the wilder- ness, many of whom will not hear my voice, but continue stubbornly, some with no shepherd at all, others with those 'whose screeching tones grate on their scrannel pipes of ragged straw;' the hungry sheep mean- while looking up, foodless to the respective dungliills of particular and general baptist communions, whereon their respective hirelings sit muck enthroned, but — hollo — stop — where am I ? What I mean is, that utterly unable hitherto to find time and houseroom for you my friend, I can now find both, and also mirabilc dictii I time to write a letter of pleasure. " Can you come to see us ? Name your own time and come. ^Ve can keep you comfortably enough after the fashion of George Herbertian parsonages, and though alas ! not quite as holy as Bemerton, are at least trying to be as busy. You will have the pleasure too of contem- plating your own exquisite Raffaelle, suspended over our chimney-piece, the admired of all beholders You will find your old friend a little humanized, I hope, but still with a strong predilection for the gaiidia ri/ris, thick shoes, and a wood axe " TO THE SAME. EvERSLEV, Dccemt'cr ^i, 1S44. '■' . . . I have deeper matters to inquire of Is it true that >^- * * * has disappeared and gone over to Romanism, and that others have gone with him ? Such is the report ; most likely as false as Dame Rumour's other bantlings, but it would be a satisfaction to know if the disease has reached its crisis. For myself, if it be true, I sincerely congratulate all parties on it, and Mr. N. rises immeasurably in my opinion — as every man must do, who, however wrong, yet feeling himself not of us, goes out from us. And that his doctrines are identical with Popery, is a conclusion which gives one much pain (for they seemed at first to hold out a hope of deliverance to our clergy from their present narrow and divided tone), but still one to which any one who has read Popish books, and Mr. * "■ ''-'s and Dr. '^ * "'s works side by side cannot but arrive at. Who is our prophet ? — who ? And if a nation cannot answer that— woe to it ! . . . ." The news of his brother Lieut. Kingsley's death from fever in 134 Charles Kingsley. Torres Straits, on board H.M.S. " Royalist," now reached Eng- land, and he writes to his wife from Chelsea, February iG, 1845. " . . . It is sad — very sad — but what is to be said ? I saw him twice last night in two different dreams — strong and well — and so much grown — and I kissed him and wept over him — and woke to the ever- lasting No ! " As far as externals go, it has been very sad. The sailors say commonly that there is but a sheet of paper between Torres Straits and Hell. And there he lay, and the wretched crew, in the little brig, roast- ing and pining, day after day — never heard of, or hearing of living soul for a year and a half The commander died — half the crew died — and so they died and died on, till in May no officer was left but Gerald, and on the 17th of September he died too, and so faded away, and we shall never see him more — for ever ? God that saved me knows. Then one Parkinson, the boatswain, had to promote himself to keep the pendant flying, all the officers being dead, and in despair left his post and so brought the brig home to Singapore, with great difficulty, leaking, with her mast sprung — her crew half dead — a doomed vessel. O God, Thou alone knowest the long bitter withering baptism of fire, wherewith the poor boy was baptized, day and night alone with his own soul. And yet Thou wert right — as ever — perhaps there was no way but that to bring him to look himself in the face, and know that life was a reality, and not a game ! And who dare say that in those weary, weary months of hope deferred, the heart eating at itself, did not gnaw through the crust of vanities (not of so very long growth either) and the living water which he did drink in his childhood find vent and bubble up ! Why not — seeing that God is love ? . . . . "The plot is thickening with the poor Church of England. All parties are in confused and angry murmur at they know not what — every one is frightened " Early in 1845 Dean Wood, of the Collegiate Church of Middleham, having two vacant stalls to dispose of, offered one to his son, the Rev. Peter Wood, now Rector of Copford, and the other to Charles Kingsley, his son's old college friend. The canonries were honorary, and had no duties connected with them, but being of historic interest, the two friends accepted the honour, and went down together to be inducted, to the stalls of St. Anthony and St, George. The deanery was abolished in Canonry of Middleham. I35 1856, on the death of Dean Wood. This was his first visit to Yorkshire, a county attractive to him, from its people as much as from its scenery. He writes home. Middleham, May i8, 1S45. '' . . . At the station I met the Dean and Peter, and went down with them. After a confused dog-sleep night, the grey morning broke in on the country beyond Derby — of that peculiar furrowed cast which marks the beds above the coal, hke the scenery between Bristol and Bath, only the hills not so high — woods all dewy green — cattle sleeping in the rich meadows, every little glen tenanted by its bright rivulet, choked and hidden by deep wooded banks. At Chesterfield they were quarrying for coal from the side of the railway cutting. Thence to York, and from York to Northallerton, a long sweep of low, rolling country, with such a soil, such crops, and such farming ! I never saw such fertility before — and this reaches to Middleham, where the scene changes, high hills spring up, deep gorges empty themselves into the plain, and Wensleydale lies spread out like a loving mother, bearing in her bosom little bright villages, and emerald pastures, until she turns the promon- tory of Penhill, and wanders up towards the lakes, bearing with her the Kendal mail, and two tortured horses, for whicli the knacker's yard cries, indignant. " I am staying at the inn, as the Dean's guest— so he willed it. The hospitalities seem perpetual. We had a great dinner last night, and go out to fish and dine to-morrow with Squire the greatest worthy I have for some time seen ; a perfect specimen of an unsophisticated Yorkshire squire. " They tell me here I must stay over next Sunday and read myself in, or that my institution will be void. Sub-dean Athill and Squire Topham have taken possession of me and I am to see everything " Deanery, Middleham, May 22, 1S45. "... Peter and I have just agreed to bring our respective wives up liere some summer or many summers. AVhat a delight it would be to take you up Coverdale just half a mile off at the back of the town. You know those lovely river scenes of Creswick's ; they are exact like- nesses of little Cover in his deep wooded glen with his yellow rocks, and bright white stones, and brown water clearer than crystal. As for fishing, I am a clod — never did I see or hear of such tackle as these men use — finer than our finest. Squire Topham considers my tackle as only fit to hold cart-horses. Altogether I shall see some lovely 1^6 Charles King sky. scenery, as the sub-dean is going to drive me up Wensleydale and to Bolton Castle, and everywhere. This is quite a racing _town — eighty horses standing here, jockeys and grooms crowding the streets, and I hear they are the most respectable and religious set, and many of them regular communicants ! Little old Lye, the celebrated jockey, was at church yesterday, and I never saw a man attend to the service with more devotion. I quite loved the little creature. The scenery is lovely. I saw two views yesterday, whose extent and magnificence surpassed every- thing I had fancied. To-day I go down the Ure, to-morrow to see Richmond Castle, the next up the Cover, and Saturday to Bolton Castle, famed for having been Mary Queen of Scots' prison, and to ' Aysgaek force,' — a force, being in plain English, a waterfall. Leyburn Scar, a. magnificent terrace of rock, rising above the valley through a 'talus' of wood, I sav^ yesterday, and have brought you a rare little flower therefrom. On it that evil woman was taken, escaping from Bolton Castle, and brought back again. I will bring you flowers from all parts, and what souvenirs I can, of thoughts — but there has been so much bustle, and robing and unrobing and so on, that I am quite tired and want a little rest of mind." MlDDLEHAM, May 22, 1845. " I send you some flowers, gathered yesterday from the ruins of Jervaulx Abbey, dismantled by connivance of Henry VIII. The forget-me-not is from the high altar, the saxifrage from the refectory. I have got a few other flowers also, which I will bring home ; one rare one among them from Leyburn Scar. To-day I go up the lovely Cover, to fish and dream of you Really everyone's kindness here is extreme after the stift' South. The mere meeting one, is sufficient to cause an invitation to stay ; parties of pleasure, gifts of flies and tackle (every- one fishes and hunts), and dinners and teas and cigars inexhaustible. I am deep in North country farming, too ; but such land ! The richest spot, it is said, in all England is this beautiful oasis in the mountains. Happy souls, if they knew their own happiness ; but there are so many feuds and old grudges, that it saddens one. Kiss baby for me " The rest of the year was spent quietly at Eversley in parish work and sermon writing : but the state of parties in Church and State, especially the former, lay heavy on his heart, and made him very anxious to join or start some periodical in which the young men of the day could find a vehicle for free expression of their opinions. The 'Oxford and Cambridge Review' was then State of the Church, 137 in existence, and it was proposed to make that the vehicle, and if not, to start a new one. On all these points Mr. Maurice was consulted, though he would not join. His first letter from Mr. J. A. Froude, soon to become his dear friend, and eventually his brother-in-law, dates from this time. TO THE REV. R. COWLEY TO WEES. Chelsea, December ii, 1S45. "About the 'Oxford and Cambridge Review.'— Froude seems to dread any fresh start, .... and I shall chew the cud and try to find out my own way a little longer before I begin trying to lead others. " God help us all! for sucli a distempered tangled juncture must end in the cutting of the Clordian knot, by the higher or lower powers ; and as the higher have fairly denied their cutting ability and have given it up, perhaps the lower may try their hands at it. I would, if I were hovering between nine shillings a week and the workhouse, as the sum of all attainabilities this side of heaven. God help us all ! I say again; for there is no counsel to be got anywhere from man, and as for God's book, men have made it mean anything and nothing, with their com- menting and squabbling, and doctrine picking, till one asks wid^ Pilate, ' What is truth ? ' Well, at all events, God knows, and Christ the King knows, and so all must go right at last, but in the meantime ? " I am just now a sort of religious Shelley, an Ishmael of catholicity, a John the Baptist, minus his spirit and power, alas ! bemoaning myself in the wilderness. Were I to stop praying, and remembering my own sins daily, I could become a Democritus Junior, and sitting upon the bench of contemplation, make the world my cock-pit, wherein main after main of cocklets— the ' shell,' alas ! scarce ' off their heads,' come forth to slay and be slain, mutually, for no quarrel, except ' thou-cock art not me-cock, therefore fight ! ' But I had as soon be the devil as old Lucretius, to sit with him in the ' Sapientum templa serena, despicere unde queas alios, et cernere passim errantes.' One must feel for one's fellows— so much better, two out of three of them, than one's self, though they will fill themselves with the east wind, and be proportionably dyspeptic and sulky. " Nobody trusts nobody. The clergy are split up into innumerable parties, principally nomadic. Every one afraid to speak. Every one unwilling to listen to his neighbour ; and in the meantime vast sums are spent, and vast work undertaken, and yet nobody is content. Everybody swears we are going backward. Everybody swears it is not his fault, but the Evangelicals, or the Puseyites, or the Papists, or 13S Charles Kings ley. the ministry ; or everybody, in short, who does not agree with him. Pardon this jeremiad, but I 'am an owl in the desert, and it is too sad to see a huge and busy body of clergy, utterly unable to gain the confidence or spiritual guidance of the nation, and yet never honestly taking the blame each man upon himself, and saying, ' I, not ye have sinned.' " Pardon, again, this threnodia, but I am sick of matters, and do earnestly wish for some one to whom to pour out my heart. The prin- ciples which the great kings and bishops of the middle ages, and our reformers of the i6th century felt to he the foundation of a Church and nation, are now set at nought equally by those who pretend to worship the middle ages, and those who swear by the reformers. And Popery and Puritanism seem to be fighting their 1 attle over again in England, on the foul middle ground of mammonite infidelity. They are re -appearing in weaker and less sincere forms, but does that indicate the approach of their individual death, or our general decay ? He who will tell me this shall be my prophet ; till then I must be my own "... My game is gradually opening before me, and my ideas getting developed, and ' fixed,' as the Germans would say. But, alas ! as Hare has it, is not in one sense ' every man a liar?' false to his own idea again and again, even if, which is rare now-a-days, we have one? " You cannot think how your letter pleased me ; for sure I am, that blessed are those, as the poet of all human poets sings, who going through the vale of misery use it for a well ! . . . . *' What times we live in ! I sometimes long for a St. Francis, with a third order of Minors, to lay hold of one's will, soul, and body, and coax, threaten, scourge one along some definite path of doctrine and labour. The latter I have, thank God, but for doctrines ! Verily, in England, doctrines, as Carlyle says of customs in France in '93, are ' a world gone entirely to chaos, and all things jumbling themselves mutually to try what will swim ! ' which, alas ! often happens to be the lightest, and not the worthiest. Yet still, as ever, God's voice is heard through the roar, * He that doeth my will shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God.' Were it not for that text I think I should sometimes sit down 'astonished,' and pray to die and get it all cleared up. Oh, Salt Asphaltic lake of Polemics ; Oh, teeming tropic sea of Eros ! of love of man as man, of marriage, and lessons which the hearth and the home alone can teach — Heaven's glories, the face of Christ our Lord, ever mirrored in their pure Eden depths ! and oh, foolish heart of mine, which will try and try to think and understand, instead of A Swarm of Bees. 139 doing and loving ! I see more and more, ' He that will be great, must be least.' He that will be the miracle worker must first become like a little child, the only miracle seer left in these materialist days ! " But I am ranting, and you are with * * * *, and want no long letters. I\Iay God bless you and her, and admit you in His good time into the inner temple of the Garden of Eden, which surely exists still on earth, for those who have faith and purity enough to believe in their own high honours." SiiAXKLiN", Isle of Wight, 2Iay, 1S46. "... I received your letter yesterday here, where I have come with my two beloved, for change of air after the influenza As for the ' Review,' I cannot but feel obliged to your friends for the high compliment of asking me to contribute But first shall I be allowed to put my own name to what I write ? . . . . Next, shall I be allowed liberty of speech, for without that I had rather preserve the still higher liberty of silence I am anxious to join, as I have for some time wished to speak my mind on the present state of our young men, which is to me more deplorable than even in Athens under the Sophists. Dear St. Elizabeth is now becoming too far de- veloped to cut her in pieces, and serve her up in a magazine : she shall appear as a poem, if I w^ait seven years to finish her. TO HIS WIFE. EVERSLEV, May, 1846. "... I got home at four this morning after a delicious walk — a poem in itself. I never saw such a sight before as the mists on the heath and valleys, and never knew what a real bird-chorus was. I am lonely enough, but right glad I came, as there is plenty to do I shall start to-morrow morning, and will lose no time waiting for coaches at Ryde, but walk on at once to Shanklin. St. Elizabeth progresses, and consolidates I have had a great treat to-day; saw a swarm of bees hived, for the first time in my life. Smith was gone to Heckfield, so G. White sent his cart for old Home ; and I stood in the middle of the flying army, and saw the whole to my great delight. Certainly man, even in the lowest grade, is infinitely wonder- ful, and infinitely brave — give him habit and self-confidence. To see all those little poisonous insects crawling over Home, wrapt in the one thought of their new-born sister-queen ! I hate to think that it is vile self interest— much less mere brute magnetism (called by the ignorant * instinct '), which takes with them the form of loyalty, prudence, order, self-sacrifice. How do we know that they have no souls ? ' The beasts ' 140 Charles Kingsley. which perish?' Ay, but put against that 'the spirit of the beast which goeth downward to the earth ' — and whither then ? ' Man perisheth,' too, in scripture language, yet not for ever. But I will not dream. " I fancy you and baby playing in the morning. Bless you my two treasures I had a most busy and interesting day yesterday in London. Called on ■"■ * * and found him undergoing all the horrors of a deep, and as I do think, healthy baptism of fire — not only a conversion, but a discovery that God and the devil are living realities, fighting for his body and soul. This, in a man of vast thought and feeling, who has been for years a confirmed materialist, is hard work. He entreated me not to leave him " God help us all, and save our country — not so much from the fate of France, as from the fate of Rome— internal decay, and falling to pieces by its own weight ; but I will say no more of this — perhaps I think too much about it." .... TO THE REV. R. C. POWLES, who had invited him to Oxford. EvERbLEV, December, 1846. " The lips of my soul water — but what is to be done ? Parsons in these parts are like rural police — one suffices for a tract ! — * qui mitros fatigaret, agro,' and I must stay at home for Sunday. My house is full of bricklayers, carpenters, my glebe of drainers (till they are frozen out), and were I Geryon himself I could not come. Be sure that everything which a man possesses, beyond a mere six-roomed cottage, five acres of freehold, and good health, is vanity and vexation of spirit — thick clay wherewith we load ourselves — more wants — more petty botherations ; less books, less thought, and, alas, less prayer. That's the sum of it. I am seven times too rich, and therefore I'm as poor as Job, and aitre nous glad to raise a little money to repair my house. Had I been Will Barker there in the drain, I should never have found out that it was cold, and damp, and shabby, and what not. Man has unrivalled powers of self-adaptation — ay, of adapting himself to wanting everything, just as easily as to wanting nothing ; there's the plague. I begin to think that, barring community of wives, Plato's (pvXaKfs in the Republic are in the only state fit for men of mind, yet discovered, except one — Sewell is not far out there. The (jivXaKes were the first shot at that idea, monasticism the second. Shall we live to see the foundations of a third attempt laid, in the form of an author guild, or brotherhood of genius ? Ask Carlyle, and Carlyle's Master and ours. " But first, young men of this day must get faith. I am more and Democracy. 141 more painfully awake to the flict that the curse of our generation is that so i^w of us deeply believe anything. Men dally with truth, and with lies. They deal in innuendoes, impersonalities, conditionalities ; they have no indicative mood — no I, no thou, whereby alone have any great souls conquered. Hence we are the worst of letter-writers. If two men quarrel in print, they do not speak to each other, they speak at each other \ they look the other way, and kick like horses, or something worse. That is the only good point in that anonymous stabber. the ' Record,' that it attacks , directly, and not by implication. The Oxford party might take a lesson there ; much more so that numerous youth, who, now that the tractarians are tired of playing at popery, are keeping dilletantism's altar alight by playing at tractarianism — the shadow of a ghost— the sham of a sham. Our intellects are getting beyond milk and water ; they are becoming mere gas and bottled moonshine, from Limbus Patrum and the land Plausible. "My friend, we must pray to God to give us faith; faith in some- thing — something that we can live for, and would die for. Then we shall be ready and able to do good in our generation. Our fixed ideas will be to us Archimedes' fulcra in space, from whence, if need be, he could move the world. Get hold of some one truth. Let it blaze in j'our sky, like a Greenland sun, never setting day or night. Give your soul up to it ; see it in everything, and everything in it, and the world will call you a bigot and a fanatic, and then wonder a century hence, how the bigot and fanatic continued to do so much more than all the sensible folk round him, who believed in * * ""' and ""' * * " The sum and substance whereof is, that I cannot come in the body, and therefore send a substitute in my spirit." TO THE SAME. Deccmher, 1846. " My whole heart is set, not on retrogression, outward or inward, but on progression — not on going back in the least matter to any ideal age or system, but on fairly taking the present as it is, not as I should like it to be ; and believing that Jesus Christ is still working in all honest and well-meaning men — see what are the elements of spiritual good in the present age, and try as an artist to embody them, not in old forms, but in new ones the new element is democracy, in Church and State, ^^'aiving the question of its evil or its good, we cannot stop it. Let us Christianise it instead ; and if you fear that you are therein doing evil that good may come, oh ! consider, consider carefully, whether democracy (I do not mean foul licence, or pedantic constitution- mongering, but the rights of man as man — his individual and direct 142 Charles Kings ley. responsibility to God and the State, on tlie score of mere manhood and Christian grace) be not the very pitli and marrow of the New Testament — whether the noble structures of mediaeval hierarchy and monarchy were not merely ' schoolmasters ' to bring Europe to Christ — ' tutors and governors ' till mankind be of age, and fit for a theocracy in which men might live by faith in an unseen, yet spiritu- ally and sacramentally present king, and have no king but Him ? I say consider this, for I speak with fear and trembling — not expecting to be heard by those whom I most long should hear me — and yet perfectly content to wait Christ's time till the age is ripe, be it to- morrow century — through years of dead monarchy, atheistic aristocrat jobbing, unrestored Church lands, an ecclesiastical system which is powerless, alas ! equally against popery and dissent, and whatsoever else the Blessed One shall choose to make our waiting and probationary state. I am no revolutionist. "Whatever soul-sufficing truth men have, in God's name let them keep it. Only when the truth is dead and suffices no longer, I would gently withdraw the corpse from the mourners, and present to them the same spirit of their creed, clothed in a fresh form to suit the present exigencies of the time. I would rejoice with the rejoicing reformers — the Morpeths, and EUesmeres, and Cobdens — I would weep with the weeping conservatives, the ecclesiologists, and the young Englanders — only I would warn each not to fancy they could do without the other. I would tell them to hail with adoration all new truth, while they cling fiercely, if need be, to all old truth — sure that Christ is the working King of the earth, and that new and old equally proceed from Him " Do not, for God's sake, compliment me. If you knew the mean, inconsistent, desultory being I am in action, in spite of my fine words, you would be ashamed of me, as I am of myself. But I cannot stave off die conviction of present danger and radical disease in our national religion. And though I laugh at myself sometimes for conceit and uncharitableness — tamen usque recurrit — that hand-writing on the wall ; that ' mene, mene ' against Anglicanism and Evangelicalism at once — - both of which more and more daily prove to me their utter impotence to meet our social evils. Six months in a country parish is enough to prove it. What is to be done I do not see. A crisis, political and social, seems approaching, and religion, like a rootless plant, may be brushed away in the struggle. Maurice is full of fear — I had almost said despondence — and he, as you know, has said in his last book, that ' The real struggle of the day will be, not between Popery and Pro- testantism, but between Atheism and Christ.' And here we are daubing walls with un tempered mortar — quanelling about how we shall patch The Anwld-itc Spirit. 143 the superstructure, forgetting that the foundation is gone — Faith in anything. As in the days of Noah with the Titans — as in the days of Mahomet Avith the Christian sects of the East — they were eating, and drinking, and quarrelhng, no doubt, and behold the flood came and swept them all away. And even such to me seems the prospect of the English Church. " People say indignantly, ' Oh ! but look at her piety ; look at the revival ; her gospel doctrines ; her church-building. She is beginning to live and not to die.' But we who ha\e read history know how the candle always flames up at the last with a false galvanic life, when the spirit is gone. Remember the Church in England just before the Reformation, how she burst out into new life ; how she reformed her monasteries ; how she filled her pulpits ; how she built more churches and colleges in fifty years than she had in two hundred before — Somersetshire as a single example — how she Avas in every respect, within as well as without, immeasurably improved just before the monasteries were dissolved. But her time was come. 'The old order' was to 'change,' 'giving place to the new' while God 'fulfils Himself in many ways,' as Tennyson has it. And not even a More and a Fisher could save her from her fire-death, and phcenix resurrection. Mene 1 Mene ! I say again for us. " But we must, in the widest and divinest sense, make friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness. It is the new commercial aris- tocracy ; it is the scientific go-a-head-ism of the day which must save us, and which we must save. We have licked the feet of the feudal aristocrats for centuries, and see whither they have brought us, or let us bring ourseh'es. In plain truth, the English clergy must Arnold-ise, if they do not wish to go either to Rome or to the workhouse, before fifty years are out. There is, I do believe, an Arnold-ite spirit rising; but most ' laudant, non sequuntur.' Decent Anglicanism, decent Evan- gelical Conservatism (or Evangelicalism) having become the majority, is now quite Conservative, and each party playing Canute and the tide, as it can scramble in turn into the chair of authority. I would devote soul and body to get together an Arnoldite party of young men. If we could but begin a periodical in which every one should be responsible by name for his own article, thereby covering any little differences of opinion, such as must always exist in a reforming party (though not in a dead-bone-galvanising one, like the Tractarians). If we could but start anything daring and earnest as a ' carroccio,' or flag of misery, round which, as round Da\id in the mountains, the spiritual rag-tag might rally, and howl harmonious the wrongs of the clergy and of literary men, it were a great thing gained ! 144 Charles Kingsley. " I have had serious thoughts of what such a thing ought to be. Its two mottoes should be Anti-lManichseism — (and therefore Anti-Tracla- rian, and Anti-EvangeUcal) and Anti-Atheism. To attack unsparingly those two things in every one, from the bishop to the peasant ; and to try, on the positive side, to show how all this progress of society in the present day is really of God, and God's work, and has potential and latent spiritual elements, whicli it is the duty and the glory of the clergy, if they are a clergy, to unfold and christen. We should require a set of articles on Church Reform, a set on the Art of Worship, which should show that the worshipless state of Evangelicalism is no more necessary than good, and that Protestantism can just as much inspire itself into a glorious artistic ritual of its own, as Popery and Anglicanism have into one of their own. Then we should want a set of Condition-of-thc-Poor-Ballads or articles, or any thing ' spicey ' on that point. A set on the Religion of Science, and a set on Modern Poetr}' and the Drama, cursing the opera and praying for the revival of the legitimate. " This, I think, might keep the game alive, if men would only be bold and ' ride recklessly across country.' As soon as a man's blood is cool, the faster he goes the safer he goes. Try to pick your way and you tumble down. If men would but believe this and be bold : we want some of that ' absolutism ' which gave strength to the Middle Ages ; and it is only the tyranny of fashion and respectability which keeps us from it; for put the Englishman into a new country, break the thrall of habit and the fear of man, and he becomes great, absolute, Titanic at once." The Magazine plan came to nothing, but once again he refers to it in 1847. 1847. *' . . . Is there not an opening now for a periodical ? .... I have thought deeply over the ' idea ' of such a work, and think I see the principles of its method. The great motto must be, ' Ne sutor ultra crepidam.' No Anti-Lord J. or Lord G. philippics. No ' fancy ' cabi- nets of our own choosing. No shooting at giants, mistaking them for windmills. No playing at grown statesmen as if we were all Macaulays and Ijockharts ; but such subjects, such a tone, such a purpose, as really and de facto, belong to young men of 25 or 30. Let us talk about what we understand — what we have felt, and we shall find listeners. That accursed second-handishness ruins young men now-a-days. Apes, apes and parrots wherever one turns. Value of Soryoiv. 145 1846 passed uncventless in the routine of parish work and home happiness. Adult classes, a singing class on Hullah's plan to improve the church music (which had been entirely in the hands of three or four poor men, with a trombone and two clarionets) brought his people on several nights in the week up to the rec- tory, where the long unfurnished dining-room served the purpose of schoolroom. He never cared to leave his quiet home, doubly enriched by the presence of a little daughter. Of him, what was beautifully said by Schafer of Albert Durer was true to the life: " He had the heart, and the confiding, tender nature of an artist, who resolved that these should flow towards his little daughter. As he highly respected every human being, and from true reverence took oft his bonnet to all and held it in his hand, so was a child also to him an angel, and his child his good angel, whom he had to entertain, and felt so blessed to be permitted to do so Whatsoever he gave her he said of it, ' God sent it to her ; God blows away the clouds ; God paints early in the morning the flowers upon the panes of glass. In short,' he continues, ' a poet, an artist who does not marry and has not children, or has not had them, has never leen in the world — the beau- teous tender world which he must experience, even if it should cost him thousands of tears." ' * The correspondence of the year closes with this letter to a friend at Oxford: — EvERSi.EV, December 22, 1S46. " Believe me, my dear friend, it is not want of sympathy but of time which has prevented my immediately answering your most inte- resting letter, I have already been through that ordeal of separation which now seems to threaten you ; but my experience may be valuable to you — God knows how valuable it was to me ; and that I rank tliat period of misery as the most priceless passage of my whole existence. It taught me to know marriage for a state so spiritual, so paradisaic, that, like the kingdom of heaven, it is only through much tribulation, through the purifying fire of affliction, man can be fitted to enter into it. That separation taught me to look at marriage as a boon from God, to be gained from Him alone by earnest prayer, by intense repentance, and complete confession of youthful sins. It taught me to know that Providence was a reality, and prayer the highest sacrament ; that to the * Albert Diirer, 1494. Life by L. Schafer. VOL. I. 146 Charles Kingsley, blessed Lord alone we must look for the fulfilment of our desires ; that these desires, which men call carnal, are truly most spiritual, most be- loved by Him, and that He Himself, when we are fit for our bliss, will work what the world might call a miracle, if necessary, to join us and those whom we love. All this I have experienced — I know, and there- fore I speak. I know how after long misery, during which filial trust in God, with many inconsistencies and ' backslidings,' was my only support, I gained by i)rayer the transcendental and super-rational con- viction that we should again meet within a certain period. I know how that period passed on and on, and how the night grew ever darker and ever more hopeless, until — when I was on the point of black despair — within a few days of the expiration of the period which I had involuntarily, and as it were by inspiration, fixed — from a quarter where I least expected— by means of those who had been most utterly op- posed to me, suddenly came a ray of light — an immediate re-union — and from that moment a run of blessings heaped one on the other, as if the merciful God were turned prodigal in His undeserved love, and here I am. Therefore, take heart, my friend, only humble yourself utterly; lie still and say, '• ^^y Father, Thy will be done.' And why shouldn't it be with you as it has been with me ? I would argue a for- tiori^ considering my infinite sins and your infinite superiority to me. But I am so convinced that the only secret of success is to feel and confess yourself nothing, that God may make you everything. May Jesus Christ bless you in body, soul, and spirit, and make you worthy of that Eden upon earth, which He has prepared for those who believe in Him and His hallowing office over all human ties, I am forced to use a nomenclature which we both wish improved, for the sake of brevity. Let it be enough that there is a true and practically realised meaning to me in every word I have said " The following year his " Life of St. Elizabeth," which was begun in prose in 1S42, and had been gradually growing under his hand, took the form of a drama. After working at it in this new form for some months, the thought of publishing it crossed his mind ; but he was so uncertain as to whether it was worth printing, that he decided nothing till he had consulted four friends on wdiose judgment and poetical verdict he could rely — the Hon. and Rev. Gerald Wellesley, then Rector of Strath- fieldsaye, now Dean of Windsor ; Rev. F. D. Maurice ; Rev. Derwent Coleridge, of St. Mark's ; and the Rev. R. C. Powles. Their opinion was unanimous, but the difficulty was to find a ^' Saint Elizabeth^ 147 publisher who would undertake the work of a young and un- known author. He took the MSS. to London, from whence he wrote home. " I breakfasted with INIaurice this morning, and went over a great deal of St. Elizabeth, and I cannot tell you how thankful I am to God about it. He has quite changed his mind about scene i of act ii., Elizabedi's bower. He read it to Powles, who is decidedly for keep- ing it in just as it is, and thinks it ought to offend no one. He is very desirous to show the MSS. to A. G. Scott, Mrs. H. Coleridge, Tennyson, and Van Artevelde Taylor. He says that it ought to do great good with those who can take it in, but for those who cannot, it ought to have a preface : and has more than hinted that he will help me to one, by writing me something which, if I like, I can prefix. ^Vhat more would you have ?...." " Coleridge's opinion of the poem is far higher than I expected. He sent me to Pickering with a highly recommendatory note ; which however, joined with Maurice's preface, was not sufficient to make him take the risk off my hands. " I am now going to Parker's, in the Strand. I am at once very happy, very lonely, and very anxious. How absence increases love ! It is positively good sometimes to be parted, that one's affection may become conscious of itself, and proud, and humble, and thankful accordingly " Messrs. Parker, of 445, West Strand, undertook the publica- tion, and he wTites joyfully to Mr. Powles. " St. Elizabeth is in the press, having been taken off my hands by the heroic magnanimity of Mr. J. Parker, West Strand, who, though a burnt child, does not dread the fire. No one else would have it. " Maurice's preface comes out with it, and is inestimable not only to I myself I, but to all men who shall have the luck to read it, and the wit to understand it. I had hoped to have shown it to you before it went, but 'non concessere columnce.'" His eldest son was born this year, and named after Mr. Maurice, who with Mr. Powles, stood sp®nsors to the boy. In the summer he took his wife and two children for six weeks to Milford, a little sea-side place near the edge of the New Forest. It was his first six weeks' holiday since his marriage, which he L 2 148 Charles Kingsley. earned by taking the Sunday services of Pennington, near Lymington. Here he had a horse, and the rides in the beau- tiful scenery of the New Forest, dear to him from old associa- tion with his father's youth and manhood, excited his imagina- tion. It was only either at a great crisis in his life, or in a time when all his surroundings were in perfect harmony, that he could compose poetry. And now, when in the forest, and in the saddle once more, or alone with his beloved ones on the sea- shore, with leisure to watch his babies, his heart's spring bubbled up into song, and he composed several ballads : — " Oh she tripped over Ocknell plain," " The Red King," and " The Outlaw." He explored the forest day after day, with deep delight, and laid up a store of impressions which in later years he began to work up into a New Forest Novel. This, however, was never completed. " I recollect well," he says, in reference to this happy summer time, '' having the value of a stern straight line in nature brought home to me, when during a long ride in the New Forest, after my eye had become quite dulled and wearied with the monotonous softness of rolling lawns, feathery heath, and rounded oak and beech woods, I suddenly caught sight of the sharp-peaked roof of Rhinefield Lodge and its row of tall stiff poplar-spires, cutting the endless sea of curves. The relief to my eye was delicious. I really believe it heightened the pleasure with which I reined in my mare for a chat with old Toomer the keeper, and the noble bloodhound who eyed me from between his master's legs." * * Prose Idylls, p. 284. CHAPTER VII. Aged 29. Publication of "Saint's Tragedy" — Chartist Riots — Tenhi of April — Politics for the People— The National Gallery and British Museum — Professorship at Queen's College — "Yeast"— Illness — Letter on Marriage. " This is true liberty when freeborn men Having to advise the public may speak free ; Whidi he who can or will, deserves high praise ; Who neither can, nor will, may hold his peace ; What can be juster in a state like this ? " Euripides, Translation by Mli.TON. CHAPTER VII. This year, so marked in the history of Europe, Avas one of the most important of Charles Kingsley's life. " The Saint's Tragedy" was published soon after Christmas, and, though it made little impression on the literary world in England, yet gave him in one sense a new position, especially among young men at the universities. The Drama was eagerly read at Oxford, and fiercely attacked by the high church party, who were to be made still more bitter against its author by the publication of " Yeast," which came out later in the year as a serial in " Eraser's Magazine." He was surprised himself to find the interest " The Saint's Tragedy " had excited at Oxford. In Germany it was read and appreciated, and Chevalier Bunsen expressed his opinion in very strong terms about it. In higher quarters still the genius of the author was recognized. In a letter to Max Miiller, written after the publication of *' Hypatia," but in w^hich he speaks of its author more as poet than novelist. Baron Bunsen says : — " Of Kingsley's dramatic power I do not hesitate to call these two works, ' The Saint's Tragedy ' and * Hypatia,' by far the most important and perfect of this genial writer. In these, more particularly, I find the justification of a hope which I beg to be allowed to express, that Kingsley might continue Shakespeare's historical plays. I have for several years made no secret of it, that Kingsley seems to me the genius of our country called to place by the side of that sublime dramatic series from King John to Henry VHL, another series from Edward VI. to the landing of William of Orange. This is the only historical development of Europe which unites in itself all vital elements, and which we might look upon without overpowering pain. The tragedy of ' St. Elizabeth ' shows that Kingsley can grapple, not only with the novel, but with the more severe rules of dramatic art. 152 Charles Kingsley. And ' Hypatia ' proves on the largest scale that he can discover in the picture of the historical past, the truly human, the deep, the permanent, and that he knows how to represent it. How, with all this, he can hit the fresh tone of popular life, and draw humorous characters and compli- cations with Shakespearian energy, is proved by all his works. And why should he not undertake this great task ? There is a time when the true poet, the prophet of the present, must bid farewell to the questions of the day, which seem so great because they are so near, but are, in truth, but small and unpoetical. He must say to himself, ' Let the dead bury their dead:' and the time has come that Kingsley should do so." The Tragedy was reviewed, not very favourably, by Mr. Con- ington, afterwards Professor of Greek at Oxford. This, however, led to an acquaintance, between author and critic, which soon ripened into friendship ; and when, in the course of a few months, " Politics for the People " were published, Mr. Conington became not only a warm ally in the cause, but a regular contri- butor, and constant visitor at Eversley. TO J. CONINGTON, ESQ. January 15, 1848. " You must pardon my addressing you while personally unac- cpainted, but as my friend B. has shown me a letter of yours in which, among many kind expressions with regard to the ' Saint's Tragedy,' you seem to have mistaken my drift in one scene, self-preservation puts me on speaking. You seem to think that scene 9, act ii. contains ' a sweeping denunciation of political economy.' I beg to say that I should be very angry with myself if I saw cause to agree with you. Political economy is a true inductive science, and its laws (as far as laws, and not mere empirical maxims, have been discovered in it) arc God's laws, and not merely physical ones, but holding true, I think, in the higher region of pure metaphysics : e. g., ' supply and demand.' And I think that a good initiation into the said science would be of good service to our clergy in these very days. But for this very reason we are bound to testify against the miserable eclecticism of certain small-mmded men— Scotch glen-clearers and others, who take up just as much political economy as suits their own selfishness and laziness, and by working out one single law to the exclusion of its fair limita- tives, arrive at results more diabolic than social. Thus in the scene Vtsii to Oxford. 153 in my play the individual principles which the Abbot, &c. , vent, are true in themselves : it is the speakers who caricature them into false- hood in the details. You must not forget that in free art, an author is not to be supposed to be execrating every opinion which he thinks fit to put in an execrable mouth. •' For anachronisms — they are intentional — in that particular scene the anachronism is in the expressions, and not in the notions embodied in them. But throughout my play I have followed the Shakespearian method of bringing the past up to my readers, and not the modern one of bringing my readers down to the past, and should follow it, unless my opinions much change, in any future work." During the winter he went to Oxford to stay a few days with his friend, Mr. Powles, Fellow of Exeter : and he writes to his wife : — Oxford, March 30, 1848. " . . . I may, I suppose, tell you that I am here undergoing the new process of being made a lion of, at least so Powles tells me. They got up a meeting for me, and the club Avas crowded with men merely to see poor me, so I found out afterwards : very lucky that I did not know it during the process of being trotted out. It is very funny and new. I dine this afternoon with Conington ; to-morrow with Palgrave ; Monday with Stanley, and so on. I like Conington very much ; he is a good, hearty piece of nature ; and I like his review very much. Of course he did not go to the bottom on the Love and Marriage question ; but there he showed his sense. Froude gets more and more interesting. We had such a conversation this morning — the crust is breaking, and the man coming through that cold polished shell. ]\Iy darling babies ! kiss them very much for me. Monday I go to Chalgrove Field, to see Hampden's martyr place." His parish work this year was if possible more vigorous than ever. Every winter's evening was occupied with either night- school at the rectory, about thirty men attending ; or little ser- vices in the outlying cottages for the infirm and labouring men after their day's work. During the spring and summer a writing class was held for girls in the empty coach-house ; a cottage school for infants was also begun on the common — all preparing the way for the National School that was to be built some years 154 Charles Kings ley. later, and for which the teacher was in training. The parish made a great step forward. The number of communicants in- creased. The daily services and evening sermons in Passion week seemed to borrow intenser fervour and interest from the strange events of the great world outside the small quiet parish, and though poorly attended, still gathered together a few labouring folk. The political events which shook all Europe to its very foun- dations, stirred his blood, and seemed for the time to give him a supernatural strength, which kept up till the autumn, w^hen he completely broke down. Rewrote an article for " Fraser's Maga- zine" (the first he ever contributed to a periodical) on Popery : " Why should we fear the Romish Priests } " following up his " Saint's Tragedy," which had struck the key note of the after work of his life ; and " Yeast " now was seething in his mind. Of his contributions to " Politics for the People " more will be said hereafter. He preached to his people on emigration, on poaching, and on the political and social disturbances of the day. In addition to parish and literary work he accepted the Professorship of English Literature and Composition at Queen's College, Harley Street, then in its infancy, of which Mr. Maurice was President, and he went up to London to give a lecture once a w^eek. He was also proposed for a professorship at King's College. He was in constant communication with Mr. Maurice and the knot of remarkable men who gathered round him. He made acquaintance with Bishop Stanley of Norwich, and his distinguished son ; with Archdeacon Hare, Arthur Helps, John Hullah, James Anthony Froude, John Malcolm Ludlow, and many other men of 'mark, but to none did he become more strongly attached than to Mr. Thomas Hughes. On the news of the Chartist rising and petition reaching Eversley, he determined, having closed his evening classes in the parish for the winter, to go to London for a few days ; and on the morning of the lOth of April, with his friend Mr. John Parker, jun., who had been spending the Sunday at Eversley, he went up to see what was going on. Mr. Parker, like many owners of property in London, was nervous and anxious about the results of the day, telling Mrs. Kingsley, half in joke as he Tenth of April. 1 5 5 left the door, that she might expect to hear of his shop having been broken into, and himself thrown into the Trafalgar Square fountains by the mob. On arriving in London, they went to the house of business at 445, West Strand, then on to Mr. Maurice's ; and in the afternoon he and Mr. Ludlow walked to Kennington Common, where pouring rain damped the spirits of the crowds assembled. By mid-day post he wrote to Eversley. London, April 10, Monday. ''. . . All is right as yet. Large crowds, but no one expects any row, as the Chartists will not face Westminster Bridge, but are gone round by London Bridge and Holborn, and are going to send up only the legal number of Delegates to the House. I am just going on to Maurice. The only fear is marauding in the suburbs at night; but do not fear for me, I shall be safe at Chelsea at 5. I met Colonel Herman, who says there is no danger at all, and the two Mansfields, who are gone as specials, to get hot, dusty, and tired — nothing else. I will send down a letter by the latest post." April II, Tuesday, 8 a.m. "All as quiet as a mouse as yet. The storm is blown over till to-morrow, but all are under arms — specials, police, and military. INIaurice is in great . excitement. He has sent me to Ludlow, the barrister who wrote those letters from France, and we are getting out placards for the walls, to speak a word for God with. You must let me stay up to-night, for I am helping in a glorious work ; and I go to breakfast with Maurice now, and to spend the evening with Arch- deacon Hare, Scott, and himself Send down to the cottage lecture, and say I shall not have it till Saturday, and say that the riots have kept me. I feel we may do something. Pray for us that God may guide us, and open our mouths to speak boldly. Maurice insists on my helping at King's College." April II, Evening. " The events of a week have been crowded into a {c\y hours. I was p till 4 this morning, writing posting placards under Maurice's auspices, one of which is to be got out to-morrow morning, the rest when we can get money. Could you not beg a few sovereigns some- where, to help these poor wretches to the truest alms ? — to words — texts from the Psalms, any thing which may keep one man from cutting his brother's throat to-morrow or Friday ? Pray, pray, help us. Maurice 1^6 Charles Kings ley. has given me tlie highest proof of confidence. He has taken me into counsel, and we are to have meetings for prayer and study, when I come up to London, and we are to bring out a new set of real ' Tracts for the Times,' addressed to the higher orders. Maurice is d la hauteur des circoiistances — determined to make a decisive move. He says : ' If the Oxford tracts did wonders, why should not we ? ' Pray for us. A glorious future is opening, and both Maurice and Ludlow seem to have driven away all my doubts and sorrows, and I see the blue sky again and my Father's face ! " On Wednesday, the I2th, all was still quiet, and this placard which he had w^rittcn was posted up, in London. "WORKMEN OF ENGLAND! *' You say that you are Avronged. Many of you are wronged ; and many besides yourselves know it. Almost all men who have heads and hearts know it — above all, the working clergy know it. They go into your houses, they see the shameful filth and darkness* in which you are forced to live crowded together ; they see your children growing up in ignorance and temptation, for want of fit education ; they see intelligent and well-read men among you, shut out from a Freeman's just right of voting ; and they see too the noble patience and self-con- trol with which you have as yet borne these evils. They see it, and God sees it. "Workmen of England ! You have more friends than you think for. Friends who expect nothing from you, but who love you, because you are their brothers, and who fear God, and therefore dare not neg- lect you. His children ; men who are drudging and sacrificing them selves to get you your rights ; men who know what your rights are, better than you know yourselves, who are trying to get for you something nobler than charters and dozens of Acts of Parliament — more useful than this 'fifty thousandth share in a Talker in the National Palaver at Westminster '+ can give you. You may disbelieve them, insult them — • you cannot stop their working for you, beseeching you as you love your- selves, to turn back from the precipice of riot, which ends in the gulf of universal distrust, stagnation, starvation. " You think the Charter would make you free — would to God it would ! The Charter is not bad; // the men luho use it are not bad t * The Window tax was not then taken off. t Carlyle. A Peimy Periodical. 157 But will the Charter make you free ? Will it free you from slavery to ten-pound bribes ? Slavery to beer and gin ? Slavery to every spouter who flatters your self-conceit, and stirs up bitterness and headlong rage in you ? That, I guess, is real slavery ; to be a slave to one's own stomach, one's own pocket, one's own temper. Will the Charter cure that 'I Friends, you want more than Acts of Parliament can give. " Englishmen ! Saxons ! Workers of the great, cool-headed, strong- handed nation of England, the workshop of the world, the leader of freedom for 700 years, men say you have common-sense ! then do not humbug yourselves into meaning ' licence,' when you cry for ' liberty ; ' who would dare refuse you freedom ? for the Almighty God, and Jesus Christ, the poor Man, who died for poor men, will bring it about for you, though all the Mammonites of the earth were against you. A nobler day is dawning for England, a day of freedom, science, industry ! " But there will be no true freedom without virtue, no true science without religion, no true industry without the fear of God, and love to your fellow-citizens. " Workers of England, be wise, and then you must be free, for you will be fit to be free. "A Working Parson." On the evening of the 12th, Archdeacon Hare, Mr. Maurice, and this little group of friends assembled at Mr. John Parker's rooms, West Strand, whence he writes home, Parker's, Strand, April 12, 6 p.^r. "... I really cannot go home this afternoon. I have spent it with Archdeacon Hare, and Parker, starting a new periodical — a Penny ' People's Friend,' in which Maurice, Hare, Ludlow, Mansfield, and I, (S:c. are going to set to work, to supply the place of the defunct ' Saturday Magazine.' I send you my first placard. Maurice is delighted with it. I cannot tell you the interest which it has excited with every one who has seen it. It brought the tears into old Parker's eyes, who was once a working printer's boy. I have got already £,2 los. towards bringing out more, and ISIaurice is subscription-hunting for me. He took me to Jelf to-day, the King's College principal, who received me very kindly, and expressed himself very anxious to get me the professorship, and will write to me as soon as the advertisements are out. I will be down at Winchfield to-morrow. Kiss the babes for me. Parker begs to re- mark that he has not been thrown into the Trafalgar fountain. On the 13th, he returned to Eversley much exhausted, and preached on the Chartist riots to his own people the following 158 Charles Kingsley. Sunday. And now working in his parish, writing for the " Pontics," preparing his lectures for Queen's College, and send- ing in testimonials* for a professorship at King's College, for which Mr. Maurice had proposed him to the Council, filled up every moment of time. The various writers for the " Politics," including Mr. Conington, were continually coming to Eversley to talk over their work and consult " Parson Lot." As one of the few survivors of those most intimately associated with the author of " Alton Locke," his friend, Mr. Tom Hughes, has written an eloquent preface to a fresh reprint of that work and of " Cheap Clothes, and Nasty," from which he has kindly allowed the following extracts to be used. Mr. Hughes, speaking of the distinct period of Charles Kingsley's life extending from 1848 to 1856, says : — "... Look at them from what point we will, these years must be allowed to cover an anxious and critical time in modern English history ; but, above all, in the history of the working classes. In the first of them the Chartist agitation came to a head and burst, and was followed by the great movement towards association, which, developing in two directions and by two distinct methods — represented respectively by the amalgamated Trades Unions, and Co-operative Societies — has in the intervening years entirely changed the conditions of the labour question in England, and the relations of the working to the upper and middle classes. It is with this, the social and industrial side of the history of those years, that we are mainly concerned here. Charles Kingsley has left other and more important writings of those years. But these are beside our purpose, which is to give some such slight sketch of him as may be possible within the limits of a preface, in the character in which he was first widely known, as the most out-spoken and powerful of those who took the side of the labouring classes, at a critical time — the crisis in a word, when they abandoned their old political weapons, for the more potent one of union and association, which has since carried them so far. To no one of all those by whom his memory is tenderly cherished can this seem a superfluous task, for no writer was ever more misunderstood or better abused at the time, and after the lapse of almost a quarter of a century, the misunderstanding would seem still to hold its * These testimonials were chiefly based on the historic insight displayed in the "Saint's Tragedy," and on his own high personal character, from the Bishop of his Diocese, Archdeacon Hare, and many other friends. Parson Lot. 159 ground. For through all the many notices of him which appeared after his death, in last January, there ran the same apologetic tone as to this part of his life's work. While generally, and as a rule cordially, recog- nizing his merits as an author and a man, the writers seemed to agree in passing lightly over this ground. ^V^ien it was touched it was in a tone of apology, sometimes tinged with sarcasm, as in the curt notice in the ' Times ' — ' He was understood to be the Parson Lot of those ' Politics for the People ' which made no little noise in their time, and as Parson Lot he declared in burning language that to his mind the fault in the ' People's Charter ' was that it did not go nearly far enough.' And so the writer turns away, as do most of his brethren, leaving pro bably some such impression as this on the minds of most of their readers — ' Young men of power and genius are apt to start with wild notions. He was no exception. Parson Lot's sayings and doings may well be pardoned for what Charles Kingsley said and did in after years ; so let us drop a decent curtain over them, and pass on.' Now as almost a generation has passed since that signature used to appear at the foot of some of the most noble and vigorous writing of our time, readers of to- day are not unlikely to accept this view, and so to find further confir- mation and encouragement in the example of Parson Lot for the mis- chievous and cowardly distrust of anything like enthusiasm amongst young men, already sadly too pervalent in England. If it were only as a protest against this ' surtout point de zele ' spirit, against which it was one of Charles Kingsley's chief tasks to fight with all his strength, it is well that the facts should be set right. This done, readers may safely be left to judge what need there is for the apologetic tone in connection with the name, the saymgs, and doings of Parson Lot. My first meeting with him was in the autumn of 1847, at the house of Mr. Maurice, who had lately been appointed Reader of Lincoln's Inn. No parochial work is attached to that post, so Mr. Maurice had undertaken the charge of a small district in the parish in which he lived, and had set a number of young men, chiefly students of the Inns of Court, who had been attracted by his teaching, to work in it. Once a week, on Monday evenings, they used to meet at his house for tea, when their own work was reported upon and talked over. Suggestions were made and plans considered ; and afterwards a chapter of the Bible was read and discussed. Friends and old pupils of Mr. Maurice's, residing in the country, or in distant parts of London, were in the habit of coming occasionally to these meetings, amongst whom was Charles Kingsley. " His poem,* and the high regard and admiration which Mr. Maurice had for him, made him a notable figure in that small society, and his * "The Saint's Tragedy." i6o Charles Kingslcy. presence was always eagerly looked for. What impressed me most about him when we first met was, his affectionate deference to Mr. Maurice, and the vigour and incisiveness of everything he said and did. He had the power of cutting out what he meant in a few clear words, beyond any one I have ever met. The next thing that struck one was, the ease with which he could turn from playfulness, or even broad humour, to the deepest earnest. At first I think this startled most persons, until they came to find out the real deep nature of the man ; and that his broadest humour had its root in a faith which realized, with extra- ordinary vividness, the fact that God's Spirit is actively abroad in the world, and that Christ is in every man, and made him hold fast, even in his saddest moments, — and sad moments were not infrequent with him, — the assurance that, in spite of all appearances, the world was going right, and would go right somehow, ' Not your way, or my way, but God's way.' The contrast of his humility and audacity, of his distrust in himself and confidence in himself, was one of those puzzles which meet us daily in this world of paradox. But both qualities gave him a peculiar power for the work he had to do at that time, with which the name of Parson Lot is associated. It was at one of these gatherings, towards the end of 1847 or early in 1848, when Kingsley found himself in a minority of one, that he said jokingly, he felt much as Lot must have felt in the Cities of the Plain, when he seemed as one that mocked to his sons-in-law. The name Parson Lot was then and there suggested, and adopted by him, as a familiar no7n de plume. He used it from 1848 up to 1856 ; at first constantly, latterly much more rarely. But the name was chiefly made famous by his writings in ' Politics for the People,' '■ the Christian Socialist,' and the ' Journal of Association,' three periodicals which covered the years from '48 to '52 ; by 'Alton Locke,' and by tracts and pamphlets, of which the best known, '• Cheap Clothes, and Nasty,' is now republished. " \x\ order to understand and judge the sayings and writings of Parson Lot fairly, it is necessary to recall the condition of the England of that day. Through the winter of 1847-8, amidst wide spread distress, the cloud of discontent, of which chartism was the most violent symp- tom, had been growing darker and more menacing, while Ireland was only held down by main force. The breaking out of the revolution on the Continent in February increased the danger. In March there were riots in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and other large towns. On April 7th, ' the Crown and Government Security Bill,' commonly called ' the Gagging Act,' was introduced by the Govern- ment, the first reading carried by 265 to 24, and the second, a few days later, by 452 to 35. On the loth of April the Government The Chartists. i6i had to fill London with troops, and put the Duke of Wellington in command, who barricaded the bridges and Downing Street, garrisoned the Bank and other public buildings, and closed the Horse Guards. When the momentary crisis had passed, the old soldier declared in the House of Lords, that no great society had ever suffered as London had during the preceding days, while the Home Secretary telegraphed to all the chief magistrates of the kingdom the joyful news that the peace had been kept in London. Li April, the Lord Chancellor, in introducing the Crown and Government Security Bill in the House of Lords, referred to the fact, that ' meetings were daily held, not only in London, but in most of the manufacturing towns, the avowed object of which was to array the people against the constituted authority of these realms.' For months afterwards the Chartist movement, though plainly subsiding, kept the Government in constant anxiety ; and again in June, 1848, the Bank, the Mint, the Custom House, and other public offices were filled with troops, and the Houses of Parliament were not only garrisoned but provisioned as if for a siege. " From that time, all fear of serious danger passed away. The Chartists were completely discouraged, and their leaders in prison; and the upper and middle classes were recovering rapidly from the alarm which had converted a million of them into special constables, and were beginning to doubt whether the crisis had been so serious after all, whether the disaffection had ever been more than skin deep. At this juncture a series of articles appeared in the Morning Chronicle, on London labour and the London poor, which startled the well-to-do classes out of their jubilant and scornful attitude, and disclosed a state of things which made all fair-minded people wonder, not that there had been violent speaking and some rioting, but that the metro- polis had escaped the scenes which had lately been enacted in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and other Continental capitals. " It is only by an effort that one can now realise the strain to which the nation was subjected during tliat winter and spring, and which, of course, tried every individual man also, according to the depth and earnestness of his political and social convictions and sympathies. The group of men who were working under Mr. Maurice were no exceptions to the rule. The work of teaching and visiting was not, indeed, neglected, but the larger questions which were being so strenuously mooted — the points of the people's charter, the right of public meeting, the attitude of the labouring class to the other classes, absorbed more and more of their attention. Kingsley was very deeply impressed with the gravity and danger of the crisis — more so, I think, than almost any of his friends j probably because, as a country parson. 1 62 Charles Kings ley. he was more directly in contact with one class of the poor than any of them. How deeply he felt for the agricultural poor, how faithfully he reflected the passionate and restless sadness of the time, may be read in the pages of ' Yeast,'which came out later in * Fraser.' As the winter months went on this sadness increased, and seriously affected his health." * On the 6th of May the first number of " Politics for the People " appeared. Its regular contributors were nearly all university men, clergymen of the Church of England, London barristers, men of science, and among them Archdeacon Hare, Sir Arthur (then Mr.) Helps, and a distinguished London phy- sician. A few letters from working men, one signed *' One of the wicked Chartists of Kennington Common," were readily admitted. Three papers on the National Gallery and British Museum, three letters to Chartists, some poetry, and a tale, " The Nun's Pool," which was rejected by the publisher as too strong, were Mr. Kingsley's only contributions. His weekly lecture at Queen's College, with two sermons every Sunday, and his indefatigable parish work (he had then no curate), prevented his doing more for the " Politics." It was a remarkable though short-lived publication, and those whose opinions of the " Radi- cals, Socialists, Chartists," who set it on foot, were formed by the public press, without reading the book itself, would be sur- prised at the loyal, conservatist, serious tone of its contents, and the gravity, if not severity, with which it attacked physical force Chartism, monster meetings, and the demand for universal suf- frage bymen who had neither education nor moral self-government to qualify them for a vote. To avoid misconception as to " that himing language " in which Parson Lot said " that the People's Charter did 7iot go far eno7igh" to which the Times of January 25th, 1875, refers, the first letter to Chartists is given at full length, LETTERS TO CHARTISTS. No. I. '•' My Friends, — " If I give you credit for being sincere, you must give me credit for being so too. I am a radical reformer. I am not one of * From Mr. Thomas Hughes' Preface to "Alton Locke," and "Cheap Clothes, and Nasty," by Parson Lot. Letters to Chartists. i6 o those who laugh at your petition of" the loth of April; I have no patience with those who do. Suppose there were but 250,000 honest names on that sheet. Suppose the Charter itself were all stuff, yet you have still a right to fair play, a patient hearing, an honourable and cour- teous answer, whichever way it may be. But my only quarrel with the Charter is, that it docs not go far enough in reform. I want to see you free ; but I do not see how what you ask for will give you what you want. I think you have fallen into just the same mistake as the rich of whom you complain — the very mistake which has been our curse and our nightmare : I mean, the mistake of fancying that legislative reform is social reform, or that men's hearts can be changed by Act of Parliament. If anyone will tell me of a country where a charter made the rogues honest, or the idle industrious, I shall alter my opinion of the Charter, but not till then. It disappointed me bitterly when I read it. It seemed a harmless cry enough, but a poor, bald, constitution- mongering cry as I ever heard. That French cry of ' Organization of Labour ' is worth a thousand of it, and yet that does not go to the bottom of the matter by many a mile. '• But I have a more serious complaint against Chartism than this, and because I love you well, and, God is my witness, would die to make you free, and am, even now, pleading your cause with all my powers, I shall not be afraid to rebuke you boldly at first. Why do you yourselves blacken Chartism in people's eyes ? Why do you give a fair handle for all the hard things which are said of you ? I mean this, and -I speak honestly of what happened to my own self. The other day, being in London, I said to myself, ' I will see what the Chartists are saying and doing just now ; ' and I set off to find a Chartist newspaper, and found one in a shop where ' The People's Charter,' and * Lamartine's Address to the Irish Deputation,' and various Chartist books were sold. Now, as a book, as well as a man, may be known by his companions, I looked round the shop to see what was the general sort of stock there, and, behold, there was hardly anything but ' Flash Songsters,' and the ' Swell's Guide,' and ' Tales of Horror,' and dirty milksop French novels. I opened the leading article of the paper, and there were fine words enough, and some really noble and eloquent words, too, which stirred my blood and brought the tears into my eyes, about ' divine liberty,' and 'heaven-born fraternity,' and the ' cause of the poor being the cause of God ; ' all which I knew well enough before, from a very different * Reformer's Guide,' to which I hope to have the pleasure of introducing you some day. ' Well,' I said to myself, ' the cause of God seems to have fallen into ugly company. If poverty sends a man to strange bed-fellows, "divine 164 Charles Kingsky. liberty " must be in a very poor way ; heaven-born brotherhood has fraternized here with some very blackguard brethren. The shop cannot be a really Chartist shop, the paper has got in here by chance. ' No ! as I read on, I found that almost the only books pufted in the advertising column of the paper itself were the same French dirt which lay on the counter : ' Voltaire's Tales,' ' Tom Paine,' and by way of a finish, ' The Devil's Pulpit ! ' * Well,' I thought, ' what must the author of that noble poem, ' The Purgatory of Suicides,' feel, when he sees the cause for which he suffered defiled by such stuff as this ! These are strange times ! I had thought the devil used to befriend tyrants and oppressors, but he seems to have profited by Burns' advice, to " tak' a thought an' men".' I thought the struggling freeman's watchword was, * God sees my wrongs. He hath taken the matter into His own hands, the poor committeth himself unto Him, for He is the helper of the friendless.' But now the devil seems all at once to have turned philanthropist and patriot, and to intend himself to fight the good cause, against which he has been fighting ever since Adam's time. I don't deny, my friends, it is much cheaper and pleasanter to be reformed by the devil than by God ; for God will only reform society on condition of our reforming every man his own self — while the devil is quite ready to help us to mend the laws and the parliament, earth and heaven, without ever starting such an impertinent and ' personal ' request, as that a man should mend himself. That liberty of the subject he will always respect. " But I must say honestly, whomsoever I may offend, the more I have read of your convention speeches and newspaper articles the more con- vinced I am that too many of you are trying to do God's work with the devil's tools. What is the use of brilliant language about peace, and the majesty of order, and universal love, though it may all be printed in letters a foot long, when it runs in the same team with ferocity, railing, mad one-eyed excitement, talking itself into a passion like a street-woman ? Do you fancy that after a whole column spent in stirring men up to fury, a few twaddling copy-book headings about the ' sacred duty of order ' will lay the storm again ? What spirit is there but the devil's spirit, in bloodthirsty threats of rei'enge ? What brotherhood ought you to have with the ' United Irishman ' party, who pride themselves on their hatred to your nation, and recommend schemes of murder which a North American Indian, trained to scalping from his youth, would account horrible ? When they have learnt that ' Justice to Ireland ' does not mean hell broke loose there ; when they have repented and amended of their madness, as God grant they may. Parson Lot's Letters to Chartists. 165 then you may treat them as brothers; but till then, those who bid them God-speed are partakers of their evil deeds. In the name of liberty and brotherhood, in the name of the poor man's cause and the l)oor man's God, I protest against this unnatural alliance ! I denounce the weapons Avhich you have been deluded into employing, to gain you your rights, and the indecency and profligacy which you are letting be mixed up with them ! Will you strengthen and justify your enemies? ^V'ill you disgust and cripple your friends? Will you go out of your way to do wrong ? When you can be free by fair means, will you try foul ? When you might keep the name of liberty as spotless as the heaven from whence she comes, will you defile her with blasphemy, beastliness and blood ? When the cause of the poor is the cause of Almighty God, will you take it out of His hands to entrust it to the devil ? These are bitter questions, but as you answer them so will you prosper. ' Be fit to be free, and God Himself will set you free.' Do God's work, and you will share God's wages. ' Trust in the Lord, and be doing good, dwell in the land, and, verily, thou shalt be fed. Commit thy way unto the Lord, and He shall bring it to pass.' For the time is near, at last, my friends, even at the doors, when those glorious old words shall be fulfilled : ' Thou, Lord, hast heard the desire of the poor : Thou preparest their heart, and Thine ear hearkeneth thereto; to help the fatherless and the poor unto their right, that the man of the world be no more exalted against them ! ' " Parson Lot." In Letter II. he tells them that if they have followed a different "Reformer's Guide" from his, "It is mainly the fault of us parsons, who have never told you that the true ' Reformer's Guide,' the true poor man's book, the true voice of God against tyrants, idlers, and humbugs, was the Bible. The Bible demands for the poor as much, and more, than they demand for themselves ; it expresses the deepest yearnings of the poor man's heart far more nobly, more searchingly, more daringly, more eloquently, than any modern orator has done. I say, it gives a ray of hope — say rather a certain dawn of a glorious future, such as no universal suffrage, free trade, communism, organization of labour, or any other Morison's-pill measure can give — and yet of a future, which will embrace all that is good in these, a future of conscience, of justice, of freedom, when idlers and oppressors shall no more dare to plead parchments and Acts of Parliament for their iniquities. I say the Bible promises this, not in a few places only, but throughout : it is the thought which runs through 1 66 Charles Kingsley. the whole Bible, justice from God to those whom men oppress, glory from God to those whom men despise. Does that look like the inven- tion of tyrants and prelates ? You may sneer, but give me a fair hear- ing, and if I do not prove my words, then call me the same hard name which I shall call any man who, having read the Bible, denies that it is the poor man's comfort, and the rich man's warning." But to return to Mr. Hughes's Preface, " I think," he says, " I know every line which was ever published under the signature, ' Parson Lot,' and I take it upon myself to say that there is in all that * burning language ' nothing more revolutionary than the extracts given above from his letters to the Chartists. But, it may be said, apart from his writings, did not Parson Lot declare himself a Chartist in a public meeting in London; and did he not preach in a London pulpit a political sermon,* which brought up the incumbent, who had invited him, to protest from the altar against the doctrine which had just been delivered ? " Yes ! both statements are true. Here are the facts as to the speech. In the early summer of 1848, some of those who felt with Charles Kingsley that the ' People's Charter ' had not had fair play or courteous treat- ment, and that those who signed it had real wrongs to complain of, put themselves into communication with the leaders, and met and talked with them. At last it seemed that the time was come for some more public meeting, and one was called at the Cranbourn Tavern, over which Mr. Maurice presided. After the president's address several very bitter speeches followed, and a vehement attack was specially directed against the church and the clergy. The meeting waxed warm, and seemed likely to come to no good, when Kingsley rose, folded his arms across his chest, threw his head back, and began — with the stammer which always came at first when much moved, but which fixed every one's attention at once — ' I am a Church of England parson ' — a long pause — 'and a Chartist;' and then he went on to explain how far he thought them right in their claim for a reform of Parliament ; how deeply he sympathized with their sense of the injustice of the law as it affected them ; how ready he was to help in all ways to get these things set right ; and then to denounce their methods in very much the same terms as I have already quoted from his letters to the Chartists. Pro- bably no one who was present ever heard a speech which told more at the time. I had a singular proof that the effect did not pass away. * This incident belongs to a later period, 185 1, and will be given in its place. Parson Lot. 167 The most violent speaker on that occasion was one of the staff of the leading Chartist newspaper. I lost sight of him entirely for more than twenty years, and saw him again, a little grey shrivelled man, by Kingsley's side, at the grave of Mr. Maurice, in the cemetery at Hampstead. " The experience of this meeting encouraged its promoters to con- tinue the series of Tracts, which they did with a success which sur- prised no one more than themselves. " The fact is, that Charles Kingsley was born a fighting man, and believed in bold attack. ' No human power ever beat back a resolute forlorn hope,' he used to say ; ' to be got rid of, they must be blown back with grape and canister, because the attacking party have all the universe behind them, the defence only that small part which is shut up in their walls.' And he felt most strongly at this time that hard fighting was needed. * It is a pity,' he writes to Mr. Ludlow, ' that telling people what's right won't make them do it ; but not a new fact, though the world has quite forgotten it, and assures you that dear sweet in- cofnpris mankind only wants to be told the way to the millennium to walk willingly into it — which is a lie. *' The memorials of his many controversies lie about in the periodicals of that time, and any one who cares to hunt them up will be well repaid, and struck with the vigour of the defence, and still more with the com- plete change in public opinion which has brought the England of to-day clean round to the side of Parson Lot. The most complete, perhaps, of his fugitive pieces of this kind, is the pamphlet ' Who are the Friends of Order?' published by J. W. Parker & Son, in answer to a-very fair and moderate article in ' Eraser's Magazine.' The Parson there points out how he and his friends were * cursed by demagogues as aristocrats, and by tories as democrats, when in reality they were neither,' and urges that the very fact of the continent being overrun with communist fanatics, is the best argument for preaching association here." * To those who cannot look back on the political storms of 1848-49, his three contributions on the subject of Art, on the pictures in the National Gallery, and on the British Museum will be more congenial. Being now out of print they are given entire. The only poem he sent to " Politics for the People," was the following — • * Tiefoce to "Alton Locke," by T. Hughes. 1876. 1 68 Charles Kings ley. OLD AND NEW: A PARABLE. " See how the autumn leaves float by, decaying, Down the red whirls of yon rain-swollen stream, So fleet the works of men, back to their earth again. Ancient and holy things fade like a dream. Nay ! see the spring blossoms steal forth a-maying, Clothing with tender hues orchard and glen ; So, though o\dfon?is go by, ne'er can their spint die. Look ! England's bare boughs show green leaf again ! " No. L NATIONAL GALLERY. " Picture-galleries should be the workman's paradise, a garden of pleasure, to which he goes to refresh his eyes and heart with beautiful shapes and sweet colouring, when they are wearied with dull bricks and mortar, and the ugly colourless things which fill the workshop and the factory. For, believe me, there is many a road into our hearts besides our ears and brains ; many a sight, and sound, and scent, even, of which we have never thought at all, sinks into our memory, and helps to shape our characters; and thus children brought up among beautiful sights and sweet sounds will most likely show the fruits of their nursing, by thought- fulness, and affection, and nobleness of mind, even by the expression of the countenance. The poet Wordsworth, talking of training up a beautiful country girl, says : — ' The floating clouds their state shall lend To her — for her the willow bend ; Nor shall she fail to see, Even in the motions of the storm, Grace which shall jnould the maiclcii'sfonit, By silent sympathy. And she shall bend her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, A)id beauty, born of murmuring sound. Shall pass into her face.'' " Those who live in towns should carefully remember this, for their own sakes, for their wives' sakes, for their children's sakes. JVez'cr lose an offortimity of seeing anything beautiful. Beauty is God's handwriting — a wayside sacrament; welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower, and thank for it Him, the fountain of all loveliness, and drink it in, simply and earnestly, with all your eyes ; it is a charmed draught, a cup of blessing. " Therefore I said that picture-galleries should be the townsman's BeaiUiftd Pictures. 169 paradise of refreshment. Of course, if he can get tlie real air, the real trees, even for an hour, let him take it, in God's name ; but how many a man who cannot spare time for a daily country walk, may well slip into the National Gallery, or any other collection of pictures, for ten minutes. That garden, at least, flowers as gaily in winter as in summer. Those noble faces on the wall are never disfigured by grief or passion. There, in the space of a single room, the townsman may take his country walk — a walk beneath mountain peaks, blushing sunsets, with broad woodlands spreading out below it ; a walk through green meadows, under cool mellow shades, and overhanging rocks, by rushing brooks, where he watches and watches till he seems to hear the foam whisper, and to see the fishes leap ; and his hard-worn heart wanders out free, beyond the grim city- world of stone and iron, smoky chimneys, and roaring wheels, into the world of beautiful things — the world tuhich shall be hereafter— ^y , which shall be ! Believe it, toil-worn worker, in spite of thy foul alley, thy crowded lodging, thy grimed clothing, thy ill-fed children, thy thin, pale wife — believe it, thou too, and thine, will some day have your share of beauty. God made you love beautiful things only because He intends hereafter to give you your fill of them. That pictured face on the wall is lovely, but lovelier still may the wife of thy bosom be when she meets thee on the resurrection morn ! Those baby cherubs in the old Italian painting — how gracefully they flutter and sport among the soft clouds, full of rich young life and baby joy ! Yes, beautiful, indeed, but just such a one at this very moment is that once pining, deformed child of thine, over whose death-cradle thou wast weeping a month ago ; now a child-angel, whom thou shalt meet again never to part ! Those landscapes, too, painted by loving, wise old Claude, two hundred years ago, are still as fresh as ever. How still the meadows are ! how pure and free that vault of deep blue sky ! No wonder that thy worn heart, as thou lookest, sighs aloud, ' Oh that I had wings as a dove, then would I flee away and be at rest.' Ay, but gayer meadows and bluer skies await thee in the world to co?ne — that fairy-land made real — 'the new heavens and the new earth,' which God has prepared for the pure and the loving, the just and the brave, who have conquered in this sore fight of life ! " These thoughts may seem all too far-fetched to spring up in a man's head from merely looking at pictures ; but it is not so in practice. See, now, such thoughts have sprung up in my head ; how else did I write them down here ? And why should not they, and better ones, too, spring up in your heads, friends? It is delightful to watch in a picture- gallery some street-boy enjoying himself; how first wonder creeps over his rough face, and then a sweeter, more earnest, awe-struck look, till his 170 Charles Kingsley. countenance seems to grow handsomer and nobler on the spot, and drink in and reflect unknowingly, the beauty of the picture he is study- ing. See how some labourer's face will light up before the painting which tells him a noble story of bye-gone days. And why ? Because he feels as if he himself had a share in the story at which he looks. They may be noble and glorious men who are painted there ; but they are still mm of like passions with himself, and his man's heart under- stands them and glories in them ; and he begins, and rightly, to respect himself the more when he finds that he, too, has a fellow feeling with noble men and noble deeds. " I say, pictures raise blessed thoughts in me — why not in you, my brothers ? Your hearts are fresh, thoughtful, kindly ; you only want to have these pictures explained to you, that you may know why and how they are beautiful, and what feelings they ought to stir in your minds ; and therefore I wish, with your good will, to explain, one by one, in future numbers, some of the best pictures in the National Gallery, and the statues in the British Museum. I shall begin by a portrait or two ; they are simpler than large pictures, and they speak of real men and women who once lived on this earth of ours — generally of remarkable and noble men — and man should be always interesting to man. And as these papers go on, if any one of you, in any part of England, will be so kind as to mention well-known statues and pictures of any sort which you wish explained, I, Parson Lot, shall be most happy to tell you as much about them as God shall give me wits to find out. " Parson Lot." NATIONAL GALLERY. No. IL " Any one M'ho goes to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, and passes right through into the furthest room of all, cannot help seeing in the left-hand corner two large and beautiful pictures — the nearer of the two labelled ' Titian,' representing Bacchus leaping from a car drawn by leopards. The other, labelled ' Francia,' representing the Holy Family seated on a sort of throne, with several figures arranged below — one of them a man pierced with arrows. Between these two, low down, hangs a small picture, about two feet square, containing only the portrait of an old man, in a white cap and robe, and labelled on the picture itself, '■Joannes Bellinus.' Now this old man is a very ancient friend of mine, and has comforted my heart, and preached me a sharp sermon, too, many a time. I never enter that Gallery without having five minutes' converse with him ; and yet he has been dead at least three hundred years, and, what is more, I don't even know his name. I believe I Giovanni Bellini. 171 might have found out if I had taken the trouble to ask — but how much should I have been the wiser ? What more do I know of a man by- knowing his name ? It amuses me much, in the world, when one asks, 'Who is that man?' to be answered, 'Oh! don't you know? — that's Mr, Brown, who married Mrs. Smith's daughter;' and so on. Bah ! Whether the man's name be Brown, or whether he has as many names and titles as a Spanish grandee, what does that tell me about the man ? — the spirit and character of the man — what the man will say when he is asked — what the man will do when he is stirred up to action? The man's name is part of his clothes ; his shell; his husk. Change his name and all his titles, you don't change him — ' A man 's a man for a' that,' as Burns says ; and a goose a goose. Other men gave him his name ; but his heart and his spirit — his love and his hatred — his wisdom and his folly — his power to do well and ill; those God and himself gave him. I must know those, and then I know the man. " Let us see what we can make out from the picture itself about the man whom it represents. In the first place, we may see by his dress that he was in his day the Doge (or chief magistrate) of Venice — the island city, the queen of the seas. So we may guess that he had many a stirring time of it, and many a delicate game to play among those tyrannous and covetous old merchant-princes who had elected him ; who were keeping up their own power at the expense of everyone's liberty, by spies and nameless accusers, and secret councils, tortures, and prisons, whose horrors no one ever returned to describe. Nay, we may guess just the very men with whom he had to deal — the very battles he may have seen fought, for the painter's name on the picture shows when he lived. " But all these are ch-cumstanccs — things which stand round the man (as the word means), and not the old man himself — not the character and heart of the man : that we must get from the portrait ; and if the portrait is a truly noble portrait we shall get it. If it is a merely vulgar or naturalist picture, like most that are painted now-a-days, we shall get the man's dress and shape of his face, but little or no expression : if it is :i pathetic portrait, or picture of passion, we shall get one particular temporary expression of his face — perhaps joy, sorrow, anger, disgust — but still one which may have passed any moment, and left his face quite different ; but if the full expression of the man's picture is of the noblest kind, an ideal or high art picture, we shall get the whole spirit — we shall read his whole character there ; just all his strength and weakness, his kindliness or his sternness, his thoughtfulness or his care- lessness, written there once and for ever ; — what he would be, though 172 Charles Kingsley. all the world passed away ; what his immortal and eternal soul will be, unless God or the devil changed his heart, to all eternity. " This is a deep matter. We shall get at it step by step, by many examples. Let us see, now, whether this is an ideal portrait ; in short, if it gives us a full idea of a complete character, so that we should know him if anyone talked to us of his character, even without telling us his likeness. " We may see at once that he has been very handsome ; but it is a peculiar sort of beauty. How delicate and graceful all the lines in his face are ! — he is a gentleman of God's own making, and not of the tailor's making. He is such a gentleman as I have seen among working- men and nine-shilling-a-week labourers, often and often ; his nobleness is in his heart — it is God's gift, therefore it shows in his noble-looking face. No matter whether he were poor or rich ; all the rags in the world, all the finery in the world, could not have made him look like a snob or a swell. He was a thoughtful man, too; no one with such a forehead could have been a trifler : a kindly man, too, and honest — one that may have played merrily enough with his grandchildren, and put his hand in his purse for many a widow and orphan. Look what a bright, clear, straightforward, gentle look he has, almost a smile ; but he has gone through too many sad hours to smile much : he is a man of many sorrows, like all true and noble rulers ; and, like a high mountain- side, his face bears the furrows of many storms. He has had a stern life of it, what with tyrant noblemen, and wayward snobs, and the cares of a great nation on his shoulders. He has seen that in this world there is no rest for those who live like true men : you may see it by the wrinkles in his brow, and the sharp-cut furrows in his cheeks, and those firm-set, determined lips. His eyes almost show the marks of many noble tears, — tears such as good men shed over their nation's sins ; but that, too, is past now. He has found out his path, and he will keep it ; and he has no misgiving now about what God would have him do, or about the reward which God has laid up for the brave and just ; and that is what makes his forehead so clear and bright, while his very teeth are clenched with calm determination. And by the look of those high cheek bones, and that large square jaw, he is a strong-willed man enough, and not one to be easily turned aside from his purpose by any man alive, or by any woman either, or by his own passions and tempers. One fault of character, I think, he may perhaps have had much trouble with — I mean bitterness and contemptuousness. His lips are very thin; he may have sneered many a time, when he was younger, at the follies of the world — which that great, lofty, thoughtful brain and clear eye of his told him were follies ; but he seems to have got past that too. Venice. i ^■^^ Such is the man's character: a noble, simple, commanding old man, who has conquered many hard things, and, hardest of all, has conquered himself, and now is waiting calm for his everlasting rest. God send us all the same. " Now consider the deep insight of old John Bellini, who could see all this, and put it down there for us with pencil and paint ; better far, more livingly and speakingly, than I could describe it to you in a dozen letters. " No doubt there was something in old John's own character which made him especially able to paint such a man ; for, as I have read, he was much such a man himself, and we always understand those best who are most like ourselves ; and therefore you may tell pretty nearly a painter's own character by seeing what sort of subjects he paints, and what his style of painting is. And a noble, simple, brave, godly man was old John Bellini, and never lost his head, though princes were flattering him and snobs following him with shouts and blessings for his noble pictures of the Venetian victories, as if he had been a man sent from God Himself ; as indeed he was, as all great painters are ; for who but God makes beauty ? Who gives the loving heart, and the clear eye, and the graceful taste to see beauty and to copy it, and to set forth on canvas, or in stone, the noble deeds of patriots dying for their country? To paint truly patriotic pictures well, a man must have his heart in his work — he must be a true patriot himself, as John Bellini was (if I mis- take not, he had fought for his country himself in more than one shrewd fight). And what makes men patriots, or artists, or anything noble at all, but the spirit of the living God ? Those great pictures of Bellini's are no more ; they were burnt a few years afterwards, with the magni- ficent national hall in which they hung ; but the spirit of them is not passed away. Even now, Venice, Bellini's beloved mother-land, is rising, new-born, from long weary years of Austrian slavery, and trying to be free and great once more ; and young Italian hearts are lighting up with the thoughts of her old fleets and her old victories, her mer- chants and her statesmen, whom John Bellini drew. Venice sinned, and fell ; and sorely has she paid for her sins, through two hundred years of shame, and profligacy, and slavery. And she has broken the oppressor's yoke, by a strange and unexpected chance. The fall of Louis Philippe has proved the salvation of Venice, God send her a new life ! May she learn by her ancient sins ! May she learn by her ancient glories ! " You will forgive me for forgetting my picture to talk of such things ? But we must return. Look back at what I said about the old portrait — the clear, calm, victorious character of the old man's face, and see how 174 Charles Kingsley. all the rest of the picture agrees with it, in a complete harmony, as all things in a first-rate picture should. The dress, the scenery, the light and shade, the general ' tone ' of colour should all agree with the character of the face — all help to bring our minds into that state in which we may best feel and sympathise with the human beings painted. Now here, because the face is calm and grand, the colour and the out- lines are quiet and grand likewise. How different these colours are from that glorious * Holy Family ' of Francia's, next to it on the right ; or from that equally glorious ' Bacchus and Ariadne ' of Titian's, on the left ! Yet all three are right, each for its own subject. Here you have no brilliant reds, no rich warm browns ; no luscious greens. The white robe and cap give us the thought of purity and simplicity ; the very golden embroidery on them, which marks his rank, is carefully kept back from being too gaudy. Everything is sober here ; and the lines of the dress, how simple they all are — no rich curves, no fluttering drapery. They would be quite stiff if it were not for that waving line of round tassels in front, which break the extreme straightness and heaviness of the splendid robe ; and all pointing upwards towards that solemn, thin, calm face, with its high white cap, rising like the peak of a snow mountain against the dark, deep, boundless blue sky beyond. " That is a grand thought of Bellini's ! You do not see the man's hands ; he does not want them now, his work is done. You see no landscape behind — no buildings. All earth's ways and sights are nothing to him now; there is nothing but the old man and the sky — nothing between him and the heaven now, and he knows it and is glad. A few months more, and those way-worn features shall have crumbled to their dust, and that strong, meek spirit shall be in the abyss of eternity, before the God from whence it came. " So says John Bellini, with art more cunning than words. And if this paper shall make one of you look at that little picture with fresh interest, and raise one strong and solemn longing in you to die the death of the righteous, and let your last end be like his who is painted there — then I shall rejoice in the only payment I expect, or desire to get, for this my afternoon's writing. • " Parson Lot." No. III. BRITISH MUSEUM. " My friend, Will Willow- Wren,* is bringing before our readers the beauty and meaning of the living natural world — the great Green-book which holds ' the open secret,' as Goethe calls it, seen by all, but read by, alas ! how few. And I feel as much as he, that nature is infinitely more wonderful than the highest art ; and in the commonest hedgeside * Charles Blachford Mansfield. The British Museum. 175 leaf lies a mystery and beauty greater than that of the greatest picture, the noblest statue — as infinitely greater as God's work is infinitely greater than man's. But to those who have no leisure to study nature in the green fields (and there are now-a-days too many such, though the time may come when all will have that blessing), to such I say, go to the British Museum ; there at least, if you cannot go to nature's wonders, some of nature's wonders are brought to you. "The British Museum is my glory and joy ; because it is almost the only place which is free to English citizens as such — where the poor and the rich may meet together, and before those works of God's spirit, ' who is no respecter of persons,' feel that ' the Lord is the maker of them all.' In the British Museum and the National Gallery alone the Englishman may say, ' Whatever my coat or my purse, I am an English- man, and therefore I have a right here. I can glory in these noble halls, as if they were my own house.' " English commerce, the joint enterprise and industry of the poor sailor as well as the rich merchant, brought home these treasures from foreign lands, and those glorious statues — though it was the wealth and taste of English noblemen and gentlemen (who in that proved themselves truly noble and gentle) which placed them here, yet it was the genius of English artists — men at once above and below all ranks — men who have worked their way up, not by money or birth, but by worth and genius, which taught the noble and wealthy the value of those antiques, and which proclaimed their beauty to the world. The British Museum is a truly equalizing place, in the deepest and most spiritual sense ; therefore I love it. " And it gives the lie, too, to that common slander, ' that the Englisli are not worthy of free admission to valuable and curious collections, because they have such a trick of seeing with their fingers ; such a trick of scribbling their names, of defiling and disfiguring works of art. On the Continent it may do, but you cannot trust the English.' " This has been, like many other untruths, so often repeated, that people now take it for granted ; but I believe that it is utterly ground- less, and I say so on the experience of the British Museum and the National Gallery. In the only two cases, I believe, in which injury has been done to anything in either place, the destroyers were neither artizans, nor even poor reckless heathen street-boys, but persons who had received what is too often miscalled ' a liberal education.' The truth is, that where people pay their money (as they do in some great houses) for the empty pleasure of staring at luxuries which they cannot enjoy, vulgar curiosity too often ends in jealous spite ; and where people consider themselves unjustly excluded from works of art, which ought, 176 Charles Kingsley. as far as is possible, to be made as free as the common air, mean minds will sometimes avenge their fancied wrongs by doing wrong themselves. But national property will always be respected, because all will be content, while they feel that they have their rights, and all will be careful while they feel that they have a share in the treasure. " Would that the rich, Avho, not from selfishness so much as from thoughtlessness, lock up the splendid collections from the eyes of all but a favoured itw, would go to the British Museum in Easter week ! Would that the Deans and Chapters, who persist (in spite of the strug- gles of many of their own body) in making penny-peep-shows of God's houses, built by public piety and benevolence — of St. Paul's and West- minster Abbey, which belong not to them at all, but to God and the people of England, would go to the British Museum in Easter week and see there hundreds of thousands, of every rank and age, wandering past sculptures and paintings, which would be ruined by a blow — past jewels and curiosities, any one of which would buy many a poor soul there a month's food and lodging— only protected by a pane of glass, if by that ; and then see not a thing disfigured — much less stolen. Everywhere order, care, attention, honest pride in their country's wealth and science; earnest reverence for the mighty works of God, and of the God-inspired. I say, the people of England prove themselves worthy of free admission to all works of art, and it is therefore the duty of those who can to help them to that free admission. " What a noble, and righteous, and truly brotherly plan it would be, if all classes would join to form a free National Gallery of Art and Science, which might combine the advantages of the present Polytechnic, Society of Arts, and British Institution, gratis. Manufacturers and men of science might send thither specimens of their new inventions. The rich might send, for a few months in the year — as they do now to the British Institution — ancient and modern pictures, and not only pictures, but all sorts of curious works of art and nature, which are now hidden in their drawing-rooms and libraries. There might be free liberty to copy any object, on the copyist's name and residence being registered. And surely artists and men of science might be found, with enough of the spirit of patriotism and love, to explain gratuitously to all comers, what- ever their rank or class, the wonders of the Museum. I really believe that if once the spirit of brotherhood got abroad among us ; if men once saw that here was a vast means of educating, and softening and uniting those who have no leisure for study, and few means of enjoyment, except the gin-shop and Cremorne Gardens ; if they could but once feel that here was a project, equally blessed for rich and poor, the money for it would be at once forthcoming from many a rich man, who Beauty and Sympathy. 177 is longing to do good, if he could only be shown the way ; and from many a poor journeyman, who would gladly contribute his mite to a truly national museum, founded on the principles of spiritual liberty, equality, and fraternity. All that is wanted is the spirit of self-sacrifice, patriotism and brotherly love — which God alone can give — which I believe He is giving more and more in these very days. " I never felt this more strongly than some six months ago, as I was looking in at the windows of a splendid curiosity-shop in Oxford Street, at a case of humming-birds. I was gloating over the beauty of those feathered-jewels, and then wondering what was the meaning, what was the use of it all ? — why those exquisite little creatures should have been hidden for ages, in all their splendours of ruby and emerald and gold, in the South American forests, breeding and fluttering and dying, that some dozen out of all those millions might be brought over here to astonish the eyes of men. And as I asked myself, why were all these boundless varieties, these treasures of unseen beauty, created ? my brain grew dizzy between pleasure and thought ; and, as always happens when one is most innocently delighted, ' I turned to share the joy,' as AVordsworth says ; and next to me stood a huge, brawny coal-heaver, in his shovel hat, and white stockings and high-lows, gazing at the humming-birds as earnestly as myself As I turned he turned, and I saw a bright manly face, with a broad, soot-grimed forehead, from under which a pair of keen flashing eyes gleamed wondering, smiling sympathy into mine. In that moment we felt ourselves friends. If we had been Frenchmen, we should, I suppose, have rushed into each other's arms and ' fraternised ' upon the spot. As we were a pair of dumb, awkward Englishmen, we only gazed a half-minute, staring into each other's eyes, with a delightful feeling of understanding each other, and then burst out both at once with—' Isn't that beautiful ? ' ' Well, that is ! ' And then both turned back again, to stare at our humming-birds. " I never felt more thoroughly than at that minute (though, thank God, I had often felt it before) that all men were brothers ; that frater- nity -and equality were not mere poHtical doctrines, but blessed God- ordained facts ; that the party-walls of rank and fashion and money were but a paper prison of our own making, which we might break through any moment by a single hearty and kindly feeling ; that the one spirit of God was given without respect of persons ; that the beau- tiful things were beautiful alike to the coal-heaver and the parson ; and that before the wondrous works of God and of God-inspired genius, the rich and the poor might meet together, and feel that whatever the coat or the creed may be, ' A man's a man for a' that,' and one Lord the maker of them all. VOL. I. N 178 Charles Kingsley. " For believe me, my friends, rich and poor— and I beseech you to think deeply over this great truth — that men will never be joined in true brotherhood by mere plans to give them a self-interest in common, as the Socialists have tried to do. No : to feel /or each other, they must first feel wi^/i each other. To have their sympathies in common, they must have not one object of gain, but an object of admiration in common ; to know that they are brothers, they must feel that they have one Father ; and a way to feel that they have one common Father, is to see each other wondering, side by side, at His glorious works ! *' Parson Lot." He had a sore battle to go through at this time with his own heart, and with those friends and relations, religious and worldly, who each and all from their own particular standpoint depre- cated the line he took, and urged him to withdraw from this sympathy with the people, which was likely to spoil his pro- spects in life. In reference to this he writes to his wife : — "... I will not be a liar. I will speak in season and out of season. I will not shun to declare the whole counsel of God. I will not take counsel with flesh and blood, and flatter myself into the dream that while every man on earth, from Maurice back to Abel, who ever tried to testify against the world, has been laughed at, misunderstood, slan- dered, and that, bitterest of all, by the very people he loved best, and understood best, I alone am to escape. My path is clear, and I will follow in it. He who died for me, and who gave me you, shall I not trust Him through whatsoever new and strange paths He may lead me? . . . ." " Many thanks for your kind letter," he writes to Mr. Ludlow, who had announced to him his rejection at King's College, " which gave me the first intimation of my defeat. Not an unwelcome one for me, for I felt more and more that I have more work already than I know where to stow, and was in daily danger of neglecting the duty which lies nearest me — my parish. The Council's conduct has not been over civil to Maurice But all I hope is," he adds, " that we shall be bold — ' draw the sword, and throw away the scab- bard.' I think I have counted the cost, and I have more to lose in many ways than any one of us almost. And therefore, lest I should turn coward, I want to put myself whence there will be no retreat. That myth of old Von Trong Hagen, dashing the boat in pieces by which the Nibelungen crossed the Danube, is great and true. Let Work for the Periodical. 1 79 the unreturning ferry-boat perish. Let us forward. God leads us, though bhnd. Shall we be afraid to follow ? I do not see my way ; I do not care to ; but I know that He sees His way, and that I see Him, and I cannot believe that in spite of all one's sins He will forget His gracious promises. * They had an eye unto Him and were light- ened ; they that put their trust in Him shall not be ashamed.' " No, Ludlow — out, out on the wide weltering ocean of thought. Let us be sure that He will never leave us nor forsake us, however sorely battered, however cowardly we may long to turn, till we have showed His strength unto this generation, and His power to all those who are yet for to come. " What if we are — no better than I am ! His strength shall be made perfect in our weakness, and He will have all the glory to Him- self — as He ought. " And now to business. '^ * '"' * * * is doing what he can to get a notice of the Politics into the Times. ... I want to have some more Whitford Priory tales out, viz., No. i. A young poet from the working classes ; bringing in Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Good Queen Bess (a great favourite of mine), the extravagance, and at the same time the high intellectual tone of her Court, &c. " 2. A good jolly Cavalier and Roundhead story, and storming of the Priory by our fathers. 3. A Roger de Coverley story, showing the low ebb of town hfe, &c. 4. A story about the Methodists, and the fury of the Squire Westerns and Parson TruUibers against them. 5. A French war and high-prices story, old Poor-law, &c. 6. What is the matter with the parish ? an expose of things as they are. 7. How to mend the parish, continued. " I will bring you up a Game-law ballad or two, and will work the end of the week at a National Gallery Article, and a Letter to the Chartists. At present I am grinding for Queen's College. " Pray, let us try and see what sort of a definite tone we can influence people towards taking at our meetings. We must be more definite and practical ; we must let the people see more what we do hold. We must thus gain their sympathy, before we begin scolding. . . ." TO THE SAME. EVERSLEY, Jtdy, 1848. '' I should have answered yesterday your noble and kind letter, had not my afternoon been employed in forcing a cruel, lazy farmer to shoot a miserable horse which was rotting alive in front of my house, and superintending its death by aid of one of my own bullets. N 2 i8o Charles Kingsley. What an awful wonderful thing a violent death is, even in a dumb beast ! I would not have lost the sight for a great deal. But now to business. You take a strange way to frighten a man off from novel- writing, by telling a man that he may become the greatest novelist of the age. If your good opinion of me was true, I should have less fear for myself, for a man could not become that in this wonderful era, without having ideas and longings which would force him to become something far better than a novelist ; but for myself, chaotic, piecemeal, passionate, ' lachemar ' as I am, I have fears as great as your own. j know the miserable, peevish, lazy, conceited, faithless, prayerless wretch I am, but I know this, too, that One is guiding me, and driving me when I will not be guided, who will make me, and has made me, go His way and do His work, by fair means or by foul. He set me on writing this ' novel' He has taught me things about the heart of fast sporting men, and about the condition of the poor, and our duty to them, which I have no doubt He has taught many more, but He has not set anyone else to speak about them in the way in which I am speaking. He has given me a certain artistic knack of utterance (nothing but a knack), but He has done more. He has made the ' Word of the Lord like fire within my bones,' giving me no peace till I have spoken out. I know I may seem presumptuous — to myself most of all, because I know best the ' liar to my own idea ' which I am. I know that He has made me a parish priest, and that that is the duty which lies nearest me, and that I may seem to be leaving my calling in novel-writing. But has He not taught me all these very things by my parish-priest life ? Did He, too, let me become a strong, daring, sporting wild man-of-the-woods for nothing? Surely the edu- cation which He has given me, so different from that which authors generally receive, points out to me a peculiar calling to preach on these points, from my own experience, as it did to good old Isaac Walton, as it has done in our day to that truly noble man. Captain Marryat. Therefore I must believe ' Se tu segui la tua stella ' with Dante, that He who ordained my star will not lead me into temptation, but through it, as Maurice says. Without Him all places and methods of life are equally dangerous— with Him, all equally safe. Pray for me, for in myself I am weaker of purpose than a lost greyhound, lazier than a dog in rainy weather. But I feel intensely the weight of your advice to write no more novels. Why should I ? I have no more to say. When this is done I must set to and read. The symbolism of nature and the meaning of history must be my studies. Believe me I long for that day — The pangs of intellectual labour, the burden of spiritual pregnancy, are not Idols of Iron. 1 8 r pleasant things. A man cannot write in the fear of God without running against the devil at every step. He cannot sit down to speak the truth without disturbing in his own soul a hornet swarm of lies. Your hack-writer of no creed, your bigot Polyphemus, whose one eye just helps him to see to eat men, they do not understand this; their pens run on joyful and light of heart. But no more talk about myself. " \Vill you tell Parker that I am quite willing to have my name and anything else he chooses appended to the reprint of 'the Politics. If it will free his worthy father in pocket or reputation, it must be done. " Once more I must thank you for your letter. Never had I words spoken to me before in which warning and encouragement were so harmoniously blended. It will help me to see my way clearer for many a month to come. I remembered you in the litany — not as a perse- cutor and slanderer, or one in error either, as far as I can see " Read a poem written by an acquaintance of mine, Clough of Oxford, ' The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich,' and tell me if you do not think it a noble specimen of Pantagruelism, and a hopeful sign for 'Young Oxford,' of which he is one of the leaders " TO THE SAME. " Many, many thanks for charming letters, which I have been too lazy to answer till now ; especially one about the river at night — that I have seen. As a companion, just see the Hungerford Suspension Bridge in a fog; standing on the steam-boat pier, the further shore invisible, with two vast lines, the catenary and its tangent line, stretching away as if self-supported, into infinite space ; a sort of Jacob's Ladder, one end on earth and one in heaven. It makes one feel very small : so for that matter, do the lines of rail in looking along a vast sweep of railway. There is an awful waiting look about them : a silent forbidden desert to all the world, except the one moment when their demon bridegrooms shall rush roaring over them on the path which none but they must go. Does this seem real ? It is because the thought is so unspeakable. I wonder whether, in the future ages, men will ever fall down and worship steam-engines, as the Caribs did Columbus's ships. Why not ? Men have worshipped stone men and women ; why not line iron ? Fancy it ! " F. and I like the ' Bothie ' more and more, and more. If you do, do write a little review of it, and get it into the ' People's Journal,' or some of those places. It may help to bridge the gap between ranks — the work which we all have to do just now " 182 Charles Kingsley. Having been appointed Professor of English Literature at Queen's College, Harley Street, he gave his first introductory lecture on May 13th, and continued lecturing weekly. In the summer he made an expedition with Mr. Maurice to Crowland Abbey, near Peterborough, which deeply impressed him at the time, and formed one of the strong features in his story of " Hereward " at a later date. " We spent there a price- less day," he says ; " these days with Maurice have taught me more than I can tell. Like all great things, he grows upon one more and more." He wrote several letters to his little daughter at this time, full of poetry and natural history, of which one is given. TO HIS LITTLE GIRL ROSE. DUXFORD, Cambridge. " My dear Miss Rose, "I am writing in such a curious place. A mill where they grind corn and bones, and such a funny little room in it full of stuffed birds. And there is a flamingo, such a funny red bird, with long legs and a long neck, as big as Miss Rose, and sharks' jaws, and an armadillo all over great scales, and now I will tell you about the stork. He is called Peter, and here is a picture of him. See what long legs he has, and a white body and black wings, and he catches all the frogs and snails, and eats them, and when he is cross, he opens his long bill, ' and makes such a horrible clattering like a rattle. And he comes to the window at tea time, to eat bread and butter, and he is so greedy, and he gobbled down a great pinch of snuff out of Daddy's box, and he was so sick, and we all laughed at him, for being so foolish and greedy. And do you know there are such curious frogs here that people eat, and there were never any found in England before Mr. Thurnall found them, and he sent them to the British Museum and the wise men were so pleased, and sent him leave to go to the British Museum and see all the wonderful things whenever he liked. And he has got such beau- tiful butterflies in boxes, and whole cupboards full of birds' eggs, and a river full of beautiful fish, and Daddy went fishing yesterday, and caught an immense trout, very nearly four pounds weight, and he raged and ran about in the river so long, and Daddy was quite tired before he could get him out. And to-day Daddy is going back to Cambridge to get a letter from his dear home. And do you know when Mr. Thurnall saw me drawing the stork, he gave me a real live stork of my own to bring home to Miss Rose, and we will put him in the kitchen Thomas Cooper. 183 garden to run about — what fun ! And to-morrow Daddy is going to see the beautiful pictures at the FitzwiUiam INIuseum, and the next day he is going to fish at Shelford, and the next day, perhaps, he is coming home to his darhngs at Eversley Rectory, for he does not know what to do without them How happy Miss Rose must be with her dear mother. She must say * thank God for giving me such a darling mother ! ' " Kiss her and Maurice for me, and now good-bye, and I will bring you home the stork. '' Your own Daddy." His acquaintance with Mr. Thomas Cooper, Chartist, was made this year, and out of it grew a long correspondence, of which this is the first letter. The rest will come at a later period. Eversley, June 19, 1848. " Ever since I read your brilliant poem, ' The Purgatory of Suicides,' and its most affecting preface, I have been possessed by a desire to thrust myself, at all risks, into your acquaintance. The risk which I felt keenly, was the fear that you might distrust me, as a clergyman; having, I am afraid, no great reason to love that body of men. Still, I thought, the poetic spirit ought to be a bond of communion between us. Shall God make us brother-poets, as well as brother men, and we refuse to fraternise ? I thought also that you, if you have a poet's heart, as well as the poet's brain which you have manifested, ought to be more able than other men to appreciate and sympathise with my feelings towards ' the working classes.' " You can understand why I held back — from shame — a false shame, perhaps, lest you should fancy me a hypocrite. But my mind was made up, when I found an attack in the ' Commonwealth,' on certain papers which I had published in the ' Politics of the People,' under the name of Parson Lot. Now I had hailed with cordial pleasure the appearance of the ' Commonwealth,' and sympathised thoroughly with it— and here was this very ' Commonwealth ' attacking me on some of the very points on which I most agreed with it. It seemed to me intolerable to be so misunderstood. It had been long intolerable to me, to be regarded as an object of distrust and aversion by thousands of my countrymen, my equals in privilege, and too often, alas ! far my superiors in worth, just because I was a clergyman, the very office which ought to have testified above all others, for liberty, equality, brotherhood, for time and eternity. I felt myself bound, then, to write to you, to see if among the nobler spirits of the working classes I 184 Charles Kingsley. could not make one friend who would understand me. My ancestors fought in Cromwell's army, and left all for the sake of God and liberty, among the pilgrim fathers, and here were men accusing me of ' medireval tyranny.' I would shed the last drop of my life blood for the social and political emancipation of the people of England, as God is my witness ; and here are the very men for whom I would die, fancying me an * aristocrat.' It is not enough for me that they are mistaken in me. I want to work with them. I want to realise my brotherhood with them. I want some one like yourself, intimately acquainted with the mind of the working classes, to give me such an insight into their life and thoughts, as may enable me to consecrate my powers effectually to their service. For them I have lived for several years. I come to you to ask you if you can tell me how to live more completely for them. If you distrust and reject my overtures, I shall not be astonished — pained I shall be — and you must know as well as I, that there is no bitterer pain than to be called a rogue because you are honester than your neighbours, and a time-server, because you have intellect enough to see both sides of a question. "If you will allow me to call on you at any hour next Wednesday or Thursday, which may suit you, you will very much oblige me. " I send you my poem as something of a 'sample.' At first sight it may seem to hanker after feudalism and the middle age. I trust to you to see a deeper and somewhat more democratic moral in it.' In the autumn he quite broke down, while writing " Yeast," as a series of papers in " Fraser's Magazine." He had not re- covered the excitement of the Chartist movement, and having at that time no curate, every hour was occupied with his sermons and cottage visiting, and he w^as forced to write " Yeast " at night, when the day's work was over, and the house still. This was too much for brain and nerves, and one Sunday evening, after his two services had been got through with difificulty, he fell asleep, slept late into the next day, and woke so exhausted that his medical man, alarmed at his weak- ness, ordered complete rest and a change to Bournemouth. From thence, after a month's rest, he returned to Eversley only to sink again. Eversley, October 27, 1848. "... Please God I shall be home to-morrow (Bournemouth). I am quite worn out with going round and seeing every one to-day. I am trying to recollect and collect everything, but my brains are half addle. rhe Art of IVriting Poetry. 185 Kiss the darlings for me. What would life be without you ? What is it with you but a brief pain to make us long for everlasting bliss. There we shall be together for ever, without a sigh or a cross. — But how long first ! how long ! " TO AN OXFORD FRIEND. EvERSLEV, December, 1848. " I have delayed answering your letter because I did not wish to speak in a hurry on a subject so important to you. I am afraid that 's report of my opinion has pained you — really it ought not ; I spoke only as a friend and in sincerity. I cannot advise you to publish the poems of yours which I have seen— at least for some years, and I will give you my reasons. With the ^'^oj of them I thoroughly agree ; it is in the ttu^oj I see defects, which will not suit the public just now. The time for merely reflective poets is past : I do not mean for sub- jective poetry — that will always be interesting, but only in so far as it embodies the subjective in objective forms — in short in so far as it is dramatic, I do not mean in dialogues and scenes, but in impersonation and representation. Byron, Moore, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson have succeeded in subjective poetry, just in so far as they have embodied spiritual and intellectual truths in images and examples drawn from the physical and pathetic (I use these words in Aristotle's broad sense) phenovienon of history, man, and the universe. This the last generation of poets have done, and the world will be satisfied with nothing less henceforward. It is a tendency to this which makes the subjectivity of the ' Ambarvalia ' * tolerable. Indeed a man is a poet just in so far as he does this — as he sees and represents the unseen in the seen. Now here you fail. You have not images enough (I don't mean tropes), nor are those you have original enough. There is, forgive me, a stock- epithet tone, too often verging towards the * post-prandial,' and I know why. " First, you write too easily; that same imp 'facility' must not be let to ruin you, as it helped to ruin Theodore Hook. You must never put two words or lines where one will do ; the age is too busy and hurried to stand it. Again, you want to see a great deal more, and study more — that is the only way to have materials. Poets cannot create till they have learnt to recombine. The study of man and nature ; the study of poets and fiction writers of all schools is necessary. And, believe me, you can never write like Byron, or anybody else worth * "Ambarvalia," by A. 11. Cloiigh and T. Burbidge. 1 86 Charles Kings ley. hearing, unless by reading and using poetry of a very different school from his. The early dramatists, Shakespeare above all ; and not less the two schools which made Shakespeare ; the Northern ballad litera- ture ; nay even, I find, the Norse myths. And, on the other hand, the Romance literature must be known, to acquire that objective power of embodying thoughts, without which poetry degenerates into the mere intellectual reflective, and thence into the metrical-prose didactic. Read, mark, and learn, and do not write. I never wrote five hundred lines in my life before the ' Saint's Tragedy,' but from my childhood I had worked at poetry from Southey's ' Thalaba,' Ariosto, Spenser, and the ' Old Ballads,' through almost every school, classic and modern, except the Spanish, and, alas ! a very little German, and that by trans- lations. And I have not read half enough. I have been studying all physical sciences which deal with phenomena ; I have been watching nature in every mood ; I have been poring over sculptures and paint- ings since I was a little boy — and all I can say is, I do not know half enough to be a poet in the nineteenth century, and have cut the Muse /;-(? ttmpore. "Again, you have an infinity to learn about rhythm and metre, and about the colouring and chiaroscuro of poetry ; how to break up your masses, and how to make masses ; high lights and shadows; major and minor keys of metre; rich colouring aUernating with delicate. All these things have to be learnt, if you wish to avoid monotony, to arrest the interest, to gain the cardinal secret of giving ' continual surprise in expectation,' and ' expectation in surprise.' " Now don't be angry with me. I think you have a poetic faculty in you, from the mere fact of your having been always lusting to get your thoughts into poetry ; and because I think you have one, therefore I don't want you to publish, or even write, till you have learnt enough really to enable you to embody your thoughts. They are good and vigorous, and profitable for this age ; but they are as yet too bare-backed — you must go clothes-hunting for the poor naked babbies. " Let me hear from you again, for I am very much interested in all you do, and your true friend and well wisher." TO , ESQ. EVERSLEV, \\ " My dear Mr. The extreme importance which I attach to the marriage question which we discussed last night, and my great dissatisfaction with my lame defence of (I must say it) the truth on the point, compels On Marriage. 187 me to inflict a long letter on you, hoping that it may, if not convince, at least shake you in your present view— perhaps, by God's blessing, be one stepping stone for you towards that higher and spiritual view of marriage, the path to which is very often earnest doubt, like yours, of that vulgar and carnal conception of it which is common, in the sense- bound world. " Man is a sexual animal : sense tells us this, independent of Scrip- ture, and Scripture confirms it — 'male and female created he them;' and again, 'be fruitful and multiply' were said of man in Paradise. The notion that marriage was not instituted till after the Fall is a private gloss, flatly contradicted by Gen. i. 28, and Adam's speech, Gen. ii. 24; and, above all, the use of the word * wife ' before the Fall proves it. I must protest, in the name of all criticism and logic, against supposing that the word wife has an utterly different meaning in the first three chapters of Genesis to what it has in the rest of the Bible and in the whole world to this day, especially when those three chapters describe the institution of wives. Admit such a mode of interpretation and Scripture may be made (as among the Romish theologians) to mean anything or nothing, at the reader's will Man is not a mere animal — he is the spirit-animal ; a spirit manifesting itself in an animal form, as the heathens themselves hold. Now the Law of the universe is, that spirit shall rule and matter obey, and this law has two poles ; ist, That spirit shall control, and matter be controlled : 2nd, That spirit shall will, and matter express that will. For the true ideal of rule is, where the subject is not merely restrained by his king, but fulfills the will of his king. In the earlier ages of Christianity the first pole only was perceived; the gross sensuality of the heathen world shut everything from the eyes of the fathers but the fact that it was by his fleshly lusts that man enacted most of his sins. " It was, I think, a part of Christ's guidance that they did see nothing else ; that their whole energies were directed to preaching the great message, 'Ye are not beasts, but immortal souls — not the slaves of flesh and matter, but the lords of your flesh, servants only of God.' Till this message had been fully believed, no art or chivalry was allowed to arise in the Church. It was better that man should think marriage, eating, and drinking, and humanity itself unclean, than make them unclean by a mere animal return to the brutality from which they had been raised. Thus Christ, in every age of the Church for the sake of enablmg our piecemeal and partial minds to bring out one particular truth, seems to permit of our pushing it into error, by not binding it with its correlative; c. g., state authority v. ecclesiastical authority, and Free Will v. Predestination. 1 88 Charles Kings ley. " In fulness of time God raised up Christian art, chivalry, and woman worship as witnesses for the other pole, Anti, /. e., that spirit had nobler relations to flesh and matter, and a nobler duty to fulfil with regard to it. As the flesh was not meant meiely to be the slave of the spirit, it was meant to be its symbol — its outward expression. In this way only can we reconcile the contradiction by which both Scripture and common sense talk of our bodies as at once not us, and yet us. They are not we, but our earthly tabernacles, in as far as they are aggregated gas and salts, &c., while we are each of us one and eternal. They are we, in as far as they are infallibly, in every lineament and gesture, the expressions of our inward and spiritual state ' In the beginning God created them male and female.' This, when taken with the context, can only be explained to mean — a woman for each man, and a man for each woman. This binary law of man's being ; the want of a complementum, a ' help meet,' without whom it is not good for him to be, and joined to whom they two became one being of a higher organisation than either had alone — this binary or monogamic law has been gradually developing itself in the history of man ; the heathen, when purest, felt that his ideal. The Bible itself sets forth its gradual rise from inter-marriage with sisters, concubinage, polygamy, up to our Lord's assertion of the original ideal of marriage, the one husband and one wife. And St. Paul, without forbidding polygamy, puts monogamy on such a ground that the whole Church has instinctively felt that as long as Ephesians v. stood in Scripture, polygamy was a base and fearful fall for any Christian man. " This development of monogamy, as the only ideal of man, is going on now ; one may see it in the increasing dislike to second marriages, for the very opposite reason to the old Romish dislike to them. Lovers of high and pure minds now shrink from them, because marriage is so spiritual and timeless— so pure and mysterious — an Eternal union, which once solemnised with the loved one can be transferred to no other — v/hich death cannot part. God forbid, however, that any Church should break gospel liberty by forbidding second marriages. They are no more sin to those who have not entered into the higher idea of marriage, than polygamy is sinful to the heathen : but towards strict monogamy lies the path of man's education in this age, and in the strict monogamy to more divine, more Scriptural views of marriage than the world has yet seen. ........ " This brings me to your objection, that if this were true it were a sin not to marry. To this I answer, that were it false, it were a sin to marry, in all who knew celibacy to be the higher state, because it is a sin On Marriage. 189 to choose a lower state, without having first striven to the very uttermost for the higher. And it is a sin to disbeHeve that God's grace will be vouchsafed in answer to prayer and earnest struggles to preserve that state, as I think the biographies of pious monks and nuns fully show. They by a vow, which they believed binding, had made it sinful for them to marry, for whatsoever is not of faith is sin ; they, therefore, prayed for grace to avoid that which in them would have been sin, and they obtained it. Were I a Romanist, I should look on a continuance in the state of wedlock as a bitter degradation to myself and my wife. But a better answer to your objection is, that, as I said before, man is a spirit-animal, and in communion with God's spirit has a right to believe th it his affections are under that spirit's guidance, and that when he finds in himself such an affection to any single woman as true married lovers describe theirs to be, he is bound (duty to parents and country allowing) to give himself up to his love in child-like simplicity and self abandonment, and, at the same time, with solemn awe and self- humiliation at being thus readmitted into the very garden of the Lord : ' The Eden, where the Spirit and the flesh Are one again, and new born souls walk free, And name in mystic language all things new, Naked and not ashamed.'* . . . With fear and trembling, putting ' his shoes from off his feet,' for the place whereon he stands is holy ground, even as the ineffable symbol of the highest of all unions (Eph. v. 25 — 29) — with fear and trembling, lest he forget the meaning of the glorious mystery " Yet if a man marries without love, he sins not — at least God shall judge him and not I. But 'for the hardness of our hearts,' only I believe is a man allowed to marry without love ; and ' such shall have trouble in the flesh,' says St. Paul. For remark all through I Corinthians vii., he is telling of marriage on its lowest ground .... and here is the key to the whole chapter. Who were the Corinthians ? The city of harlots — for centuries sunk in the most brutal sensuality, even then getting drunk at the Lord's table. This is * the present necessity ' — their low and sensual state which would have never comprehended the magnificent idea of marriage, which he unfolds to his beloved Ephesians, the blameless Church to whom he speaks of nothing but the deepest and most glorious truths. * " Saint's Tragedy," Act II. Scene ix. 1 90 Charles Kingslcy. " True, there is a blessing pronounced on him who gives up wife for Christ's sake and the Gospel's .... But in God's name let it be for Christ's sake — not for his own sake, that he may do the more good, not merely that he may be the more good. Is a man to be rewarded because for the sake of attaining (as he thinks that he may attain) what he calls * a higher place in heaven,' he refuses to bring immortal beings, made in God's image — heirs of Christ's redemption into the world, and to obey the primeval and as yet unrepealed command? Oh ! sir, whoever calls this devoutness, I call it selfishness. " Buit if a man, on the other hand, — as men have done, as I must believe St. Paul did, when I read Ephesians v. and i Timothy iii. 2 — says to himself, ' I know marriage is the highest, because the most symbolic of all human states ; but it is not for me, I have a great work to do — a peculiar vocation, which lies in a quite opposite direction to the duties of citizen and husband, and must bear that cross. God has refused to let me love woman ; and even hereafter, if I shall love, I must turn away from the fulfilment of that love in time, trusting to my Heavenly Father to give us some deeper and more ineffable union with each other in those glories unknown, which He has prepared for those who love Him : at all events the work which He has for me must be done — and, as a married man, I cannot do my work, peculiar as it is.' I believe that he who should so embrace celibacy, would deserve all names of honour which men could heap on him, just because the sacrifice is so great — just because he gives up a pre- sent and manifest honour and blessing— his rights as man made in God's image — committing himself to God to repay him. But what has this to do with mere selfish safety and easy saving of one's own soul ? " The highest state I define as that state through and in which men can know most of God, and work most for God: and this I assert to be the married state. He can know most of God, because it is through those family ties, and by those family names that God reveals Himself to man, and reveals man's relations to Him. Fully to understand the meaning of ' a Father in Heaven ' we must be fathers ourselves ; to know how Christ loved the Church, we must have wives to love, and love them ; else why has God used those relations as symbols of the highest mysteries which we (on the Romish theory) are the more saintly the less we experience of them ? And it is a historic fact, that just the theologic ideas which a celibate priesthood have been unable to realise in their teaching, are those of the Father in Heaven — the Husband in Heaven. Their distortion of the last great truth requires a letter to itself. I will only now add an entreaty that you will forgive The Bothic of Tobcy-na-Viwlich. 191 me if I have seemed too dogmatic. But God has showed me these things in an eventful and blisiful marriage history, and woe to me if I preach them not." After a second prostration of strength, he was advised to give up all work entirely, and the winter and spring were spent in North Devon, at Ilfracombe and Lynmouth. TO JOHN CONINGTON, ESQ. Ilfracombe, December 19, 1848. " Many thanks for your most sensible remarks about ' Yeast.' Quite right ; the Prophet is too like Sidonia, but I never read " Coningsby " till the other day, when the Prophet was months old. " Monte Christo" I never read Altogether, I am so dissatisfied with ' Yeast,' that I shall lay it by pro tan. It was finished, or rather cut short, to please Fraser, and now it may lie and ferment for a few years. You are right in your surmise that the finale is mythic and not typic. You will see why (please God, for I am diffident of myself,) when I finish it. Now as for Clough's poem. I am game to ' go in ' fiercely against all Mani- cheans, Hermann-and-Dorothea-formalists, and other unclean beasts, to prove that Clough knows best what he wants to say, and how ; and that taking the poem inductively, and not i priori (as the world, the flesh, and the devil take works of art), there is a true honest harmony, and a genial life in it, as of a man who seeing things as they were, and believing that God, and not ' taste,' or the devil settles things, was not ashamed to describe what he saw, even to Hobbes's kilt, and the " hizzies' " bare legs. All right \ manly, more godly, too, in my eyes, than the whole moon-behowling school of male prude-pedants, who seem to fancy that God has left this lower world since 1688, and would, if they dared, arraign nature as indecent, because children are not born with shifts on. Carrion-feeders, like the vultures, — they have a miracu- lous sense of smell — for the foul. " But in the meantime I am hardly up to much work. I have Mrs. Jameson's book to review, which will be hard work for my poor addle brain, which feels, after an hour's reading, as if some one had stirred it with a spoon. I have, however, tinkered up something light and quaint by way of a review, since writing the above, and shall get it done off" in a day or two. So if you will keep your trumpet for ' Ambarvalia,' I will celebrate the birth of the ' Bothie ' with penny whistle and banjo. . . I am mending in health, from the joint action of idleness, the cUmate 192 Charles Kingsley. of Paradise, and glorious cliff scenery, and hope to have Maurice staying with me next week. "Your man of war called and brought with him another man of war. One attends my church pretty regularly. I like having soldiers about me. I am very fond of them, and ha\e a large acquaintance among them." CHAPTER VIII. 1S49. Aged 30. Winter in Devonshire— Ilfracombe — Lynmouth— Decides on taking Pupils— Correspondence — Visit to London — Social Questions — Fever AT Eversley — Renewed Illness — Returns to Devonshire — Cholera IN England— Sanitary Work — Bermondsey— Jacob's Island — Letter from Mr. C. K. Paul. VOL. I. Passion, or " sensation." I am not afraid of the word, still less of the thing. You have heard many cries against sensation lately ; but, I can tell you, it is not less sensa- tion we want, but more. The ennobling difference between one man and another — between one animal and another — is precisely in this, that one feels more than another. If we were sponges, perhaps sensation might not be easily got for us ; if we were earth- worms, liable at every instant to be cut in two by the spade, perhaps too much sensa- tion might not be good for us. But being human creatures, IT IS good for us ; nay, we are only human in so far as we are sensitive, and our honour is precisely in propor- tion to our passion. Rlskin, " Sesame and Lilies." CHAPTER VIII. This year began in ill-health at Ilfracombe, where Mr. Maurice with other friends came to visit him, and went away depressed at seeing the utter exhaustion, mental and bodily, of one who had been the life and soul of their band of workers in 1848. He was able to do nothing for months — riding, walking, and even conversation were too much for him ; and wandering on the sea- shore, collecting shells and zoophytes, with his wife and children, was all the exertion that he could bear, while dreaming over " The Autobiography of a Cockney Poet," which in the autumn was to develop into " Alton Locke." With much difficulty he got through an article on Mrs. Jameson's "Sacred and Legendary Art " for " Fraser's Magazine," which he had promised.* His friend Mr. Froude came to him from Oxford in February, and then and there made acquaintance with his future wife, Mrs. Kingsley's sister, who was also at Ilfracombe. There are few letters to mark the winter and spring of 1849, and fewer poems, TO JOHN CONINGTON, Esq. "Ilfracombe, ya/w^/j 6, 1S49. " You and your worthy brother, my dear Conington, have my leave to misunderstand me as often as you will, provided that your mistakes, as this one has done, bring out your convictions of those truths which I hold most precious. " But you must not fancy for a moment that I have been untrue to my own anthropology. Let me explain myself. You know of course, that spiritual truths present themselves to us in ' antinomies,' appa- rently contradictory pairs, pairs of poles, which however do not really contradict or even limit each other, but are only correlatives, the existence of the one making the existence of the other necessary, * Since published in hib Miscellanies. 196 Charles Kings ley. explaining each other, and giving each other a real standing ground and equilibrium. Such an antinomic pair are those two great sayings, ' He that loveth not, knoweth not God ;' and ' If a man hate not father, mother, wife, he cannot be my disciple.' Both are utterly true without limitation ; and believe me, my dear friend, that he who has been led by love to a human being, to understand the mystery of that Divine love which fills all heaven and earth, and concentrates itself into an articulate manifestation in the person of Christ, will soon begin to find that he cannot enter into the perfect bliss of that truth, witliout going further, and seeing that the human heart requires some standing ground for its affection, even for the love of wife and child, deeper and surer than that love, namely, in utter loyalty, resignation, adoring affec- tion to Him in whom all human loveliness is concentrated. It is a great mystery. It is a hard lesson. I have not learnt it yet, but I am learning it. If the love of woman is to be the main spring of our actions, if she is to be our God, we shall find that the idolatry will avenge itself. We shall be disappointed in our idol, let her be as perfect as Romanists have feigned the Virgin Mary herself. Then we shall find that our love cannot justify itself by her perfection, and therefore it must justify itself by itself It must stand on. the ground of our emotions and our own will, and that is a poor quicksand whereon to build duty and obedience. The experiment was tried by the old Provencal knights and troubadours in chivalry, and fearfully it failed both for man and woman. But let a man believe that he who loveth father, wife, child, more than Christ, is not worthy of Him. Let him be content to carry out the great law of self-sacrifice, even to his marriage bed. Let him hold himself in willingness to give up even woman's love, if his Lord shall call upon him to do so, and he will find the truth of another great antinomy, that ' he that loseth his life shall save it' — that there is no man who has given up wife or child for Christ's sake but he shall receive an hundred fold more in this present time ; he Avill find that he has taken his wedded love, out of the protection of his own self-will, and put it into the hands of Him who is the Lord and (jiver of Love, able and faithful to keep that which is committed to Him, to fill him more and more with the spirit of affection and chivalry and adoration to one woman, and to all other women in her. He will find, I say, if he will but hear Christ's words in the latter of those two truths, that Christ Himself will fulfil the former of them for him. I am not talking mysticism — I am talking sound, plain matter of fact naturalism, as open and possible to the labouring man as to the sage. But of this more hereafter. Mrs. Kingsley, who has been my amanu- ensis, will not allow me to say more " Elegiacs. 197 During a solitary ride on Morte Sands, he composed some elegiacs, of which he speaks in the following letter : TO J. MALCOLM LUDLOW, Esq. Ilfracombe, Febntary, 1849. " .... I send you the enclosed lines as some proof that the exquisite elegiac metre suits our English language (as indeed everything beautiful does). They are but a fragment. You were the cause of their not being finished ; for your kindness swept away the evil spirit of despondency, and I hold it a sin to turn on the Werterian tap, of malice prepense. If they are worth finishing, I shall have sorrows enough ere I die, no doubt, to put me in the proper vein for them again. I send them off to escape the torment of continually fidgeting and polishing at them ; for whatever I may say in defence of my own case, I dare not let anything go forth, except as highly finished as I can make it. Show them to the ' oak of the mountain,' the Master (Mr. Maurice), he will recognize the place, and the feeling of much of them, and ask him whether, with a palinode, setting forth how out of winter must come spring, out of death life, they would not be tolerably true Wearily stretches the land to the surge, and the surge to the cloudland ; Wearily onward I ride, watching the water alone. Not as of old, like Homeric Achilles, /ct)5fi" 7010.':', Joyous knight errant of God, thirsting for labour and strife, No more on magical steed borne free through the regions of ether, But, like the hack which I ride, selling my sinew for gold. Frait-bearing autumn is gone ; let the sad, quiet winter hang o'er me — What were the spring to a soul laden with sorrow and shame? Blossoms would fret me with beauty ; my heart has no time to be-praise them ; Grey rock, bough, surge, cloud, waken no yearning within. Sing not, thou skylark above ! Even angels pass hushed by the weeper. Scream on, ye sea fowl ! my heart echoes your desolate ciy. Sweep the dry sand on, thou wild wind, to drift o'er the shell and the sea-weed ; Sea-weed and shell, like my dreams, swept down the pitiless tide. Just is the wave which uptore us ; 'tis Nature's own law which condemns us ; Woe to the weak who, in pride, build on the faith of the sand ! Joy to the oak of the mountain : he trusts to the might of tlie rock-clefts ; Deeply he mines, and in peace feeds on the wealth of the stone. ***** " . . . . I have hope also of the book which I am writing, the Autobiography of a Cockney Poet, which has revealed itself to me so rapidly and methodically, that I feel it comes down from above, and that only my folly can spoil it — which I pray against daily. " .... I never felt the reality and blessing of that church con- 198 Charles Kings ley. fession and absolution more than I did in this morning's service. Thank you for all and every hint .... " Tell Charles Mansfield I have found to-day another huge comatnla, and bottled him with his legs, by great dodging. I am always finding something fresh " Best love to all our friends. Poor Maurice ! But a little persecu- tion is a blessing to any man. Still it does make one sick to hear these C|uill-driving cowards and bigots attacking him." The expenses of illness, and his inability to meet them by- writing, obliged him now to think of some other means, and he consulted Mr. Maurice about taking pupils. Mr. Maurice wrote at once to Professor Thompson, now Master of Trinity, Cambridge : " Kingsley, who, I think, is known to you, has been disabled for some time, and has been obliged to leave his living. He is much better, and wishes very much for a pupil to prepare for orders or even for college. He is now at Ilfracombe. At Eversley he would have accommodation in a very pleasant house. I do not know a man more fitted for the work — scarcely any one equally fitted. He is a good, accurate, and enthusiastic scholar, full of knowledge of all things about him, and delight in them ; and more likely to give a young man of the day a good direction in divinity, meeting his difficulties and dealing honestly with them, than any person I have fallen in with. His con- versation is full of interest even when he is ill ; when he is well he is the freshest, freest hearted man in England His home is altogether most pleasant, and those who dwell in it. If you can give him help, I shall be most grateful to you. " Yours ever truly, " F. D. Maurice." He gives his own plan of teaching, or rather training a pupil, in a characteristic letter to Mrs. Scott, wife of Rev. A. J. Scott, afterwards Principal of Owens College, Manchester : " Will you excuse my burdening you with another word about pupils ? .... I am not going to talk of what I can teach ; but what I should try to teach, would be principally physical science, history, English literature, and modern languages. In my eyes the question is not what to teach, but how to educate ; how to train not scholars, but men; bold, energetic, methodic, liberal-minded, magnanimous. If I Devonshire Scenery. 199 can succeed in doing that, I shall do what no salary can repay — and what is not generally done, or expected to be done, by private tutors " On the receipt of this letter Mr. Scott remarked, " That is what is wanted, and it is what Charles Kingsley will do." Not- withstanding the efforts of his friends, the pupils were not forth- coming. His writings had caused a strong prejudice against him ; and it was not till the following year that he succeeded. The long waiting was repaid when the pupil came, and the labour, which throughout was a labour of love, was more than repaid, being spent on one who realised the tutor's ideal in after life. That pupil will speak for himself in another chapter. The leave of absence was now extended to the summer, and gradually the rest told upon him, and he wrote more cheerfully to his parents : Ilfracombe, April Fool's Day, 1849. " My dearest People, — " Many thanks for all your great kindness ; I should be now like Batsy Bannett, ' the mazed woman teu Morte that picketh shalls,' if it had not been for all your care of my few sheep in the wilderness. I am quite ashamed of amusing myself here while you are toiling for me ; but being here, I will not do things by halves, and am leading a truly hoggish life — viz. : 18 hours sleeping, 4 hours eating, 2 hours walking, o hours reading — 24 ; which you will allow is a change in liiy dietetics. " Mansfield and I go geologizing and shell-picking; but ah! !! *ther baint no shells ! Where be they gwan ? ' I went to Morte yesterday, and found, as indeed I do of all this country, that my old childish recollection had painted it, not as usual, larger and more striking than the actuality, but smaller. I find that I was not, as a boy of ten, capable of taking in the grandeur of the scenery here, and that I had brought away only as much of it as I could hold. Every hill (and this strikes me much), except perhaps little Capstone, is much higher and grander than I thought. I feel the change from North Hants very much — the world seems turned upside down. I get a strange swimming in the wits now and then, at seeing farm-houses under my feet, and cows feeding like so many flies against a wall. It is the strange position of well-known objects, and not the height, which upsets me. On the contrary, I find my climbing head surer than ever, and can placidly 200 Charles Kings ley. look over the awful gulf of Hillsborough as if it were a six foot wall. We have had some glorious climbs already, which have put new life into me. In fact, were I to return to work to-morrow, the journey would, so far, have cured me — the very sight of the hills round Barn- staple was enough. " What a mysterious curse-blessing is this same * Heimweh,' this intense love of one's own country, which makes it seem pleasanter to lie down here and die, than to live anywhere else on earth. It is a righteous and a God-given feeling, and one which, as Carlyle says, distinguishes man from the ape— that local attachment, root of all true patriotism, valour, civilization — woe to those who fancy it fine to turn cosmopolite, and by becoming ' citizens of the world,' lose the very idea of citizenship, for the sake of doing what a navigator's dog or a gipsey's donkey can do a great deal better. " But a truce to field-officery. Pray fell me how and where to find shells. Morte and even Barricane itself, was monopolized by countless millions of mactra stultorum— there was hardly another shell. Crewkerne is very barren ; at Rillage Point the beach is quite altered, all the sands gone. What is the name also of the Pteridophilos, or fern-loving P'igaro, of whom you told me ? And ' where, oh where,' is the Venus' Maidenhair gone? I have hunted every wet rock and 'shute' from Rillage Point to the near side of Hillsborough, at danger of my neck, and cannot find a scrap, but plenty of Asplenium marinum, which you couldn't find. I will thereof bring you some. Pray inform me how to get shells; and pray don't say that 'Yeast' is written by me. I shall be able to do better with it by remaining incog. " The infant pilgrims are as well as can be expected after their long confinement to the house by rain. ** I have found the most wonderful beasts on the rocks you can imagine. Comatula rosea, bred between the star-fish, a coralline, and an encrinite, animal, vegetable, and mineral, which start as stone-flowers, and then break ofl" their stalk, and go about with legs and arms, and the beauty in shape and colour is wonderful. I enclose a drawing; just send a note to Dr. Roget, to ask him if he has found them here, and to say I shall be happy to preserve some for him. I am now better than I have been at all, I may say. A tremendous gale of wind has acted on me exactly like champagne and cathedral-organs in one, and restored my (what you would call nervous what I call) magnetic tone." It had been a great sorrow to him to give up his work at Queen's College, and he was never able to resume it. Besides Lectures at Queens College. 20 1 two introductory lectures on literature and composition, instinct with genius, now out of print, he only delivered one course on Early English Literature. The Rev. Alfred Strettell took his place, and to him he writes from Lyn MOUTH, April 17, 1849. " Many thanks for your kind letter. I left off before the Conquest, my next lecture would have been on Edward the Con- fessor — the difference between a good man and a good king — like him and Louis XVI. The rotting of the Anglo-Saxon system — inability of Saxon mind to originate — Anglo-Saxon, (a female race) required impregnation by the great male race, — the Norse introduction of Northmen by Edward paving the way for the Conquest, &c. Let me recommend to you Thierry's History of the Conquest (cum grano salis), and also Bulwer's Harold — whose history philosophy is not bad " Go your own way ; wliat do girls want with a ' course of litera- ture?' Your business and that of all teachers is, not to cram them with things, but to teach them how to read for themselves. A single half century known thoroughly, as you are teaching, will give them canons and inductive habits of thought, whereby to judge all future centuries. We want to train — not cupboards full of 'information' (vile misnomer), but real informed women. " 1 quite agree with you about Chaucer's Norman and Saxon elements. I said something about it in my Introduction. Don't be afraid of talk- ing about marriage. We must be real and daring at Queen's College, or nowhere. The ' clear stage and no favour ' which we have got there is so blessed and wonderful an opening, that we must make the most of it to utter things there which prudery and fanaticism have banished from pulpits and colleges. " I read out some Credmon — no yElfric — I think some Beowulf — but I should counsel you to let that be (as I gave them the Athelstan Ballad, and some of Alfred's, &c.), and just do what I intended. Give them a lecture on the rise of our Norse forefathers — give them some- thing from the Voluspa and Edda. Show 4iem the peculiar wild, mourn- ful, gigantic objective imagination of the men, and its marriage with the Saxon subjectivity (as I fancy) to produce a ballad school. Remember two things. The Norse are the great creators, all through — and all the ballads came from the North of England and Lowlands of Scotland, i.e., from half Norse blood. " But I suspect you know more about all this than I. We will have some happy talks, please God, in June. I am so much better that I 202 Charles Kmgsley. am going off to Clovelly to-morrow for three or four days. Kindest remembrances to all at Taplow." From Clovelly, where he went with his wife's sister and Mr. Froude, he writes home : " Only a few lines, for the post starts before breakfast. We got here all safe. C. enjoyed herself by lying in misery at the bottom of the boat all the way. ... I cannot believe my eyes : the same place, the pavement, the same dear old smells, the dear old handsome loving faces again. It is as if I was a little boy again, or the place had stood still while all the world had been rushing and rumbling on past it \ and then I suddenly recollect your face, and those two ducks on the pier ; and it is no dream ; this is the dream, and I am your husband ; what have I not to thank God for ? I have been thanking Him ; but where can I stop ? We talk of sailing home again, as cheapest and pleasantest; most probably Friday or Saturday. To day I lionize Charlotte over everything. Kiss the children for me." The following letter, addressed to a young man going over to Rome, though incomplete, is too valuable to omit. Several pages have been lost, which will account for any want of sequence, Harlev House, Clifton, May ii, 1849. " My Dear Sir,— " I have just heard from Charles Mansfield, to my inexpressible grief, that you are inclined to join the Roman Communion; and at the risk of being called impertinent, I cannot but write my whole heart to you. " What I say may be -napa t6v \oy6v, after all; if so, pray write and let me know what your real reasons are for such a step. I think, as one Christian man writing to another, I may dare to entreat this of you. For believe me I am no bigot. I shall not trouble you with denun- ciations about the ' scarlet woman' or the \little horn.' I cannot but re- gard with awe, at least, if not reverence, a foi'm of faith which God thinks good enough still for one half (though it be the more brutal, profligate, and helpless half) of Europe. Believe me, I can sympathise with you. I have been through it ; I have longed for Rome, and boldly faced the consequences of joining Rome; and though I now have, thank God, cast all wish of change behind me years ago, as a great lying devil's temptation, yet I still long as ardently as ever to see in the Church of England much which only now exists, alas ! in the Church of Rome. The Romish Chirch. 203 Can I not feel for you ? Do I not long for a visible, one, organized Church? Do I not shudder at the ghastly dulness of our services ? Do I not pray that I may see the day when the art and poetry of the nine- teenth century shall be again among us, turned to their only true destina- tion — the worship of God? Have I shed no l.Mtter, bitter tears of shame and indignation in cathedral aisles, and ruined abbeys, and groaned aloud ' Ichabod, Ichabod, the glory is departed,' etc. ? " [Here some pages are lost.] " Can you not commit the saving of your soul to Him that made your soul ? I think it will be in good keeping, unless you take it out of His hands, by running off where He has not put you. Did you never read how ' He that saveth his soul shall lose it.' Beware. " Had you been born an Italian Romanist I would have said to you. Don't leave Rome ; stay where you are, and try to mend the Church of your fathers ; if it casts you out, the sin be on its own head ; and so I say to you. Do you want to know God's will about you? AMiat plainer signs of it, than the fact that He has made you, and educated you as a Protestant Englishman. Here, believe it — believe the providentiam, ' Dei in rebus revelatam.' — Here He intends you to work, and do the duty which lies nearest. Hold what doctrines you will, but do not take yourself out of communion with your countrymen, to bind yourself to a system which is utterly foreign to us and our thoughts, and only by casting off which, have we risen to be the most mighty, and, with all our sins, perhaps the most righteous and pure of nations (a fact which the Jesuits do not deny). I assure you that they tell their converts that the reason why Protestant England is allowed to be so much more righteous than the Romish nations is — to try the faith of the elect ! ! You will surely be above listening to such anile sophistry ! " But still, you think, 'you may be holier there than here.' Ah, sir, ' coelum, non animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt.' Ultramon- tanism will be a new system ; but not, I think, a new character. Cer- tain outward acts, and certain inward feelings, which are all very nice, and right, and pleasant, will be made easier for you there than here : you will live so charmingly by rule and measure ; not a moment in the day but will be allotted out for you, with its appropriate acts of devotion. True, now you are a man, standing face to face with God ; then you will (believe one who knows) find yourself a machine, face to face, not with God, but with a priest and a system, and" hosts of inferior deities, of which hereafter. Oh ! sir, you, a free-born Englishman, brought up in that liberty for which your forefathers died on scaffolds and in battle-fields — that liberty which begot a Shakspeare, a Raleigh, a Bacon, Milton, Newton, Faraday, Brooke — will you barter away that inestimable gift 204 Charles Kingsley. because Italian pedants, who know nothing of human nature but from the books of prurient celibates, tell you that they have got a surer ' dodge' for saving your soul than those have, among whom God's will, not your own, has begotten and educated you ? But you ' will be able to rise to a greater holiness there.' Holiness, sir? Devoutness, you mean. The ' will of God' is your holiness already, and you may trust Him to perfect His will in you here — for here He has put you — if by holiness you mean godliness and manliness, justice and mercy, honesty and usefulness. But if by holiness you mean ' saintliness,' I quite agree that Rome is the place to get that, and a poor pitiful thing it is when it is got — not God's ideal of a man, but an effeminate shaveling's ideal. Look at St. Francis de Sales, or St. Vincent de Paul's face, and then say, does not your English spirit loathe to see that 1 God made man in His image, not in an imaginary Virgin Mary's image. And do not fancy that you will really get any spiritual gain by going over. The very devotional system which will educe and develop the souls of people born and bred up under it, and cast, constitutionally and by hereditary associations, into its mould, will only prove a dead leaden crushing weight on an Englishman, who has, as you have, tasted from his boyhood the liberty of the Spirit of God. You will wake, my dear brother, you will wake, not altogether, but just enough to find yourself not believing in Romish doctrines about saints and virgins, absolutions and indulgences, but only helianng in believifig them — an awful and infinite difference, on which I beseech you earnestly to meditate. You will find yourself crushing the voice of con- science, common-sense, and humanity — I mean the voice of God within you, in order to swallow down things at which your gorge rises in disgust. You will find the Romish practice as different from the Romish ideal as the English is from the English ideal, and you will find amid all your discontent and doubts, that the habits of religious excitement, and of leaning on priests whom you will neither revere nor trust for themselves, will have enchained you like the habits of a drunkard or an opium eater, so that you must go back again and again for self-forgetfulness to the spiritual laudanum-bottle, which gives now no more pleasant dreams, but only painful heartache, and miserable depression afterwards. I know what I have seen and heard from eye-witnesses. " I know you may answer — This may be all very fine, but if Rome be the only true Church, thither I must go, loss or gain. Most true. But take care how you get at this conviction that Rome is the true Church ; if by a process of the logical understanding, that is most un- fair, for you will have to renounce the conclusions of the understanding when you go to Rome. How then can you let it lead you, to a system which asserts in limine that it has no right to lead you any where at all ? Co-operative Movement. 205 " But I must defer this question, and also that of Romish aesthetics, to another letter. I make no apology for plain speaking ; these are times in which we must be open with each other. And I was greatly- attracted by the little I saw of you. I know there is a sympathy between us ; and having passed through these temptations in my own person, God would judge me if I did not speak what He has revealed to me in bitter struggles. One word more. Pray, answer this, and pray wait. Never take so important a step without at least six months' deliberate waiting, not till, but after your mind is made up. Five- and-twenty years God has let you remain a Protestant. Even if you were wrong in being one. He will surely pardon your remaining one six months longer, in a world wherein the roads of error are so many and broad that a man may need to look hard to find the narrow way." Before resuming work again at Eversley, he went to London, and took up the old thread by attending a Chartist meeting on the 3rd of June, and on the 19th a workmen's meeting'on the Land Colonization question, and from Chelsea he writes home : ". . . . I could not write yesterday, being kept by a poor boy Mho had fallen off a truck at Croydon and smashed himself, whom I escorted to Guy's Hospital. I have spent the whole day running up and down London on business. I breakfasted with Bunsen, such a divine-looking man, and so kind. I have worlds to tell you. Met F. Newman last night, and breakfast with him to-morrow. I had a long and interesting talk with Froude last night " Monday. — I spent yesterday with Ludlow, and went with him to Dr. Thorpe's, and to Lincoln's-inn Chapel in the afternoon — a noble sight. — Maurice's head looked like some great, awful Giorgione portrait in the pulpit, but oh, so worn, and the face worked so at certain passages of the sermon. It was very pleasant, so many kind greetings there from old friends, male and female, for some of the Co-operative friends were there. To-night for the meeting. They expect to muster between one and two hundred. I am just going with my father and mother to Deptford to put Mary T. (an Eversley girl) on board an emigrant ship " " Long and most interesting talk with Mons. Chevallicr this morning. London is perfectly horrible. To you alone I look for help and advice — God and you, — else I think at times I should cry myself to death. .... There is a great Tailor's meeting on Friday. The women's shoe-makers are not set up yet. My sermons (' Village Sermons') are being 2o6 Charles Kings ley. lent from man to man, among the South London Chartists, at such a pace that Cooper can't get them back again. And the Manchester men stole his copy of the Saint's Tragedy " I have just been to see Carlyle." (Later) " On Friday I dined at Maurice's. Met Mrs. Augustus Hare, and a brother of the Archdeacon's, an officer in the Prussian army, also Mr. and Mrs. Scott, who were very kind indeed. I took George to a soire'e at Parker's, and introduced him to all the set there. On Saturday we dined at Ludlow's, met dear Charles Mansfield and a Frenchman, now being tried in Paris for the June Row, a complete Red Republician and Fourierist ; he says nothing but Christianity can save France or the world. I had an intensely interesting talk with him. In the evening the Campbells, Shorter the Chartist, and Dr. Walsh, came in, and we had a glorious evening. G. is quite in a new world. He says he never saw * live ' men before, and he sees a new ' avatar ' open- ing for him **** jg ygj-y niuch struck with Maurice, and said to me yesterday that he did not know but what I might be in the right after all, about the old creeds. .... Longing, longing to be home, but I am doing my Father's will, I do believe. Maurice and Colson coming down to Eversley I am going to see again to- morrow about the Tailor's business, and to sleep at Carshalton and fish with George Glyn " June 12, 1849 (My Birthday). " Last night will never be forgotten by many, many men. Maurice was — I cannot describe it. Chartists told me this morning that many were affected even to tears. The man was inspired — gigantic. No one commented on what he said. He stunned us ! I will tell you all when I can collect myself. I am afraid I must stay up till Thursday. I cannot get through my work else. Kiss our babes for me "This morning I breakfasted with Dr. Guy, and went with him Tailor hunting, very satisfactory as yet Yesterday afternoon with Professor Owen at the College of Surgeons, where I saw un- speakable things " He now settled at Eversley again, and threw himself into the full tide of parish work with the loving help of the Rev. H. Percy Smith, of Baliol, who was ordained to the curacy of Eversley. The season was unhealthy ; cholera was brooding over England, and a bad low fever broke out at Eversley, which gave the rector incessant work and anxiety. The parish- Devonshire again. 207 ioners got frightened. It was difficult to get nurses for the sick, so that he was with them at all hours ; and after sitting up a whole night with one bad case, a labourer's wife, the mother of a large family, that he might himself give the nourishment every half-hour on which the poor woman's life depended, he once more completely broke down, and London physicians advised his taking a sea voyage A trip to America and back was pro- posed ; but he dreaded the loneliness, and his parents being strongly averse to the plan, he went again to Devonshire, hoping that a month's quiet and idleness would restore him. From thence he writes home. Appledore, August 10, 1849. " Here I am, no boat having come from Clovelly, to which place a trawler has engaged to take me nine miles for 5^-. to-morrow morn- ing at eight. A delicious passage down, in which I fell in with a character, a Cornish shipowner and fruit vessel captain, who has in- sisted on my drinking tea with him this evening, and on my coming to see him in September at Boscastle, near Padstow, where he will give me sailing in his little yacht, and take me to seal caves, where they lie by dozens. He is, of course, like all Cornishmen, a great admirer of your father. Strange, what a name your father seems to have made for himself. The man is a thorough Cornishman : shrewd, witty, religious, well in- formed, a great admirer of scenery ; talks about light, and shadow, and colouring more like an artist than a brown-fisted merchant skipper, with a mass of brain that might have made anything had he taken to books. I feel myself already much better. The rich, hot, balmy air, which comes in now through the open window, off Braunton Burrows, and the beautiful tide river, a mile wide, is like an ' Elixir of life ' to me. No night frosts here. It is as warm as day. I expect a charming sail to- morrow, and to catch mackerel on the way. The coast down here looked more lovely than ever ; the green fern and purple heather have enriched the colouring since the spring ; showers succeeded by gleams of sun, give a wonderful freshness and delicacy to all the tints. Dear old Lynmouth and Ilfracombe, I loved them, because they seemed so full of recollections of you and the children." Clovelly, 1849. " Safe settled at Mrs. Whitefield's in lodgings. I am going out fishing to-day in the bay, if there is wind ; if not, butterfly hunting. I was in and out of all the houses last niirht, like a ferret in a rabbit burrow — • 2o8 Charles Kingslcy. all so kind. I feel unjustifiably well, and often ask myself, What right have I to be here, while you are working at home ? . . . . " My room is about 12 ft. square on the first-floor, a jessamine, and a fuchsia running up to the windows. In front, two or three small houses, above which, and right in front, towers the wall of wood, oak, ash and larch, as tender and green as if it were May and not August. I am near the top of the street, which lines the bottom of this gorge of woods. On the left, that is down the hill, I see from my windows piled below me, the tops of the nearest houses, and the narrow paved cranny of a street, vanishing downwards, stair below stair, and then above all, up in the sky it seems, from the great height at which I am, the glorious blue bay, with its red and purple cliffs. The Sand-Bar, and Braunton, the hills towards Ilfracombe, and Exmoor like a great black wall above all. The bay is now curling and writhing in white horses under a smoking south wester, which promises a blessing, as it will drive the mackerel off the Welsh shore where they now are in countless millions, into our bay ; and then for fun and food for me and the poor fellows here, who are at their wits' end, because some old noodles of doctors have persuaded people that fish gives the cholera. Saturday was too rough for sailing, though Friday I had a charming sail with a poor fellow, who thought 2S. too much, and would work it out by offering to give me a sail in his herring-boat, which is to come off shortly. Saturday I hired a pony for \s. 6d. and went to Torridge just for the afternoon — caught my basket full, and among them one 2 lbs. ! ! 1 never was such a trout seen in Clovelly before. " We had a charming trip yesterday to Lundy ; started at six, and were five hours going over — the wind being very light ; but we went along very pleasantly to a continued succession of Wes- leyan hymns, in two and three parts, sung most sweetly (every one sings here, and sings in tune, and well). We dined at the farm-house ; dinner costing me i^-. ^d., and then rambled over the island. I saw the old Pirate Moresco's Castle on the cliff — the awful granite cliffs on the west, Avith their peaks and chasms lined with sea fowls — the colouring wonderful — pink, grey, granite, with bright, yellow lichen spots, purple heather, and fern of a peculiar dark glowing green. You wanted no trees ; the beauty of their rich forms and simple green was quite replaced by the gorgeous brilliance of the hues. And beyond and around all, the illimitable Atlantic — not green — but an intense sapphirine black-blue, such as it never is inshore, and so clear, that every rock and patch of sea-weed showed plain four hundred feet below us, through the purple veil of water. Then I went back to the landing cove, where shoals of A Fiery Sea. 209 mackerel were breaking up with a roar, like the voice of many waters ; the cove like glass ; and one huge seal rolling his black head and shoulders about in the deep water — a sight to remember for ever. Oh, that I had been a painter for that day at least. And coming away, as the sun set behind die island, great flame coloured sheets of rack flared up into the black sky from off the black line of the island top; and when the sun set the hymns began again, and we slipped on home, while every ripple off the cutter's bow fell down, and ran along the surface in flakes and sparkles of emerald fire ; and then the breeze died, and we crawled under our own huge cliffs, through a fiery sea, among the dusky herring boats, for whom and their nets we had to keep strict watch, and landed, still through fire, at half-past two in the morning : and then came the absurdity; three women. Croft, a sailor, and I, went off first, and ran for a litUe strip of land between the pebbles. The beach is like Linton, only the stones are bigger still ; but we could not get up the sand, and had to land on the boulder stones, which average a yard high, covered with slippery sea-weed at dead low water. How we got up I don't know yet. Croft, unaccustomed either to rocks or sea, was rolling on his face and hands, and unable to help himself. The rocks seemed endless, and cut one's shoes about ; but I did not tire myself too much to write a line to you before I got to bed, and slept till eleven a.m. I send you a little bit of dwarf centaury off the clift" above the Seal Caves, as a token. What am I to do with eight sketches of Hero and Leander, which I have been finishing very carefully, and are the best things I ever did ? Shall I send them ? This place is perfect — continued grey clouds night and day, just the same warmth. The air like a hot-scented air-bath. But it all seems a dream, unreal as well as imperfect, without you. . . . Kiss the darling ducks of children for me. How I long after them and their pratde. I delight in all the little ones in the street for their sake, and continually I start and fancy I hear their voices outside. You do not''know how I love them ; nor did I hardly till I came here. After all, absence quickens love into consciousness." ToRRinoE Moors, West Country Inn. "I have been fishing the Torridgc to-day. Caught ij- dozen — very bright sun, which was against mc. To-morrow I return to Clovclly. I have got a companion here who is fishing and collecting his rents. Gentleman-like man, and friend of Hawker's the ^Vest Country Poet. Tennyson was down here last year, and walked in on Hawker to collect Arthur legends. I feel quite lonely, and long to be home. And these moors are very desolate from ignorance and neglect only, for they might be made as fine land as the carse of Berwick and the Lothians. VOL. I. p 210 Charles Kings ley. \\\\tn will men see that God's laws are their interest ? Talk of man- kind being ruled by self-interest ! Juggling fiend. It is its own bane. None are so blind to their own interest as the selfish. Witness the Torridge Moors " Cl.r)\Ki.i,Y, Aug. i6, 1849. " If J tell you that I am happy outwardly, you must not suppose that I am not just as lonely as you at heart All the pleasure of perfect rest, and I am in perfect rest, and in a new-old and lovely place, does not take off the edge of my solitude. Already I feel it — how much more a month hence. I have read Rabelais right through, and learnt immensely from him. I have been reading P. I.eroux's book on Christianity and Democracy, and am now reading Ruskin. The Aveather has been too stormy for trawling, but I have got a few nice shells Last night I gave a tea-party with cream and your cake, which is too good for me, to my landlady and Mr. and Mrs. Wimble, and we all agreed we only wanted you and my mother : as it was we were very merry, and finished with prayers. My landlady is an extraordinary woman, a face and figure as of a queen, but all thought, sensibility and excitement ; a great ' de'vote ' and a true Christian ; between grief and religion she has learnt a blessed lesson. Old Wim. potters in, like an old grey-headed Newfoundland dog, about three times a day to look after me in all sorts of kind and unnecessary ways. And I sit on the window seat and watch the wonderful colouring of the bay spread like a map below me, and just think of nothing but home. To-day I am going out in one of the large herring boats ; there is plenty of wind, and the herrings and mackerel are coming in. " Tell Rose I will write her a letter, and thank her \ ery much for her's. Say I am so pleased to hear she is a good girl. * -* * * * » * " This air is so very relaxing, and I am getting so lonely without you that change of scene I must have. I shall go to Dartmoor, and ramble over the Moor to my birth-place, Holne. I have been pestered with letter after letter asking me to join this new popular Church paper, but have of course fought off. I am convinced at moments that, after all, the best place for me is at home Do not be surprised if I return to you in ten days from Dartmoor " " Saturday I start.* I am quite in spirits at the notion of the Moor. It will give me continual excitement; it is quite new to me — and I am well enough now to walk in moderation. Let me know when you receive my drawings. I am doing you a set more — still better I hope. ' The Artist's ^Vife,' seven or eight sketches of Claude Mellot and Sabina, two of my most darling ideals, with a scrap '' Heimivchr 211 of conversation annexed to eacli, just embodying my dreams about married love and its relation to art " TO HIS .MOTHER. Cl.O\-ELLY, August 14, 1849. "Gaining health and strength here fast; and the quiet is as novel as refreshing. This place seems more beautiful than of old. Con- trary' to one's usual experience in visiting old scenes, the hills are higher, the ^'egetation more luxurious, the colouring richer than I had fancied. I sail a great deal ; the difficulty is, only to make the people take any money. I am kept in fish, gratis, by half the town ; and at every door there are daily inquiries, loving and hearty, after you and my father. How these people love you both. Your stay here seems to have been t/ie era in their memories. ....... " Happy and idle. I do not know how to get through the day, strange to say ! It is too rough for trawling to-day, and too wet for entomologising. So I do nothing but smell the woods, and chat with Wimble. Many thanks for frightening me away from America, and jiutting me on coming here. This is the place. The wounded bird goes to the nest ; and I firmly believe in the itiagiidic effect of the place where one has been bred ; not to mention that I am perhaps the only Englishman I ever met who has continually the true ' heimweh ' home- sickness, of the Swiss and Highlanders. The thought of the West Country will make me burst into tears at any moment. ^Vherever I am it always hangs before my imagination as home, and I feel myself a stranger and a sojourner in a foreign land the moment I get east of Taunton Dean, or the Mendips. It may be fancy, but it is most real, and ])ractical, as many fancies are. I felt a new life, a renewing my youth like the eagle's, the day after I got here. The very smell of ^Vimble's house is a fragrance (spiritually not physically) from the fairy gardens of childhood." TO J. I^r. LUDLOW, Esq. Clovf.i.i.y, August 17, 1849. " I am at last enjoying perfect rest— doing nothing but fish, sail, chat with old sailor and Wesleyan cronies, and read, by way of a nice mixture, Rabelais, Pierre Txtoux, and Ruskin. The first, were he seven times as unspeakably filthy as he is, I consider as priceless in wisdom, and often in true evangelic godliness — more of him hereafter. The second is indeed a blessed dawn. The third, a noble, manful, godly book, a blessed dawn too : but I cannot talk about them ; I am as stupid as a p 2 212 Charles Kingsley, porpoise, and I lie in the window, and smoke and watch the glorious cloud-phantasmagoria, infinite in colour and form, crawling across the vast bay and deep woods below, and draw little sketches of figures, and do not even dream, much less think. Blessed be God for the rest, though I never before felt the loneliness of being without the beloved being, whose every look and word and motion are the keynotes of my life. People talk of love ending at the altar, . . . Fools !...." TO HIS WIFE. COLEBROOK, Crediton, September 2^ 1849. " Drosier has insisted on taking me in [Rev. J. Drosier, Rector of Colebrook]. He himself, with his handsome grey head, is the most angelic of men — good sense, imperturbable sweetness, earnestness, and simplicity beaming from his countenance and his life — for I know his history has been as noble as his looks. The three youths here are his playfellows rather than his pupils. I shall stay on the Moor till my money is gone, and then come home. To-morrow I go to Chagford. Direct to me there for three days. The place is lovely, on the edge of the Moor, with the Teign running past. I am perfectly well to-day. The coach drive and change of air have completely cured me." " Here I am at Chagford in a beautiful old muUioned and gabled ' per- pendicular' inn — granite and syenite everywhere — my windows looking out on the old churchyard, and beyond, a wilderness of lovely hills and woods — two miles from the Moor — fresh air and health everywhere. I went up into the Moor yesterday, and killed a dish of fish. I am as well as ever I was in my life. Stay here for three days, and then move to Two Bridges. From thence I go to Holne, return to Colebrook, and then home ! home ! home ! How I thirst for it." " Starting out to fish down to Drew's Teignton— the old Druid's sacred place, to see Logan stones and cromlechs. Yesterday was the most charming solitary day I ever spent in my life — scenery more lovely than tongue can tell. It brought out of me the following bit of poetry, with many happy tears. POET. I cannot tell what you say, green leaves, I cannot tell what you say ; But I know that there is a spirit in you, And a word in you this day. The Moor. 2 1 3 I cannot tell what ye say, rosy rocks, I cannot tell what ye say ; But I know that there is a spirit in you, And a word in you this day. I cannot tell what ye say, brown streams, I cannot tell what ye say ; But I know in you too, a spirit doth live, And a word in you this day. THE WORD'S ANSWER. Oh, rose is the colour of love and youth, And green is the colour of faith and truth. And brown of the fruitful clay. The earth is fruitful, and faithful, and young, And her bridal morn shall rise ere long. And you shall know what the rocks and the streams, And the laughing green-woods say ! " Show these to C. If she has taken in the real good of Spinozism, she ought to understand them. To-morrow I tramp for Two Bridges."' Two Bridges. " Got on the Teign about three miles up, and tracked it into the Moor. About two miles in the Moor I found myself to my delight in the ruins of an old British town/ as yet, I fancy, unknown. The circular town wall, circular gardens, circular granite huts, about twenty feet in diameter, all traceable. All round was peat-bog, in- dicating the site of ancient forests. For you must know that of old. Dart Moor was a forest — its valleys filled with alder and hazel, its hill-sides clothed with birch, oak, and 'care,' mountain ash. But these, like the Irish, were destroyed to drive out the Cymry, and also dwindled of their own accord, having exhausted the soil; and moreover, the scrub, furze, and heather which succeeded them, have been periodically burnt down for centuries, that grass for cattle may spring up. So that the hills now are covered with coarse pasture, or a peat soil, which wraps the hills round, and buries the granite rocks, and softens all the outlines till the moor looks like an enormous alternation of chalk downs and peat bogs, only that the downs are strewn with huge granite stones and capped with 'tors,' which cannot be described — only seen. I sketched two or three this afternoon for you. Well, I got to Teign head — through a boggy glen. Out of the river banks, which were deep peat, I got a i)iece of fossil birch bark for you. Then I climbed a vast anticlinal ridge, and seeing 214 Chaides Kingsley. a great tor close by, I could not resist the temptation, and went up. Oh ! what a scene ! a sea of mountains all round, and in the far east wooded glens, fertile meadows, twenty miles off — far — far below ; and here and there through the rich country some spur of granite hill jjeeped up, each with its tor, like a huge ruined castle, on the top. Then, in the midst of a bog, on the top of the hill, I came on two splendid Druid circles, ' the grey wethers,' as I afterwards found out, five and thirty yards in diameter — stones about five feet above the bog — perhaps more still below it — evidently a sun temple in the heart of a great oak forest, now gone. I traced the bog round for miles, and the place was just one to be holy, being, I suppose, one of the loftiest woods in the Moor. After that, all was down, down, down, over the lawn and through deep gorges, to the East Dart. At Port Bridge, I meant to sleep, but found myself so lively that I walked on the four miles to this place — twenty miles about, of rough mountain, and got in as fresh as a bird. The day was burning bright, so I only killed a dozen or so of fish. Every valley has its beautiful clear stream, with myriad fish among great granite boulders. To-day I got up at seven, and walked over, after breakfast, to Cherry Brook, two and a-half miles, the best fishing on the moor — the sharp easterly wind made the fish lie like stones — and down Cherry Brook and up Dart, home, and I only killed seventeen. Then, after luncheon, I sallied to Wistmen's {Wise men's) wood — the last remaining scraj) of primeval forest. But I shall write all night to tell you all I saw and felt. I send you an oak leaf from the holy trees, and a bit of moss from them — as many mosses as leaves — poor old Britons ! The grey moss is from the ruins of an old Cymry house near by — a Druid may have li\ed in it ! The whortle berry is from the top of a wonderful rock three miles on, which I have sketched. Oh, such a place ! I climbed to the top. I was alone with God and the hills — the Dart winding down a thousand feet below — I could only pray. And I felt impelled to kneel on the to}) of the rock — it seemed the only true state to be in in any place so primeval — so awful — which made one feel so indescribably little and puny. And I did pray — and the Lord's Prayer too — it seemed the only thing to express one's heart in. But I will tell you all at home ! .... It is an infinite relief and rest to me to have seen even some little of the Moor. I was always from a child longing for it, and now, thank God, that is fulfilled. '•'To-morrow I walk to Holne by Cator's Beam, i.e. over the highest mountain on the South Moor, from which all the South Devon streams rise. Sunday I spend at Holne, Monday at Ashburton, Manaton, and Lustleigh ; Tuesday through Chagford to Colebrook, and Thurs- day home I It seems — sometimes a day, sometimes a year since I saw CJiohra Crusade. 215 you. I shall bring you home several drawings and sketches, both of figures and of the Moor scenery. " Kiss the darling babes for me." • TO Ills FATHER. Ex'ERSLEV, Scplcmbcr, 1S49. '' I had i)urposed to have written to you from Holne, but being panic-struck at the increased ill-healtli of the parish, I hurried home where I am. What I saw of Holne more than justified your praises and drawings of it. Hazel Tor is to me the finest thing I have seen except the Upper Wye, which the whole place much resembles (I mean from Plinlimmon to Presteign). Of Benjay Tor I did not see as much as I wished. The man wlx) drove me said it was the finest thing they had. But of that kind of scenery I had seen much on the High Teign the preceding week, at Gidleigh, Drew's 7-eignton, which quite astonished me by its mingled lusciousness and grandeur. The distinctive and specific glory of Holne was the descent into cultivation down Holne Ridge, after four hours' awful silence and desolation from Fox Tor Mire, along the Titanic ridges of Cator's Beam, Aum Head, and Peter in the Mount, over the black bog, which varies the primaeval forest, the first gleam of spires, and woods, and chequered fields, first tinkle of the sheep bell, and creak of the plough, and halloo of boys, and the murmur of the hidden Dart. I could only pray and thank God for showing me such a thing. " The people, all whom I saw, and very many whom I longed to have seen, had I not been swept away, were full of you, and welcomed me as your son. The host, Easterbrook and his wife, were very full of you : two fellows in the public-house were glorying in two books which you gave them the day you left. My mother, Lady Louisa, and E. L., were much talked of by men as well as women. I shall be in London shortly, and shall ' tell ' to you, usque ad nauseam. I am as w^ell as ever I was in my life in health and spirits : quite strong and able to walk stoutly twenty miles and more a day over the bogs and the rocks. I need not say I shall be careful. Early to bed and to rise are now my i)lan, and, indeed, a point of conscience with me " And now the Cholera w as once more in England, and sanitary matters absorbed him. He preached three striking sermons at Evcrsley, on Cholera, " Who causes Pestilence" (uublisliecl together in 1H54, with preface). He worked in London and the country in the crusade against dirt and bad drainage The 2i6 Charles Kmgsley, terrible revelations of the state of the Water supply in London saddened and sickened him, and led to his writing an article in the " North British Review " on the subject* To this phase of his life Dean Stanley eloquently points when in his funeral sermon he says : *' It was this sense that he was a thorough Englishman — one of your- selves, working, toiling, feeling with you, and like you — that endeared him to you. Artisans and working men of London, you know how he desired, with a passionate desire, that you should have pure air, pure water, habitable dwellings, that you should be able to share the courtesies, the refinements, the elevation of citizens, and of P^nglishmen ; and you may, therefore, trust him the more when he told you from the pulpit, and still tellg you from the grave, that your homes and your lives should be no less full of moral purity and light " TO Ills WIFE. Chelsea, October 2a,, 1849. " I was yesterday with George Walsh and Mansfield over the cholera districts of Bermondsey ; and, oh, God ! what I saw ! people having no water to drink — hundreds of them — but the water of the common sewer which stagnated full of ... . dead fish, cats and dogs, under their windows. At the time the cholera was raging, Walsh saw them throwing untold horrors into the ditch, and then dipping out the water and drink- ing it ! ! Oh, show Mr. AVarre " (then member for Ripon, a relative of his wife's — with whom she was staying), " entreat him to read the account of the place in the ' Morning Chronicle ' of last week, and try every nerve to get a model lodging-house there ; why should people spend money and time in making a play-thing model-parish of St. Barnabas, where there are three rich to one poor, while whole square miles of other parts of London are in the same state as two or three streets only of Upper Chelsea? And mind, these are not dirty, debauched Irish, but honest hard-working artizans. It is most pathetic, as Walsh says, it makes him literally cry — to see the poor souls' struggle for cleanliness, to see how they scrub and polish their little scrap of pavement, and then go through the house and see ^^ society" leaving at the back poisons and filth— such as would drive a lady mad, I think, with disgust in twenty-four hours. Ob, that I had the tongue of St. James, to plead for those poor fellows! to tell what I saw myself, to stir up some rich men to go and rescue them " Water Supply of London," publislied in the Miscellanies. Bcrmondscy Horrors. 217 from the tyranny of the small shopkeeping landlords, who get their rents out of the flesh and blood of these men. Talk of the horrors of ' the middle passage.' Oh, that one-tenth part of the money which has been spent in increasing, by mistaken benevolence, the cnielties of the slave- trade, had been spent in buying up these nests of typhus, consumption, and cholera, and rebuilding them into habitations fit — I do not say for civilized Englishmen — that would be too much, but for hogs even. I will say no more. Pray get Mr. Warre to stir, for remember it is not a question of alms. It is only to get some man to take the trouble of making a profitable investment, and getting six per cent, for his money. I will put him in communication with those who know all the facts if he will help us. Twenty pounds sent to us, just to start a water-cart, and send it round at once — at once — ior the people are still in these horrors, would pay itself. I can find men who will work the thing. Mr. Ludlow, Charles Mansfield, the two Campbells, will go and serve out the water with their own hands, rather than let it go on. Pray, pray, stir people up, and God will reward you. Kiss my darlings for me. "P.S. — Do not let them wait for committee meetings and investigations; while they will be maundering about ' vested interests,' and such like, the people are dying. I start to-morrow for Oxford to see the bishop about these Bermondsey horrors, with a letter from Maurice. Direct to me there. The proper account of Bermondsey is in the ' Morning Chronicle ' of September 24, published a month ago, and yet nothing done, or likely to be ! !" PowLEs's Rooms, Oxford. " .... I saw the bishop (Wilberforce) yesterday. Most satisfactory interview. I am more struck with him than with any man, except Bunsen, I have seen for a long time. Also Archdeacon , disappointed, but interested me. Had no notion that such specimens of humanity were still to be found walking about this nineteenth-century England. But he looks a good man. Kiss the babes for me. How I long for your dear face and voice. ... I expected a letter from you to day, and some money for the poor Bermondsey folks." TO J. M. LUDLOW, ESQ. EvERSLKV, Monday, November, 1849. "Mv Friends, " Why tarry the wheels of your water-carts, why are your stand- l)ipes truly stand-still pipes ? Why are you so confoundedly merciful and tender-hearted ? Do you actually fancy that you can talk those landlords into repentance ? W^ill men repent for being told ? are men 2i8 Charles Kings ley. capable of repentance who will go on doing what they have been doing ? and is their interest changed by the fact of your wanting them to lay on water ? and do you trust tlic water company ? You see they are trying, to restrict not to extend. " You must go to the higher powers, i st. To the Chairman of Bcr- mondsey Improvement Commission. Now, what is this Commission ? By what authority does it pretend to act ? If it is one of the New I>ocal Commissions under the Heahh of Towns Act it can serve nuisance notices, and make people obey them. Therefore the chairman is a twaddler, if he only talks of wanting to do, what he can do if he likes. Therefore find out whether a majority of these Commissioners 7oil/ serve nuisance notices, &c. 2. On whom. Whom does the ditch belong to ? The Commissioners of Sewers or the Landlords ? Find out that and tell me, and try for indicting the Cor.wnissioners of Sewers, whose names I saw painted up. " Next. Just tell me what you have found out on these points, and I will write to Lord Carlisle and Lord John Russell, as the Bishop of Oxford told me, and ask for interviews. Find out, therefore, in walking home, whether Lord Carlisle and Lord Jolm Russell are in London, and if not, where? I write to Helps to-night. " Lastly, have the pamphlets been sent round ? People write that they will lielp when they know either what is the matter or how to mend it. But that no ])nmphlets have come to them. A\hen I know that, I will go to Farnham and see the Bishop of Winchester. " What has become of your public meeting plan ? / am ready. Or your placards? / am ready to write them. Now just give me an answer, dear boys." TO THE SAME. EVERSLEV, Noveinl'cr l, 1849. *' Dear Man, '* All the plans are good ; tell me to do, and I will do it. In the meantime return sennons (Cholera Sermons,) and they shall, three of them, be pepi)ered for London palates, and prepared for press. " I like Charles Mansfield's notion of a Sanitary League. It will act like a wedge. Papers and preachments are ' as a man beholding his natural face in a glass,' (S:c. Still, we'll try them ; tell me my work, and I'll do it with Cod's help. I enclose a list of [)eople to whom to send the pamphlet, to those marked " I will write also. I have written to S. C. O. for a Times letter. Tom Taylor may help us in Punch. " I have a quarrel with the Pamphlet. It does not bring before the eye the damning fact that that 'Chronicle' article came out a month ago. A Sci/uci to Vcast. 219 and produced no effect, that Sipf. 24 ought to have had a whole page to itself, and a hundred notes of exclamation. Else folks say, ' Very true, but no doubt the authorities are taking proper steps,' and so go on rejoicing. Now, we want at once a short, pithy, stern, but not ferocious statement, that nothing has been done, or will be done, and 7a/iy not. A plain avowal like Sam '\\'eller's, ' Somebody must be whopped for this,' and an attempt to define why. Else people will say, ' ^^'hy are )ou in such a fuss or I? You must prove to me that my money is wanted.' Don't you see, you dear old fellow ? *'Will you try for a public meeting? This Bermondsey case is only the cxpcrintciituiii crucis of a vast question, and shall men do what they like with their own ? INIind. If I begin and find it work, I should tr>- for compulsory legislation for all Landlords. * An .Edile Bill.' . . . ." TO THE SAME. " I sit down to answer your letter, which I should have done long ago, had I had common civility, but Yeast and Will. Willowwren have kept my brains over-busy. I want to talk to you about Yeast, and in doing so consolidate my own notions on it. It is not going to die, but re-appear under a different name and form, and in fresh scenes. Lancelot is to be ruined, go up to London and turn artist. In Yeast, as its name implies, I have tried to show the feelings which are working in the age, in a fragmentary and turbid state. In the next part, ' The Artists,' I shall try to unravel the tangled skein, by means of conversations on Art, connected as they will be necessarily with the deepest questions of science, anthropology, social life, and Christianity. And looking at the Art of a people as at once the very truest symbol of its faith, and a vast means for its further education, I think it a good path in which to form the mind of my hero, the man of the coming age. He, and his friend Mellot, and his cousin Luke, who has just turned Romanist, will be typical of the three great schools. Mellot of the mere classic Pagan, and of the Fourierism which seems to me to be its representative in the world of doctrines ; Luke of the Puginesque Manichwan. or exclusively spiritual school, and Lancelot who tries historic painting, and finding that there is nothing to paint about, falls back on landscapes and animals, on the simple naturalism of our Landseers and Creswicks, the only living school of art as yet possible in England. He is raised above his mere faith in nature by the simple Christianity of Tregarva, at the same time that he is taught by him that true democracy which considers the beautiful the heritage of the poor as well as of the rich : and Tregan-a in his turn becomes the type of English Art-hating Puritanism, gradually 220 Charles Kingsley. convinced of the divine mission of Art, and of its being the rightful child, not of Popery, but of Protestantism alone. " Thus, I think Lancelot, having grafted on his own naturalism, the Christianity of Tregarva, the classicism of Mellot, and the spiritual symbolism of Luke, ought to be in a state to become the mesothetic artist of the future, and beat each of his tutors at their own weapons, as the mesothet will always include a perfect each of the poles connected with it. " But where will Argemone be all this time ? You have your fears (in which I sympathize) that she will be too like Lancelot : but I cannot help exhibiting in her the same restlessness and dissatisfaction with the present, as in him, because I see it equally common now-a-days in both sexes, and I take it as the painful, yet most hopeful, sign of the times. There will still be a true polarity (a merely sexual one, being both ideals without any strongly-marked peculiarities) between her and her lover. She will retain the virginal purity, the conscientious earnestness of will, the strong conservative ecclesiastical prejudices, which go to make the ideal Englishwoman. She will be his compkiucutum^ and consider on the ground of the affections, the same questions which he is examining on the ground of the intellect. She must be educating her head through her heart, he his heart through his head. She as heiress of Whitford must try all sorts of accredited methods for its improvement, and find them all fail, because unconnected with the great principles which God is manifesting in this age ; and then- when the lovers are at last united, and Whitford becomes their work-field, he will supply her with social and anthropological principles on which to base her labours, and she will translate his theories for him into objects of passionate enthusiasm to be embodied in the charities of daily life. And so I think the two may become an ideal pair of pioneers toward the society of the future, the oTofxeio of which will be given in a third and last volume, to be written — when ? "This is a long preface. Whether I shall be able to fulfil my design remains to be proved. Perhaps I am aiming at too much, perhaps I am meddling with matters I don't understand. But if one needs must go when the devil drives, how much more when One very different from him impels one to speak at all costs ? And after all, ' it shall be given you in that hour w^hat ye shall speak ; ' and I am in no hurry, — five years will not be too long to occupy in working out the plan, and I want, when Yeast, and * the Artists ' have appeared in Eraser's, to take them out, work them over and enlarge them, and then take my time over the last or positive volume. So ends a long letter all about myself When will you come and see me ?...." Cobdais Freehold Land Scheme. 221 TO THOMAS COOl'EK. E\ERSLEY, December 6, 1849. " I ought to have written to you some time ago, to thank you for your kind promise of enlightening me on the history of Chartism, which I hope to reclaim when I come to London next. I deeply feel this proof of confidence, and you will not find me unworthy of it. I hear of you from time to time as busily at work, and I am myself busy enough, very much with the same object as yours, though with somewhat different tools and materials. I find the good cause living and growing fast — slowly enough, God knows, for all the evils which have to be removed : but wonderfully fast, considering the mountains of prejudice, selfishness, covetousness, and humbug, which it has to dig through. On one point I am a little pained and startled — I mean Mr. Cobden's Freehold Land Society speech. It seems to me that he openly avows the intention of setting up a number of small absentee proprietors, resident in towns, and holding land in the country. Now I would be just as glad to see a non- resident 40J". freeholder in the pillory, as a non-resident 40,000/. one. And I honestly declare, that the worst cases of tyranny, of neglect of property, and high rents taken for ' man-styes,' which I see, are on these little freeholds of poor landlords, who run up houses anyhow,- to make the ground pay. ' A poor man who oppresses the poor,' says Solomon, 'is like a sweeping rain that leaveth no good,' and I say, 'true !' It does seem to me that this project would thus increase one of the very evils which has pressed on the working man, and made his dwellings unfit for human habitation ; and I fear, too, that the greater part of these freeholds would become tlie property, not of workmen, but small retail tradesmen — a class, which, as you and I know, are a curse to the work- man. Pray enlighten me on these points. I am quite open to convic- tion if my fears are unfounded. •' I must congratulate you on the noble bequest for a Working Man's Hall, Museum, etc., which I hear you announced lately in John Street. May I ask for further particulars on the subject, for if I could be of any assistance in organizing or adding to any part of the museum, or what I long especially for, a Gallery of works of art, I shall be delighted to make myself of use." TO J. U. LUDLOW, ESQ. EvERSLEV, Sunday, December 30, 1S49. " I am shamed and sickened by the revelations in your article in * Fraser's ; ' they were new to me except about the tailors. How to thank 22 2 Charles Kingslcy. you for your article I know not, except by intreating you to put by my pamphlet and write one yourself; you would do it seven times as well. 1 send you up the rest of the MSS. ; but they are not worthy of the cause. Perhaps you might make something of them by doctoring ; but I cannot speak about Association ; it is our only hope, but I know nothing about it, or about anything else. If I had not had the com- munion at Church to-day, to tell me that Jesus does reign, I should have blasphemed in my heart, I think, and said the Devil is king ! " I come up Tuesday, and will see you at your rooms. I have a wild longing to do sonict/ihig. What — God only knows. You say, * He that believeth will not make haste ;' but I think he that believeth must make haste. But I will do anything that anybody likes. I have no confidence in myself, or in anything but God. I am not great enough for such times, alas ! ' ne pour faire des vers,' as Camille Desmoulins said." EvERSLEY, Friday, Dccemhct; 1849. ''I have an old 'crow to pick with you' about my hero Rajah Brooke 3 and my spirit is stirred within me this morning by seeing that the press are keeping up the attack on him for the Borneo business. I say at once that I think he was utterly right and righteous. If I had been in his place I would have done the same. If it is to do again, I trust he will have courage to do it again. But, thank God, just because it is done it will not have to be done again. The truest benevolence is occasional severity. It is expedient that one man die for the people. One tribe exterminated, if need be, to save a whole continent. 'Sacrifice of human life ?' Prove that it is hiinian life. It is beast-life. These Dyaks have put on the image of the beast, and they must take the con- sequence. 'Value of life?' Oh, Ludlow, read history; look at the world, and see whether God values mere physical existence. Look at the millions who fall in war ; the mere fact that savage races, though they breed like rabbits, never increase in number ; and then, beware lest you reproach your Maker. Christ died for them ? Yes, and He died for the whole creation as well — the whole world, Ludlow — for the sheep you eat, the million animalcules which the whale swallows at every gape. They shall all be hereafter delivered into the glorious liberty of the children of God ; but, as yet, just consider the mere fact of beasts of prey, the countless destruction which has been going on for ages and ages, long before Adam's fall, and then consider. Physical death is no evil. It may be a blessing to the survivors. Else, why pestilence, famine, Cromwell and Perrot in Ireland, Charlemagne hanging 4000 Saxons over the Weser Bridge; did not God bless . .lose terrible Rajah Brookes Policy. 223 righteous judgments ? Do you believe in the Old Testament ? Surely then, say, what does that destruction of the Canaanites mean ? If // was right, Rajah Brooke was right. If he be wrong, then Moses, Joshua, David, were wrong. No! I say. Ilecause Christ's kingdom is a king- dom of peace ; because the meek alone shall inherit the earth, therefore, \ou Malays and Dyaks of Sarawak, you also are enemies to peace. ' Your feet swift to shed blood, the poison of asps under your lips ;' you who have been warned, reasoned with ; who have seen, in the case of the surrounding nations, the strength and happiness which peace gives, and will not repent, but remain still murderers and beasts of prey. You are the enemies of Christ, tlie Prince of peace ; you are beasts, all the more dangerous, because you have a semi-human cunning. I will, like David, ' hate you with a perfect hatred, even as though you were my enemies.' I will blast you out with grape and rockets, ' I will beat you as small as the dust before the wind.' You, 'the strange children that dissemble with me, shall fail,' and be exterminated, and be afraid out of your infernal river-forts, as the old Canaanites were out of their hill-castles. I say, honour to a man, who, amid all the floods of sentimental cow^ard cant, which by some sudden revulsion may, and I fear will, become coward cruelty, dares act manfully on the broad sense of rights as Rajah Brooke is doing. Oh, Ludlow, recollect how before the '89, men were maundering about universal peace and philanthropy, too loving to hate God's enemies, too indulgent to punish sin. Recollect how Robespierre began by refusing, on conscientious principles, to assist at the punish- ment of death ! Just read, read the last three chapters of the Revelations, and then say, whether these same organs of destructiveness and com- bativeness, which we now-a-days, in our Manichajism, consider as the devil's creation, may not be part of the image of God, and Christ the Son of God, to be used in His service and to His glory, just as much as our benevolence or our veneration. Consider — and the Lord give thee grace to judge what I say. I may be wrong. But He will teach us both; and show this to Maurice, and ask him if I am altogether a fiend therein." EvERSLEV, Dcconhcr, 1S49. " I agree with every word of your letter, and have done so for some time. But it seems to me that you are justifying my friend Rajah Brooke (an intimate friend of wliose I have been seeing lately, and hearing things which make me love the Rajah more and more). I think the preserving that great line of coast from horril)le outrage, by destroying the pirate fleet, was loving his neighbour as himself, and taking the blood-money — not to spend on himself (for he spends nothing 2 24 Charles Kingsley, on himself ), but to use in civilizing the wretched people whom these pirates have been butchering for centuries — was right. "Borrow or buy the 'Morning Chronicle' articles, and send me them, and I will reimburse you ; at least send me the Tailor one by return of post. I will come up after Christmas and help. I am going to-day to meet Tennyson." At this period many young men from Oxford and elsewhere gathered round him. The following letter from one of them, Mr. C. Kegan Paul, speaks for itself of the life at Eversley, which had become a centre to so many enquiring spirits. " It is a sad pleasure to me to recall at your wish the particulars of my friendship with your husband, during the many years of which I have only to think of one long series of kindnesses, and more than brotherly affection, unbroken by the smallest misunderstanding, even when I came in some degree to differ from him from whom I had learnt so much. "You wish me to write my recollections, especially of the life at Eversley in those old days during which many came and went, a band of friends now dispersed, and of whom some are gone with him into the shadowy land. ' Die Einen, sie weinen, Die Andern, sie wandern, Die Dritten noch mitten Im Wechsel der Zoit ; Audi Viele am Ziele, • Zii den Todten entboten, Verdoiben, gestorben, In Lust und in Leid.' " I will put on paper what I can, and you will use as much or as little as you please. " I first saw Charles Kingsley in Oxford, in the spring term of 1S48. He had just published the ' Saint's Tragedy,' and came up to stay with his old schoolfellow, Cowley Powles, one of our Exeter tutors. He had not, I think, the least notion he would find himself famous, but he was so among a not inconsiderable section of young Oxford, even one month after the drama had appeared. A large number of us were thoroughly dissatisfied with the high-church teaching, which then was that of most earnest tutors in Oxford. There were, indeed, some noble exceptions,— Jowett of Balliol, Powles of Exeter, Congreve of Wadham, Stanley of University, Clough of Oriel. But they were scat- Letter from C. Kegan Paul. 225 tered, and their influence was over men here and there ; the high- churchmen held the mass of intelligent young men, many of whom revolted in spirit, yet had not found a leader. Here was a book which showed that there was poetry also in the strife against asceticism, whose manly preface was as stirring as the verse it heralded. We looked at its author with the deepest interest ; it was a privilege to have been in the room with him ; but my acquaintance with him was necessarily of the slightest. " In the summer of the following year, H. Percy Smith, of Balliol, who also had met Kingsley and taken a walk with him during that memorable Oxford visit, went to Eversley as curate, and almost as soon as he was settled, invited me to stay with him in his lodgings, about half a mile from the Rectory. The day after my arrival we dined at the Rectory. You were then using as a dining-room the larger room which afterwards was your drawing-room, and were alone \ Percy and I were the only guests. We went into the study afterwards while Kingsley smoked his pipe, and the evening is one of those that stand out in my memory with peculiar vividness. I had never then, I have seldom since, heard a man talk so well. " Kingsley's conversational powers were very remarkable. In the first place he had, as may be easily understood by the readers of his books, a rare command of racy and correct English, while he was so many sided that he could take keen interest in almost any subject which attracted those about him. He had read, and read much, not only in matters which every one ought to know, but had gone deeply into many out-of-the-way and unexpected studies. Old medicine, magic, the occult properties of plants, folk-lore, mesmerism, nooks and bye-ways of history, old legends ; on all these he was at home. On the habits and dispositions of animals he would talk as though he were that king in the Arabian Nights who understood the language of beasts, or at least had lived among the gipsies who loved him so well. The stammer, which in those days was so much more marked than in later years, and which was a serious discomfort to himself, was no drawback to the charm of his conversation. Rather the hesitation before some brilliant flash of words served to lend point to and intensify what he was saying ; and when, as he sometimes did, he fell into a monologue, or recited a poem in his sonorous voice, the stammer left him wholly, as it did when he read or preached in church. " When, however, I use the word monologue, it must not be supposed that he ever monopolized the talk. He had a courteous deference for the opinions of the most insignificant person in the circle, and was even too tolerant of a bore. With all his vast powers of VOL. I. Q 226 Charles Kings ley. conversation, and ready to talk on every or any subject, he was never superficial. What he knew he knew well, and was always ready to admit the fact when he did not know, " The morning after that evening in the study, came a note to me dated, ' Bed this morning,' inviting me to breakfast, and to transfer my goods from the village public-house — Percy Smith had no spare bed- room — to the Rectory. I did so, and this was the first of many visits, each one of increasing intimacy and pleasure. I cannot do better than expand some notes of those visits, which I sent to the ' Examiner' newspaper, in the week which followed Kingsley's death last year : — "'To those who, in the years of which we speak, were constant guests at Eversley, that happy home can never be forgotten. Kingsley was in the vigour of his manhood and of his intellectual powers, was administering his parish with enthusiasm, was writing, reading, fishing, walking, preaching, talking, with a twenty-parson power, but was at the same time wholly unlike the ordinary and conventional parson. " ' The picturesque bow-windowed Rectory rises to memory as it stood with all its doors and windows open on certain hot summer days, the sloping bank with its great fir-tree, the garden — a gravel sweep before the drawing-room and dining-rooms, a glass-plat before the study, hedged off from the walk — and the tall active figure of the Rector tramping up and down one or the other. His energy made him seem everywhere, and to pervade every part of house and garden. The MS. of the book he was writing lay open on a rough standing desk, which was merely a shelf projecting from the wall; his pupils — two in number, and treated like his own sons — were working in the dining-room ; his guests perhaps lounging on the lawn, or reading in the study. And he had time for all, going from writing to lecturing on optics, or to a passage in Virgil, from this to a vehement conversation with a guest, or tender care for his wife — who was far from strong — or a romp with his children. He would work himself into a sort of white heat over his book, till, too excited to write more, he would calm himself down by a pipe, pacing his grass-plat in thought and with long strides. He was a great smoker, and tobacco was to him a needful sedative. He always used a long and clean clay pipe, which lurked in all sorts of unexpected places. But none was ever smoked which was in any degree foul, and when there war. a vast accumulation of old pipes, they were sent back again to the kim to be rebaked, and returned fresh and new. This gave him a striking simile, which, in " Alton Locke," he puts into the mouth of James Crossthwaite. " Katie here believes in Purgatory, where souls are burnt clean again, like 'bacca pipes." ' *' When luncheon was over, and any arrears of the morning's work His Abou7iding Hiimo7ir. 227 cleared up, a walk with Kingsley was an occasion of constant pleasure. His delight in every fresh or known bit of scenery was most keen, and his knowledge of animal life invested the walk with singular novelty even to those who were already country bred. I remember standing on the top of a hill with him when the autumn evening was fading, and one of the sun's latest rays struck a patch on the moor, bringing out a very peculiar mixture of red-brown colours. What were the precise plants which composed that patch ? He hurriedly ran over the list of what he thought they were, and then set off over hedge and ditch, through bog and water-course, to verify the list he had already made. " During these afternoon walks he would visit one or another of his very scattered hamlets or single cottages on the heaths. Those who have read ' My Winter Garden,' in the * Miscellanies,' know how he loved the moor under all its aspects, and the great groves of firs. Nothing was ever more real than Kingsley's parish visiting. He believed absolutely in the message he bore to the poor, and the health his ministrations conveyed to their souls, but he was at the same time a zealous sanitary reformer, and cared for their bodies also. I was with him once when he visited a sick man suffering from fever. The atmos- phere of the little ground-floor bed-room was horrible, but before the Rector said a word he ran up-stairs, and, to the great astonishment of the inhabitants of the cottage, bored, with a large auger he had brought with him, several holes above the bed's head for ventilation. His reading in the sick room and his words were wholly free from cant. The Psalms and the Prophets, with judicious omissions, seemed to gain new meaning as he read them, and his after-words were always cheerful and hopeful. Sickness, in his eyes, seemed always to sanctify and purify. He would say, with the utmost modesty, that the patient endurance of the poor taught him day by day lessons which he took back again as God's message to the bed-side from which he had learnt them. " One great element of success in his intercourse with his parishioners was his abounding humour and fun. What caused a hearty laugh was a real refreshment to him, and he had the strongest belief that laughter and humour were elements in the nature of God Himself " This abounding humour has with some its dangers. Not so with Kingsley. No man loved a good story better than he, but there was always in what he told or what he suffered himself to hear, a good and pure moral underlying what might be coarse in expression. "WTaile he would laugh with the keenest sense of amusement at what might be simply broad, he had the most utter scorn and loathing for all that could debase and degrade. And he was the most reverent of men, though Q 2 2 28 Charles Kings ley. he would say things which seemed daring because people were unac- customed to hear sacred things named without a pious snuffle. This great reverence led him to be even unjust to some of the greatest humourists. I quoted Heine one day at his table. * Who was Heine ? ' asked his little daughter. * A wicked man, my dear,' was the only answer given to her, and an implied rebuke to me. " On the week-day evenings he frequently held a ' cottage lecture ' or short service in a cottage, for the old and feeble who lived at a distance from church. To this he would sally forth in a fisherman's knitted blouse if the night were wet or cold. "■ Old and new friends came and went as he grew famous — not too strong a word for the feeling of those days — and the drawing-room evening conversations and readings, the tobacco parliaments later into the night, included many of the most remarkable persons of the day. " I do not give any recollections of those conversations, partly because it would be difficult to do so without giving names which I have no right here to introduce, and partly because his opinions on all subjects will be amply illustrated in his own words from letters to many who sought his advice. But I know that those evening talks kept more than one who shared in them from Rome, and weaned more than one from vice, while others had doubts to faith removed which had long paralyzed the energy of their lives. " It would not be right, however, to pass over the fact that it was through his advice, and mainly in consequence of the aid he gave me, that I was myself enabled to take orders. You know that I have again become a layman, but though my views have greatly developed from those I held twenty-three years ago, I do not regret that I then was encouraged to become a clergyman. Kingsley enabled me to dismiss at once and for ever all faith whatever in the popular doctrine of eternal punishment, and all the whole class of dogmas which tend to confuse the characters of God and the Devil. " A day rises vividly to memory, when Kingsley remained shut up in the study during the afternoon, the door bolted, inaccessible to all interruption. The drowsy hour had come on between the lights, when it was time to dress for dinner, and talk, without the great inspirer of it, was growing disjointed and fragmentary, when he came in from the study, a paper, yet undried, in his hand, and read us the ' Lay of the Last Buccaneer,' most spirited of all his ballads. One who had been lying back in an arm-chair, known for its seductive properties as ' sleepy hollow,' roused up then, and could hardly sleep all night for the inspiring music of the words read by one of the very best readers I have ever heard. Acctwacy in Detail, 229 " It was my good fortune to be staying with you through the summer in which the greater part of ' Hypatia ' was written. I was especially struck not only with his power of work, but with the extraordinary pains he took to be accurate in detail. We spent one whole day in searching the four folio volumes of Synesius for a fact he thought was there, and which was found there at last. The hard reading he had undergone for that book alone would furnish an answer to some who thought him superficial. " Others will write better than I of his work in the parish generally, and of his theology. " In some places in the country it is still the custom to perform part of the marriage service in the body of the church, and then proceed to the chancel. So it had always been in the Oxfordshire parish to which I was appointed. Kingsley told with infinite delight how a curate at or near Bideford had tried to introduce the practice, and how the Devon clerk protested, saying, ' First he went up the church, and then he went down the church, side-a-ways, here-a-ways, and theer-a- ways, a scrattlin' like a crab.' " His sermons were full of most tender care for individual cases known only to himself. When he was most impressive and pathetic it was generally because his sermon touched the sorrow of some one in the congregation, though the words seemed general. Once, when I was to preach for him, he asked me to let him look at two or three MS. sermons I had with me. He read them carefully, and selected one, not by any means the best written. ' Preach that, Charles ; there is a poor soul who will be in church whose sins it may touch, and whose sorrows it may heal. God help us all.' " In the summer of 1851, I travelled from Reading to London with Miss Mitford, who did not then know Kingsley, though afterwards they became very good friends. She said she had driven by Eversley church- yard a few days before, and had seen Kingsley reading the funeral service ; that he looked quite what she should have expected, ' a pale student.' I need hardly say she had seen his curate, and that Kingsley was as unlike a pale student as any man who ever lived. His tempera- ment was artistic and impulsive. He delighted in out-door life, in sport, in nature in all her moods and phases. His physical frame was power- ful and wiry, his complexion dark, his eye bright and piercing. Yet he often said he did not think that his would be a long life, and the event has sadly confirmed his anticipations. " My life at Eton as Master in College was one which left me scant time for visits to Eversley. But my rare interviews with Kingsley, when I snatched a day to drive over, were always full of delight. I 230 Charles Kings ley. often consulted him about professional difficulties, and found his insight into school-boy life most remarkable, and his sympathy with the young unflagging. He spent one day only with us at Eton in those eight years, but I remember his delight in a row on the river, visiting the boys' bathing places. " Cambridge, indeed, in those years was more accessible than Eversley, and that again would furnish me with somewhat to say, did not others know that portion of the life better than I. I was staying at Cambridge at the time of the Prince Consort's death, and remember how he was affected by it, as at the loss of a personal friend. I walked over the next day to Maddingly with Kingsley, who wished to hear Windsor news from some of the suite, and met, on the way, more than one of the specially chosen young associates of the Prince of Wales. I can never forget, nor probably will those who were addressed forget, the earnest, solemn, and agitated tones in which he spoke of the Prince Consort's care for his son, and the duty which lay on them, tlie Prince of Wales's young friends, to see that they did all in their power to enforce the wise counsel of him who was dead. " My removal into Dorset yet further sundered us in person, but never in heart. When we met from time to time, his cordial grasp said more than words to assure me of the old brotherly affection. '* Coming once more to live in London, I hoped for the old unrestricted intimacy once again. It was not so to be. I saw him, and saw him only but once, enough to notice that he was sorely changed in body, which, though far from puny, was fretted away by his fiery spirit. And when they laid him to rest, in Eversley church- yard, near the graves where some whom he loved repose, and where the shadow of the great Scotch fir lies each summer afternoon, I could stand by his grave only in thought. But it will ever have associations of the most solemn kind. I am among those many who can never forget that, widely as they have differed from Charles Kingsley, and whatever were his failings and incompletenesses, his was just that one influence which, at a time they needed a guide, roused them to live manly lives, and play their parts in the stir of the world, while to me he was the noblest, truest, kindest friend I ever had or can hope to have." CHAPTER IX. 1850— 1851. Aged 31, 32. Resigns the Office of Clerk in Orders at Chelsea— Pupil Life at EvERSLEY — Publication of "Alton Locke" — Letters from Mr. Car- lyle— Writes for "Christian Socialist" — Troubled State of the Country — Burglaries— The Rectory Attacked— Correspondence on THE Romish Question. " A lynx-eyed fiery man, with the spirit of an old knight in him ; more of a hero than any modern I have seen for a long time. A singular veracity one finds in him ; not in his words alone, which, however, I like much for their fine rough naivete ; but in his actions, judgments, aims ; in all that he thinks, and does, and says — which indeed I have observed is the root of all greatness or real worth in human creatures, and properly the first (and also the rarest) attribute of what we call gknius among men. " T. Carlyle, on Sir Charles Napier. CHAPTER IX. The year 1850 was spent by the Rector of Eversley at home, in better health, with still fuller employment ; for in addition to parish and writing, he had the work of teaching a private pupil, which was quite new to him. Times were bad, rates were high, rate-payers discontented, and all classes felt the pressure. The Rector felt it also, but he met it by giving the tenants back ten per cent, on their tithe payments, and thus at once and for ever he won their confidence. He had, since his marriage, held the office of Clerk in Orders in his father's parish of St. Luke's, Chelsea, which added con- siderably to his income, and in those days was not considered incompatible with non-residence ; but though his deputy was well paid, and he himself occasionally preached and lectured in Chelsea, he looked upon the post as a sinecure, and so he resigned it. The loss of income must however be met, and this could only be done by his pen. It was a heavy struggle just then, with Rector's Poor's Rates at ^ 1 50 per annum, and the parish charities mainly dependent on him ; but he set to work with indomitable industry, and by a great effort finished "Alton Locke." It was a busy winter, for the literary work was not allowed to interfere with the pupil work, or either with the parish ; he got up at five every morning, and wrote till breakfast ; after breakfast he worked with his pupil and at his sermons ; the afternoons were devoted as usual to cottage visiting ; the evenings to adult school and superintending the fair copy of " Alton Locke " made by his wife for the press. It was the only book of which he ever had a fair copy made. His habit w^as thoroughly to master his subject, whether book or sermon, always out in the open air, in his garden, on the moor, or by the side of a lonely trout stream, 234 Charles Kingsley. and never to put pen to paper till the ideas were clothed in words ; and these, except in the case of poetry, he seldom altered. For many years his writing was all done by his wife from his dictation, while he paced up and down the room. When " Alton Locke " was completed, the difficulty was to find a publisher : Messrs. Parker, who had, or thought they had, suffered in reputation for publishing " Yeast " in the pages of Fraser, and " Politics for the People," refused the book ; and Mr. Carlyle kindly gave the author an introduction to Messrs. Chapman & Hall, who, on the strength of his recommendation, undertook to bring it out, " I have written to Chapman," says Mr. Carlyle, " and you shall have his answer, on Sunday, if it come within post hours to-morrow ; if not then on Tuesday. But without any answer, I believe I may already assure you of a respectful welcome, and the new novel of a careful and hopeful examination from the man of books. He is sworn to secrecy too. This is all the needful to-day, — in such an unspeakable hurry as this present. " And so, right glad myself to hear of a new explosion, or salvo of red-hot shot against the Devil's Dung-heap, from that particular battery, " I remain, " Yours always truly, "T. Carlyle." The spread of infidel opinions among the working classes and the necessity of meeting them, continually occupied him, and he writes to his friend Mr. Ludlow, " But there is something else which weighs awfully on my mind, — the first number of Cooper's Journal, which he sent me the other day. Here is a man of immense influence, openly preaching Straussism to the workmen, and in a fair, honest, manly way. which must tell. Who will answer him ? Who will answer Strauss ? Who will denounce Strauss as a vile aristocrat, robbing the poor man of his Saviour — of the ground of all democracy, all freedom, all association — of the Charter itself? Oh si mihi centum voces et fcrrea lingua. Think about that — talk to Maurice about that. To me it is awfully pressing. If the priests of the Lord are wanting to the cause now !■ — woe to us ! ... . A New Penny Periodical. 235 "Don't fire at me about smoking. I do it, because it does me good, and I could not (for I have tried again and again) do without it. I smoke the very cheapest tobacco. In the meantime I am keeping no horse— a most real self-sacrifice to me. But if I did, I should have so much the less to give to the poor. God knows all about that, John Ludlow, and about other things too." TO THE SAME. EVERSLEY, February 13, 1850. " Your letter delights me, because it shows me that you have the same idea of the paper as I have. I believe firmly that if we know better why brotherhood is the ideal, we ought to be more ready to act on it than these poor fellows, and not be narrower and less believing than them by saying with the sects. You are not our brothers unless you know why — as if a man was not his father's son till he had found his father. Rather, in theology, as in the world, ' Jfs a wise child that knows its own father!' "As for the subjects. It seems to me that, to spread the paper, you must touch the workman at all his points of interest. First and fore- most at Association ; but also at political rights as grounded both on the Christian ideal of the Church and on the historic facts of the Anglo-Saxon race ; then National Education, Sanitary and Dwelling-house Reform, the Free Sale of Land, and corresponding Reform of the Land-Laws, moral improvement of the Family relation, public places of Recreation (on which point I am very earnest) ; and I think a set of hints from History, and sayings of great men, of which last I have been picking up from Demosthenes, Plato, &c. In fact, our journal must do all that T. Cooper and Eliza Cook, &c., want to do and can't. We must even try to beat out of the field that harmless, and enormously read ' Family Friend.' *' Boyne-water day to-day ! ! ! glorious day — and what Psalms this morning ! Omen accipio lubens ! " June, 1S50. " Up till one this morning, keeping a great flood out — amid such lightning and rain as I think I never saw before ; up to my knees in water, working with a pickaxe by candle-light to break holes in the wall, to prevent all being washed away. Luckily my garden is saved. But it all goes with me under the head of ' fun.' Something to do — and light- ning is my highest physical enjoyment. I should like to have my thunderstorm daily, as one has one's dinner. What a providence I 236 Charles Kings ley. did not go to town last night. My man was gone home, and we should have had the garden ruined, and the women frightened out of their wits." Before the new penny periodical was set on foot the writers for " Politics " brought out a series of tracts, " On Christian Socialism." Among the most remarkable was " Cheap Clothes, and Nasty," by Parson Lot,* exposing the slop-selling system, which was at the root of much of the distress in London and the great towns. The Tailors' Association was formed, and a shop opened in Castle Street, to which the publication of " Cheap Clothes" took many customers ; and, in June, a friend writes to Mrs. Kingsley from London : — "... Three copies of ' Cheap Clothes, and Nasty ' are lying on the Guards' Club table ! Percy Feilding (Captain in the Guards) went to Castle Street and ordered a coat, and I met two men at dinner yester- day with Castle Street coats on." In August the Rectory party had an addition, Mr, Lees, a young Cambridge man arriving for three months to read for Holy Orders. It was a bold step in those days for any man to take, to read divinity with the author of " Yeast " and " Alton Locke," but after twenty-six years' ministry in the Church, he looks back to it as a time not only of enjoyment, but of profit. With this pupil Mr. Kingsley read Strauss's " Leben Jesu," of which an English translation had just been published. He con- sidered Strauss, as he considered Comte eighteen years later, the great false prophet of the day, who must be faced and fought against by the clergy. To another candidate for Holy Orders, who wrote to him at that time, he replies : — TO C. KEGAN PAUL, Esq. " You wish to know what to read for Orders? That depends on what you mean. If to get through a Bishop's examination, just ask any- one who has been lately ordained what he crammed ; and cram that, which may take you some six weeks, and no trouble. * Now republished in a new edition of "Alton Locke." Letter from Rev. H. Percy Smith. 237 " But if you want to be of any use, I should advise you, if you can, which all men cannot, to sit down and read your Bible honestly, and let it tell you its own story, utterly careless of any theories, High Church or Puritan, which have been put into the text first, and then found there by their own inserters. " For instance : read the Pentateuch and the books of Samuel and Kings ; Isaiah in Lowth's and the minor prophets in Newcome's trans- lation; the Gospels from Alford's new text, and the Epistles by the light of your own common sense and honest scholarship. Believe that if TTovy means a foot in profane Greek, it will most likely mean a foot also in ecclesiastical Greek, and avoid the popular belief that the Apostles write barbarisms, whenever their words cannot be made to square at first sight with Laud or Calvin. " For books : Kitto's ' Encyclopaedia of Biblical Literature ' will tell you all that is known of Bible history and antiquities ;* and for doctrine, I advise you to read Maurice's ' Kingdom of Christ,' ' Christmas Day and other sermons,' and his new edition of the ' Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy.' " Thus much now, but if you will ask me questions from time to time, I will tell you all I know, if you think my knowledge worth having. Never think of bothering me. It is a delight to me to give hints to anyone whom I can ever so little put forward in these confused times." Of the influence he exercised and the afifection he woke up in the young men who surrounded him at that time, his first curate's own glowing, loving words must tell. REV. H. PERCY SMITH, TO MRS. KINGSLEY. Barton Vicarage, 1875. "... Everyone knows what it is to read his thoughts : full, powerful, clear, like a mountain stream. But few, comparatively, know what it was to hear them, fresh and glowing ; by the hour together to walk with him, or ride, or sit by the fire, or lie on that dear lawn, looking up into the sky and clouds, and hear those wonderful outpourings on every possible subject, as he travelled from one to another, speaking of deeper things with an intense profound reverence, and lighting up the most trivial matters as genius only can ; always full to overflowing with geni- ality and kindness ; and often so unutterably droll. * It must be remembered that this was in 1S50, before the "Dictionary of the Bible," &c., &c., were published. 238 Charles Kings ley. " What wonderful talks they were ! In those days there were many matters — as there must be at all times — about which the Church and country were profoundly anxious, and upon these and the various ways of looking at them, he would ' think aloud ' continually as we were together. How earnest and bold was the faith with which he would look into the future ! Yet with what tender anxiety, lest he should startle or even disturb his companion, who might not be able to see so clearly or so far, or might perhaps misapprehend his meaning. As I watched this, I used to say to myself, * Never in anyone have I seen such honesty of thought — such freedom from prejudice, from verbal carelessness or confusion, and from selfishness. Never in any one have I seen so intense and pure a desire to see things exactly as they are, and as God sees them.' " As to religious matters, you might very often have imagined him absolutely unaware of all the strife, parties, «ames, and watchwords. With him it would have been too completely realised and common-place a thought to need expression — that one must not think a thing neces- sarily, or even probably, right or wrong, because this or that party holds it. He seemed to me to live high up above such considerations ; to be always looking straight out for the truth, as if in clear regions of reverent thought ; just as that wonderful eye of his was always looking into the outward world — observing, perceiving, distinguishing. And what a deep reverent belief his was ; who that knew him intimately in his pri- vate life and everyday conversation ever failed to see it ? — that Holy Scripture is indeed the message of God our Father, that the Sacraments witness to a Real Presence of our Blessed Lord with us — that the great fact of the Incarnation is the source of all life and goodness, that is or ever shall be. After all, it is from the unstudied, unrestrained, every- day talk of a man that one best learns what his clearest, strongest con- victions are. But because in those days he inveighed severely — not one particle too severely, as the event proved — against what was unmanly, un-English, celibate ; against what was opposed to true Protestantism, and unjust and ungrateful to the Reformation, there were some who fancied that his positive belief on some points was vague and unde- fined. Those who really knew him then knew better. And since then the world in general has learnt better also. " Those Cottage Lectures, especially those held in preparation for Holy Communion, what pains he took with them ! How he would stand up in some cottage room filled with poorest folks, talking to them with all that earnest simplicity of his ! To no hearers, even had they been amongst the highest and most educated, could he have spoken with more painstaking love and ability. How wisely, carefully, His respect for the Poor. 239 tenderly, he would read and converse in the sick-room; and as the ' servant ' of Christ and His people ! Many are the passages which now, as I read them, I seem to hear him reading to some sufferer. " These are very happy memories now. They bring back that dear one to my mind in, what was beyond shadow of doubt, his strongest, best, most beautiful character. Often, very often, when my dear Rector has been spoken of as one admired exceedingly in the world, and listened to by crowds as he preached or lectured, and favoured in high places, I have answered, ' Yes ; but you don't know his real strength and goodness, and how far greater, more loveable, he is in his home and parish than anywhere else. You should have lived with him and worked with him in the earliest years after ordination, and seen how from any and every subject, however engrossing, he would always instantly turn to any theme that came before him relative to his own people and his own parish ; how all those scientific subjects added together were not in his mind equal to the welfare of one parishioner.' " And what respect he had for the poor ! I can think of no other word. It was not simply that he cared for them exceedingly, and was kind, feeling, sympathetic in an especial degree — that he would take any amount of trouble for them j that those whom he employed became simply devoted to him. It was far more than this. There was in him a simple, delicate, deep respect for the poor — a positive looking up to them, for His dear sake who ' became poor ;' for the good which he saw in them, for the still greater good which he hoped to see and strove that he might see in them, in Eversley and everywhere else ; a respect arising out of the consciousness of his own responsibility in having to think for those who could not well think for themselves — a respect, because the poor have a greater, not a less, claim upon our politeness of manner, and thoughtful courtesy of speech, and consideration in action of every kind. " So it was in his parish. What he was in his home, to those who lived in that dear Rectory, to all who were welcome there — the very home of family love, of household order and peace, and hospitality — on this I may not dwell. For myself only I may speak of it, as the chief among many causes of an affection for him which grew into a simple passionate love ; and one fed (this I know that to you I may dare to say) by the knowledge that ever since those happy years at Eversley, I have had a place in his love also. " Let us think of him, dear Mrs. Kingslcy, as he is now ; and of that noble, truth-loving, affectionate spirit, as being ' with Christ,' and nearer than when he was with us to God whom he loves " 240 Charles Kings ley. In some of his schemes his elder pupil sympathised, as this letter to Mr. Ludlow shows : — EVERSLEY, August, 1850. "... WTien 'God sends mouths, He sends meat.' So Lees will lend us the ^100 to-morrow. He is ^;z^6'//^with the thing ; will do any- thing to help it — seems very much longing to buy up Jacob's Island, and build a model lodging-house, &c., &c. " Now — quick — present — fire. Can you and Walsh talk all over with the Master, and run down here for three or four hours, and let us organise this paper ? Lees says that we shall have an enormous sale, that the young men are thirsting for something of the kind. We can get help in Cambridge, and I believe, elsewhere. God will find us men, as He has money. But I had rather work in harness. You tell me what you want weekly, and you shall have it ; else I shall have twenty irons in the fire at once, and none of them hot. I tell you, you or some one must act as my commanding officer in this. I have too much autocracy already to be bothered with autocracy in this too. Either I must be king of this paper, which I can't and wouldn't be, or I must be an under-strapper, and set the example of obedience. "Think over a list of subjects to make play on. Don't call the little one ' The Workshop ' — people will think it merely a mechanic's trade thing like the ' Builder.' Call it ' Brotherhood,' your old name — first thoughts are best. I thhik, if we can count on six hacks to write every week, we can keep up a team. Now settle clearly your subjects. I. Politics according to the Kingdom of God. 2. Art and Amusements for the People. 3. Opening the Universities to the People, and Educa- tion in general. 4. Attacking Straussism and Infidelity. 5. Sanitary Reform. 6. Association : a. Agitation on Partnership Laws ; /S. Stores and Distribution ; y. Agricultural Schemes. '* All the five former subjects are connected with Socialism, i.e, with a live and practical Church. It depends on us to treat them as if they were so, not trying to put it into them, but to deduce their ideals out of it. There, my say is said. " The tracts, ' Cheap and Nasty ' especially, are selling well at Eton. As for the tailors, I agree with Hughes, * Through much tribulation we enter into the Kingdom of God,' and why there is to be a plenary indulgence in favour of associate tailors, I can't see. Toko, my friend, toko is necessary to make men of us all ; and if our neighbour won't give it us, and we ourselves won't either, God will." Disturbed State of the Country. 241 September, 1850. " I have been very forgetful about the tract — forgive me. My excuse is the unspeakable hurry and ceaseless work of preparing, thanks to the Bishop, my confirmation candidates in a fortnight, instead of the usual time (six weeks), which has nearly driven me wild — but that is over to-morrow, and then, after the getting them ready for Communion next week, I will work for the movement steadily. I quite agree with all you say on Church matters But why can we not do more ? why can we not set up an Associate journal? Every fool and penniless adventurer is starting his periodical — is it so much easier to do the devil's work than God's ? If you will join me in a speculation to get the thing started, I will run the chance of pecuniary loss, and work myself to the bone to resuscitate * Politics for the People,' in a new form. I want to, and (D.V.) will, at once, write a set of papers in it, or tracts ' God justified to the People,' or ' Bible Radicalism ' by Parson Lot — showing that Democracy is the idea of the Bible and the cause of God, beginning with the Exodus, and going through David and the Prophets to our Lord and the Early Church. Lees and I are just going to begin Strauss, and I will write some sort of answer to him, if God gives me grace. ... Oh ! do not fancy that I am not perplexed — ' cast down, yet not in despair.' — No ; Christ reigns, as Luther used to say, Christ reigns — and therefore I will not fear, ' though the mountains be removed (and I with them) and cast into the midst of the sea.'" . . . . . . Your letter makes me veiy sad. I cannot abide the notion of Branch Churches or Free (Sect) Churches. So help me God, unless my whole train of thought alters, I will resist the temptation as coming from the devil. Where I am, I am doing God's work, and when the Church is ripe for more, the Head of the Church will put the means in our way. You seem to fancy that we have a ' Dens quidam Deceptor ' over us after all. If I did, I'd go and blow my dirty brains out, and be rid of the whole thing at once, I would indeed. If God, when people ask Him to teach and guide them, does not — if, when they confess themselves rogues and fools to Him, and beg Him to make them honest and wise. He does not, but darkens them and deludes them into bogs and pitfalls — is He a father? You fall back on Judaism, friend. " I shall \vrite a Labour Conference Tract forthwith. As for hot water with the tailors — tell Cooper, no hot water, no tea." During the autumn of 1850 the state of the country was ominous. In his own parish there was still low fever, and a general depression prevailed. Work was slack, and as winter 242 Charles Kings ley. approached gangs of housebreakers and men who preferred beg- ging and robbery to the workhouse, wandered about Hampshire, Surrey, and Sussex. No house was secure. Mr. Holiest, the clergyman of Frimley, was murdered in his own garden while pursuing the thieves ; and the little Rectory at Everslcy, which had never hitherto needed protection, and had scarcely a strong lock on its doors, was armed with bolts and bars, fortunately before it too was attempted by the same gang. The Rector slept with loaded pistols by his bed-side, and policemen from Winchester watched in and about the quiet garden by night. The future of England looked dark, and he writes to Mr. Maurice : — EvERSi-EY, Sunday, October, 1850. "My dearest Master, " I hear you are come home. If so, for God's sake come down and see me, if but for a day. I have more doubts, per- plexities, hopes, and fears to pour out to you than I could utter in a week, and to the rest of our friends I cannot open. You comprehend me ; you are bigger than I. Come down and tell me what to think and do, and let Fanny as well as me, have the delight of seeing your face again. I would come to you, but I have two pupils, and business besides, and also don't know when and how to catch you. " The truth is, I feel we are all going on in the dark, toward some- thing wonderful and awful, but whether to a precipice or a paradise, or neither, or both, I cannot tell. All my old roots are tearing up one by one, and though I keep a gallant * front ' before the Charlotte Street people (Council of Association), little they know of the struggles within me, the laziness, the terror. Pray for me ; I could lie down and cry at times. A poor fool of a fellow, and yet feeling thrust upon all sorts of great and unspeakable paths, instead of being left in peace to classify butterflies and catch trout. '' If it were not for the Psalms and Prpphets, and the Gospels, I should turn tail, and flee shamefully, giving up the whole question, and all others, as cegri som?iia." TO J. M. LUDLOW, Esq. EVERSLEY, October, 1850. " I have been thinking about two ways of working this penny periodical and which is the right. Whether our present idea is not to New Periodical. 243 write down to the people, to address ourselves too exclusively to the workuig man, to give them only a part of our thoughts ? Whether the truly democratic method would not be to pour out our whole souls in it. To say, if not all we think, yet all we think fit to say on every subject ; to make it, if possible, an organ of Christian teaching to all classes, on the things now agitating their minds. " To have the best criticism, metaphysics, history, and everything else, and by teaching all, to teach the working man merely as a member of the whole, and of equal rights and mind with all. I cannot help fancy- ing this the true brotherly method — to speak to factory-worker and duke alike — to put them on one common ground, show that we con- sider them subject to the same law. I want to send you a bit of poetry,* and the first of three letters on the Frimley murder, and our present 'reign of terror,' showing that Christian organization of labour might have prevented it all, and that increased police is a mere ruinous driving inward of the disease. Will you have them ? Have you any numbers of the ' Morning Chronicle ' with information about our hop-districts ? If you have, be so kind as to send me them down at once. " The rogues are frightened off. I had to send a charge of slugs, not deadly though unpleasantly straight, after one the other night, and they have eschewed us since. " I will get ready the Labour Conference Tract as soon as I can. But I have been disorganised, and kept up at night by these sons of Belial, and so I am behind in my work " * It is thought that this must have been the poem referred to, as it expresses the struggle of his mind at that time. " It chanced upon the merry, merry Christmas Eve I went sighing past the church across the moorland dreary. Oh ! never sin, and want, and woe, this earth will leave, And the bells but mock the wailing round, they sing so cheery. ' How long, O Lord ! how long before Thou come again ? Still in cellar, and in garret, and on moorland dreary. The orphans moan, and widows weep, and poor men toil in vain. 'Til the earth is sick of hope deferred, though Christmas bells be cheery.' Then arose a joyous clamour from the wild-fowl on the mere, Beneath the stars, across the snow, like clear bells ringing ; And a voice within cried — ' Listen ! Christmas carols even here ! Though thou be dumb, yet o'er their work the stars and snows are singing. Blind ! I live, I love, I reign ; and all the nations through With the thunder of my judgments even now are ringing : Do thou fulfil thy work but as yon wild-fowl do, Thou wilt heed no less the wailing, yet hear through it the angels singing. " P.'VKSON Lot. R 2 244 Charles Kings ley. " Jeremiah is my favourite book now. It has taught me more than tongue can tell. But I am much disheartened, and am minded to speak no more words in this name (Parson Lot). Yet all these bully- ings, teach one, correct one, warn one, show one that God is not leaving one to go one's own way. * Christ reigns,' quoth Luther," "Alton Locke" came out in August, and the verdict of the Press was of course a severe one. The best artizans, however, hailed it as a true picture of their class and circumstances, and there are still thoughtful men and women of the higher orders who consider it one of the finest of his productions. Mr. Carlyle's words on the subject are noteworthy. Chelsea, October 2,1, 1850. " It is now a great many weeks that I have been your debtor for a book which in various senses was very welcome to me. ' Alton Locke' arrived in Annandale, by post, from my wife, early in Sep- tember, and was swiftly read by me, under the bright sunshine, by the sound of rushing brooks and other rural accompaniments. I believe the book is still doing duty in those parts ; for I had to leave it behind me on loan, to satisfy the public demand. Forgive me, that I have not, even by a word, thanked you for this favour. Continual shifting and moving ever since, not under the best omens, has hindered me from writing almost on any subject or to any person. " Apart from your treatment of my own poor self (on which subject let me not venture to speak at all), I found plenty to like, and be grate- ful for in the book: abundance, nay exuberance of generous zeal; head- long impetuosity of determination towards the manful side on all manner of questions ; snatches of excellent poetic description, occa- sional sunbursts of noble insight ; everywhere a certain wild intensity, which holds the reader fast as by a spell : these surely are good quali- ties, and pregnant omens in a man of your seniority in the regiment ! At the same time, I am bound to say, the book is definable as crude ; by no manner of means the best we expect of you — if you will resolutely temper your fire. But to make the malt sweet, the fire should and must be slow : so says the proverb, and now, as before, I include all duties for you under that one ! ' Saunders Mackaye,' my invaluable countryman in this book, is nearly perfect ; indeed I greatly wonder how you did contrive to manage him — his very dialect is as if a native had done it, and the whole existence of the rugged old hero is a won- derfully splendid and coherent piece of Scotch bravura. In both of Letter from Thomas Carlyle. 245 your women, too, I find some grand poetic features ; but neither of them is worked out into the ' Daughter of the Sun ' she might have been ; indeed, nothing is worked out anywhere in comparison with 'Saunders;' and the impression is of a fervid creation still left half chaotic. That is my literary verdict, both the black of it and the white. " Of the grand social and moral questions we will say nothing what- ever at present : any time within the next two centuries, it is like, there will be enough to say about them ! On the whole, you will have to persist ; like a cannon-ball that is shot, you will have to go to your mark, whatever that be. I stipulate farther that you come and see me when you are at Chelsea ; and that you pay no attention at all to the foolish clamour of reviewers, whether laudatory or condemnatory. " Yours with true wishes, " T. Carlyle." His elder pupil left Eversley in November, and his tutor writes : — TO WILLIAM LEES, ESQ. Eversley, December a,, 1850. " As you must be as well aware as I am, that I ought to have written to you long ago, I shall not dilate on that unpleasant fact. Every- thing remains as before, except the leaves which have fallen, and the house-breakers, who have come again. If I have to shoot them after all, it will not be for want of provocation ; and if they get in, it will not be for want of trying. The infants remain healthy, Mrs. Kingsley troubled with much serving. John Martineau studious, and Dandy superfluous. We have commenced night schools, and a weekly lec- ture on English history, which I started last night with twenty hearers, on the Saxon conquest, and I hope made the agricultural eyes open once or twice, by showing that they did not grow out of the earth originally, like beetles, but came from somewhere else ; and might probably have to go somewhere else, and make room for their betters, if they continued so like beetles, human manure-carriers, and hole- grubbers, much longer. The weather has been trying its hand at everything. Frantic gales, frantic frosts, now frantic mists. I go to Bramshill cottage lecture to-night, and expect to finish in a ditch — but this rain has made it soft lying, so that is of no con- sequence. " The Doctor is, as you may suppose, Wiseman-foolish ; so, for that 246 Charles Kingsley. matter, are his betters. The dear * Times ' is making strong play on the Papal aggressions ; and on the whole the fool-crop seems as good this year as last. The 'Christian Socialist' sells about 1500, and is spreading ; but not having been yet cursed by any periodical, I fear it is doing no good. Pray let us hear from you again. You will see a letter of mine in last week's * Spectator,' ' Evidence against the Universities.' Don't say who wrote it : I have quite enough dogs barking at me already. Mrs. Kingslcy and John send kindest remem- brance. Did you send the 'bugs,' as the Yankees call them, to Barlow's? for I hear nothing of them. I wish I was in bed, which, after all, is the only place of rest on earth for a parson." The publication of " Yeast " brought him some enemies and many correspondents ; and more than one "fast man " came down from London to open his heart to its author and ask advice. In the religious world the Anglican question occupied one large section of the Church, and the tide set Rome-wards. Clergy- men wrote to him to ask him to advise them how to save mem- bers of their flock from Popery ; mothers to beg him to try and rescue their daughters from the influence of Protestant con- fessors ; while women, themselves hovering between Rome and Anglicanism, between the attractions of a nunnery and the monotonous duties of family life, laid their difficulties before the author of the " Saint's Tragedy." He who shrank on principle from the office of father-confessor had the work thrust upon him by many whom he never met face to face in this world, and whom he dared not refuse to help. The labour was severe to a man who felt the importance of such communications, and the responsibility of giving counsel, as intensely as he did ; and those who saw the daily letters on his study table would say that the weight of such corre- spondence alone was enough to wear any man down, who had not in addition sermons to write, books to compose, a parish to work, and a pupil to teach. But his iron energy, coupled with a deep conscientiousness, enabled him to get through it. " One more thing done," he would say, "thank God," as each letter was written, each chapter of a book or page of a sermon dic- tated to his wife ; " and oh ! how blessed it will be when it is all over, to lie down in that dear churchyard." The Weight of Coin'espondence, 247 The correspondence increased year by year, as each fresh book touched and stirred fresh hearts. Officers both in the army and navy would write to him — all strangers — one to ask his opinion about duelling ; another to beg him to recommend or write a rational form of family prayer for camp or hut ; another for a set of prayers to be used on board ship in her Majesty's navy ; others on more delicate social points of conscience and conduct, which the writers would confide to no other clergyman ; but all to thank him for his books. The atheist dared tell him of his doubts ; the profligate of his fall ; young men brought up to go into Holy Orders, but filled with misgivings about the Articles, the Creeds, and, more than all, on the question of end- less punishment, would pour out all their difficulties to him ; and many a noble spirit now working as a priest and pastor in the Church of England would never have taken orders but for Charles Kingsley. The following letters to a country rector, a stranger to him, who wrote to consult him about social politics and the Romish question, are placed together, though written at intervals. No names are given, for obvious reasons. TO THE REV. , RECTOR OF . EvERSLEY, January 13, 1851. " I will answer your most interesting letter as shortly as I can, and, if possible, in the same spirit of honesty as that in which you have written to me. " First. I do not think the cry ' get on,' to be anything but a devil's cry. The moral of my book is, that the working man who tries to get on, to desert his class and rise above it, enters into a lie, and leaves God's path for his own — with consequences. " Second. I believe that a man might be, as a tailor or a costermonger, every inch of him a saint and scholar, and a gentleman, for I have seen some few such already. I believe hundreds of thousands more would be so, if their businesses were put on a Christian footings and them- selves given by education, sanitary reforms, «S:c., the means of develop- ing their own latent capabilities. I think the cry, ' rise in Hfe,' has been excited by the very increasing impossibility of being anything but brutes while they struggle below. I know well all that is doing in the way of education, &c., but I do assert that the disease of degradation has been 248 Charles Kingslcy. for the last forty years increasing faster than the remedy. And I believe, from experience, that when you put workmen into human dweUings, and give them a Christian education, so far from wishing discontentedly to rise out of their class, or to level others to it, exactly the opposite takes place. They become sensible of the dignity of work, and they begin to see their labour as a true calling in God's church, now that it is cleared from the accidentia which made it look, in their eyes, only a soulless drudgery in a devil's workshop of a world. ^'■Third. From the advertisement of an ' English republic ' you send, I can guess who will be the writers in it, &c., being behind the scenes. It will come to nought ; everything of this kind is coming to nought now. The workmen are tired of idols ; ready and yearning for the church and the gospel ; and such men as your friend may laugh at Julian Harney, Feargus O'Connor, &c. Only we live in a great crisis, and the Lord requires great things of us. The fields are white to harvest. Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest. " Fourth. As to the capacities of working men, I am afraid that your excellent friend will find that he has only the refuse of working intellects to form his induction on. The devil has got the best long ago. By the neglect of the Church, by her dealing (like the Popish church, and all weak churches) only with women, children, and beggars, the cream and pith of working intellect is almost exclusively self-educated, and there- fore, alas I infidel. If he goes on as he is doing, lecturing on history, poetry, science, and all the things which the workmen crave for, and can only get from such men as Holyoake, Thomas Cooper, &c., mixed up with Straussism and infidelity, he will find that he will draw back to his Lord's fold, and to his lecture rooms, slowly, but surely, men whose powers will astonish him, as they have astonished me. ^'Fijth. The workmen whose quarrels you mention are not Christians, or socialists either. They are of all creeds and none. We are teaching them to become Christians by teaching them gradually that true socialism, true liberty, brotherhood, and true equality (not the carnal, dead level equality of the communist, but the spiritual equality of the Church idea, which gives every man an equal chance of developing and using God's gifts, and rewards every man according to his work, without respect of persons) is only to be found in loyalty and obedience to Christ. They do quarrel, but if you knew how they used to quarrel before association, the improvement since would astonish you. And the French associa- tions do not quarrel at all. I can send you a pamphlet on them, if you wish, written by an eye-witness, a friend of mine. " Sixth. If your friend wishes to see what can be made of workmen's brains, let him, in God's name, go down to Harrow Weald, and there " Fro7n Oxford to Rome^ 249 see Mr. Monro — see what he has done with his own national school- boys. I have his opinion as to the capabilities of those minds, which we, alas ! now so sadly neglect. I only ask him to go and ask of that man the question you have asked of me. " Seventh. May I, in reference to myself, and certain attacks on me, say, with all humility, that I do not speak from hearsay now, as has been asserted, from second-hand picking and stealing out of those ' Reports on Labour and the Poor,' in the ' Morning Chronicle,' which are now being reprinted in a separate form ; and which I entreat you to read if you wish to get a clear view of the real state of the working classes. " From my cradle, as the son of an active clerg)'man, I have been brought up in the most familiar intercourse with the poor in town and country. My mother is a second Mrs. Fry, in spirit and act. For four- teen years my father has been the rector of a very large metropoUtan parish — and I speak what I know, and testify that which I have seen. With earnest prayer, in fear and trembling, I wrote my book (Alton Locke), and I trust in Him to whom I prayed, that He has not left me to my own prejudices or idols, on any important point relating to the state of the possibilities of the poor for whom He died. Any use which you choose you can make of this letter. If it should seem worth your while to honour me with any further communications, I shall esteem them a delight, and the careful consideration of them a duty." EvERSLEY, Jamiary 26, 1851. " Alas ! my dear sir, as I have had to ask others ere now, ' Am I God to kill and to make alive, that thou sendest to me to recover a man of his leprosy ? ' Whatsoever you can point out to me, as possible, I will do. So far from siding with Dr. he is, in my eyes, one of the most harmful men now in England ; and * * * * in spite of his real holiness and purity, is not the man to whom I would intrust anyone I love. In him, and in all that school, there is an element of foppery — even in dress and manner; a fastidious, maundering, die-away effeminacy, which is mistaken for purity and refinement ; and I con- fess myself unable to cope with it, so alluring is it to the minds of an effeminate and luxurious aristocracy; neither educated in all that should teach them to distinguish between bad and good taste, healthy and un- healthy philosophy or devotion. I never attempted but once to rescue a woman out of 's hands, and then I failed utterly and completely. I could not pamper her fancies as he could ; for I could not bid her be more than a woman, but only to be a woman. I could not promise a safe and easy royal road to lily crowns, and palms of virginity, and 250 Charles Kingslcy. the especial coronet of saints. I have nothing especial to offer any- one, except especial sorrow and trouble, if they wish to try to do especial good. I wish for no reward, no blessing, no name, no grace, but what is equally the heritage of potboys and navvies, and which they can realise and enjoy just as deeply as I can, while they remain "^pot-boys and navvies, and right jolly ones too. " Now this whole school (though there is very much noble and good in it, and they have re-called men's minds — I am sure they have mine — to a great deal of catholic and apostolic truth which we are now forgetting) is an aristocratic movement in the fullest and most carnal sense. It is a system for saving the souls of fine ladies and gentlemen in an elegant and gentlemanlike way; for making it, the more riches they have, the more easy to enter into what they call the kingdom of heaven, and after sitting on high above tlie masses here on earth, to sit on high above them for ever hereafter. Ei'Sobs X/yw. I may seem coarse and sneering — God is my witness, I feel deeply and ten- derly — and if you knew the misery which I have seen, and partly had to endure from all this, you would not wonder at my showing my teeth ■when I speak of it. " Now the perfection of this aristocratic, exclusive method of soul- saving is only to be found in Romish Jesuitism, which is a system con- structed consciously and expressly for great folks. And the bolder, Xdeeper, honester any English gentleman-or-lady-Puseyite is, the more certain they are to go on, and throw themselves into the arms of the Jesuits, who have the real, complete system, and not a mere tentative sham of it. Here again, EtSws X/yca. I saw this very thing happen with as noble a heart as God ever made And she was right, and consistent, and logical in that act of moral suicide ; and perhaps out of the black pit of utter unbelief and atheism, conscious or unconscious, which is Jesuitism, she and others may yet be driven to utter one cry to a living Father, when the dead traditionary god of formulae and cere- monies, who is supposed to have left this earth \yith the last Stuart in 1688, shall have vanished as an empty phantom, and left them alone with their own hearts in the infinite dark. If, therefore, I were to meet your friend, what am I to say to her ? Can I say, ' Go thus far, but don't go any farther ? ' Folks do say that. So help me God, I never will. If the road is a right one, follow it, in God's name, to the end ; however strange the end may seem, if it be the end, you are safe in it. But if the road be the wrong road, shall I say, ' Stop here, half-way, at the sign of nowhere ? ' Roads were meant to travel on, not to stand still on ; and the reason why one travels on a road is to get to the place whither that road leads. Dots Mr. B.'s road lead to The Government of God. 251 Rome? Possibly net consciously, Ka^' eavn7i/ and in its absolute idea; but as a fact, now, in this country, in the best English souls, it does so, at least /^r accidens. I believe that it does m& eavTrjv; you will not deny that it does so J>er accidens, else why have B.'s curate and church- warden followed poor C. last week ? You say because they are weak ? Well at least they are strong enough to take that very bold step ; and they and all the converts I have seen, are very fair specimens of the English upper classes — not a strong-minded class at all just now. " This road, then, as a fact, leads Romewards. Now do you wish me to say to your friend what I think ? Do you wish me to ask her the questions I must ask, or speak no word to her ? Dare you send to her a man who would say to her, or pray to Jesus Christ to give him courage to say to her : — Madam you are pure — why not ? You are an English lady. You are benevolent —why not? So have Jews, Turks, and Infidels been, if they were born so. You are earnest and ardent — so is Satan himself. You are devout — so were the women of Heathen Rome ; so are the women of Popish Rome now. You wish to do good. Would you wish it equally, if Hell-fire and not Paradise were promised, as the meed of your almsgiving, sick visiting, and church building ? In one word, Madam, I want proof — and how to get it I cannot tell — certainly not from anything which I have just mentioned — that you are not an atheist and an idolator. Those are terrible words ; but I mean them. I want proof whether you really believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. I see very few who do. I hardly dare say, except at moments, that I do myself. If you do not — if you only believe in believmg in them, if you believe that they are present only in some Church or system ; or ought to be present there, and may be put back again there, by art and man's device, by more rigid creeds, and formulae, more church goings, more mediaeval architecture, more outward ceremonies, or more private prayers, &c., &c., and religious acts of the members : if you believe that God used to guide the world, or one nation of it, in the Jews' time : if you believe that God takes care of Episcopal churches, and the devil has the rest of the world to himself : if you believe that God takes care of souls, and not of bodies also ; of Churches, and not of States also ; of ecclesiastical events, and not of political and scientific ones also ; of saints, and not of sinners also ; of spiritual matters, and not of crops and trades and handicrafts also : then I cannot, cannot say that you believe in the creeds or the sacraments, or those of whose Eternal being, presence and power they witness. You may not be an atheist, or an idolator, for you may have deeper and more living faith in God than you express, deeper than I have. But still you are, in creed at least, a Manichee, if not worse. I cannot bid 252 Charles Kingsley. you stop in the Church of England, if this is your creed ; for it is exactly the creed against which the Church of England, in all her articles, services, and in her national form of constitution, in her excel- lencies as well as her defects, protests : you must logically go to Rome, where that Manicheeism (Atheism as I should call it), is formulized and systematized. I warn you that you are in a lie. But if you are in it, you must either come back, utterly out of it, or go through with it, till it breaks down under you, as I pray God it may, either in this life, or in the life to come. I do not pretend to judge how guilty you are. An English rich lady just now, is one of those to whom little is given, and of them will little be required. Every real unselfish longing for righteousness (which is God) for its own sake — every aspiration of real instinctive child-like love for Him who died for you, will be rewarded a thousand-fold. But every error must, in God's universe, bring down on itself, by necessary and eternal laws, more necessary and causative than those of physical science, some cognate misery. I believe that the Lord will have mercy on you, for He has mercy on all His works. But I shudder at that which is before you, some when and some where — He alone knows what, and when, and where. But Madam, I would say, if you really believe the Lord's Prayer, and the Creed, and the Sacraments, and the witness of the Priesthood : if you really believe that you have a Father in heaven, in any real sense of that king of words, Father : if you believe that He who died on the Cross for you, and for your children, and for the whole earth, is really now King- and Lord of the Universe, King and Lord of England, and of your property, and of your body and mind and spirit : if you really believe that the Holy Spirit pro- ceeds from Him as well as from His Father and your Father, and that He and your Father are One : — why should you go to Rome ? Did God make Rome and not England ? He has chosen to teach Rome one way and England another. He has chosen to make you an English woman, a member of the Church of England, English in education, character, brain, feelings, duties : you cannot unmake yourself You are already a member of that Spiritual One body, called the English Nation : you cannot make yourself anything else. A child cannot choose its own mother : the fact of your being born in a certain faith and certain circumstances, ought to be to you a plain proof, if you believe in a Living Father at all, that that faith and those circumstances are the ones by which He means to teach you, in which you are to work. You may answer. What if I find the faith is wrong ? I answer, Prove first that you know what the faith is ! You must exhaust the meaning of the Church of England, before you have any right to prefer any other church to it. For there is always an a priori probability that you are right Romanism foreign to the English Alind. 253 where you are, because God has put you where you are. But I am not going to rest the question on probabilities. I only ask you to pause for their sake, while you consider whether you know what the Church of England is, what God's education of England has been, and whether the one or the other are consistent with each other. I say they are. I say that the Church of England is wonderfully and mysteriously fitted for the souls of a free Norse-Saxon race ; for men whose ancestors fought by the side of Odin, over whom a descendant of Odin now rules. And I say that the element which you have partially introduced, and to drown yourself in which you must go to Rome, is a foreign element, unsuited to Englishmen, and to God's purposes with England. How far it may be the best for the Italian or Spanish spirit I cannot judge. I can only believe that if they had been capable of anything higher, God would have given them something higher. And if you ask me, why I think we are capable of something higher, I say, because the highest idea of man is to know his Father, and look his Father in the face, in full assurance of faith and love \ and that out of that springs all manful energy, self-respect, all self-restraint, all that the true Englishman has, and the Greek and Spaniard have not. And I say this is what that inspired demagogue, St. James, means when he speaks of ' the per- fect law of liberty.' I say that this Protestant faith, which teaches every man to look God in the face for himself, has contributed more than anything else to develop family life, industry, freedom in England, Scotland and Sweden ; and that if any one wishes to benefit the poor whom God has committed to their charge, they must do any thing and every thing rather than go to Rome— to a creed which by substituting the Confessor for God, begins by enslaving the landlord's soul, and will infallibly teach him to enslave the souls of his tenants, make them more incapable than they are now, of independence, self- respect, self-restraint ; make association and co-operation impossible to them, by substituting a Virgin Mary, who is to nwse them like infants, for a Father in whom they are men and brothers ; and end by bringing them down to the level of the Irish or Neapolitan savage. " And if it be answered that the last thirty years of Protestantism have been rapidly degrading the poor to this very level ; I answer. Yes ; because it has not been Protestant but Popish. Till Protestants began to turn Papists five years ago, we little knew how Popish we were at heart. But all the time, from Calvinistic and Evangelical, as well as from High Church pulpits had been preached the Popish doctrine against which the martyrs of the Reformation, and the old Catholic creeds, which they preserved in the spirit, while Rome only kept their letter, protested. From Evangelical, as well as from High Church and 254 Charles Kingsley. Romish pulpits, went forth the message that the devil, and not Jesus Christ, is the Lord of this present world ; that men are sent into this life to get their souls saved in the next life ; that the soil is not Christ's but man's ; that the State has nothing to do with religion, or clergymen with politics ; that property has no absolute and essential duty towards Christ (why should it, if it be not the Lord who giveth us power to get wealth ?), but only works of supererogation in the way of alms and charity, and district visiting, and school building ; that God is not the Father, nor Christ the Lord, of all men, but only of a chosen few (whether * Episcopally-baptized ' ones, or ' the converted,' or ' the elect,' matters little in practice and in spiritual truth) ; and, in a word, all that ManichKan-practical-athcism, of which Rome is the systematised embodiment, and which is now proving what its unconscious parentage was, leading people, the children of Evangelicals especially, to Rome from whence it came. " This I would say; and then I would say. If you are dissatisfied with the present state of the Church of England, so am L Stay in it, then, and try to mend it. But let your emendations be consistent with the idea of the part which is yet pure. To Romanize the Church is not to reform it. To unprotestantize is not to reform it. Therefore take care that the very parts in the Prayer-book which you would alter, be not just the really Catholic and Apostolic parts ; that you would give, without intending it, exactly the same Sectarian and Manicha^an tone to its present true catholicity w-hich the Puritan party would, if they were allowed to tamper with the Baptismal or Ordination Service. This I would say, if God gave me utterance and courage. It remains for you to decide whether you dare allow me to say it, or rather will say it yourself . . . " Make any use whatsoever which you choose of this letter. Mind, my dear sir, that I have been here putting the arguments themselves in strong relief In what words it might be right to embody them, would depend upon the temper and peculiar trials and advantages of the per- son herself." TO THE SAME. [Who had shown the previous letter to the lady in question.] EVERSLEY, February^, 185 1. " All is right w-hich God wills, else I should have wished that my opinions had gone to your friend in some milder form. I hope for my sake you will send her the passage at the end of my last letter, where I say that I should put them in different shapes, according to the The whole Qitestioii Anthropological. 255 subjects of them, and that you have them only in their rough-hewn state for your own perusal, not hers. " I am convinced of one thing more and more, by experience, that the whole question is an anthropological one. ' Define a human being,' ought to be the first query. It is thence that the point of departure, perhaps unconsciously, takes place. Perhaps I shall not bore you, if I speak a little on this point. I do not speak from book, for I have no great faith in controversial books — they never go to the hearts of the doctrines or those who hold them. ' Measure for measure ' taught me more than oceans of anti-men polemics could have done, or pro-men either. But, to tell you the truth in private, I have been through that terrible question of * Celibacy versus Marriage ' once already in my life. And from what I have felt about it in myself, and seen others feel, I am convinced that it is the cardinal point. If you leave that fortress untaken, your other batteries are wasted. It is to religion, what the Malthusian doctrine is to political economy — the crux in limine, your views of which must logically influence your views of everything afterwards. " Now, there are two great views of men. One as a spirit embodied in flesh and blood, with certain relations, namely, those of father, child, husband, wife, brother, as necessary properties of his existence. No one denies that the relations of father and child are necessary, seeing that man is the son of man. About the necessity of the others there is a question with some ; but not with the class of whom I speak, viz., the many. Christian as well as heathen, in all ages and countries. To them, practically, at least, all the relations are considered as standing on the same basis, viz., the actual constitution which God has given man, and the necessity of continuing his race. " Those of them who are spiritually enlightened, have learnt to believe that these relations to man are the symbols of relations to God. That God is our Father. That Christ is the husband of the one collective and corporate person, called the Church. That we are brothers and sisters, in as far as we are children of the same Heavenly Father. And, finally, that these human relations are given us to teach us their divine antitypes ; and therefore that it is only in proportion as we appreciate and understand the types that we can understand the anti- types. They deny that these relations are carnal, /. e., animal, in essence. They say that they are peculiar to the human race. That being human, they are spiritual, because man qiiA man is not an animal, but a spirit embodied in an animal. Therefore they more or less clearly believe these relations to be everlasting; because man is im- mortal, and therefore all which pertains to his spirit (as these do) is immortal also. How these relations are to be embodied practically in 256 Charles Kings ley. tlie future state, they do not know : for they do not know how they them- selves are to be embodied. But seeing that these relations are in this life the teachers of 'the highest truths, and intimately and deeply connected with their deepest and holiest feelings and acts, they believe that they will in the next life teach them still more, be still more con- nected with their inmost spirits, and therefore have a more perfect development and fulfilment, and be the forms of a still more intimate union with the beloved objects, whom they now feel and know to be absolutely parts of themselves. " This I hold to be the Creed of the Bible, both of the Old Testa- ment and the New. And if any passages in the New Testament seem to militate against it, I think that they only do so from our reading our popular manicha^ism or gnosticism into them; or from our not seeing that the Old Testament doctrine of the absolute and everlasting humanity, and therefore sanctity, of these relations is to be taken for granted in the New Testament as an acknowledged substratum to all further teaching. " The second class, who have been found in large numbers, princi- pally among the upper classes, both among Christians and heathens at various eras of the world, hold an entirely different anthropology. In their eyes man is not a spirit necessarily embodied in, and expressed by an animal ; but a spirit accidentally connected with,' and burdened by an animal. The animal part of them only is supposed to be human, the spiritual, angelic or diabolic, as the case may be. The relations of life are supposed to be properties only of the animal part, or rather adjuncts of them. The ideal of man, therefore, is to deny, not himself, but the animal part which is not himself, and to strive after a non- human or angelic state. And this angelic state is supposed, of course, to be single and self-sustained, without relations, except to God alone; a theory grounded first on the belief of the Easterns and Alexandrians, and next, on the supposed nieaning of an expression of our Lord's in Mark xii. 25. " Now this may be a true anthropology, but I object to it, in limine, that it denies its own ground. If, as all will allow, we can only know our relations to God through our relations to each other, the more we abjure and despise those latter relations, the less we shall know of the former, the less ground we shall have for believing that they are our relations to God ; and, therefore, in practice, the less we shall believe that they are. It has been said that to be alone only means to have nothing between us and heaven. It may mean that, but it will also mean to ignore God as our Father, men as our brothers, Christ as the Bride- groom of the Church. The Angelic Idea of Man. 257 "That this is the case is evident from history; and history is a fair test. ' By their fruits ye shall know them.' A fair test of doctrines, though not of individuals. Every man is better and worse than his creed. Even the most heretical are happily inconsistent (as I believe, because the light which lighteth every man, the eternal idea of pure humanity, which is the image of the Lord God, is too strong for them, and makes their acts more right — because more human — than their theories). But we may judge of the truth of a doctrine both from its fruits in the general faith and practice of an age, and from its manifesta- tions in those stronger souls who dare carry things consistently out wherever they may lead them. " Now this anthropology was held and carried out by the Neo- Platonists, by Plotinus, Libanius, Hypatia, Isidore, Proclus, and others. And we know whither it led them. To aristocratic exclusiveness j to absolute hatred of anything which looked like a gospel for the merely human masses ; to the worship of the pure and absolute intel- lect, and the confusion of it with the understanding ; to the grossest polytheism, and image worship, as a means of supplying that void which they themselves had made, by trying to have nothing between themselves and heaven ! To theurgy, and all such sorts of spasmodic attempts at miracle-working, in order to give themselves, when they had thrown away the evidence and teaching which they thought gross and material, some sort of evidence and teaching, any mere signs and won- ders, to assure their exhausted faculties, tired of fluttering in the vacuum of ' pure devotion,' that the whole was not a dream, and finally — utter scepticism. I appeal to history whether my account is not correct. And I appeal also to history whether exactly the same phases, in exactly the same order, but with far more fearful power, did not develop themselves in the mediaeval Church, between the eleventh and sixteenth century, ending in the lie of lies — the formulised and organised scepticism of Jesuitiy. And I do assert, that the cause of that development was the same in both — the peculiar anthropologic theory which made an angel the ideal of a man, and therefore celibacy his highest state. I only ask you to read carefully the life of St. Francis of Assisi (not in the eclectic Sir James Stephen, still less in that canting and fact-concealing Alban Butler, but in old Surius himself, or in any of the almost contempo- raneous lives published by his disciples), and you will, as I do, love, reverence, and all but adore the man ; but you will see that all which made him unmanly, superstitious and everything which we abhor, sprang- evidently, and in his case (being a genius) consciously, from his notion of what a man was, and what he ought to be. "And from these grounds I venture a prediction or two. God knows 258 Charles Kings icy. I liave seen enough of all this to see somewhat at least where it leads. For several years of my life it was the question which I felt I must cither conquer utterly or turn papist and monk. If I give you some little light, I can assure you I bought it dear. I, too, have held, one by one, every doctrine of the extreme High Church party, and faced their consequences. " It does seem to me, then, that if that party persist in their adoption of the Romish and Neo-Platonist anthropology, they must, at least the noble spirits of them, follow it out to the same conclusions. " There will be a lessening sense of God as a Father — or of that word Father meaning anything real — till we shall see, as we do in Romish books of devotion, and in Romish practice, the Fatherhood of (Jod utterly forgotten, and the prayer which declares it turned into a parrot-like charm — as if for the very purpose of not recollecting its blessed news. And in proportion as their own feelings towards their children become less sacred in their eyes, they will be less inclined to impute such feelings in God towards them ; they will not be able to conceive fo-giveness, forbearance, tender jiatience and care on His part, and will receive the spirit of bondage again unto fear. In proportion as they think their relation to their own children is not an absolute and eternal one, they will find a difficulty in conceiving their relation to God to be so. They \v\\\ conceive it possible to lose the blessing even of the name of God's children. They will resort to prayers and terrors to recover a lost relationship to God, which, if their ow^n children employed towards them, they would consider absurd in reason, and insulting to parental love. " Do I say they will ? Alas ! may I not say they do so already ? " Then there will be an increasing confusion about our Blessed Lord. They will, thanks be to His Spirit, and the grace of the sacraments, which are never in vain, still regard Him as the ideal of humanity. But they will only see as much of that ideal as their sense of the term humanity allows them. It will be, therefore, those passages of our Lord's life, those features of His temporary stay on earth, which seem most angdic, or non-human, which will be most prized. In all in which He approaches the Romish saint, they will apprehend and appreciate Him. But they will not appreciate Him as the Word who said to Adam and Eve, ' Increase and multiply and replenish the earth ; ' as the tutelary God of the patriarchs, with their rich animal life ; as the Lord of the marrying, farming, fighting J ews, with their intense perception of the sanctity of family, hereditary and national ties, and the dependence of those on the very essence of the Lord ; as the Lord of Cyrus and Nebuchadnezzar, the Lord of all the nations of the earth, who is the Sympathy of the Blessed Virgiit. 259 example and the sanction, the ideal fulfiller, not merely of the devotee, but of every phase of humanity. They will less and less appreciate the gospel of ' Husbands love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it.' Not that they will not hold the doctrine of tlie Blessed One being the Bridegroom. But having forgotten what a bridegroom means, they will not shrink with horror from calling Him the ' Bridegroom of each individual soul ' — an unscriptural and illogical doctrine (I will not use the words which I might about it, for the sake of His name which it involves) — common to mystics, both Romish and Puritan, the last phase of which may be seen in Frank Newman's Unitarian book, ' The Soul, /ur sorrows and aspirations ! ' You are as well aware as I, that the soul is talked of as a bride — as feminine by nature, whatever be the sex of its possessor. . This is indeed only another form of the desire to be an angel. For if you analyse the common conception of an angel, what is it, as the pictures consistently enough represent it, but a woman, unsexed ? '' But in the mean time, there will be revulsions from the passionate, amatory language which mystics apply to our Lord, as irreverent, if not worse. There will be recollections that He is Lord and God. The distance between His angelic, and tJierefore incomprehensible humanity, and the poor, simple, struggling, earth-bound soul of the worshipper, already painful enough, will widen more and more, till He becomes the tremendous Judge of ISIichael Angelo's picture — not a God-man, but a God-angel ; terrible thought — ' ^^'ho shall propitiate Him — the sainth', the spotless, the impassable? He would feel for us if He could com- prehend us, for He loved us to the death ; but how can He compre- hend us poor mean creatures ? How dare we tell Him the meannesses we hardly dare confess to ourselves ? Oh ! for some tender ear, into which we should not be ashamed to pour our tale. One like us in all things — of like passions with ourselves. It must be a woman. We so weak and woman-like — we who call our souls 'she,' we dare not tell man — at least till he is unsexed by celibacy ; but even the priest is cold, is uncertain, is sinful like ourselves. Oh ! for a virgin mother, in whose face we should never see anything but a pitying smile ! ' " ' Go to the blessed Virgin,' said a Romish priest, to a lady whom I love well. ' She, you know, is a woman, and can understand all a woman's feelings.' "Ah ! thought I, if your head had once rested on a lover's bosom, and your heart known the mighty stay of a man's affection, you would have learnt to go now in your sore need, not to the mother, but to the Son — not to the indulgent virgin, but to the strong Jiiaii, Christ Jesus — stern s 2 26o Charles Kingsley. because loving — who does not shrink from punishing, and yet does it as a man would do it, ' mighty to save' " My dear sir, there is the course which that i)arty must run — to Mariolatry; and the noblest and tenderest hearts of them will plunge most deei)ly, passionately, and idolatrously into it. Not that they will find it sufficient. They, too, will have to eke out the human mediation which the soul of man requires, by saints, and their relics. They, too, will find accesses of blank doubt !....* Nothing between them and heaven.' True ; but heaven will in that case look far far off at times. There must be ' signs,' ' evidences,' ' palpable proofs ' of something invisible and spiritual. If their children, their parents, their country, are none — perhaps images may be, or still better, miracles, if one would but appear ! 'The course of nature does not testify of God.' Then something supernatural may. ' The laws of nature are not the pure eternal children of the pure eternal Father.' ' Oh ! for something to break them — to show that there is something besides ourselves, and our own handywork, in the universe. Oh ! for an ccstatica, a weeping image, a bleeding picture ! ' .... God lielp them — and us ! " I have more to say on other points, but I dare say no more without your request." TO THE SAME. EVERSLEV, August, 1 85 1. *' The only causes of my late silence were my own going abroad and !Mrs. Kingsley's illness. Since I wrote last I have got to regard this movement towards Rome as rather painfully curious, than formidable. I believe more and more that the real danger is from a very opposite quarter, and have written a little book ' Phaeton ' about all that. *' I confess that the prospects of the Church, especially while Pilate and Herod make friends in the columns of the ' Times ' to crush convo- cation, are drear}- enough — but I regard the Catholic Faith as immortal and Protean, and the moment I see it slain in one form, I expect to see it arise in another ; so that my only ver)- serious apprehensions are for my own tithes, of which I expect to be dispossessed during the next twenty years, by a combination of the Manchester School and their antipodes, the Evangelicals, because I dare to believe in their plain sense the words to which I swore nine years ago in the Baptismal Service. In that case we may meet in Australia — and probably find Mr. * * * * there also — and very good company too .... At least, one has the comfort of not being immortal." CHAPTER X. 1851. Aged 32. Hypatia — Christian Socialist — Letters on University Reform and Teetotalism— Opening of the Great Exhibition— Attack on "Yeast" IN THE "Guardian" and Reply — Lecture on Agriculture— Occur- rence IN A London Church— Goes to Germany — Letter from Mr. John Martineau. lie has outsoared the shadow of our night, Envy and cahimny and hate and pain Can touch him not, and torture not again ; He is secure ! and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain. Shelley. We should Ijc wary what persecution we raise against the living labours of public rien ; how we spill the seasoned life of man preserved and stoled up in books j since v.'c see a kind of homicide may be committed, sometimes a martyrdom. Milton, CHAPTER X. The year of the Great Exhibition, which began with distress and discontent in England, and ended with a Revolution in Paris, was a notable one in the life of Charles Kingsley. His parochial work was only varied by the addition of new plans of draining the parish at the points where low fever had prevailed; which he successfully carried out without help from any sani- tary board. " Hypatia " was begun as a serial in " Eraser's Magazine." " Santa Maura " and several shorter poems were written. He contributed to the "Christian Socialist" eight papers on "Bible Politics, or God justified to the People," four on the " Frimley Murder," three entitled " The Long Game," a few ballads and sonnets, and " The Nun's Pool," which had been rejected by the publishers of " Politics." He preached two sermons in London, one of which made him notorious, and occasionally he attended the Conferences of the Promoters of Association. He crossed the Channel for the first time. His friendship with Erederika Bremer, the Swedish novelist, and with ]\Hss IMitford, date from this year. Li January he writes to Mr. Maurice about the new romance which was dawning upon his imagination. EVERSLEV, January i6, 1851. " A thousand thanks for all your advice and information, which encourages me to say more. I don't know how far I shall be able to write much for the * Christian Socialist.' Don't fancy that I am either lazy or afraid. But, if I do not use my pen to the uttermost in earning my daily bread, I shall not get through this year. I am paying off the loans which I got to meet the expenses of re- pairing and furnishing; but, with an income reduced this year by more than 200/., having given up, thank God, that sinecure clerkship, 264 Charles Kingslcy. and having had to return ten per cent, of my tithes, owing to the agri- cultural distress, I have also this year, for the first time, the opportunity, and therefore the necessity, of supporting a good school. My available income, therefore, is less than 400/. I cannot reduce my charities, and I am driven either to give up my curate, or to write, and either of these alternatives, with the increased parish work, for I have got either lectures or night school every night in the week, and three services on Sunday, will demand my whole time. What to do unless I get pupils I know not. Martineau leaves me in June. " My present notion is to write a historical romance of the beginning of the fifth century, which has been breeding in my head this two years. P>ut how to find time I know not. And if there is a storm brewing, of course I shall have to help to fight the Philistines. Would that I had wings as a dove, then would I flee away and be at rest ! I have written this selfish and egotistical letter to ask for your counsel ; but I do not forget that you have your own troubles. My idea in the romance is to set forth Christianity as the only really democratic creed, and philosophy, above all, spiritualism, as the most exclusively aristocratic creed. Such has been my opinion for a long time, and what I have been reading lately confirms it more and more. Even Synesius, * the philosophic ' bishop, is an aristocrat by the side of Cyril. It seems to me that such a book might do good just now, while the Scribes and Pharisees, Christian and heathen, are saying, ' This people, which knoweth not the law, is accursed ! ' Of English subjects I can write no more just now. I have exhausted both my stock nnd my brain, and really require to rest it, by turning it to some new field, in which there is richer and more pictur- esque life, and the elements are less confused, or rather, may be handled more in the mass than English ones now. I have long wished to do something antique, and get out my thoughts about the connection of the old world and the new ; Schiller's ' Gods of Greece ' expresses, I think, a tone of feeling very common, and which finds its vent in modern Neo-Platonism — Anythingarianism. But if you think I ought not, I will not. I will o\if^ your order." The two next letters refer to some correspondence in the " Spectator " on the state of the Universities, where he and others beheved there was a wide-spreading spirit of unbelief among the undergraduates, and that among other books, Strauss's " Life of Christ " was one constantly to be found in their hands. Of this fact he thought the authorities ought not only to be aware, but that it was their duty to take some measures to meet the evil. State of the Universities. 265 He urged the necessity of a Commission to inquire into abuses, and to consider the justice of excluding Dissenters from Oxford and Cambridge. His letters, however, only called forth strong denials, and brought down more abuse on himself. TO GEORGE BRIMLEY, ESQ EvERSLEY, \st Sunday in Lent, 1S51. " Not a word from you amid all this shower of bullying about my luckless letters. I wish you would write to me honestly, and say what you like, however unpleasant. I shall listen to you, because you, like myself, have had to hunt and fight for a faith, instead of buying one at * y® shops ' ready-made. But I hear that you agree with the whole ' Philis- terei ' about them. Be it so. I can see one mistake I have made, at least, and that is about Strauss. I know the state of men's minds after they leave Cambridge and Oxford (your friend * * * confirmed my opinion on that point), and I thought, from what I had heard of both universities, that at Cambridge as Avell as at Oxford, much of the seed of unbelief was sown there. I find, from unanimous consent, that I am mistaken — that is to say, with regard to Trinity, at least ; and that, of course, is the college of which one hears most. So that I have com- mitted the unpardonable sin of thinking the men earnester and deeper than they were, and more anxious to deliver themselves from carbonic acid and asphyxia Well, at all events, I have made a mistake ; and my letters are a failure, and a wind-egg, to any practical purpose ; and though I have retreated, in good order, hitting out right and left, and finally vauldng the ropes, and not being knocked over them, yet I am beaten. There is no denying it. Let me explain what I mean. Except on the point of fact about Strauss, I consider myself right. I was wrong, in hitting so hard a blow without having counted the cost of following it up. I was wrong in fancying that I could meddle with so great a question without far more knowledge of specific facts, far more experience of the temper of the ' vKt] viroKeifievr] ' than I had. I ought to have held my tongue and thought the more. I have had a very severe and humiliating lesson. You can hardly guess how severe, and all the more so, because I am utterly convinced that I am in the right. Of this hereafter. " As to the temper and tone of what I wrote, whereon folks are fierce, I have nothing to say, but that, if half my theory was true, it would excuse my writing passionately — not excuse me to this generation —or to a university in the temper of 'deadness, flatness, and epicurism,' which it confesses to. Of course, if this generation only * deplores as 266 Charles Kings ley. unfortunate accidents ' the flagrant profligacy of undergraduates, the necessity of private tutors, debts, tlie scale of expenses, the exclusion of the poor, the exclusion of dissenters — in short, the exclusion of three- fourths of the nation from a university education, the state of religious ^vorship and theological teaching, the distance between teachers and taught — I can say nothing. Only I believe an old superstition, that things are either right or wrong, and that right means what God commands, and loves, and blesses ; and wrong what He forbids and hates, and makes a curse and a road of ruin to those who follow it; and therefore no language is too strong to warn men from the road to ruin, because you cannot tell into what fearful ' descensus averni ' it may lead them. I had a superstition that the universities were going down that descent, that they were almost unconsciously on the edge of destruction as useless solecisms. Everything which every one has written or said about these letters, true or false, has confirmed me in that opinion. I expected to be reviled, by Dons and undergraduates. No one likes to be told that ihey are all wrong. I had hoped that some here and there would listen to me. I ha\e no proof that none will not ; but still, if such men as you think me wrong, I take it as a sign that I have tried to i)ick green fruit, that the time is not come, and retire to chew the cud, and try again some day, when I know more about the matter. As for hard words, they neither make for me or against me. There never was any one who spoke out the truth yet on the earth, who was not called a 'howling idiot' for his pains — at first. '' Now I want men to say one of two things, either ' we want no commission,' or ' we want a commission, but only to examine interested witnesses.' I can understand either of those two propositions. A jumble of both, which may mean neither, I cannot understand. Will you give me frankly your opinion on this and all points? I have my practical remedies in pcito^ and if you choose to hear them you shall ; but I am not very sanguine about them, and still less sanguine since this noise. My conclusion is, being on all points a 'superstitious man,' that God does not choose me to meddle in this matter, being not wise and good enough ; that He has therefore allowed me to fall into a slight mistake of fact, in order to cripple me, and that therefore I must mind other work for the present ; whereof I have plenty." TO REV. J. LLEWELLYN DAVIES. EVERSLEY, February 2S, 1 85 1. " You and I have been hammering away at each other lately through the medium of the ' Spectator : ' and if what our mutual friends tell CoTvespondcncc in " Spectator!' 267 me be tme, we both are on the same side at heart, and are using the strength which might assist each other to do good, in counteracting each other's forces with a very small resultant, which, to say the least, is not expedient. " Now you, as I think, struck me unprovoked, when I meant nothing but good, and acted (right or wrong no matter) to the best of my know- ledge. I returned the blow as hard as I could, my rule being to smash, if possible, all wilful obstacles to anything I have in hand. " If you do not think our mutual 'honour' satisfied by this exchange of shots, of course you will riposte at the first opportunity ; and I shall riposte or not in my turn, according as your blovr interferes with what I have in hand or not. But if you are of my opinion, it will be much wiser for us both to pull together, or at least try if we cannot do so. And therefore I tender on paper the right hand of full reconciliation, which you may accept or not, as you will ; only as I tender it honestly and utterly, do you accept it so, or not at all. " ]\Ir. tells me that you are honest and generous at heart, and that you have a clear sense of the real evils of the university. If so, and if I have misconceived those evils in any way (the existence of some evil being an allowed thing), will you give me your full and frank opinion as to what is the matter ? Your words shall be strictly and inviolably private ; my only wish is to get at truth, and help to point out the way to remedies. And if you are the man which I am told you are, you will find little difficulty in co-operating with me. For surely, it is a sacred duty to gwe facts to every man who asks for them ; if he makes a wrong use of them aftenvards, the sin is his, not yours." TO GEORGE BRIMLEV, ESQ. EVERSLEY, Monday, October, 185 1. " I cannot sufliciently thank you, and Rintoul too, for your gallant letter in the ' Spectator.' It is wonderful to watch how God sends a man friends and encouragement just as he wants them. I have to thank you too for your promise to continue the battle, though I hardly think it necessary. All these attacks from the most opposite quarters give me heart ; because they make me more and more sure that we are really, as we hoped to do, probing at some root-lie, and devil's- mesothet, below all mere party cries, and common to them all. We have touched some really deep cancer, I do believe; and to do that is worth folios of ' articulate wind,' blown at one by people who are either knaves and fools, and therefore count neither way; or good mistaken people, who will shake hands with us, when they understand us better. 268 Charles Kings ley. " I am quite astonished at the steady-going, respectable people who approve more or less of ' Alton Locke.' It was but the other night, at the Speaker's, that Sir * * * * * ♦ , considered one of the safest Whig traditionists in England, gave in his adherence to the book in the kindest terms. Both the Marshalls have done the same — so has Lord Ashburton. So have, strange to say, more than one ultra-respectable High-Tory squire — so goes the world. If you do anything above party, the true-hearted ones of all parties sympathize with you. And all I want to do is, to awaken the good men of all opinions to the necessity of shaking hands and laying their heads together, and to look for the day when the bad of all parties will get their deserts, which they will, very accurately, before Mr. Carlyle's friends, ' Tlie Powers' and 'The Destinies' have done with them. " The article I have not seen, and don't intend to. There is no use for a hot-tempered and foul-mouthed man like myself praying not to be led into temptation, and then reading, voluntarily, attacks on himself from the firm of Wagg, Wenham, and Co. But if you think I ought to answer the attack formally, pray tell me so. " Hypatia grows, little darling, and I am getting very fond of her ; but the period is very dark, folks having been given to lying then, as well as now, besides being so blind as not to sec the meaning of their own time (perhaps, though, we don't of ours), and so put down, not what we should like to know, but what they liked to remember. Never- theless there are materials for a grand book. And if I fail in it, I may as well give up writing — perhaps the best thing for me ; though, thanks to abuse-puffs, my books sell pretty steadily." The "Christian Socialist" movement had been severely attacked in an article in the " Edinburgh " and in the " Quarterly ;" in both articles Communism and Socialism were spoken of as identical, and the author of " Alton Locke " was pointed at as the chief offender ; and, " Though" (says Mr. Hughes) " Charles Kingsley faced his adver- saries bravely, it must not be inferred that he did not feel the attacks and misrepresentations very keenly. In many respects, though housed in a strong and vigorous body, his spirit was an exceed- ingly tender and sensitive one. I have often thought that at this time his very sensitiveness drove him to say things more broadly and inci- sively, because he was speaking as it were somewhat against the grain, and knew that the line he was taking would be misunderstood, and would displease and alarm those with whom he had most sympathy. His Sensitive7tess. 269 For he was by nature and education an aristocrat in the best sense of the word, believed that a landed aristocracy was a blessing to the country, and that no country would gain the highest liberty without such a class, holding its own position firmly, but in sympathy with the people. He liked their habits and ways, and keenly enjoyed their society. Again, he was fi.ill of reverence for science and scientific men, and specially for political economy and economists, and desired eagerly to stand well with them. And it was a most bitter trial to him to find himself not only in sharp antagonism with traders and employers of labour, which he looked for, but with these classes also. " On the other hand, many of the views and habits of those with whom he found himself associated were very distastefiil to him. In a new social movement, such as that of association as it took shape in 1849-50, there is certain to be great attraction for restless and eccentric persons, and in point of fact many such joined it. The beard move- ment was then in its infancy, and any man except a dragoon who wore hair on his face was regarded as a dangerous character, with whom it was compromising to be seen in any public place — a person in sympathy with sansculottes, and who would dispense with trousers but for his fear of the police. Now whenever Kingsley attended a meeting of the promoters of Association in London, he was sure to find himself in the midst of bearded men, vegetarians, and other eccentric persons, and the contact was very grievous to him. ' As if we shall not be abused enough,' he used to say, ' for what we must say and do, without being saddled with mischievous nonsense of this kind.' To less sensitive men the effect of eccentricity upon him was almost comic, as when on one occasion he was quite upset and silenced by the appearance of a bearded member of Council at an important deputation, in a straw hat and blue plush gloves. He did not recover from the depression pro- duced by those gloves for days. Many of the workmen, who always rise to the top at first, who were most prominent in the Associations were almost as little to his mind — windy inflated kind of persons, with a lot of fine phrases in their mouths which they didn't know the meaning of " But in spite of all that was distasteful to him in some of its sur- roundings, the co-operative movement (as it is now called) entirely approved itself to his conscience and judgment, and mastered him so that he was ready to risk whatever had to be risked in fighting its battle. Often in those days, seeing how loath Charles Kingsley was to t:ike in hand much of the work which Parson Lot had to do, and how fearlessly and thoroughly he did it after all, one was reminded of the old Jewish prophets, such as Amos the herdsman of Tekoa, — ' I was no 270 Charles Kingslcy. prophet, neither was I a prophet's son ; but I was an herdsman, and a gatherer of s}-camore fruit : and the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and said unto me, Go, i)rophesy unto my people Israel.' "* Among other topics discussed in the columns of the " Chris- tian Socialist " was teetotalism. On this Mr. Kingsley wrote a letter to the editor, which was not inserted. It is so exhaus- tive that it is best to give it in full. *' I have watched, for some time, with increasing anxiety, the teetotal dispute in your columns. I am exceedingly sorry that so much •space should be taken up therein by a subject which has nothing to do with socialism, and which I have always feared, and now fear more than ■ever, will be a root of bitterness and dissociation between men who •ought to love, respect, and work with each other. It seems to me that if the teetotal party persevere in their new eleventh commandment, the thing can only issue, some fifty years hence, in a great social split l)etween water-drinkers and beer-drinkers, each party despising and reviling the other : the beer-drinkers calling the water-drinkers * con- ceited puritans, and manichees and ascetics ;' the water-drinkers calling the beer-drinkers, ' flabby, pot-bellied, muddle-headed, disgusting old brutes,' and other such Christian and gentle appellations, the truth of which will, of course, be tested by hard knocks, and we shall have mutual rioting and persecution. And then, on my honour, unless the teetotalers show a more humble, gentle, and tolerant spirit than is common among them, I shall advise beer-drinkers, like myself and Mr. Hughes, either to flee the countr}', or, if their cloth allows them, which mine does not, prove by self-defence that a man can value his beer, and thank God for it with a good conscience, as tens of thousands do daily, and yet feel as tight about the loin, and as wiry in the arm, as any teetotaler in England. " Honestly, I am jesting in earnest. I regard this teetotal movement •with extreme dread. I deeply sympathise with the horror of our English •drunkenness that produced it. I honour every teetotaler, as I honour •every man who proves by his actions that he possesses high principle, and manful self-restraint. I think Mr. ^^^alford"s reminder, that every l^ot of beer would buy so much land, is most honourable to him, and that the man who abstained from liquor, or from anything else to get land, would do a manful thing in giving up a small and temporary good for a great and permanent one. That a man should be a teetotaler Preface by Tom Hughes, Esq., to " Alton Locke." Tcdotalism. 271 rather than a drunkard needs no proof. Also that a man should go about in a sack rather than be a fop, and waste time and money on dress. l!ut I think temperance in beer, hke temperance in clotlies, is at once a more rational and a higher virtue, either than sackcloth or water. " I dread the spread of teetotalism — first, because it will beget that subtlest of sins, spiritual pride, and Pharisaism. Its first founders, like the first founders of every asceticism, may be, and as far as I have con- versed with them, are pure, humble, and self-denying men. So were the first Fakeers, the first Mohammedan ascetics, the first monks, the first Quakers. But no one can have read much of the history of asceticisms, Christian or other (and teetotalism is one and a most important one), without seeing the evils to which they lead; without seeing that they are an evil spirit dressed up as an angel of light, utterly unconsciously to the good men who are allured by them ; and that, after a few generations, the self-avenging Nemesis comes; the evil spirit drops his mask, and appears as Pharisaism, sectarianism, priestcraft, and superstition, saying to the many who are content to be mere men and women, and not monks, Quakers, teetotalers and what not, ' Stand by, I am holier than thou ;' * This people who knoweth not the law are accursed.' And the evil spirit always seems to me to choose for his starting point some good gift of God which has been abused, and by the subtlest possible appeal to human pride, to whisper, '■ It is not thou, the man, who hast been wrong; it is the thing itself which is wrong. It is not that thou hast sinned in misusing the thing by thy own self-will and luxury ; no, no blame attaches to thee, the thing itself is devilish, and thou, having been taught, not by thyself, but by thy forefathers, to use it, couldst not help the misery which it has brought on thee. Give it up, and thou wilt be perfect, and have a right to glorify thyself and say — 'I am not as other men are. I am above wearing fine clothes. I am above marrying. I am above drinking beer.' So the blame is comfortably shifted off man's shoulders on to those of nature, of his ancestors, of God ; and in the meantime, his mind is turned away from the spiritual righteousness to this new righteousness of his own — from love, justice, wisdom, industry, to the mere outward material act of abstaining from some outward material thing. Oh, my teetotal brothers, in God's name, as one who has studied long and deeply the historj' of ancient asceticisms, and sees from them the false road on which you, with the best intentions in the world, and for which I love and honour you, are surely travelling, I entreat you to pause and beware. ' What doth the Lord require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?' You are trying to do so now: your pupils fifty years hence will not. Even now I sec the evil fruits of your self-chosen eleventh commandment 272 Charles Kings ley. growing up in you. You are not doing justly when you try to wrest Scripture and history to your own cause. You are not loving mercy when you try to exclude the beer-drinker from the blessings of associa- tion, and keep him the slave of the publican's poison, and the brewer's high prices. You are not walking humbly with your God, when you make a moral duty of a material abstinence, when you set up as a com- mandment that which He has not commanded, when you call the natural processes of His material world, ' of their father, the devil.' " I have no doubt that you do not mean to be either Pharisees or Manichees. I have no doubt that T. S. means nothing but good, and abstains from intoxicating liquors, as he says, because he believes them to be most unlawful. But so did the early monks abstain from marriage. The rise of mediaeval celibacy was exactly analogous to the rise of modern teetotalism. The sexual passion in the East had been grossly abused. Lust and profligacy had been the parents of every form of bestiality, cruelty, and horror. The East was one vast brothel and Gomorrha. The monks of the Thebaid could have made out, and did, I assert as a fact, make out a ten times better case against the use of marriage than we can against the use of fermented Hquors. They there- fore indulged in exactly the same fierce denunciations against their use in which the teetotalers now indulge in their own cause. They, like the teetotalers, confounded the use and the abuse, preached total abstinence, and condemned marriage altogether. Not that they did not allow it to the masses — that is, to their own relations — for, like the teetotalers, they were almost all men of the working class. They allowed it, and cursed it. They show in their writings about it just the same inconsistency as the teetotalers do. It was wrong, and not wrong, devilish and not devilish. That is, it was wrong for them, because they, having superior light, knew it to be wrong; but not for the poor brutalized masses, who had not strength of mind to turn monk. In short, they were better than their neighbours, more than men. I assert the identity of the two cases. The old monks and early fathers proved from logic, reason. Scripture, science, and everything else, that marriage was hor- rible, beastly, ruinous — the parent of every misery and evil on earth. They had serious doubts whether married persons could be finally saved. They discovered that Eve was a virgin in Paradise, and that marriage in Genesis does not mean marriage, just as the teetotalers have that our Lord did not drink fermented liquors, and that wine in the Gospels does not mean wine. And they had their reward. The masses, whose small spiritual discernment makes them attach an inordinate value to outward signs of virtue, worshipped them for abstaining from that from which they could not abstain themselves. They would not listen to a married Teetotalism, 273 preacher. It is all stuff about Pope and bishops having compelled the celibacy of the clergy. It was the monks — sprung and recruited from the working classes — who compelled it, by the help of the married, and very often profligate mob ; as some half century hence the teetotalers, aided by the drunkards, may be driving beer-drinking preachers from their pulpits, as not pure enough to be the guides and teachers of man- kind. Believe me, my teetotal friends, every gin-sot in London will help you at that work. The many always find a comfort to their souls in the thought — ' Well, at least, if we do not abstain, we know that abstinence is right, and we will prove it by compelling our teachers to abstain. So we go to balls and parties ; but we won't let the parsons. W'q are married ourselves ; but we are too pure to let the clergy be so. If we are sots, we will take very good care that only a teetotaler shall preach to us.' " There, my friends, there is the future horoscope of teetotalism, drawn by fair Baconian induction from the example of all Pharisaisms and asceticisms that the world has ever seen Yet not quite the full horoscope. There will be from time to time reactions, as there were in the case of monkery, all the world knows. The substitute with the teetotalers of a.d. 1900, will be, I apprehend, laudanum. I expect, and hereby warn all friends, that the sale of laudanum will increase henceforth rapidly. There will be always, as in monkery, some who will keep up the present pure and sincere standard of the original school; but the mass will, as usual, be contented with the form of the thing without its reality 3 they will either break out now and then, on the sly, into excesses all*the more beastly from previous restraint, or fly to opium — the most enervating and brutalizing of poisons. " When I talked of wresting History and Scripture to the cause of teetotalism, I was sorry to have to make such an accusation. But, as Aristotle said, ' Though both are my friends, the truth and Plato, it is better to prefer the former.' Who Mr. B*** may be, who gives lectures to prove that the wines of the ancients were not intoxicating, I know not. But this I know, that such an assertion, if offered to any decent classic, would only provoke a smile, and not be considered worthy of refuta- tion. All we know of the wines of the ancients is from their writings, and filDm the dried syrup found at the bottom of old wine-jars in Pompeii and Herculaneum, in which, of course, there was no alcohol, it having evaporated through the porous jars ages ago, with the water, leaving a very small quantity of sugar and other compounds behind. And as for the writings of the ancients, they uniformly speak of wines as fermented, exhilarating, intoxicating if taken in excess. If there exists 2 74 Charles Kingsley. a passage about non-intoxicating, or drugged wines, I have never seen it, and I have had a fair chance of so doing. But I have seen, and every school-boy has seen, a thousand passages about intoxicating pure wines, the ' acraton methu,' ?///mixed wine, such as makes the Cyclops drunk in Euripides' drama. Every school-boy knows that the ancient wines of Rome, when old, were so strong and dry, that they had to be weakened with water, and sweetened with honey, to make drinkable toddy of them. Every school-boy knows the numberless myths of Dionusos (Bacchus) * the Inspirer,' worshipped because he brought from India (from a hot country) the grape with its intoxicating qualities, supposed to be divine and supernatural. Is there anything about drugging wines in the thousand and one stories of the Bacchae, and the Msenads, and the drunken orgies which took place in the vine- yards themselves in worship of Bacchus ? Is it not the commonest thing to see, in bas-reliefs of Bacchanals and Fauns, the drunken figures squeezing the grape-clusters with their hands into the patera, and drink- ing it straightway ? The conclusion to be drawn from all the old sculptures and myths is, that they preferred the fresh and fermenting juice, as more intoxicating than when the fermentation was complete. For then it is champagne, disengaging its gases, and producing that rapid intoxication, followed by little or no sickness on recover- ing, for which sparkling wines have been famous for ages among luxurious sots. As for drunkenness, in the common sense of the term, on unmixed wine, every record of the Greeks and Romans, from Homer down to Juvenal, is full of it, proving that T. S.'s theory, that drink was not then synonymous with intoxication, is utterly mistaken. As for its being customary to boil down wines in Greece or Rome, there is but one answer — it was not. They may have made syrup now and then, why not ? But as for that being a customary part of their vintage, every schoolboy knows the contrary. As for the sweetness of the grape pre- venting there being much alcohol in it, that is a most curious and unex- pected result, seeing that alcohol is made out of sugar and nothing else, and therefore the more sugar the more alcohol, if there be azotized matter enough to ferment it all. Where there is not, as in Constantia and Tent wines, the excess of the sugar remains unchanged and the wane is sweet, but none the less alcoholic for that, if the average quantity of azote be there to work up the due quantity of sugar. As a fact, Constantia and Tent, two of the sweetest wines, and coming from the hottest vine-climates, are two of the strongest. As for the assertion that the heat of the climate would prevent the wines of Judaea from being alcoholic, how comes it, in addition to the two last examples, that as a general rule the wines are stronger as you go southwards, the German and Tcctotalism. 275 French wines being far weaker than the wines of Spain, Portugal, and the Cape ? Liebig will give the reason at once. Because the more heat the more sugar, and therefore the more alcohol. It is true, alcoholic fermentation requires a low temperature (70° to 80°) to go on well ; and if Mr. B*** would look over his authorities, or rather the authorities, again, he would find that the ancients, both in Italy, Greece, and Judaea, took great care to obtain that low temperature ; proving thereby that what they wanted was the true vinous fer- mentation — to get drunk on, of course, muddle-headed beasts as they were, those old Roman Republicans, and Greek artists and metaphysicians. For the invariable concomitant of the ancient vine- yard was, not a boiling-house, whereof never was word yet heard, but a lacus, a wine-vat, or subterranean cistern, dug out in the rock or earth underneath the wine-press, and protected from sun and air, in which the wine might ferment at that very low and steady temperature required to produce alcohol. Whether Solomon had a boiling-house in his vineyard on Lebanon, he does not say; but we take for granted, that, like every other vine-grower mentioned in the Old or- New Testament, he digged a wine- vat there ; for he got from it wine, which 'caused the lips of them that were asleep to speak.' " There is one instance, if I remember right, and but one, in Scripture, in which a vineyard without a wine-vat is mentioned, but that is one which certainly does not make for Mr. B***'s new theory of ancient wines, viz., how ' Noah planted a vineyard and drank of the fruit thereof, and was drunken.' That that history stands there as a warning against drunkenness we all shall agree. That it stands there to prove that the wines of Scripture were not intoxicating, is a more difficult thing to prove. Either let the teetotalers give up Scripture and history altogether, or quote them fairly. If they choose to say, 'We know more about this than the old Jews, the Bible is wrong and ^\•e right,' we shall know how to argue with them ; but at present, they must allow me to say that they are only giving a fresh proof of that well- known and unfortunate phenomenon, viz., that when a man has made up his own mind already, he can prove anything whatsoever, from any facts whatsoever. The divine excellence of celibacy has been proved a thousand times, and is believed to be proved still by many, from a book which deals more with marriage, children, and the sexual relations, than any other book on earth. And now they are going to prove teetotalism from it too, by a similar process. " There, I have said my say. I shall make no rejoinder to gainsayers, and submit to be called ' niddering,' being busy. I shall, as is my un- T 2 276 Charles Kingsley. happy custom, be accused, as usual, of abetting the very vices which I most hate and dei)lore, which I desire most anxiously to see amended ; and that because I will not be a bigot and a manichee, but only, as far as I can, a christian ma?i. Because I am determined, in spite of the ' Guardian ' not to be a monk, and, in spite of Mr. B***, not to be a teetotaler. Because I believe every creature and law of God is good, and that nothing is evil but sin. *' The true remedies against drunkenness are two. First, to agitate and battle for that about which the working classes are so culpably and blindly lukewarm, — proper sanitary reform, which, by improving the atmosphere of their dwellings, will take away the morbid cra\ing of their stomachs for stimulants, and render temperance easy and pleasant ; and, secondly, the establishment of small associate home-breweries, in which a dozen workmen's families, for a fixed capital of three or four pounds, may brew themselves the best of malt-and-hop-ale at a far lower price (thanks to free trade), than they can buy the salt and grains-of-Paradise, and cocculus indicus of the scoundrel jDublicans, and may free themselves at once from all that wretched public-house tyranny, and neglect of their families, to which, those who represent association as too pure to consort with John Barleycorn, wish in their tender mercies to deliver them over without escape. And I solemnly warn those who try to prevent it, that they are, with whatsoever good intentions, simply doing the Devil's work. "Parson Lot." While thus arguing against teetotalism, and for the right of the poor man to wholesome (and therefore not public-house) beer, he was for ever urging on landlords, magistrates, and house- holders to make a stand against the increasing number of public- houses (and consequent increase of drunkenness and demoraliza- tion, wdiich paralyzed the work of the clergy,) by refusing licenses to fresh public-houses, and above all by withholding spirit licences. He saw no hope for country parishes unless the number of public- houses could be legally restricted by the area of the parish and the amount of population to the lowest possible number ; and those, he said, must be placed under the most vigilant police superintendence, especially in the outlying districts where they are nests of poachers and bad characters, and utterly- ruinous to the boys, girls, and young men who frequent them from the moment they leave school. A Days Work. 277 TO THOMAS HUGHES, ESQ. " . . . . You are green in cottoning to me about our '48 mess. Because why ? I lost nothing — I risked nothing. You fellows worked like bricks, si:)ent money, and got midshipman's half-pay (nothing a-day and find yourself), and monkey's allowance (more kicks than halfpence). I risked no money ; 'cause why, I had none ; but made money out of the movement, and fame too. I've often thought what a poor creature I was. I made ^150 by 'Alton Locke,' and never lost a farthing; and I got, not in spite of, but by the rows, a name and a standing with many a one who would never have heard of me otherwise, and I should have been a mendicant if I had holloaed when I got a facer, while I was winning by the cross, though I didn't mean to fight one. No. And if I'd had ^100,000, I'd have, and should have, staked and lost it all in 184S-50. I should, Tom, for my heart was and is in it, and you'll see it will beat yet 3 but we ain't the boys, w6 don't see but half the bull's eye yet, and don't see at all the policeman which is a-going on his beat behind the bull's eye, and no thanks to us. Still, some somedever, it's in the fates, that association is the pure caseine, and must be eaten by the human race if it would save its soul alive, which, indeed, it will ; only don't you think me a good fellow for not crying out, when I never had more to do than scratch myself, and away went the fleas. But you all were real bricks ; and if you were riled, why let him that is without sin cast the first stone, or let me cast it for him, and see if I don't hit him in the eye. " Now to business : I have had a sorter kinder sample day. Up at five, to see a dying man ; ought to have been up at two, but Ben King, the rat-catcher, who came to call me, was taken nervous ! ! ! and didn't make row enough; was from 5-30 to 6-30 with the most dreadful case of agony — insensible to me, but not to his pain. Came home, got a wash and a pipe, and again to him at eight. Found him insensible to his own pain, with dilated pupils, dying of pressure of the brain — going any moment. Prayed the commendatory prayers over him, and started for the river with "\V, Fished all the morning in a roaring N.E. gale, with the dreadful agonized face between me and the river, pondering on The mysteiy. Killed eight on 'March brown,' a 'governor,' by drowning the flies, and taking 'em out gently to see if aught was there, which is the only dodge in a north-easter. 'Cause why ? The water is warmer than the air — ergo, fishes don't like to put their noses out o' doors, and feeds at home down stairs. It is the only wrinkle, Tom. The captain fished a-top, and caught but three all day. They weren't going to catch a cold in their heads to please him or any man. Clouds 278 Charles Kijigsley. burn up at i p.m. I put on a minnow, and kill three more ; I should have had lots, but for the image of the dirty hickory stick, which would ' walk the waters like a thing of life,' just ahead of my minnow. Mem. never fish with the sun in your back ; it's bad enough with a fly, but with a minnow it's strychnine and prussic acid. My eleven weighed together four and a-half pounds, three to the pound ; not good, con- sidering I had passed many a two-pound fish, I know. " Corollary. — Brass minnow don't suit the water. Where is your wonderful minnow? Send me one down, or else a horn one, which I believes in desperate ; but send me something before Tuesday, and I will send you P. 0.0. Horn minnow looks like a gudgeon, which is the pure caseine. One pounder I caught to-day on the ' March brown,' womited his wittles, which was rude, but instructive ; and among wonns was a gudgeon three inches long and more. Blow minnows — gudgeon is the thing. " Came off the water at three. Found my man alive, and, thank Cod, quiet. Sat with him, and thought him going once or twice. "What a mystery that long, insensible death-struggle is ! Why should they be so long about it ? Then had to go to Hartley Row for an Archdeacon's Sunday-school meeting — three hours useless (I fear) speechifying and shop ; but the archdeacon is a good man, and works like a brick beyond his office. Cot back at 10.30, and sit writing to you. So goes one's day. All manner of incongruous things to do, and the very incongruity keeps one beany and jolly. Your letter was delightful. I read part of it to W., who says you are the best fellow on earth, to which I agree. " So no more from your sleepy and tired, " C. KiNGSLEY." TO HIS WIFE. E\'ERSLEV Rectory, Whit Monday. " A most successful Club Day. Weather glorious — roasting hot. Quite cool this morning. Preached them a sermon on the 2nd Lesson (i Cor. xii.) the Church of the World. World as the selfish com- petitive isolating form of society — Church as the uniting socialist one — talked Socialism — quoted Acts ii. about the early Christians having all things in common. Spoke of the Millenium and the reali- zation of the Kingdom of God — showed the intimate connection of the whole with Whitsuntide, and especially the Whit Monday services, and was greeted after church by the band striking up ' the good time coming.' I know nothing which has pleased me so much for a long A TJmnderstorm. 2 79 time. The singing was excellent, and altogether all went charmingly. We dine with them by request — Smith, Martineau, and I. " Whit Tuesday. I have been planting vigorously. Heat intense — one has to water everything already. This glorious heat makes me lively and happy in the body in spite of myself; but if a chill whiff of a cloud comes, I feel all alone at once — a crab without his shell, a cock without his tail, a dog-fish with a nail through his nose — all are nothing in want and helplessness to my feelings. Kiss the darlings for me. Thank God only five days more alone, please God ! please God! " Friday. Such a ducking ! such a storm ! I am glad you were not at home for that only. AVe were up fishing on the great lake at Brams- hill : the morning soft, rich, and lowering, with a low, falling glass. I have been prophesying thunder for two or three days. Perch would not bite. I went to see E. H. ; and read and prayed with her. How one gets to love consumptive patients. She seems in a most happy, holy state of mind, thanks to Smith. Then I went on to L. G. ; sat a long time with her, and came back to the lake — day burning, or rather melting, the country looking glorious. The day as hot without sun, as it generally is with. There appeared a black storm over Reading. I found the luckless John had hooked a huge jack, which broke everything in a moment, and went off with all his spinning tackle which he prizes, so. Then the storm began to work round in that mysterious way storms will, and gather from every quarter, and the wind which had been dead calm S.E., blew N.E., N., W., and lastly as it is doing now, and always does after these explosions, S.W. And then began such a sight, and we on the island in the middle of the great lake ! The lightning was close, and seemed to strike the ground near Sandhurst again and again, and the crackle and roar and spit and grumble over our heads was awful. I have not been in such a storm for four years. And it rained — fancy it ! We walked home after an hour's ducking. I gave John a warm bath and hot wine and water, for I did not feel sure of his strength. I am not ashamed to say that I prayed a great deal during the storm, for we were in a very dangerous place in an island under high trees; and it seemed dreadful never to see you again. I count the hours till Monday. Tell the chicks I found a real wild duck's nest on the island, full of eggs, and have brought one home to hatch it under a hen ! Kiss them for me. We dined at the T.'s last night, and after dinner went birds' nesting in the garden^ and found plenty. Tell Rose a bullfinch's, with eggs, and a chaffinch's, and an oxeye's, and a thrush's, and a greenfinch's; and then Ball and I, to the astonishment and terror of old Mrs. Campbell, climbed to the top of the highest fir tree there, to hang. our hats on the top. 28o Charles Kings ley. The opening of the Great Exhibition was a matter of deep interest to him, not only for its own sake, but for that of the Great Prince who was the prime mover in the undertaking. On entering the building he was moved to tears ; to him it was like going into a sacred place, not a mere show as so many felt it, and still less a mere gigantic shop, in which wares were displayed for selfish purposes, and from mere motives of trade competition. The science, the art, the noble ideas of universal peace, universal brotherhood it was meant to shadow forth and encourage, excited him intensely, while the feeling that the realization of these great and noble ideas was as yet so far off, and that these achievements of physical science were mere fore- castings of a great but distant future, saddened him as pro- foundly. Four days after the^ opening, when preaching to a London congregation in St. Margaret's, Westminster, on Psalm Ixviii. 1 8, and Eph. iv. 8 : " When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and received gifts for men, yea, even for His enemies, that the Lord God might divell among them," he startled his hearers by contrasting the wide-spread unbelief of the present day, in God as the P^ount of all science, all art, all the intelli- gence of the nation, with the simple faith of our forefathers, " If," he said, " a thousand years ago a congregation in this place had been addressed upon the text I have chosen, they would have had little difficulty in applying its meaning to themselves, and in mentioning at once the innumerable instances of those gifts which the King of men had received for men, innumerable signs that the Lord God was really dwelling among them. But among those signs, I think, they would have mentioned several which we are not now generally accustomed to consider in sucK" a light. They would have pointed not merely to the building of churches, the founding of schools, the spread of peace, the decay of slavery, but to the importation of foreign literature, the extension of the arts of reading, writing, painting, architecture, the improvement of agri- culture, and the introduction of new and more successful methods for the cure of diseases.* .... If these forefathers of ours could rise from their graves this day they would be inclined to see in our hospitals, in our railroads, in the achievements of our physical science, confirma- tion of that old superstition of theirs, proofs of the kingdom of God, * The sermon was for the Westminster Hospital. The Great Exhibition. 281 realizations of the gifts which Christ received for men, vast^ than any of which they had dreamed And they would say sadly to us, ' Sons, you ought to be so near to God. He seems to have given you so much, and to have worked among you as He never worked for any nation under heaven. How is it that you give the glory to your- selves and not to Him.' . . . For do we give the glory of our great scientific discoveries to God in any real, honest, practical sense ? There may be some official and perfunctory talk of God's blessing on our endeavours ; but there seems to be no real belief in us that God — the inspiration of God — is the very fount and root of the endeavours them- selves ; that He teaches us these great discoveries ; that He gives us wisdom to get this wondrous wealth True, we keep up something of the form and tradition of the old talk about such things ; we join in prayer to God to bless our Great Exhibition ; but we do not believe — we do not believe, my friends — that it was God who taught men to conceive, build, and arrange this great exhibition, and our notion of God blessing it, seems to be God's absence from it ; a hope and a trust that God will leave it and us alone, and not ' visit ' it or us in it, or in- terfere by any ' special providences,' by storms, or lightning, or sickness, or panic, or conspiracy ; a sort of dim feeling that we could manage it all perfectly well without God, but that as He exists, and has some power over natural phenomena, which is not very exactly defined, we must notice His existence over and above our work, lest He should become angry and ' visit ' us. And this, in spite of words which were spoken by one whose office it was to speak them as the representative of the highest and most sacred personage in these realms — words which deserve to be written in letters of gold on the high places of this city, in which he spoke of this exhibition * as an approach to a more complete fulfilment of the great and sacred mission which man has to perform in the world.'* AVhen he told the English people, that 'man's reason being created in the image of God, he has to discover the laws by which Almighty God governs this creation ; and by making those laws the standard of his action, to conquer nature to his use, himself a divine instrument ;' when he spoke of ' thankfulness to Almighty God for what He has already ^/ew/' as the first feeling which that Exhibition ought to excite in us ; and as the second, ' the deep conviction that these blessings can only be realized in proportion to ' not, as some would have it, the rivalry of selfish competition , but ' in proportion to the /u'//> which we are prepared to render to each other ; and therefore, by peace, love, and ready assist- ance, not only between individuals, but between all nations of the earth.' Speech of H.R.H. The Prince Consort, at the opening of the Great Exhibition, 282 Charles Kingslcy. " We read those great words, but in the hearts of how few, alas ! to judge from our modern creed on such matters, must the really important and distinctive points of them find an echo ! To how few does this whole p:xhibition seem to have been anything but a matter of personal gain or curiosity, for national aggrandizement, insular self- glorification, and selfish . I had almost said, treacherous rivalry with the very foreigners whom we invited as our guests.* . . . ." In the month of May there was a review of his "Yeast" in the "Guardian" by a well-known Oxford graduate, a strong partizan of the Anglican party. The review was anonymous, and contained very grave charges against the book and its writer — of heresy — of encouraging profligacy, &c., &c. In speaking of the characters in " Yeast," these words are used : "Launcelot, a 'healthy animalist,' who has gone through that course of profligacy whicli is considered necessary to develope the nature and impart breadth and manliness to the intellect of the apostles of the latest and most philosophical phase of Christianity "... (this, of course, is in reference to Christian socialists). Again — " a man in the ])Osition of the author of 'Alton Locke,' (if he be the writer,) commits a grave offence when he publishes such a book as this. Professing to aim at religious earnestness and high morality, its tendencies are really to the destruction of both It is the countenance the writer gives to the worst tendencies of the day, and the manner in which he conceals loose morality in a dress of high sounding and philosophical phraseology, which calls for plain and decided condemnation Doctrines, however consecrated by the faith of ages, practices, however recom- mended by the lives of saints, or the authority of wise and good men, are to be despised if they interfere with what he thinks the full develop- ment of our nature, tend to check the wildest speculations of the intellect, or even to restrain (if we understand the teaching of his cha- racter) the most entire indulgence of the passions Above all, we are utterly at issue with him in an opinion which is implied throughout the volume, that a certain amount of youthful profligacy does no real and permanent harm to the character, perhaps strengthens it for a useful and even religious life." .... Again, "The doctrines of 'Yeast' will really convert no one, though they may afford some men specious reasons for selfish gratifications, which they could have indulged in without the argumentative inducements of an impure philosophy." * " The Fount of Science ; " National Sermons, ist Series. Attack on ''Yeasts 283 These were some of the charges made. Their effect was to leave a general impression that the book inculcated the vilest principles, and most pernicious doctrines, while not a single quotation from it was given, so as to afford the readers of the review an opportunity of judging for themselves. Mr. Kingsley had hitherto made it a rule not to answer news- paper attacks on himself, especially those of the religious press, but these charges being beyond all precedent, he repudiated them in the followingr indignant words : TO THE EDITOR OF THE "GUARDIAN." "Sir, May, 1 85 1. " Having lived for several years under the belief that the Editor of the 'Guardian' was a gentleman and a christian, I am bound to take for granted that you have not yourself read the book called ' Yeast,' which you have allowed to be reviewed in your columns. This answer therefore is addressed, not to you, but to your reviewer ; and I have a right to expect that you will, as an act of common fairness, insert it. " I most thoroughly agree with the reviewer that he has not mis- understood me ; on the contrary, he sees most clearly the gist of the book, as is proved by his carefully omitting any mention whatsoever of two questions connected with a character whose existence is passed over in silence, which form the very pith and moral of the whole book. I know well enough why he has ignored them ; because they were the very ones which excited his wrath. " But he makes certain allegations against me which I found it some- what difficult to answer, from their very preposterousness, till, in PascaPs Fifteenth Provincial Letter, I fell on an argument which a certain Capuchin Father, Valerian, found successful against the Jesuits, and which seems to suit the reviewer exactly. I shall therefore proceed to apply it to the two accusations which concern me most nearly as a churchman. " I. He asserts that I say that ' it is common sense and logic to make ourselves children of God by believing that we are so when we are not.' Sir, you and your readers will hardly believe me when I tell you that this is the exact and formal opposite to what I say, that the words which he misquotes, by leaving out the context and the note of interrogation, occur in a scornful reductio ad absnrdutn of the very doctrine which he wantonly imputes to me, an appeal to common sense and logic against and not for the lie of the Genevan School. I have a right to use the word 284 Charles Kings ley. * wantonly,' for he cannot say that he has misunderstood me ; he has refused to allow me that plea, and I refuse to allow it to him. Indeed, I cannot, for the passage is as plain as daylight, no schoolboy could misunderstand it ; and every friend to whom I have shown his version of it has received it with the same laughter and indignation with which I did, and felt, with me, that the only answer to be given to such dis- honesty was that of Father Valerian, * Mcntiris impudcntissime.' "2. So with the assertion, that the book ' regards the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity as the same thing with that of the Vedus Neo- Platonists,' &:c. &c. ; or considers *a certain amount of youthful profligacy as doing no real and permanent harm to the character — perhaps strengthening it — for a useful and even religious life ; and that the ex- istence of the passions is a proof that they are to be gratified.' Sir, I shall not quote passages in disproof of these calumnies, for if I did I should have to quote half the book. I shall simply reply, with Father Valerian, ' Alcntiris impudcntissimc? " I shall enter into no further defence of the book ; I have no doubt of there being many errors and defects in it. I shall be most thankful to have them pointed out, and to correct them most patiently. But one thing I may say, to save trouble hereafter, that whosoever henceforth, either explicitly or by insinuation, says that I do not hold and believe ex animo, and in the simple and literal sense, all the doctrines of the Catholic and Apostolic Church of England, as embodied in her Liturgy or Articles, shall have no answer from me but Father Valerian's Mcntiris impitdentissime. " I am, Sir, " Your obedient and faithful servant, "The Author of 'Yeast.'" In speaking of this correspondence, Mr. Maurice says : " If / had been accused of profligacy and heresy, as Mr. Kingsley has been in the ' Guardian,' I believe I should have felt much more indignation than he has, though I might have expressed it with less simplicity and brevity. If a man in a mask, calling himself a ' We,' tells a clergyman that he has been all his life uttering a lie, that his whole professions before God and man are a lie, that he is an advocate for profligacy when he professes to make men moral, a deliberate teacher of heresy when he knows that his inmost desire is to preach the Catholic faith, and when he knows that he expresses that desire most loudly, not in the presence of dignitaries who might patronize him for it, but of infidels who would despise him for it, it does Effect of ''YeasC 285 not seem very strange that such a clergyman should say in Latin or English, Sir AVe ! thou thyself tellest a lie " Some may think it needless to revive these old controversies, but attacks on his moral teaching in this case, and at a later period on " Hypatia," implying as they did, a want of moral principle in himself, and the encouragement of it in others, touched Mr. Kingsley on his tenderest point, and cannot be passed over, if only to show those who know what the results of his work have been, and have seen the different tone taken since by the religious press with regard to him and his writings, what sore battles he had at one time to fight, what bitter insults he had to stand, while labouring day and night for the good of others. But when once the moment and the expression of righteous indignation was over, he had a wonderful power of putting attacks and the individuals who made them, out of his mind, bearing no malice, and going on his way. " Life is too hard work in itself," he would say, " to let one stop to hate and suspect people." The " Guardian " replied again, reiterating its charges, but happily there was another side to the question. Only three weeks before these attacks he had received the following among many other testimonies to the moral influence of "Yeast," on men whose hearts could not be touched by teachers of a narrower school : April 2, 1S51. " Dear Sir, " I have just finished ' Yeast' in exicnso, having only skimmed it in Fraser, and, fresh from the book, I cannot resist communicating to you my heartfelt thanks for it. You will not care about whether / thank you or not; never mind, I shall relieve myself by writing, and you at any rate will not feel insulted. I believe you have taken up the right ground in standing firmly by the spirit of Christianity, and the divineness of Christ's mission, and showing the people how they are their best friends and the truest reformers. I have been as far as most people into the Kingdom of the Everlasting No, and had nearly, in my in- tellectual misery, taken up with blank Atheism and the Reasoner ; and should have done so, had not my heart rebelled against my head, and flooding in upon me reflections of earlier, purer days, brighter days of 286 Charles Kingslcy. Faith, bade me pause. For six months I have been looking back to Christianity, my heart impelling me towards it ; my head urging me into farther cimmerias. I wanted some authoritative word to confirm my heart, but could not meet with it. I read orthodox books of argu- ment, of persiiasion, of narrative, but I found they only increased my antagonism to Christianity. And I was very miserable — as I believe all earnest men must be when they find themselves God-abandoned in times like these — \vhen, picking up your * Christian Socialist,' I read your * God justified to the People,' and felt that here now was a vian, not a mere empty evangelical tub-thumper (as we of the North call Ranters), but a bona fide man, with a .man's intellect, a man of genius, and a scholar, and yet who did not spit upon his Bible, or class it with Goethe and Dante, but could have sympathies with all the ferment of the age; be a Radical Reformer without being a vague Denier, a vaguer *■ Spiritualist,' as our 'Leader' friends have it, or an utter Atheist. If this man, on further acquaintance, prove what 1 suspect him to be, here is the confirmation I desire. Impelled by this, and by the accounts I gathered of you from Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle, I devoured ' Yeast ; ' and * Alton Locke,' I am now in the middle of (I am no novel reader, which must be my excuse for being so late in the field). I find that I am quite correct, that I have not exaggerated your capacity at all ; and having, day and night, meditated on what you have to say, I feel that the con- firmation I have got from you is sufficient. But I have another better confirmation in my own heart. I feel as if I had emerged from a mephitic cavern into the open day. In the midst of worldly reverses, such as I never before experienced, I feel a mental serenity I never before knew ; can see life and my role in life, clear and definite for the first time, through all manner of intervening entanglements. '* I know not by what right I make you my father confessor, but I feel strangely drawn towards you, and even at the risk of being deemed im- pertinent, must send this rambling missive to thank you and to bless you for having helped in the light and the leaven to a sad yeasty spirit hitherto. This letter led to a long correspondence ; but unfortunately no copies have been kept of Mr. Kingsley's letters.- Another testimony to " Yeast " is given by a Wesleyan minister. "Rev. Sir, " I have read your book ' Yeast : a Problem ; ' and, regardless of etiquette (perhaps of decorum) cannot refrain thanking you on my Lectu7^e on Agriculttwe a7id Association. 287 oym behalf, and on behalf of the millions of poor, for whom, with a warm heart, a clear head, and a modest tongue, you have pleaded. For years I have ardently longed to see the cause of the needy advocated by one who knew their real condition, as well as their undoubted rights. "And, for one, I thank you most heartily for 5'our priceless delineation of a sceptical mind feeling after the Almighty. Alas ! there are few, yet, of my fellow working-men who can follow you through the open door you set before them, however ready they may be to lose themselves in the first labyrinth of doubt which presents itself. Still, some great, earnest souls are to be found among them— like your own Tregarva — who daringly heave up their shoulders above their sleepy comrades, and ask, what of the night ? Enough that He who 'keepeth Israel neither slumbereth nor sleepeth. " I hope I shall be able to induce some of my well-meaning, but in- judicious, brethren (I am a Wesleyan Local Preacher) to look more attentively, and with more humility, at the wounds they strive to heal. I know well the storms of doubt and the deceitful calm of a ' well-enough ' faith. But, stay, you have a work to do, a high and holy one, and it becomes not a stranger to detain you long. " Is there not a work for me also ? On the 28th of May, his controversy about " Yeast " scarcely over, he had to deliver one of a series of lectures on behalf of the Society for Promoting Working Men's Associations, on a subject that as a country clergyman he could speak of best : The Appli- cation of Associative Principles and Methods to Agriculture. This, however, he did, as he said, with the greatest diffidence. The effect it produced on those who heard it, is described by a London barrister, who wrote as follows to Mrs, Kingsley : May 10, 1 85 1. *' I was engaged till so late yesterday condensing your husband's lecture for the ' Christian Socialist,' that I was not able to write to you as I intenddC. I can only say that I feel what everybody else feels whom I have spoken with on the subject, that no other man in England could have done what he did ; I say man emphatically, because if I were to seek a word to express my opinion of it, I would say it was the ?naniiesf thing I had ever heard. Such a right bold honest way of turning from side to side, looking ever}'thing straight in the face, and speaking out all the good 288 Charles Kings ley. and all the ill that could be said of it, in the ]:)lainest way, was surely never seen before; and certainly never was audience kept for nearly two hours and a half so attentive, by the mere weight of the subject, and the force with which it was wielded. It would have been better, perhaps, in some respects, if it had been divided into two, and if the construction part at the end had been more carefully elaborated ; but, perhaps, the haste was here unavoidable, and, perhaps, also, the two-hours-and-a-half lecture was a victory to be once carried, so as to break the very neck of all cavil as to the reality of the effect produced. The very few objections which I might make to two or three details are so small, that I do not choose to mention them. I can call the thing but by one name — a triumph. And I do regret that any other ans\ver should have been sent to a certain article in a certain newspaper than an invitation to the said lecture. " counts with a modest assurance quite imperturbable, on your and Charles's presence at the Association tea-party on Whit-Tuesday, and has made me advertise it, at least his ; don't be frightened. " The lecture will, of course, be published. Perhaps I should also mention, though it is a very small matter, that in spite of almost no advertisement and many free tickets, the thing was completely successful in a pecuniary point of view, and more than paid expenses." In the summer of 185 1 several London clergymen arranged to have courses of lectures specially addressed to the working men, who came in numbers to see the Great Exhibition. One of these clergymen, whose church was in the neighbourhood of a lecture- hall much frequented by working men of atheistic views, begged. Mr. Maurice to take part in his course of lectures and {once more to quote Mr. Hughes's words) : " to ask Kingsley to do so also ; assuring Mr. Maurice that he ' had been reading Kingsley's works with the greatest interest, and earnestly desired to secure him as one of his lecturers.' ' I promised to mention this request to him,' Mr. Maurice says, ' though I knew he rarely came to London, and seldom preached except in his own parish. He agreed, though at some inconvenience, that he would preach a sermon on the Message of the Church to the Labouring Man. I suggested the subject to him. The incumbent intimated the most cordial approval of it. He had asked us, not only with a previous knowledge of our pub- lished writings, but expressly because he had that knowledge. I pledge you my word that no questions were asked as to what we were going to Occ7crrence hi a London Church. 289 say, and no guarantees given. Mr, Kingsley took precisely that \iew of the message of the Church to labouring men which e^'cry reader of his books would have expected him to take.' '* Kingsley took his text from Luke iv. verses 18 to 21 : ' The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor,' &c. What then was that gospel ? Kingsley starts at once with — ' I assert that the business for which God sends a Christian priest in a Christian nation is, to preach freedom, equality, and brotherhood, in the fullest, deepest, widest meaning of those three great words ; that in as far as he so does, he is a true priest, doing his Lord's work with His Lord's blessing on him ; that in as for as he does not he is no priest at all, but a traitor to God and man ;' and again, ' I say that these words express the very pith and marrow of a priest's business ; I say that they preach freedom, equality, and brotherhood, to rich and poor for ever and ever.' Then he goes on to warn his hearers how there is always a counterfeit in this world of the noblest message and teaching. " Thus there are two freedoms — the false, where a man is free to do what he likes ; the true, where a man is free to do what he ought. " Two equalities — the false, which reduces all intellects and all characters to a dead level, and gives the same power to the bad as to the good, to the wise as to the foolish, ending thus in practice in the grossest inequality ; the true, wherein each man has equal power, to educate and use whatever faculties or talents God has given him, be they less or more. This is the divine equality which the church pro- claims, and nothing else proclaims as she does. " Two brotherhoods — the false, where a man chooses who shall be his brothers, and whom he will treat as such ; the true, in which a man believes that all are his brothers, not by the will of the flesh, or the will of man, but by the will of God, whose children they all are alike. The church has three special possessions and treasures. The Bible, which proclaims man's freedom. Baptism his equality, the Lord's Supper his brotherhood." — (Preface to 'Alton Locke'). The sermon was listened to with profound attention by a large congregation, in which Avere many working men. But at its close, just as Mr. Kingsley was about to give the blessing, the incumbent rose in the reading-desk and declared, that while he agreed with much that had been said by the preacher, it was his painful duty to add that he believed much to be dangerous and much untrue. 290 Charles King shy. The excitement of the congregation was intense : the working men could with difficulty be kept quiet, and to a man of the preacher's vehement temperament it must have required a great effort not to repl}-. He only bowed his head, and with deepened solemnity came down from the pulpit, passed straight through the crowd that thronged him with out-stretched hands, and an eager " God bless you, sir," on their lips, and went into the vestry, where his friends gathered round him to express their sympathy, and to take the sermon from him that it might be printed exactly as it was written. " Those," said Mr. Maurice, " who observed the solemnity of Mr. Kingsley's manner while he w^as delivering his sermon, still more when he was praying with the congregation, and blessing tjiem, will believe that the thought of having unwittingly made himself a stumbling-block to his fellow men, was infinitely more bitter to him than any mere personal insult which he w^as called upon to endure." " You will have heard ere this," writes a friend to Mrs. Kingsley the day following, " all about the strange event of last night. . , . Nothing could justify the violation of church order and decency which was committed Thank God, thank Him on your knees, that Charles did not answer a single word ; if he ha,d, I do not know what might not have happened. Robertson and Hansard had severally to quiet knots of working men, who were beginning to hiss or otherwise testify their disapproval. A word from Charles, or, indeed, from any one on his behalf, might have raised such a storm as God only could have quelled " What the consequences of the whole thing may be, none, I suppose, can tell ; but they are in God's hands, and He knows best, and makes all things work together for good for us if we truly fear Him. Charles, I think, feels that it is his only policy to keep quite quiet — and so must his friends for the present. Tell him old Lumley is showing himself a man, and will be extremely glad to publish the sermon " Mr. Kingsley returned to Eversley exhausted and depressed, and in the meantime the storm burst. A leading morning paper began the attack, with an article, which being full of inaccuracies, made its due impression on those who did not know the facts, and who were already strongly prejudiced against the " Apostle of Socialism," Sympathy of Working Men. 2gi This was followed by a letter from the Bishop of London (Dr. Blomfield), who hearing of the disturbance, wrote to Mr. Kingslcy to express his displeasure, and forbade him to preach in London. Mr. Kingsley replied most respectfully, requesting his lordship to suspend his judgment till he had read the sermon. Meanwhile letters of sympathy poured in from all quarters, from a few of the clergy, from many of the laity, and from numbers of working men. There was a meet- ing of working men on Kennington Common, and an expres- sion of their warm allegiance and sympathy. A proposal was also made bef6re the bishop's prohibition was withdrawn, to induce Mr. Kingsley to start a free church independent of episcopal rule, with a promise of a huge following. It is needless to say he did not entertain this proposal for a moment. In the meantime the sermon was printed, and a copy sent to the Bishop, who wrote at once to ask Mr. Kingsley to come up and see him at London House ; when after a kind reception he withdrew his prohibition, and in a fortnight Mr. Kingsley preached at the parish church of Chelsea. Before the meeting on Kennington Common, the secretary of the John Street Lecture Hall, where the principal audience was composed of Chartists, free thinkers, and followers of Strauss, wrote to offer Mr. Kingsley the use of their lecture hall, which he declined in the following words : EVERSLEY, y////;- 26, IS5I. " I have conferred with my friends on their willingness to gi\-e lectures in John Street, and find it to be their unanimous opinion, that to do so, would be interpreted by the public into an approval, more or less, of other doctrines which are tauglit there, from which I, of all men in England, differ most strongly, and against which I hold myself bound most strongly to protest. " As a churchman, such a suspicion would be intolerable to me, as it would be gratuitously incurred. Those who wish to know my opinions will have plenty of opportunities elsewhere ; and I must therefore, in common with my friends, distinctly, but most courteously, decline your kind offer of the John Street lecture rooms." u 2 292 Charles Kings ley. He was so much exhausted with the work and the contro- versies of the last eight months, that his parents, who were going to Germany for some weeks, seeing the importance of his having thorough change, persuaded him to leave his parish in the care of a curate and go abroad with them. It was the first time he had crossed the water, and it was quite a revelation to him, — to be enjoyed as thoroughly as he could enjoy any thing which took him from his home. But even in new scenes his fiery spirit could not rest ; and the cause of the Church and the People pressed heavily on him. TO HIS WIFE. Ems, Aiigtisl i, 185 1. " Actually at Ems at last. As for what I have seen and felt I cannot tell you. My comfort is that you have seen it already, though, alas ! you have not seen that glass by Kaulbach at Coin, which is most magnificent. Grand pictures in painted glass, with far distances, which let the eye out of the building, instead of confining and crushing it in- wards, as painted glass generally does. At them I did not cry ; but at the choir I did, and cried, too, like a child, at the head of the Virgin in that great triptych of Koloffs, the Adoration ; that head is the most wonderful female head I ever saw yet from the hand of man. Then I had my first sight of the Rhine and vineyards — such a strange new feel- ing — and the Drachenfels, which is fine ; but I was not overpowered as I was by Rolandseck and Nonnenwerth, andt/iat story, — it seemed quite awful to find oneself in presence of it. ' Ehrenbreitstein utterly disappointed me, except professionally. The lying painters paint it just three times as high as it is, and I was quite shocked to find it so small. But it is all beautiful — beautiful. That vast rushing, silent river, those yellow vine slopes, and azure hills behind, with the thunder clouds lowering over their heads — beautiful ; and the air ! I have felt new nerves, as well as new eyes, ever since Cologne, the wonderful freshness and transparency of the colouring, and the bracing balminess of the atmosphere, make me understand now at once why people prefer this to England ; there is no denying it. It is a more charming country, and that is the best of reasons one has for thanking God that one has not the means of escaping to it from 7C'ork. Ems is lovely, and we have got to the quiet side of it, close to the Gutenberg. . . . *' How strange that my favourite Psalm about ' the hills of the robbers ' First Iinpressio)is of the Rhine. 293 should have come the very day I went up the Rhine. . . . These Ems waters are doing me good • out fishing yesterday at Dausennau. The otlier day H. and I walked over the hills to Braubach and ISIarks- burg, and caught unspeakable butterflies, and found — conceive my de- light — some twenty-five species of plants, new to me ! I cannot tell you the enjoyment of it. The scenery is certainly most lovely in every direction ; and it is so delightful to think that you know it all ! Tliat thought recurs to me continually. Tell the darling children that I will bring them each home something pretty, and that the woods are full of great orange slugs, and great green lizards, and great long snakes, which bite nobody, and that I will bring them home some red and blue locusts out of the vineyards. . . " Another dear letter, and with such good news too ! (about the Needlewomen's and other associations). I am so lifted up, and thankful for it ! I am sure the cause is spreading ; and as the Psalms for this morning say — Those who fear God will be turned to us ] let the proud lie as they will. I am very glad Lord has come over. It is an excellent sign, and may have invaluable consequences. " I have worlds to tell you. I have been to Bingen. H. and I got into the steamer at Braubach, ran up to Bingen, crossed and slept at Assmanshausen, and walked down the right (the Lurlei) bank to St. Goar, and back again. ... I scrambled up the face of the Lurlei to the Nymph's own scat, and picked you a little bouquet. . . . You told me I should be disappointed. It is past all telling — beautiful — wonderful. Three things above all — Obenvesel — the Sonneck Schloss, worth (as a beau ideal of the robber's nest) all the other castles put together — and the opening out of the Rhine at Bingen into infinite un- known distances, and calm, and glory, and wealth. I never shall, or hope I never shall, forget that one thing as long as I live. As for new plants, I should think I passed fifty new species in that one day. Keep- ing them was no good, so I just picked specimens, and looked at them till I knew them thoroughly, and went on regretful. On INIonday we start for the Eifel. I have been writing a good deal of poetry ; you shall have it all when I get home; and that getting home is really too delicious to think of. Tell the dear children I am getting lots of stories for them. The Eifel tramp will set me up, with God's blessing, utterly." It was at this time the " Eagle " was composed. To those wlio remember the social and political state of Europe from 1848 to 185 1, it is full of significance. 294 Charles Kingsley. Even as an eagle crying all alone, Above the vineyards, tlu-ough the summer night. Among the skeletons of robber towers ; Because the ancient eyrie of his race Was trenched and walled by busy-handed men ; And all his forest chase and woodland wild, Wherefrom he fed his young with hare and roe, Were trim with grapes, which swelled from hour to hour, And tossed their golden tendrils to the sun. For joy at their own riches : So, I thought, The great dcvourers of the earth shall sit, Idle and impotent, they know not why, Down-staring from their barren height of state, On nations grown too wise to slay and slave The puppets of the few, while peaceful lore And fellow help, make glad the iieart of earth, With wonders, which they fear and hale, as he, Tlie eagle, hates the vineyard slopes below. Ems, August 4. " . . . . Just off this afternoon for the Eifel for a fortnight. I take a kna})sack and plaid, a change of garments, paper to write to you twice a week, my pipe, fishing-tackle, German Testament, word-book, note- book, and map of the Eifel. And so we start, and in a fortnight appear at Bonn, with beards, I suppose, as shaving is out of the question. I get better and better, and have written lots more poetry." The poems he refers to and which he sent home to his wife were the sonnet beginning, " The baby sings not on its mother's breast ; " " The Ugly Princess ; " " Oh thou hadst been a wife for Shakespeare's self ; " " Ask if I love thee ? oh, smiles cannot tell," and " The world goes up and the world goes down." Menderscheid, August 7. " I write from the loveliest place you can imagine, only how we got here I know not ; having lost our way between some * feld ' or other to here. We found ourselves about 8 p.m. last night at the top of a cliff 500 feet high, with a roaring river at the bottom, and no path. So down the clifif-face we had to come in the dark, or sleep in the forest to be eaten by wild boars and wolves, of which latter, one was seen on our route yesterday ' as high as the table.' And down we came, knapsacks, fish- ing-rods, and all ; which process must not be repeated often if we intend to revisit our native shores. I have seen such wonders, I don't know where to begin. Craters filled sometimes with ghastly blue lakes, with Walking Toitr in the Eifel. 295 shores of volcanic dust, and sometimes, quaintly enough, by rye-fields and reapers. The roads are mended with lava ; the whole country the strangest jumble, alternations of Cambridgeshire ugliness (only lifted up 1,200 feet high) with all the beauties of Devonshire. The bed of the Issbach, from the baths of Bertrich, up which we came yesterday, was the most ravishingly beautiful glen scenery I ever saw; such rocks — such baths — such mountains covered with huge timber — not mere scrub, like tlie Rhine forests. Such strips of lawn here and there between the stream and the wood. All this, of course, you get on a grander scale on the Moselle, which was perfectly exquisite ; yet there is a monotony in its luscious richness and softness, and I Avas right glad to find myself on my legs at Alf Two days of that steamer running would have been too much for one, with its heat and confinement, so I think this plan of walking is the best. Weather glorious. I have just had my first sight of the basalt opposite the Kurhaus of all Kurhauses — so lovely, one longs to kiss it. At two or three points one felt only inclined to worship. Bertrich is just as beautiful as everything else, too. Tell Rose I have got her some volcano-dust from the crater of the Pulver-Maar. To-day we go to a great Maar with cones of slag round it, and then a-fishing for trout. I am exceedingly well and strong, though we did dine yesterday off raw ham, and hock at 9d. a bottle. JNIy knap- sack and plaid weigh about two stone, which is very heavy, but I go well enough under it, having got a pair of elastic cross-straps, which divide the weight over the breast-bone Tell Rose and Maurice their daddy dreams of them often." GerOLSTEIN, August ID. " The most wonderful place I ever was in in my life, and during the last three days I have been stunned with wonders. Mountains fallen in, and making great lakes in the midst of corn-land ; hills blown up with the wildest perpendicular crags, and roasted into dust ; craters with the lips so perfect, that the fire might have been blazing in them twelve months ago ; heaps of slag and cinder 2,500 feet above the sea, on which nothing will grow, so burnt are they ; lava streams pouring down into the valley, meeting with brooks drying them up, and in the fight foaming up into cliffs, and hurling huge masses of trachyte far into the dells ; mysterious mineral springs boiling up, full of carbonic acid, by the roadside — all, as Beatrice says, ' wonderful, wonderful, and yet again wonderful, past all whooping ! ' When I shall get to Treves and your letter I know not, for there is so much to see here that I cannot tell when we move ; and the living is ridiculously cheap, about 2s. 6d. or y, a day for one person, and one could not spend more if one would, for 296 Charles Kings ley. there is nothing to spend on. This is the most memorable thing I have ever seen, and when one adds, too, all the flowers, and the castles, and the vales — Avhy it will take me three months to tell you all. Kiss my darlings, and tell Rose I have got for her all sorts of curious lava-stones from the volcanoes, and shall carry them 200 miles on my back before she gets them. God be thanked that I ever came here to see so much." BiRREBORN, August 13. " I wr'xie to you out of the quaintest place, with a mineral spring which kills dogs and birds, and a landlady who talks good French and bad German, and a husband who is a dirty pothouse-keeper, with a casting net over his arm, and yet, speaking of Kaulbach's stained glass at Cologne, gives it as his opinion (in these very words), that * they say that Art (die Kunst) is decayed, but my opinion is, that it widens and deepens every day.' (! ! !) Really this Germany is a wonderful country — though its population are not members of the Church of England — and as noble, simple, shrewd, kindly hearts in it, as man would wish to see. I cannot tell you what moral good this whole journey has done me. I am learning hourly so much, that I do not know how much I have learnt. Exceedingly well and strong ; as lean as a lath, as any one would be, who carried two stone of baggage daily increasing in weight from the minerals and fossils I find, on his back through broiling suns. We are both worse than the ' hollow, pampered jades of Asia, that cannot go but thirty miles a-day,' for with our knapsacks we can only make fifteen, and then a sight-seeing walk in the evening. Yesterday we had indeed a day. We walked from Hillesheim past the Dreiser Weiher — ■ a mountain fallen into a crater, as is their habit here — and on the back among the volcanic dust-mountains Ave found such minerals — olivine, augite, and glassy felspar. One could have filled a cart — as it was I could only fill a pair of socks. Then we went from Daun up to the Schalcken Maaren. Three crater lakes in one mountain, which, being past all words beautiful and wonderful and awful, I will say no more. Every night I dream of you and the children, and everywhere I go I pick you flowers fiir denkmaler." Treves, August 17. " Here we are at Treves, having been brought here under arrest, Avith a gendarme from the Mayor of Bittsburg, and liberated next morning with much laughter and many curses from the police here. However, we had the pleasure of spending a night in prison, among fleas and felons, on the bare floor. It appears the barbarians took our fishing-rods for ' todt-instrumenten ' — deadly weapons — and our wide-awakes for A German Prison. 297 Italian hats, and got into their addle pates that we were emissaries of Mazzini and Co. distributing political tracts, for not a word of politics had we talked. Luckily the police-inspector here was a gentleman, and his wife and daughter ladies, and they did all they dare for us, and so about ten next morning wc were set free with many apologies, and the gendarme (who, after all, poor fellow, was very civil) sent back to Bittsburg with a re})rimand. "^^'e are the lions of Treves at present, for the affair has made a considerable fuss. We leave this to-morrow after having seen all the wonders — and what wonders there are to see. I need not tell you all I have felt here and at Fleissem. But at first the feeling that one is standing over the skeleton of the giant iniquity — Old Rome — is overpowering. And as I stood last night in that amphitheatre, amid the wild beasts' dens, and thought of the Christian martyrdoms and the Frank prisoners, and all the hellish scenes of agony and cruelty that place had witnessed, I seemed to hear the very voice of the Archangel whom St. John heard in Patmos, crying, ' Babylon the Great is fallen ; ' but no more like the sound of a trumpet, but only in the still whisper of the night breeze, and through the sleeping vineyards, and the great still smile of God out of the broad blue heaven. Ah ! and you were not there to feel it with me ! I am so longing to be home ! " Bonn. " I went yesterday with my mother to see the Museum here. The minerals are magnificent, better arranged than any English collection I know, and the volcanic specimens alone would take one day to work through, not to mention the wonderful fossil fish, crabs, and insects from the Solenhofen slate, all but new to me ! I was in ecstasies. I am very well indeed, and very strong, and my limbs are all knots, as hard as iron. Tell Rose that out of my window here I can see the seven mountains, which were once volcanoes all on fire ! " Before going abroad, he had parted with the beloved pupil who had become quite one of the family at the Rectory, and was dear to him and his wife as a son. Mr. John Martineau's graphic words and tender recollections of the eighteen months he spent at Eversley, give the best picture of the home life at that period, between January 21, 1850, and June 28, 1851. Park Corner, Heckfield, Christmas Eve, 1875. "I first knew him in January, 1S50. I entered his house as his pupil, and was for nearly a year and a half his constant companion ; 298 Charles Kings ley. indeed, out of doors, almost his only companion, for during the greater part of that time he had no other pupil, and hardly any intimate friends within reach. He was then in his tliirty-first year, in the fulness of his strength ; I a raw receptive school-boy of fifteen ; so that his mind and character left their impression upon mine as a seal does upon wax. What that impression was I will put down as best I can. " He was then, above all things and before all things else, a parish clergyman. His parish work was not indeed so laborious and absorbing as it had been six years before, when he was first made Rector. The efforts of these six years had told, the seed was bearing fruit, and Kversley would never again be as it had been. His health had nearly broken down not long before, and he had now a curate to help him, and give him the leisure which he needed for writing and other things. Still, even so, with a large and straggling though not very populous parish, with his share of three services on Sunday and cottage-lectures on two week-day evenings in winter ; there was much for him to do, throwing himself into it, as he did, with all his intensity and keen sense of responsibility. At this time, too, he had not, as in later years, the help and the purses of laymen to assist him. " These were the days when farm-labourers in Hampshire got from eight to ten shillings a week, and bread was dear, or had not long ceased to be so. The cholera of 1849 ^''^^^ j^'^^ swept through the country, and though it had not reached Eversley, a severe kind of low fever had, and there had been a season of much illness and many deaths, during which he had, by his constant, anxious, tender care of the sick poor, won their confidence more than ever before. The poor will not go to the relieving officer if they can get their needs supplied elsewhere; and the Eversley poor used to go for relief, and something more than relief, to the Rectory. There were few mornings, at that time, that did not bring some one in distress, some feeble woman, or ailing child, or a summons to a sick- bed. Up to that time he had allowed (I believe) no man or woman in his parish to become an inmate of the work-house through infirmity or old age, except in a few cases where want had been the direct con- sequence of indolence or crime. " At times, too, other poor besides those of his parish, might be seen at his door. Gipsies were attracted to him from all the country round. He married and christened many of them, to whom such rites were things almost unknown. "I cannot give any description of his daily life, his parish work, which will not sound commonplace. There were the mornings chiefly spent in reading and writing, the afternoons in going from cottage to cottage, the Letter from Mr. Martineau. 299 long evenings in writing. It sounds monotonous enough. But there never was a man with whom hfe was less monotonous, with whom it was more full to overflowing, of variety, and freshness. Nothing could be so exquisitely delightful as a walk with him about his parish. Earth, air, and water, as Avell as farm-house and cottage, seemed full of his familiar friends. By day and by night, in fair weather and in storm, grateful for heat and cold, rain and sunshine, light and soothing darkness, he drank in nature. It seemed as if no bird, or beast, or insect, scarcely a drifting cloud in the sky, passed by him unnoticed, unwelcomed. He caught and noted every breath, every sound, every sign. With every person he met he instinctively struck some point of contact, found some- thing to appreciate — often, it might be, some information to ask for — which left the other cheered, self-respecting, raised for the moment above himself; and whatever the passing word might be, it was given to high or low, gentle or simple, with an appropriateness, a force, and a genial courtesy, in the case of all women, a deferential courtesy, which threw its spell o^■er all alike, a spell Avhich it\y could resist. " So many-sided was he that he seemed to unite in himself more types and varieties of mind and character, types differing as widely as the poet from the man of science, or the mystic from tlie soldier ; to be filled with more thoughts, hopes, fears, interests, aspirations, temptations than could co-exist in any one man, all subdued or clenched into union and harmony by the force of one iron will, which had learnt to rule after many a fierce and bitter struggle. " His senses were acute to an almost painful degi-ee. The sight of suffering, the foul scent of a sick-room — well used as he was to both — • would haunt him for hours. For with all his man's strength there was a deep vein of woman in him, a nervous sensitiveness, an intensity of sympathy, which made him sufter when others suffered, a tender, delicate, soothing touch, which gave him power to understand and reach the heart ; to call out, sometimes almost at first sight (what he of all men least sought), the inmost confidences of men and women alike in all classes of life. And he had sympathy Avith all moods from deepest grief to lightest humour — for no man had a keener, quicker perception of the humorous side of anything — a love and ready word of i)raise for whatever was good or beautiful, from the greatest to the least, from the heroism of the martyr to the shape of a good horse, or the folds of a graceful dress. And this wide-reaching hearty appreciation made a word of praise from him sweeter, to those who knew him w^ell, than volumes of commendation from all the world besides. " His every thought and word was penetrated with the belief, the full assurance, that the world — the world of the soldier or the sportsman, as 300 diaries Kings ley. well as the world of the student or the theologian — was God's world, and that everything which He had made was good. ' Humani nihil a me alienum puto,' he said, taught by his wide human sympathies, and encouraged by his faith in the Incarnation. And so he rejected, as Pharisaic and unchristian, most of what is generally implied in the use of such words as ' carnal,' * unconverted, ' worldly,' and thereby em- braced in his sympathy, and won to faith and hope, many a struggling soul, many a bruised reed, whom the narrow and exclusive ignorance of schools and religionists had rejected. " No human being but was sure of a patient, interested hearer in him. I have seen him seat himself, hatless, beside a tramp on the grass outside his gate in his eagerness to catch exactly what he had to say, searching him, as they sate, in his keen kindly way with question and look. With as great a horror of pauperism and almsgiving as any professed political economist, it was in practice very hard to him to refuse anyone. The sight of unmistakable miser}^, however caused, covered, to him, the multitude of sins. I recollect his passing backwards and forwards again and again — the strong impulsive will for once irresolute — between the breakfast-room and a miserable crying Avoman outside, and I cannot forget, though twenty-five years have passed since, the unutterable look of pain and disgust with which, when he had decided to refuse the request, he said, ' Look there ! ' as he pointed to his own well-furnished table. " Nothing roused him to anger so much as cant. Once a scoundrel, on being refused, and thinking that at a parsonage and with a parson it would be a successful trick, fell on his knees on the door-step, turned up the whites of his eyes and began the disgusting counterfeit of a prayer. In an instant the man found himself, to his astonishment, seized by collar and wrist, and being swiftly thrust towards the gate, with a firm grip and a shake that deprived him of all inclination to resist, or, till he found himself safe outside it, even to remonstrate. "He had at that time great physical strength and activity, and an im- petuous, restless, nervous energy, which I have never seen equalled. All his strength, physical, mental, and moral, seemed to find expression in his keen grey eyes, which gazed, with the look of an eagle, from under massive brows, divided from each other by two deep perpendicular furrows — at that time, together with the two equally deep lines from nostril to mouth, very marked features in his face. One day, in a neighbour's yard, a large savage dog flew out at him, straining at its chain. He walked up to it, scolding it, and by mere force of eye, voice, and gesture, drove it into its kennel, close to which he stopped, keeping his eye on the cowed animal, as it growled and moved uneasily from Rectory Life in 1850. 301 side to side. He had done the same thing often before, and had even pulled an infuriated dog out of its kennel by its chain, after having driven it in. '* By boyish habits and tastes a keen sportsman, the only sport he ever enjoyed at this time was an occasional day's trout or pike-fishing, or throwing a fly for an hour or two during his afternoon's walk over the little stream that bounded his parish. Hunting he had none. And in later years, when he did hunt occasionally, it was generally a matter of two or three hours on an old horse, taken as a relaxation in the midst of work, not, as with most other men, as a day's work in itself. Fond as he was of horses, he never in his life had one worth fifty pounds, so little self-indulgent was lie. He never then, or afterwards — so far as I know — went out shooting. "Though exercising intense self-control, he was very restless and excitable. Constant mo^■ement Avas a relief and almost a necessity to him. His study opened by a door of its own upon the garden, and most of his sermons and books were thought out and composed as he paced up and down there, at all hours and in all weathers, his hands behind his back, generally smoking a long clay pipe ; for tobacco had, as he found by experience — having once tried a year's total abstinence from it — an esi)ecially soothing beneficial effect upon him. He ate hurriedly, and it was an effort to him to sit still through a meal. His coat frequently had a white line across the back, made by his habit of lean- ing against the whitened chimney-piece of the dining-room during breakfast and dinner. Once in the long summer days we were con- demned to a more than usually dull dinner-party at a neighbour's house, where the only congenial person was a young scientific doctor from the next parish. After dinner, it being broad daylight, we were all in the garden, and opposite to us were two high thick-foliaged trees. I do not know which of the two suggested it, but in an instant his coat and the doctor's were off, and they were racing each other, each up his tree, like schoolboys, one getting first to the top, the other first down again to the ground. " Of society he had then very little, and it was rarely and unwillingly that he passed an evening away from home. He did not seek it, and it had not yet bcg\m to seek him. Indeed, at no time was general society a congenial element to him ; and those who knew him only thus, did not know him at his best. A few intimate friends, and now and then a stranger, seeking his advice on some matter, would come for a night or a Sunday. Amongst the former, and honoured above all, was Mr. Maurice. One of his visits happened at a time when we had been startled by a burglary and murder at a parsonage a few miles off, and 303 Charles Kingsley. had armed oursehes and barricaded the rambHng old Rectory in case of an attack. In the middle of the night an attempt was made to force open the back door, which roused us all, and we rushed down stairs with pistols, guns, and blunderbuss, to expel the thieves, who, however, had taken alarm and made off. Mr. Maurice, the only unarmed and the coolest man amongst us, was quietly going out alone, in the pitch darkness, into the garden in pursuit of them, when Mr. Kingsley for- tunately came upon him and stopped him ; and the two passed the rest of the night together talking over the study-fire till morning came. " Many a one has cause to remember that Study, its lattice window (in later years altered to a bay), its great heavy door, studded with large projecting nails, opening upon the garden ; its brick floor covered with matting ; its shelves of heavy old folios, with a fishing-rod, or landing- net, or insect-net leaning against them ; on the table, books, writing- materials, sermons, manuscript, proofs, letters, reels, feathers, fishing- flies, clay-pipes, tobacco. On the mat, perhaps — the brown eyes, set in thick yellow hair, and gently-agitated tail, asking indulgence for the intrusion — a long-bodied, short-legged Dandy Dinmont Scotch terrier, wisest, handsomest, most faithful, most memorable of its race. When the rest of the household went to bed, he would ask his guest in, ostensibly to smoke. The swing-door would be flung open and slam heavily after him, as it always did, for he would never stop to catch and close it. And then in the quiet of night, when no fresh face could come, no interruption occur to distract him, he would give himself wholly to his guest, taking up whatever topic the latter might suggest, whatever question he might ask, and pouring out from the full stores of his knowledge, his ([uick intuitive sagacity, his ready sympathy. Then it was, far more than in the excitement and distraction of many voices and many faces, that he was himself, that the true man appeared ; and it was at times such as these that he came to be known and trusted and loved, as few men ever have been, as no man has been whom I ever knew. " He had to a wonderful degree the power of abstraction and con- centration, which enabled him to arrange and elaborate a whole sermon, or a chapter of a book, while walking, riding, or even fly-fishing, without making a note, so as to be able on his return to write or dictate it in clear terse language as fast as pen could move. He would read a book and grasp its essential part thoroughly in a time so short that it seemed impossible that his eyes could have traversed its pages. Compared with other men who have written or thought much, he worked for few hours in the day, and without much system or regularity ; but his application was so intense that the strain upon his vital powers was very great. Nor when he ceased could his brain rest. Except during sleep, — and even Character and Preaching. 303 that was characteristic, so profound was it,— repose seemed impossible to him for body or mind. So that he seemed to live three day:, as it were, while other men were living one, and already foresaw that there would be for him no great length of years. " Connected with this rapid li\ing was a certain impatience of trifles, an inaccuracy about details, a haste in drawing conclusions, a forgetful- ness of times and seasons, and of words lightly spoken or written, and withal an impulsive and almost reckless generosity, and fear of giving pain, which sometimes placed him at an unfair disadvantage and i)ut him formally in the wrong when substantially he was in the right. It led him, too, to take too hastily a favourable estimate of almost every one with whom he came personally into contact, so that he was liable to suffer from misplaced confidence ; while in the petty matters of daily life it made him a bad guardian of his own interests, and but for the wise and tender assistance that was ever at his side would almost have overwhelmed him with anxieties. " In the pulpit, and even at his week-day cottage-lectures, where, from the population of his parish being so scattered, he had sometimes scarcely a dozen hearers, he was at that time eloquent beyond any man I ever heard. For he had the two essential constituents of eloquence, a strong man's intensity and clearness of conviction, and a command of words, not easy or rapid, but sure and unhesitating, an unfailing instinct for the one word, the most concrete and pictorial, the strongest and the simplest, which expressed his thought exactly. " Many have since then become familiar with his preaching, many more with his published sermons, but few comparatively can know what it was to hear him, Sunday after Sunday, in his own church and among his own people, not preach only, but read, or rather pray, the prayers of the Church-service. So completely was he in harmony with these prayers, so fully did they satisfy him, that with all his exuberance of thought and imagination, it seemed as if for him there was nothing to be asked for beyond what they asked for. So that in his cottage-lectures, as in his own household worship, where he was absolutely .free to use any words he chose, I scarcely ever heard him use a word of prayer other than the words of the Prayer-book. " In conversation he had a painful hesitation in his speech, which diminished as he got older, though it never wholly left him. But in preaching, and in speaking with a set purpose, he was wholly free from it. He used to say that he could speak for God but not for himself, and took the trial — and to his keenly sensitive nature it was no small one, — patiently and even thankfully, as having by God's mercy saved him from many a temptation to mere brilliancy and self-seeking. The 304 Charles King shy. successful effort to overcome this difficulty increased instead of diminishing the impressiveness of his voice, for to it was partly due the strange, rich, high-pitched, musical monotone in which he prayed and preached, the echo of which, as it filled his church, or came borne on the air through the open window of a sick room, seems to travel over the long past years and kindle his words afresh, as I read them in the cold dead page. " And as it was an unspeakable blessing to Eversley to have him for its Rector, so also it was an inestimable benefit to him to have had so early in life a definite work to do which gave to his generous sympathetic impulses abundant objects and responsibilities and a clear purpose and direction. Conscious, too, as he could not but be, of great powers, and impatient of dictation or control, tlie repose and isolation of a country parish afforded him the best and healthiest opportunities of develop- ment, and full liberty of thought and speech, with sufficient leisure for reading and study. *' Great as was his love of natural science, in so many of its branches, his genius was essentially that of a poet. Often a time of trouble and sadness — and there was in him a strong undercurrent of sadness at all times, — would result in the birth of a lyrical poem or song, on a subject wholly unconnected with that which occupied him, the production of which gave him evident relief, as though in some mysterious way his mind was thereby disburdened and set free for the reception of new thoughts and impressions. In June 1851, he preached a powerful sermon to working men in a London church. No sooner had he finished it than the incumbent who had asked him to preach, rose in the reading- desk and denounced it. It was a painful scene, which narrowly escaped ending in a riot, and he felt keenly — not the insult to himself — but the discredit and scandal to the Church, the estrangement that it would be likely to increase between the clergy and the working men. He came home the day after, wearied and worn out, obliged to stop to rest and refresh himself at a house in his parish during his afternoon's walk. That same evening he brought in a song that he had written, the ' Three Fishers,' as though it were the outcome of it all ; and then he seemed able to put the matter aside, and the current of his daily life flowed as before. " Not that he at this time — or indeed at any time — wrote much verse. Considering that what the world needed was not verse, however good, so much as sound knowledge, sound reasoning, sound faith, and above all, as the fruit and evidence of the last, sound morality, he did not give free rein to his poetical faculty, but sought to make it his servant, not his master, to use it to illuminate and fix the eyes of men on the truths of science, of social relationship, of theology, of morality. Essentially a Poet. 305 His books — and they are many — are the living witnesses of the fruit of these efforts, of the many purposes, the varied subjects, on which he employed the gift that was in him. The letters which he received in countless numbers, often from utter strangers who knew nothing of him but from his books, seeking counsel on the most delicate and important matters of life, testify how great a gift it was, how truly and tdlingly it was used. " In reading all his writings, on whatever subject, it must not be forgotten that he was a poet, — that he could not help thinking, feeling, and writing as a poet. Patience, industr}', a memory for detail, he had, even logical and inductive power of a certain intuitive intermittent kind, not sustained, indeed, or always reliable, for his was not a logical, or in details an accurate mind, and surface inconsistencies are not hard to find in his writings ; but as a poet, even if he saw all sides, he could not express them all at once. The ver^' keenness of his sympathy, the intensity with which he realized all that was passing around him, made it impossible for him to maintain the calm unruffled judgment of men of a less fiery temperament, or to abstract and devote himself to the pursuit of any one branch of study without being constantly distracted from it and urged in some ncAv direction by the joys and sorrows of the surging world around, to seek if by any means he might find a medicine to heal its sickness. " Hence it may, perhaps, be that another generation will not fully realize the wide-spread influence, the great power, he exercised through his writings. For, in a sense, it may be said that, as to some of them, not their least merit is that in part they will iiot live, except as the seed lives in the corn which grows, or water in the plant which it has revived. For their power often lay mainly in the direction of their aim at the special need of the hour, the memory of which has passed, or will pass, away. As his 'Master,' as he affectionately and humbly called Mr. Maurice, was a theologian, and, in its original sense, a ' Prophet,' so Mr. Kingsley, as Priest and Poet, gloried in interpreting, expanding, applying him. * I think this will explain a good deal of Maurice,' was the single remark I heard him make when he had completed ' Yeast.' " In later years, as his experience widened, his judgment ripened, his conclusions were more calmly formed. But his genius was essentially of a kind that comes to maturity early, when the imagination is still vivid, the pulses of life beat fastest, and the sympathies and affections are most passionately intense. And I venture to think that these comparatively early years were amongst the best of his life. It was at this time, the first half of the year 1850, that he completed ' Alton Locke,' which, containing though it may more faults, sweeping VOL. I. X 3o6 Charles Kingsley. accusations, hasty conclusions, than any of his writings, is nevertheless his noblest and most characteristic book — at once his greatest poem and his grandest sermon. " With the great outside world, with the world of politicians and the press, and still more with the religious world, so called, as represented by the religious newspapers, he was in those years at open war. Popular as he afterwards became, it is difficult now to realize how great was the suspicion, how bitter the attacks, especially from the religious newspapers, which his books and sermons drew down upon him. Not that he in general cared much for praise or blame from the newspaper press, so venal and unprincipled did he — not without reason — consider most of it. Whig, Tory, Radical, and religious. At that time he did not take in or read any daily paper. The Spectator^ then edited by Mr. Rintoul, and with Mr. Brimley for its chief critic, was almost his only source of news. "It was then about two years after the events of 1848, and for him the one all-important and absorbing question of Politics was the condition, physical and mental, of the working-classes and the poor in town and country. On that question he considered that all the leading parties of the legislature had alike shown themselves indifferent and in- capable. This conviction, and a deep sympathy with the suffering poor, had made him a Radical. Nay, on at least one occasion, he publicly and deliberately declared himself a Chartist — a name which then meant a great deal, — and for a Clergyman to do this was an act the boldness of which it is difficult to appreciate now. " So vividly did he realize the sufferings of the poor, so keenly did he feel what he deemed the callousness and the incompetence of the Go- vernment and the mass of the upper and middle classes to alleviate them, that at times he seemed to look, with trembling, for the coming of great and terrible social convulsions, of a ' day of the Lord,' such as Isaiah looked for, as the inevitable fate of a world grown evil, yet governed still by a righteous God. In later years this feeling gradually left him — already, perhaps, it was beginning to fade. But it was no mere pulpit or poetic gust. It penetrated (I think) occasionally even to the lesser matters of daily life. Late one dark night he called me out to him into the garden to listen to a distant sound, which he told me was a fox's bark, bidding me remember it, for foxes might soon cease to be in England, and I might never hear one bark again. "This phase of his life has been described by one who knew it in an earlier stage, and far better than I, I will only say that, looking back •upon his daily life and conversation at that time, I believe he was democratic in his opinions rather than in his instincts, more by force of ''Noblesse Obliged 307 conviction than by natural inclination. A doctrinaire, or a lover of change for the sake of change, he never was ; and when he advocated democratic measures, it was more as a means to an end than because he altogether liked the means. From the pulpit, and with his pen, he claimed brotherhood with all men. No man in his daily intercourse respected with more scrupulous courtesy the rights, the dignity of the humblest. But he instinctively disliked a ' beggar on horseback.' Nohksse oblige, the tme principle of feudalism, is a precept which shines out conspicuously in all his books, in all his teaching, at this period of his life as at all others. *' In later years his convictions became more in accord with this natural tendency of his mind, and he gradually modified or abandoned his democratic opinions, thereby, of course, drawing down upon himself the reproach of inconsistency from those who considered that he had deserted them. To me, looking back at what he was when he wrote ' Yeast,' and ' Alton Locke,' the change seems rather the natural develop- ment of his mind and character under more or less altered circumstances, pardy because he saw the world about him really improving, partly because by experience he found society and other existing institutions more full of healthy life, more available as instruments of good, more willing to be taught, than he had formerly thought. " But, at that time, in his books and pamphlets, and often in his daily familiar speech, he was pouring out the whole force of his eager, passionate heart, in \\Tath and indignation, against starvation wages, stifling workshops, reeking alleys, careless landlords, roofless and crowded cottages, hard and canting religion. His ' Poacher's Widow ' is a piercing, heart-rending cry to heaven for vengeance against the oppressor. ' There is a righteous God,' is its burthen, 'and such things cannot, and shall not, remain to deface the world whicli He has made. Laws, constitutions, churches, are none of His if they tolerate such ; they are accursed, and they must perish — destroy what tliey may in their fall. Nay, they ^c'/// perish in their own corruption.' " One day, as he was reading with me, something led him to tell me of the Bristol Riots of 1832. He was in that year a schoolboy of thirteen, at Bristol, and had slipped away, fascinated by the tumult and the horror, into the midst of it. He described — rapidly pacing up and down the room, and, with glowing, saddened face, as tliough the sight were still before his eyes, — the brave, patient soldiers sitting hour after hour motionless on their horses, the blood streaming from wounds on their heads and faces, waiting for the order which the miserable, terrified Mayor had not courage to give ; the savage, brutal, liideous mob of in- human wretches plundering, destroying, burning; casks of spirits broken 3o8 Charles Kingslcy. open and set flowing in the streets, the wretched creatures drinking it on their knees from the gutter, till the flame from a burning house caught the stream, ran down it with a horrible rushing sound, and, in one dreadful moment, the prostrate drunkards had become a row of black- ened corpses. Lastly, he spoke of the shamelessness and the impunity of the guilty ; the persecution and the suicide of the innocent. " ' That sight,' he said, suddenly turning to me, ' made me a Radical.' " ' Whose fault is it,' I ventured to ask, ' that such things can be ' ? " ' Mine,' he said, ' and yours.' "I understood pardy then, I have understood better since, what his Radicalism was. *' From his home life I scarcely dare, even for a moment, try to lift the veil. I will only say that having had the priceless blessing of admission to it, the daily sight of him in the closest of his home relations has left me a deeper debt of gratitude, and more precious memories, created higher hopes and a higher ideal, than all other manifestations combined of his character and intellect. To his wife — so he never shrank from affirming in deep and humble thankfulness — he owed the whole tenor of his life, all that he had worth living for. It was true. And his every word and look, and gesture of chivalrous devotion for more than thirty years, seemed to show that the sense of boundless gratitude had become part of his nature, was never out of the undercurrent of his thoughts. Little thinking that he was to be taken first, and with the prospect of a long agony of loneliness imminent from hour to hour, the last flash of genius from his breaking heart was to gather into three simple, pregnant words, as a last offering to her, the whole stor}' of his life, of the Faith he preached and lived in, of his marriage, blessed, and yet to be blessed. He was spared that agony. Over his grave first are written his words, 'Amavimus, amamus, amabimus. ' " CHAPTER XL 1852. Aged 33. Strike in the Iron-Trade— Correspondence on Social and Metaphysicat, QuESTioNs — Mr. Erskine comes to Fir Grove — Parson Lot's last Words— Birth of his youngest Daughter — Hexameters— Poetry — Letter from Frederika Bremer. ' I do not like to decline bearing my share of the odium, thinking that what many men call ' caution ' in such matters, is too often merely a selfish fear of getting oneself into trouble or ill-will. I am quite sure that I would never gratuitously court odium or controversy, but I must beware also of too much dreading it ; and the love of ease is likely to be a more growing temptation than the love of notoriety or the pleasure of argument." Dr. Arnold. CHAPTER XI. The short holiday of the past year had so far invigorated Charles Kingsley that he worked without a curate for a time. The hterary ^vork was hampered by the heavy correspondence, principally with strangers, who little knew what labour each letter cost him. Of one very valuable series of letters with the son of a clergyman, a young man of atheistical opinions, connected with the " Reasoner," newspaper, and who eventually died a professing Christian, only two letters are preserved, the rest having been by the will of their owner destroyed at his death, as referring to a phase in his life which it would be painful to his family to recall. Another series, to Thomas Cooper, the Chartist, though spread over this and several years, will be given together in a later chapter. His literary work consisted of" Hypatia," now coming out monthly in " Fraser's Magazine " ; " Phaeton," and a reply to an attack on Christian Socialism in "Phraser's Magazine," which was not inserted. In the summer he amused himself by trying his hand at hexameters, and began the poem of " Andromeda." His parish work prevented his helping personally in the Co- operative Movement in London ; but he was consulted from time to time by the Council of Promoters, and in the great lock-out of the Iron Trade in January he wrote to explain his views on the matter. This letter " will show," as Mr. Hughes truly says, " how far Kingsley was an encourager of ' violent measures or views.' " TO TOM HUGHES, ESQ. EVKRSLKV, Jaimary 2%, 1852. " You may have been surprised at my having taken no part in this Amalgamated Iron Trades' matter. And I think that I am bound to say why I have not, and how far I wish my friends to interfere in it. 312 Charles Kings ley. " I do think that we, the Council of Promoters, shall not be wise in interfering between masters and men ; because — i. I question whether the points at issue between them can be fairly understood by any per- sons not conversant with the practical details of the trade " 2. Nor do I think they have put their case as well as they might. For instance, if it be true that they themselves have invented many, or most, of the improvements in their tools and machinery, they have an argument in favour of keeping out unskilled labourers, which is unan- swerable, and yet what they have never used — viz. : 'Your masters make hundreds and thousands by these improvements, while we have no remuneration for this inventive talent of ours, but rather lose by it, because it makes the introduction of unskilled labour more easy. Therefore the only way in which we can get anything like a payment for this inventive faculty of which we make you a present over and above our skilled labour, for which you bargained, is to demand that we, who invent the machines, if we cannot have a share in the profits of them, shall at least have the exclusive privilege of using them, instead of their being, as now, turned against us.' That, I think, is a fair argument; but I have seen nothing of it from any speaker or writer. " 3. I think whatever battle is fought, must be fought by the men themselves. The present dodge of the Manchester school is to cry out against us, as Greg did, ' These Christian Socialists are a set of mediasval parsons, who want to hinder the independence and self-help of the men, and bring them back to absolute feudal maxims; ' and then, with the most_ absurd inconsistency, when we get up a Co-operative workshop, to let the men work on the very independence and self-help of which they talk so fine, they turn round and raise just the opposite yell, and cry, * The men can't be independent of capitalists ; these associations will fail because the men are helping themselves' — show- ing that what they mean is, that the men shall be independent of every one but themselves — independent of legislators, parsons, ad- visers, gentlemen, noblemen, and every one that tries to help them by moral agents ; but the slaves of the capitalists, bound to them by a servitude increasing instead of lightening with their numbers. Now, the only way in which we can clear the cause of this calumny, is to let the men fight their own battle ; to prevent any one saying, ' These men are the tools of dreamers and fanatics,' which would be just as ruinously blackening to them in the public eyes, as it would be to let the cry get abroad, 'This is a Socialist movement, destructive of rights of property. Communism, Louis Blanc, and the devil, &c.' You know the infernal stuff which the devil gets up on such occasions — having no scruples Association and the Government, 313 about calling himself hard names when it suits his purpose, to blind and frighten respectable old women. " Moreover, these men are not poor distressed needle-women or slop-workers. They are the most intelligent and best educated work- men, receiving incomes often higher than a gentleman's son whose education has cost 1000/. ; and if they can't fight their own battles, no men in England can, and the people are not ripe for association, and we must hark back into the competitive rot heap again. All, then, that we can do is, to give advice when asked — to see that they have, as far as we can get at them, a clear stage and no favour, but not by public, but by private influence. ** But we can help them in another way, by showing them the way to associate. That is quite a distinct question from their quarrel with their masters, and we shall be very foolish if we give the press a handle for mixing up the two. "We have a right to say to masters, men, and public, ' We know, and care nothing about the iron strike. Here are a body of men coming to us, wishing to be shown how to do that which is a right thing for them to do — well or ill off, strike or no strike, namely, associate ; and we will help and teach them to do that to the very utmost of our power.' " The Iron Workers' co-operative shops will be watched with lynx eyes, calumniated shamelessly. Our business will be to tell the truth about them, and fight manfully with our pens for them. But we shall never be able to get the ears of the respectabilities and the capitalists, if we appear at this stage of the business. What we must say is, ' If you are needy and enslaved, we will fight for you from pity, whether you be associated or competitive. But you are neither needy, nor, unless you choose, enslaved ; and therefore we will only fight for you in pro- portion as you become associates. Do that, and see if we can't stand hard knocks for your sake.' " A few months later, having heard that a Bill for legalizing Industrial Associations was about to be introduced into the House of Commons, and that perhaps a cabinet minister would undertake it, he writes to Mr. Hughes : — " Let him be assured that he will by such a move do more to carry out true Conservatism, and to reconcile the workmen with the real aristocracy, than any politician for the last twenty years has done. Tlie truth is, we are in a critical situation here in England. Not in one of danger — which is the vulgar material notion of a crisis, but at the crucial point, the point of departure of principles and parties which will 314 Charles Kingsiey. hereafter become great and powerful. Old Whiggery is dead, old true blue Toryism of the Robert Inglis school is dead too — and in my eyes a great loss. But as live dogs are better than dead lions, let us see what the live dogs are. " I.— The Peelites, who will ultimately, be sure, absorb into them- selves all the remains of Whiggery, and a very large proportion of tlie ConserN'ative party. In an effete mibelieving age, like this, the Sadducee and the Herodian will be the most captivating philosopher. A scien- tific laziness, lukewarmness, and compromise, is a cheery theory for the young men of the day, and they will take to it con amove. I don't complain of Peel himself He was a great man, but his method of compromise, though useful enough in particular cases when emjjloyed by a great man, becomes a most dastardly '■schema mutidi' when taken up by a school of little men. Therefore, the only help which we can hope for from the Peelites is, that they will serve as ballast and cooling jiunip to both parties, but their very trimming and moderation make them fearfully likely to obtain power. It depends on the wisdom of the present government, whether they do or not. . " 2. — Next you have the Manchester School, from whom Heaven idefend us; for of all narrow, conceited, hypocritical, and anarchic land atheistic schemes of the universe, the Manchester one is exactly ithe worst. I have no language to express my contempt for it, and therefore I quote what Maurice wrote me this morning. ' If the Ministry would have thrown Protection to the dogs (as I trust they have, in spite of the base attempts of the Corn Law Leaguers to goad them to committing themselves to it, and to hold them up as the people's enemies), and thrown themselves into social measures, who would not have clung to them, to avert that horrible catastrophe of a ]\Ianchester ascendancy, which I believe in my soul would be fatal to intellect, morality, and freedom, and will be more likely to move a rebellion among the working men than any Tory rule which can be conceived?' I " Of course it would. To pretend to be the workmen's friends, by keeping down the price of bread, when all they want thereby is to keep down wages, and increase profits, and in the meantime to widen the gulf between the working man and all that is time-honoured, refined, and chivalrous in English society, that they may make the men their divided slaves, that is — perhaps half unconsciously, for there are excellent men amongst them — the game of the INIanchester School. " J have never swerved from my one idea of the last seven years, that the real battle of the time is — if England is to be saved from anarchy A True Democracy. 315 and unbelief, and utter exhaustion caused by the competitive enslave- ment of the masses — not Radical or Whig against Peelite or Tory (let the dead bury their dead), but the Church, the gentleman, and the workman, against the shopkeepers and the Manchester School. The battle could not have been fought forty years ago, because, on one side, the Church was an idle phantasm, the gentleman too ignorant, the workman too merely animal ; while, on the other, the IManchester cotton-spinners were all Tories, and the shopkeepers were a distinct class interest from theirs. But now these two latter have united, and the sublime incarnation of shop-keeping and labour-buying in the cheapest market shines forth in the jierson of Nebuchadnezzar and Son, and both cotton-spinners and shop-keepers say, ' This is the man !' and join in one common press to defend his system. Be it so : now we know our true enemies, and soon the working men will know them also. But if the present Ministry will not see the possibility of a coalition between them and the workmen, I see no alternative but just what we have been straining every nerve to keep off — a competitive United States, a democracy before which the work of ages will go down in a few years. A true democracy, such as you and I should wish to see, is impossible without a Church and a Queen, and, as I believe, without a gentry. On the conduct of statesmen it will depend whether we are gradually and harmoniously to develop England on her ancient founda- tions, or whether we are to have fresh paralytic governments succeeding each other in doing nothing, while the workmen and the Manchester School fight out the real questions of the day in ignorance and fury, till * culbute generale ' comes, and gentlemen of ancient family, like your humble servant, betake themselves to Canada, to escape, not the Amal- gamated Engineers, but their ' masters,' and the slop-working savages- whom their masters' system has created, and will by that time have multiplied tenfold." We now come to the more pri\'ate correspondence of the year. TO ESQ. EvERSLEV, February 20, 1852. "... I will answer you as shortly as I can by a few hints. " I. Of whatsoever you predicate Time you must also predicate Space, See whether you can predicate the latter of God. I will send you on shortly some papers on these two points, which please return. " 2. Your definition of the ideas of the pure reason is correct. Kant does not see that they belong to the moral vrorld ; but his argument tO' 3i6 Charles Kingsley. prove time and space to be, as far as we know, only modes of human conception, can, I think, hardly be answered. " 3. I do not think time an instinctive idea, but altogether a concep- tion abstracted from our own experience of the succession of natural phenomena, whether subjective or objective. *' 4. That you cannot imagine it possible for time not to be, I doubt not ; were it an idea of the pure reason you would not be able to imagine it itself at all, any more than you can imagine beauty itself, or good itself. For imagination is of the psychical understanding, and not of the reason. And as all imagination-conceptions are merely reconciliations of phenomena which experience has shown us, in the realm of time and space, it is impossible to form any conception of any matter, even of God, without predicating, consciously or unconsciously, time and space as its necessary material. Try and imagine God infinite, or almighty, as well as eternal, and you will, if you analyze the image presented to your mind, see either time, or space, or both, as their v\r] viroKUfievT]. '■■'■ 5. But suppose we lay down the following propositions, to which we shall both agree : — " God is a Spirit. " God is a Will. " God is Righteousness. " God is Love. " Of none of these four can you form any conception-image, by any acts of abstraction or concretion. And in neither of these four does Time appear. "You may hesitate a little about the first proposition. That will serve us for future matter. But you will agree that in defining God, time does not appear. As soon as you connect the Not-God, or universe, with God, time does begin to enter the field. As thus God willed — something which was not God. God loved — something which is not God. God did right — to something which is not God. Here the conception of time springs not from God, but from the Not-God, or universe. " But there is a case in which God in action does not involve the idea of time. And that is in the mystery of the ever-blessed Trinity. In the eternal generation of the Son, in the eternal loving of the Father and the Son, in the eternal procession of the Spirit from both. There the absolute acts, but it acts on the absolute, and therefore time is elimi- nated from the — not conception, for it is inconceivable — but from the ideas of the mystery of the Trinity. On this we must talk some other day. " But now remains God in contact with time, as acting on the time- Time and the Logos. 317 and-space universe. And here, I frankl}' tell you, I must go beyond you^ and frankly, on the warrant of Scripture, attribute succession, division, before and after, time and space, to God ; that is to the Logos — is qui Xeyerai — is divided and articulate, in all senses. Read in the light of the first chapter of St. John's Gospel, the so-called ' anthropomorphic metaphors ' of the Old Testament, which I believe to contain solemn and literal truths, will receive light. And the doctrine of the Logos, as found in Clemens Alexandrinus, Philo and the Easterns will give us many more hints of the truth. " Now I hold, with the best Christian theologians, that whatsoever is spoken of God as working in time, is spoken of the Logos. And that the fault of Calvinism is, that ignoring utterly the doctrine of the Logos — and really leaving out the first chapter of St. John's Gospel, it condi- tions the Father by those laws of time and space which are in the hands of the Son, by whom He made the worlds, and by whom He rules the worlds ; and does very much ' confound the persons,' after which it is forced, in order to restore something like moral equilibrium to its theory, to 'divide the substance.' I will tell you what I mean some other time. " Lastly : beware how you talk of a seed of evil, as if evil had a positive existence, and were something, and not merely a state of disharmony with and disobedience to a law. But Augustine must fight that battle with you. I will send you some references to his works on that point. " Next, I accept your definition of God's apprehension of past and future as all present, provided that you will remember that in saying pre- sent, you mean present time (for you cannot give a definition of present in the sense in which you use it, which does not involve before and after), in defining them. As — present is time which is not time before, not time after — whether a spiritual presentation may not be something quite different, is the question in hand, though one which I cannot solve, it being beyond conception. " But now, let me take you on grounds whereon we agree, and which I believe to be the only grounds on which the matter can be at all seen rightly. " You say that ' good ' is an idea of the pure reason. I agree utteriv. And that all things are under a law — I agree as utterly as before. But it is little to know that they are under a law, unless we know whether they are under a good law or not. The former assertion may satisfy the psychical understanding of man, the same faculty which is satisfied when a book is put straight on the table ; but it will not satisfy his spirit, the moral faculty or heart of him. You say, all is well, because it is in the hands of a wise and good God. How do you know that ? How do 3i8 Charles Kingslcy. you know all is well ? How do you know that His law is a good one ? First, you must define your predicates. What does well mean ? What does good mean ? You will not surely say, arguing in a circle, ' God does whatsoever is right,' and then, ' right is whatsoever God may hap- pen to do ! ' At least, Abraham was not of the opinion of those who think a thing right, merely because they think that God did it or may do it. He asked, ' shall not the judge of all the earth do right?' He knew that there was a right, and expected God to know the same, and to act up to that right. Is God's right, then, God's righteousness at all like man's right and man's righteousness ? — Reason says ' yes,' for if there be no absolute right, and good, which is the same for God, man, angel, and devil, I cannot see how ' good ' can be an idea of the pure reason. Consider this most carefully, and remember that Plato, who first preached ideas, considers them always as subjective reflexions in man, of eternal realities in God. Moreover the Bible de- clares that man's goodness and God's goodness are identical. For not content with telling us that man qua man is made in God's image (which indeed is to say all I want), it tells us that God, the Son of God, became man, and showed forth the express likeness of God's perfect righteousness, in the righteous acts and life of a man. And when we read history in the gospels, v^•e find that all which He considered to be the likeness of His Father's righteousness and to be His Father's will, and therefore did^ is exactly what men, even the heathens, say is righteous for men to do ... . with one exception. With one exception — and in God's name, look what that is. ' Do unto others as ye Avould they should do unto you. Forgi\e and ye shall be forgiven. Except your righteous- ness exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees, who say an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Be ye perfect as your Father in Hea\'en is perfect. For He makes His sun to shine on the evil and the good, and His rain to fall on the just and on the unjust, and is good to the unthankful and the evil .... God is love. He so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son for it ... . He willeth not the death of a sinner, but that all should be converted and live. It is not His will tliat one little child should perish.' Here is the full unveiling of the idea of ' the good.' Love, mercy, boundless forbearance, forgiveness, condescension, going to seek and to save those who are lost ; in short, the revelation of a Father. And can you say that it is consistent with such a character to bring the vast majority of the human race into existence, simply for inevitable torment and despair, for ever? I appeal to your own idea of good. Would you make anything which you were certain would be miserable for the majority of its existence, much less for ever? Self-will. 3 1 9 Are you satisfied when you see a poor sinner going straight towards ' hell?' If God is satisfied at seeing him damned, arc you 1 If God's love is content, is yours? If God's pity is shut up, is yours? If God wills that he should have no hope or chance for ever, do you will it ? Would you not be glad to see him saved ? Would you not, now, honestly, be glad to save any living being from endless and hopeless misery? .... And is it the worse or the better part of you, the highest or the lowest, the rigliteous or the unrighteous, which yearns after poor wretches going down to the pit ? ... . " Pardon a scribble after two services and sermons, one extempore, and a class of confirmation candidates (all of which ' take it out of one,' when one is in earnest) : but it is wholesome, cheerful work — though slow with Hampshire clods. ]\Iy people are silent and impassive, but sure — often surprising me by unexpected right-doing where I had suspected nothing but stupidity." TO LORD . Plas Gwynnant, April 2$, 1852. " I am answering your letter, only just received, I fear, at a disad- vantage ; for first, you seem to fancy me an older man than I am. I am only two-and-thirty ; never was a tutor of Trinity or any other college, and shall not be surprised or offended if you or any other person con- sider me on further enquiry too young to advise them. " Next, I have not knowledge enough of you to give such advice as would be best for you. I have no nostrum for curing self-will and self- seeking ; I am aware of none. It is a battle, I suspect a life-long battle, which each man must fight for himself, and each in his own way, and against his own private house-fiend — for in each man the evil of self- seeking takes a difterent form. It must do so, if you consider what it is. Self is not evil, because self is you, whom God made, and each man's self is different from his neighbour's. Now God does not make evil things, therefore He has not made self evil or wrong ; but you, or self, are only wTong in proportion as you try to be something in and for yourself, and not the child of a father, the servant of a lord, the soldier of a general. So it seems to me. The fault of each man who thinks and studies as you seem to have done, in the confession with which you have honoured me, is the old fault of Lucifer. The planet is not con- tented with being a planet ; it must be a sun; and forthwith it falls from heaven. I have no nostrum for keeping the planet in its orbit. It must keep there itself and obey the law which was given it, and do the work which it was set to do, and then all will be well. Else it will surely find 320 Charles Kings ley. by losing the very brightness in which it gloried, that that brightness was not its own but a given and reflected one, which is not withdrawn from it as an arbitrary punishment for its self-seeking, but is lost by it neces- sarily, and ipso facto, when it deflects from the orbit in which alone the sun's rays can strike full on it. You will say, this is a pretty myth or otherwise — that you have done me the honour to ask me what you are to do, and this is no answer to that question. I will try and answer as honestly as I can. You have said boldly, in words which pleased me much, though I differ from them — that I ought not to ask you to try to cure self-seeking by idle prayer — as if a man by taking thought could add one cubit to his stature. I was pleased with the words ; because they show me that you have found that there is a sort of prayer which is idle prayer ; and that you had sooner not pray at all than in that way. Now of idle prayer I think there are two kinds : one of fetish prayer, when by praying we seek to alter the will of God concerning us. This is, and has been, and will be common enough and idle enough. For if the will of Him concerning us be good, why should we alter it ? If bad, what use praying to such a Being at all ? Prometheus does not pray to Zeus, but curses and endures. Another, of praying to oneself to change oneself ; by which I mean the common method of trying by prayer to excite oneself into a state, a frame, an experience. This too is common enough among protestants and papists, as well as among unitarians and rationalists. Indeed some folks tell us that the great use of prayer is * its reflex ' action on ourselves, and inform us that we can thus by taking thought add certain cubits to our stature. God knows the temptation to believe it is great. I feel it deeply. Nevertheless I am not of that belief; nor, I think, are you. " But if there were a third kind of prayer — the kind w^hich is set forth to us in the Lord's Prayer as the only one worth anything — a prayer, not that God's will concerning us or anyone else may be altered, but that it may be done ; that we may be kept out of all evil and delivered from all temptation which may prevent our doing it ; that we may have the apTov imoiKTiov given to us in body, soul, spirit, and circumstance, which will just enable us to do it and no more ; that the name of Him to whom we pray may be hallowed, felt to be as noble and sacred as it is, and acted on accordingly. And if that name were the simple name of Father, does it not seem that prayer of that kind — the prayer, not of a puling child but of a full-grown or growing son, to his father ; a prayer to be taught duty, to be disciplined into obedience, to be given strength of will, noble purpose, carelessness of self, delight in the will and the purpose of his father — would be the very sort of prayer which — supposing always, as I do from ten years' experience, that father to God our Father. 321 exist, and to hear, and to love, and to have prepared good works for us to walk in — to each man his own work, and his own education for tliat work — Docs it not seem to you, I say, granting the hypothesis, that that would be a sort of prayer which would mightily help a man striving to get rid of his self-seeking, and to recover his God- appointed place in the order of the universe, and use, in that place, the attainments which his father has given him to be used ? It seems to me that such a man might look up to God and feel himself most strong when he was confessing his own weakness, and then look down at himself and all his learning, and see that he was most weak when he was priding himself on his own strength — that such a man would be certain of having his prayers for light, strength, unselfishness, answered, because then, indeed, his will would be working with God's will. He would be claiming to be a fellow-worker with God ; to be a son going about his father's business — in deep shame and sorrow, no doubt, for having stolen God's tools, to use for his own aggrandisement for so long, but with no papist (or rather Jesuit) notion of making a sacrifice to God — giving a present to Him who has already given to us what we pretend to make a merit of giving Him. And such a man, it seems to me, would have no difficulty in finding out what God intended him to do ; for if he really believed himself a son, under a father's education, he would believe everything which happened to be a part of that education — every opportunity of doing good, trivial as well as grand, a duty set him by his father to do. He would not be tempted to rush forth fanatically from the place where God had put him, to try some mighty act of self-sacrifice. If the thing which lay nearest him was the draining of a bog, or the giving employment to a pauper, or the reclaiming of a poacher, he would stay where God had put him and try to do it ; and believe that God had given him his nobility, or his learn- ing, or his gentleman's culture, just that he might be able the better to do that part of his father's business there and then and no other. He would consider over what he knew, what he could do, and would determine to make all his studies, all his self-training bear upon the peculiar situation in which God had put him ; not fanatically repro- bating, but still considering as of less importance whatsoever did not bear on that situation. In all things, in short, he would do the duty which lay nearest him, believing that God had put it nearest him. "And such a man, I believe, so praying, and so working, keeping before him as his lode-star — ' Our Father, hallowed be Thy name ; Thy kingdom come ; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven ! ' and asking for his daily bread for that purpose, and no other, would find, unless I am much mistaken, selfishness and self-seeking die out of him, and active VOL. I. y 322 Charles Khigslcy. benevolence grow up in him. He would find trains of thought and subjects of inquiry which he had pursued for his private pleasure, not to mention past sorrows and falls, turned unexpectedly to practical use for others' good ; and so discover to his delight, that his father had been educating him, while he fancied that he was educating himself. And while he was so working, and so praying, he would have neither leisure nor need to torment himself about the motives of his actions, but simply whatever his hand found to do, would do it with all his might." EvERSLEY, May 6, 1852. " I beg you never to apologize for wTiting. This is my business, and I learn, from the many such letters I have, far more than I teach. I consider myself indebted most deeply to any man who will honestly tell me the workings of his own mind. How can a physician learn pathology without studying cases ? My fear is rather that I shall bore you with my method of haggling, after the Socratic example, over single words, and refusing to stir a foot in the question till the meaning of some particle or preposition has been settled. What took Augustine the nine best years of his life to fight through, may well take you as many. It took me more ; and even now .... What am I ? ' An infant crying in the night ; An infant ciying for the hght ; And with no language but a cry. ' " But as far as I do see through a glass darkly, I am bound to speak boldly. Every fresh ray of light is a positive gain ; the fullest sunlight is only made up of many such. " Now putting aside a great deal which your most interesting letter makes me burn to say to you, let us take that one expression ' infinite in space.' I send you a rough sketch of a Socratic fragment on the sub- ject; you will see that it is altogether destructive. You must so far trust me as to believe, that I would not have sent it had I not something better to build up instead — or rather to give you already built — for Plato and Augustine will tell you all you need. Read those Confessions and see if they do not help you, and in the meantime I will send you the apodosis of the argument as soon as I have time." TO THE SAME. EvERSLEY, Whit Tuesday, Jtate 5, 1S52. '' I. I think you wrong in predicating space of God. My dialogue was intended to show (what I fear it must have failed in) that predica- space and Infinity. 323 ting any measured or unmeasured quantum of space of Him must in- volve us in contradictions. " 2. You will perceive, I think, that your method of argumentation is not quite Socratic. You assume a definition of the term idea, and argue from that. I assume, if I recollect, no arbitrary terms whatsoever, but merely work out the meanings of the words by analysis as they come before me. "3. I think your definition of idea, though a very good one, is faulty, for it applies, as you show, equally to infinity and to space. Now these two are not congeners, and I think your mistake lies here : that- space is not 'a thing which cannot be perceived by the senses.' To me it seems that we know nothing of it but by the senses. That is by seeing bodies occupy space. That it is a pure abstraction from them, and no more an idea than weight or form. That it is, as Kant says at the be- ginning of the '■ Kritik,' the necessary condition of our perception. Mind, I don't agree with all that Kant says thereon. But he dare only go so far as giving it an existence relative or subjective with regard to our own perceptions, and distinctly states we have no right to predicate it (as I fear you do) as an objective necessity of all beings in themselves. " 4. Now our idea of infinity is not derived from the senses. Our notion of infinite or immeasured space is. But I have tried to show you that that is only a partial infinity, having numberless fines (limits) in itself, and only illimited subjectively, i.e., because our own notion refuses to cognise certain further limited portions which lie beyond and beyond again for ever. What I want you to conceive is, of an infinity which has no internal limits, as well as no external ones, i.e., which is not made up like yours of a finite crowd ; which has no parts ; which is a pure negation of all which we can conceive of space and matter. Yours is not this ; for if you will examine it, your idea of infinity is space -f a quality, i.e. space -f no limits. In fact, I want you to con- ceive — who can do it but dimly and by negations ? — of a Being of whom it is as absurd to predicate greatness as smallness, time as space, exten- sion as succession. And then I would go on to ask you, whether your difficulties in that former letter about His power, did not proceed from the same error as those about His extension. Namely, from condition- ing them by abstract notions derived from matter? Did not your ' power ' only mean ' force ? ' Have you not been falling into the same error as Kant, Fichte, the Neo-platonists (I was going to say Emersonians, but really they hash up scraps of e\ery old fallacy together in such a frantic borboro-taraxis, that one cannot tell what they mean), namely, that you are trying to get at a metaphysical conception of God ? " Now if I do know anything— and you hardly guess how little I know — 324 Charles Kings ley. I know that that is impossible ; and for this reason. In all attempts to deduce a conception of God from any mental consciousnesses of our own, we must always start with \h.e pditio principii that those consciousnesses of ours can measure Him ; that the inferior being can comprehend — go all round, and take in the superior one, and that with only one organ of His many ones. He may be able to do it, who knows ? but even if he succeeds it must be peradventure ; i.e., in an illogical and indemonstrable way, on account of that first pe^ if io principii. And I think Kant himself saw this, when in his Theodicy he upsets every other metai)hysical proof of a God. Not that he succeeds any better himself; for he gives you, or informs you that he gives you — I am sure I forget what, a sort of Euclid's point ; not only without parts and without magnitude, but ' sans everything.' A ghastly, cold, immoral, minute negative no-thing — Avhich if it comforted his soul he must have been very easily pleased. But — throw away all this .... throw it clean away, as a vain effort of man by searching to find out God,' and consider, that this method, like Kant's, never touches that phase of the divine substance which only is important to us — that phase of which alone He has deigned to speak in His (mn revelation of Himself, and then you will see that you have thrown away nothing. He reveals Himself purely as a moral substance. Why wdll you persist in cognizing Him as an intellectual one ? If you do the latter, you cannot help continually disturbing Him to fit the sub- jective modes of your own intellect — time, space, cause, and the rest of them which are no things, as Lange says ' no Gods.' " But look at the moral side. The first thing which strikes you is that He has revealed Himself as the Father. There you have no intellectual conception, but a practical relation to you, and that one of the purest transcendental moral. Father is a spiritual relation. First cause, omni- potent force, &c. are only intellectual ones .... Take the higher ground which He Himself offers you, and then these Calvinistic and Spinozistic doubts (for they are identical at root) will seem to you simply para- logisms of men who have bought a wooden doll, and complain that it won't speak. The error of Calvinism has been that it has refused to cognize God simply on His own moral ground, and has mixed up certain metaphysic notions about time (in predestination), force (in irresistible grace), &c., &c., with its theology. This is, I fear, all very incoherent, but you will excuse great haste and a weary brain . . . ." TO THE SAME. EVERSLEV, June 15, 1852. "... Now, as to Time. I think, if you would try time Socratically, by the same method as I have tried space, you would find that the Neo Platonism and its Results. 325 attribution of it to God would involve analogical absurdities. I say this out of mere laziness ; conscience tells me that I ought to set it down and do it for you, having started the question : but will you have patience with a man who has a child nine days old ? " It shall be done as soon as I can. Nevertheless, cii passant^ pray be vexed no more at taking up any time of mine. Letters like these are a recreation after book-writing and parish-visiting when I am at work; and just now, when the former is stopped by family circum- stances, they are a sacred duty. I have finished fifteen pages of Harriet Martineau's book .... after an afternoon's pike-fishing, to which I took out of mere inability to sit quiet at home without a wife down stairs. So do not fancy that you take up my time " I liked to hear that you were teaching a carpenter boat-building. Men ought to know how to do such things ; and gentlemen and noblemen ought to find an honour in teaching them. I, alas ! have no such constructive genius, being, except in poetry and drawing, merely destructive — a slayer of animals, which of course, as a clergyman, public opinion requires me to indulge in very little ; and perhaps rightly. But luckily, shooting I hate ; fishing is par excellence the parson's sport, and hunting I am preserved from, by the double demurrers of an execrable hunting country, and pride, which forbids me to ride, unless I am as well mounted as the rest. So I am not a ' sporting parson ' after all. "But what has all this to do with the object of our intimacy? For- give me " I confess myself a Platonist ; and my aim is to draw men, by show- ing them that the absolute ' God the Father,' whom no man hath seen, is beyond all possible intellectual notions of ours ; to feel the necessity of believing in a ' God the Son ' in whom that indefinable absolute will and morality is manifested in space and time, under a form — not human till He took flesh, but still, as the Bible tells us from beginning to end, the archetype of humanity. Moreover, I want to make men feel that the merely intellectual cognition of either of the three persons of the Trinity is ipso facto void ; because all intellectual cognition on such points must start from the assumption of self and of the universe as the fixed datum — that the former must lead to Pantheism, under which I class the Neo-Platonism of Alexandria, and the Neo-Platonico-Eclectico- Borborotaraxticism of Emerson, Fichte, and the whole of the German, American, English, spiritualists (not excluding Goethe himself, in his ■ultimate teaching), and that the latter must lead, as with Atkinson, and Harriet Martineau, to materialist atheism. When 1 say must lead, I mean logically. Everyone, thank God, is better than his creed — I mean his real heart's belief Humanity and common sense are too mighty 326 Charles Kingsley. even for H. Martineau and Atkinson ; but they will not be so for their disciples. Their disciples will formulise, systematise, carry out — per- secute ; and then find themselves ending, in a generation or two, to the astonishment of their Atkinsonian and Emersonian papas and mammas, in all manner of fetish-worship ; out-popery-ing popery itself. Honestly believing this horoscope from all induction from history which I can collect, I want as long as life, and as far as wisdom is given to me, to put the anthropology of men of my own generation on as sound a footing as I can, that their children and grandchildren may have some fixed ideas concerning God, and man, and the universe, to fall back on, and fight from, when the evil day comes — as come, unless the tide turns, it surely will. And when a man of your position writes to me about such matters, I feel no labour too great which may help him even in the least to see and to teach the good old way by which St. Paul and Augustine struggled out of mists and quagmires, to which any in these days are, after all, shallow and transparent " Let me thank you most cordially for your hint about chloroform. As for ' forbidden ground,' can there be forbidden ground between hus- band and husband ; or between two human beings who wish to diminish by one atom the amount of human suffering ? .... It is a real delight to my faith, as well as to my pity, to know that that suffering of child- birth can be avoided. It is the one thing which I hate and curse, as the deepest paradox and puzzle upon earth ; but when it is proved to me that man can ' by obeying nature, conquer her,' in that also I am content The popular superstition that it is the consequence of the fall I cannot but smile at — seeing it is contradicted by the plain words of the text which is quoted to prove it — ' I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.' .... It being yet a puzzle to me, as a Cambridge man, how the multiplication of o can produce a number, o X A" used to = o, did it not ? " Pray read the ' History of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy,' by Maurice ; a little golden book. It is a new world of thought and reve- lation in the true sense " TO THE SAME. '* I. Man is God^s Image, " He need not, therefore, be equal with God in any Lockite sense of ' as big as^ but in the sense of the Greek tVos (invaluable metaphysic word), in which you may say that a miniature, however small, is l., in idea). Chi'ist the Archetypal Man. 327 " 2. Christ is the Son of Alan, i.e., as I take it, the absolute and archetypal man. " I hold, privately, that we have a right to say, on the authority of— * ' the Lord was xwx^o. flesh ' (not made man), that he was man before the incarnation, just as much as He is now. I may be wrong : in the meanwhile, I find such fearful difficulty in making Christians believe that He is man since His ascension (in any real and practical sense), that I shrink utterly from puzzling them with the notion that He was ' the Son of Man who is in heaven,' even while He was upon earth ; especially as Augustine has given it against me by the palpable paralogism, ' He calls himself, while on earth, the Son of Man who is in heaven, because as So7i of God he was still in heaven.' To which I can only answer, If so, why did not the Lord say so himself, and leave so strange an ambiguity to be corrected by Augustine ? An reste, I send you back all your own letter, because I think that, taking my ground, your second page explains the whole matter. " Next, as to the Athanasian Creed, I too have my little (it is a very little) quarrel with that ' equal to the Father, as touching His Godhead : but inferior to the Father, as touching his manhood.' The former clause I accept toto co^lo ; because the Cardinal idea, on which the whole hinges, is that like begets like, that the very names of Father and Son, therefore, imply perfect equality and likeness. On this I cannot insist too strongly. Arianism (a hair's breadth of it) nullifies ipso facto the very meaning of the words Father and Son, and makes not a few texts, but the whole New Testament nonsense. But the second clause puzzles me. I don't see why it is true. I don't see what error it guards against; but I am contented to believe that the magnificent meta- physician (whoever he was), who wrote that creed, did see, and knew very. well which devil he was fighting; and, having faith in the per- manence of devils, I have no doubt that that clause stands to fight some past devil, to be revealed again hereafter, and one who may be very probably a present devil also, and buzzing about my ears now, just because I don't see what that clause means. I am always frightened if I don't understand a thing of this kind. Who knows but the Devil has a trap set just there for one, and his hands tight over one's eyes meanwhile? "As for dividing the substance, I think that is just what you must do in Christ, ea ipsct qnd, Christ, but not in God. As the reasonable soul and flesh are one man (there you have two substances), so God and man are one Christ (two substances again, united in one person). In God you have three persons united in one sub- stance. I can conceive dimly both these, but the whole matter is very obscure to us now, owing to the word substance being 328 diaries Kings ley. originally identical with the Greek vTroo-rao-ty. The Greek has no word for person, but ' upostasis,' and I think it the very best, and should be inclined to say that a man's personality was his substance, id quod stat subtcr, and holds together and makes a one thing, all his properties and accidents. But unfortunately the Athanasian Creed, in Latin and Enghsh, is a translation into Latin Aristotelian language, i.e., Nominalist language, of thought worked out in Greek Platonic realist language, hence vnoaraais and substance, and have actually changed places, and while the Greek says that there are three virocrTaans in God, the Latin forbids us to divide his substance i.e., literally his vmaTaaLs. Hence endless confusion, — as in all other theologic matters, — to deliver us out of which I can only look for a fire of God from heaven to burn up the chaff, as great as fell in Luther's days, and pray Him that I may not be burned up with my own chaff, pen, ink, and paper, and vanish into oblivion, Hela, and the spiritual dung-hill, where fools rot, in that great day of the Lord, which is coming as a snare on the face of the whole earth, whose judgments will begin, as usual, at the house of God, by judging us parsons, and trying our work with fire. . . ." TO , ESQ.* EvERSLEY, Whit Tuesday, 1852. *' My dear Mr. " Sad as your letter was, it gave me much pleasure : it is always a pleasure to see life springing out of death — health returning after disease, though, as doctors know, the recovery from asphyxia or drowning is always as painful as the temporary death itself was painless. .... Faith is born of doubt. ' It is not life but death where nothing stirs.' I take all these struggles of yours as simply so many signs that your Father in heaven is treating you as a father, that He has not forsaken you, is not offended with you, but is teaching you in the way best suited to your own idiosyncrasy, the great lesson of lessons. ' Empty thyself, and God will fill thee.' I am not a man of a mystical or romantic turn of mind ; but I do say and know, both from reason and experience, that we must be taught, even though it be by being allowed for a while to make beasts of ourselves, that we are of ourselves, and in ourselves, nothing better than — as you see in the savage — a sort of magnified beast of prey, all the more terrible for its wondrous facul- ties j that neither intellect nor strength of will can save us from degra- * A young man of nineteen, to whom he was personally a stranger, but who wrote to him laying bare his whole heart, having woke up from a course of sin and unbelief in black despair. Fir Grove. 329 dation ; that they may be just as powerful for evil as for good ; and that what we want to make us true juen, over and above that which we bring into the world with us, is some sort of God-given instinct, motive, and new principle of life in us, which shall make us not only see the right, and the true, and the noble, but love it, and give up our wills and hearts to it, and find in the confession of our o\Vn weakness a strength, in the subjection of our own will a freedom, in the utter care- lessness about self a self-respect, such as we have never known before. " Do not — do not fancy that any confession of yours to me can lower you in my eyes. My dear young man, I went through tlie same devil's sewer, with a thousand times the teaching and advantages which you have had. Who am I, of all men, to throw stones at you? 15ut take your sorrows, not to me, but to your Father in heaven. If that name. Father, mean anything, it must mean that He will not turn away from His wandering child, in a way in which you would be ashamed to turn away from yours. If there be pity, lasting affection, patience in man, they must have come from Him. They, above all things, must be His likeness. Believe that He possesses them a million times more fully than any human being. " St. Paul knew well, at least, the state of mind in which you are. He said that he had found a panacea for it; and his words, to judge from the way in which they have taken root, and spread, and con- (jucred, must have some depth and life in them. Why not try them ? Just read the first nine chapters of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and write me your heart about them. But never mind what any body, Unitarian or Trinitarian,* may say they mean. Read them as you would a Greek play — taking for granted that they mean the simplest and most obvious sense which can be put upon them. " Let me hear more — I long for another letter. I need not say that I consider your confidence an honour, and shall keep it sacred. " Do not consult ■"■•"" *'"■■•. I love him well, but he has no evangel for you. I should be glad to see him in the state you are in now. It would be nearer health." In the summer of 1852 the Right Hon. Thomas Erskinc, with his family, settled at Fir Grove, Evcrsley. For the next twelve happy years he was friend and counsellor to the Rector, and to the parish his influence and example was a priceless blessing. The Judge and his family relieved him of a load of expense and consequent anxiety in the matter of the parish charities, * His correspondent had been brought up a Unitarian, 330 Charles Kingsley. which had hitherto fallen almost exclusively on the Rector ; regular district visiting began, and at Fir Grove, which was henceforth like a second home to him and his wife, some of the most charming friendships of that period of his life were formed. It was a new era in Eversley, and with fresh help and fresh hope he worked cheerfully, and had the heart once more to turn his thoughts to poetry. The " Christian Socialist" at this time came to an end, and Parson Lot spoke his " last words " in its last number, concluding thus : — " Let us say little and work the more. We shall be the more re- spected, and the more feared too for it. People will begin to believe that we really know what we want, and really do intend to get it, and really believe in its righteousness. And the spectacle of silent working faith is one at once so rare and so noble, that it tells more, even on opponents, than ten thousand platform pyrotechnics. In the mean time it will be no bad thing for us if we are beaten sometimes. Success at first is dangerous, and defeat an excellent medicine for testing people's honesty — for setting them earnestly to work to see what they want, and what are the best methods of attaining it. Our sound thrashings as a nation in the first French war were the making of our armies ; and it is good for an idea, as well as for a man, to ' bear the yoke in his youth.' The return match will come off, and many, who are now our foes, will then be our friends ; and in the mean time, ' The proper impulse has been given. Wait a little longer.' " Parson Lot." This was his last signature as Parson Lot. At the same time he writes to the editor : "If you want an Epicedium, I send one. It is written in a hurry, so if you like, reject it: but I have tried to get the maximum of terseness and melody. " So die, thou child of stormy dawn, Thou winter flower, forlorn of nurse ; Chilled early by the bigot's curse, The pedant's frown, the worldling's yawn. Fair death, to fall in teeming June, When every seed whch drops to earth Takes root, and wins a second birth From steaming shower and gleaming moon : Hypatia and the Monks. Fall warm, fall fast, thou mellow rain ; Thou rain of God, make fat the land ; That roots, which parch in burning sand, May bud to flower and frait again. To grace, perchance, a fairer morn In mighty lands beyond the sea, While honour falls to such as we From hearts of heroes yet unborn. Who in the light of fuller day, Of loving science, holier laws. Bless us, faint heralds of their cause, Dim beacons of their glorious way. Failure ? while tide-floods rise, and boil Round cape and isle, in port and cove. Resistless, star-led from above : What though our tiny wave recoil ? Jiinec), 1852. " Charles Kingsley. TO J. M. LUDLOW, Esq. EvERsi.EY Rectory, June 6, 1852. " Too tired, confused, and happy to work, I sit down for a chat with you. *' I. About the last number of ' Hypatia.' I dare say you are right. I wanted, for artistic purposes, to keep those two chapters cool and calm till just the very end of each; and it is very difficult to be quiet without also being dull. But this, you know, is only after all rough copy ; and such running criticisms are of the very greatest help to me. About the ' Saga :' I sent it to Max Miiller, who did not like it at all. he said ; because, though he highly approved of the form (and gave me a good deal of learned advice /// re), it was too rational and moral and rounded, he said, and not irrational and vast, and dreamy, and hyper- bolic — like a true saga. But I told him, that as a parson to the English public, I was expected to point a moral ; and so I put Midler's criti- cism, who complains of its respectable Benjamin Franklin tone, and yours too, into the mouth of Agilmund. " As for the monks : 'pon honour they are slow fellows — but then they li'cre so horribly slow in reality. And I can't see but that Pambo's palaver in my tale is just what I find in Rosweyde's ' Vitre Patrum,' and Athanases' ' Life of Anthony.' Almost every expression of Pambo's is a crib from some one, word for word. And his instances are historic ones. Moreover, you must recollect, that Arsenius was no mere monk, 332 Charles Kings ley. but a finished gentleman and court intriguer— taken ill with superstition .... As for the Sermons," I am very glad you like any of them. About what you don't like, I will tell you honestly, I think that I have not said anything too strong. People must be cured of their horrible notions of God's arbitrary power — His 'satisfaction' in taking vengeance — His inflicting a permanent arbitrary curse as a penalty — His being the author of suffering or evil in any way. I have been driven to it by this. It is easy enough in the case of a holy person to use the stock phrase of its having 'pleased God to afflict them,' because one sees that the affliction is of use ; but you can't and daren't say that God is pleased, i. e., satisfied, or rejoiced to afflict poor wretched heathens in St. Giles's, to whom, as far as we can see, the affliction is of no use, but the very reverse. The school formula (not a Scripture one at all, mind) works very well in the school, when at his desk or in the pulpit the good pedant is bringing out his system to a select audience of ' Christian friends,' and forgetting, he and they too, that outside the walls lies a whole world who, he confesses himself, have no more to do with his for- mula (at least till they find themselves in hell at last) than sticks or stones. But if I am to preach a gospel, it must have to do with the people out- side the tract-and-sermon-world, as well as inside it ; and then the formula, like most others, don't fit " If, however, I found it in Scripture, I should believe it : what I want is plain inductive proof from texts. The ' it has pleased the Lord to bruise Him,' is just the very opposite. The pith and marrow of the 53rd of Isaiah being, that He of whom it speaks is afflicted, not for the good of His own soul, but for others — that He is ennobled by being sacrificed. It seems to me, that the only way to escape the dilemma really is, to believe that God is what He has revealed Himself to be — 'A Father.' If a child said, ' I was naughty, and it pleased my father to whip me for it,' should we not feel that the words were hollow and absurd? And if F. died to-morrow, God forbid that I should say of my Father in heaven, it pleased Him to take her from me. If the Lord Jesus is the express image of His Father's glory, then His Father cannot be like that. For could I dare believe that it would not pain the Blessed Lord infinitely more than it would pain me, if He was com- pelled by my sins, or by any other necessity of His government of this rebellious world, to inflict on me, not to mention on the poor little child- ren that bitter agony ? In the face of such real thoughts, school terms vanish, and one has to rest on realities; on the belief in a human-hearted, loving, sorrowing Lord, and of A Father whose image He, in some inex- * National Sermons, First Series. Sorrow ajid its Lessons. 333 plicable way is or one would go mad. And I have always found, in talking to my people in private, that all second-hand talk out of books about the benefits of affliction, was rain against a window pane, blinding the view — but never entering. But I ca7i make a poor wretch believe — 'the Lord Jesus is just as sorry as you that you have compelled Him for a while to deliver you over to Satan for the punishment of the flesh, that your soul may be saved thereby.' Till you ca» make them believe that God is not pleased, but ^/j-pleased to afflict them, I never found them any the better for their affliction. They take either a mere hypocritically fatalist view of their sorrow, or else they are terrified and despairing, and fancy themselves under a curse, and God angry with them, and are ready to cry, ' Let us curse God and die ! If God be against me, what matter who is for me ? ' And so with * * * * j have been trying hard to make him believe that his sorrows come from himself and the devil, just because he has been believing that they came from God. He has been believing and telling me that 'he is under a curse : that God's wrath is permanently abiding on him for acts com- mitted at school years ago, which never can be undone, and that there- fore — ' If God be against him, what matter who is for him?' " Now I have been trying to tell him, as I do every one — ' If God be for you, what matter who is against you !' I have been saying to him what Anthony used to say, as Pambo quotes him to Arsenius. I have been trying to make him understand that he is not in the devil's hands one moment longer than he likes, because God is as much the enemy of his sorrows as he is of his own, and that the moment he will allow God to remove those sorrows, the Lord will rejoice in doing so Am I to tell him it pleased God that he should do such and such wrong, or am I to tell him, that 'it pleased the devil into whose power, not God but you yourself put yourself years ago, deliberately separating your own will from God, and determining to be a law unto yourself, and to do exactly what was right in the sight of your own eyes ? But God abhors your misery; God yearns to lift you out of it.' If I can make him feel that first, then, and then only, I can go on to say, ' But He will not lift you out of it till it has taught you the lesson which He intends you to learn ; ' because then (instead of canting generalities, which, God forgive me, I too often use, and feel ready to vomit my own dirty soul out the next minute) I can tell him what lesson God intends him to learn by affliction, namely, the very lesson which I have been trying to teach him, — the ^■ery lesson which I preached in the three sermons on the cholera — that God is the foe of all misery and affliction ; that He yearns to raise us out of it, and to show us that in His presence is the fulness of life and joy, and that nothing but our own wilfulness and 00^ Charles Kmgsley. imperfection keep us in it for an instant. I dare not say this of A. or B. I leave them to impute sin to themselves, but I will impute to myself, and not to God's will, the cause of every finger ache I have, because I know that I never had a sorrow which I did not cause myself, or make necessary for myself by some sin of my own ; and I will stand by the service of the ' Visitation of the Sick,' which represents the man's sins as the ^reason of the sickness, and his recovery as God's will and desire. ' He doth not afflict willingly or grieve the children of men,' is a plain Scripture, and I will not explain it away to suit any theory whatsoever about the origin of evil ; but believe that the first chapter of Job, and the two accounts of David's numbering the people, tell us all we can know about it. Thus, so far from allowing that what I say of God's absolute love of our happiness and hatred of our misery is the half-truth, which must be limited by anything else, I say it is the whole truth, the root truth, which must limit all theories about the benefit of suffering, or any other theories, and must be preached absolutely, nakedly, unreservedly first, as the Lord Jesus preached it, instead of any such theories or schemes (however true) to be of any real benefit to men. " I know all this is incoherent ; but I don't pretend to have solved this or any other problem. If you prove to me seven large self-contra- dictions in my own harangue it won't matter. All you will do, will be to drive me to a Socratic dialogue, which is the only way I can argue. " This is the end of my say, which I could not finish the other night." TO THE SAME. EVERSLEY, June, 1852. " Instead of ignorant discourse about Hroswithe (which I opine signifieth a horse-collar — to grin through !) will you be so good as to get Rosweyde's ' Vitse Patrum,' and read them ? If you do you will a thing or two diskiver. He was — that is, if I recollect right — some old Benedictine of the i6th or 17th century; I'm sure I forget The Folio containeth original Hues of the great Syrian and Egyptian hermits and Coenobiarchs. Athanases' * Life of iVnthony,' if I mistake not, is there in full. They are, when not originals, compilations from the earliest sources, with notes, and I think scholia. You have Paul, Anthony, Saba, Macarius, Nilus, &c. ; and that Nilus, if you want to know a great deal about the time, is an invaluable fellow. He lived about 450, in the Sinai mountains. His letters were published by Leo Allatius, 1688; his 'tractates,' by Suarez, 1623; and there are anecdotes of him without end, But almost the most interesting part Monks' Silence and Monks' Speech. 335 of Rosweyde are two, I think, lengthy sets of anecdotes of hermits — he and she — and of the great Laura, wliich are like nothing you ever read in your life, and bear the stamp of authenticity on their foreheads. They reach through, I think, the 5th and 6th centuries, and give one an insight into the hearts and ways of the old folks, which one gets no where else. They seem to be traditions of great people handed down in each Laura. But he will give you his authorities. " I think, after ten years of grubbing in Monk-Latin, I rather do know the fulsome, bombastic touch of the later monk, who saith unto himself, ' Go to, let us paint an ideal.' From its first dawn in Simeon INIetaphrastes and the Pseudo-Acts of Gregory Thaumaturgus, down to its full evil sunshine in Alban Butler. You must know it too. Read those anecdotes, and see if it is there. To me they are the Homer of Monasticism. " I like your estimate of Jerome. He was the Bentley of his age. And I think your theory about those tremendous monks being required to conquer the Teutons as true as possible. I recollect the passage in the letter to Eustochium well enough. But I think if you will look at Basil's exquisite sketch of his early Laura life up in — where was it ? — On the Iris, near Neo-Csesarea, .... you will find the soft^ graceful, genial, cotivcrsatiotial side of the monk life, which I for my own purposes pre- ferred. ;And J'll tell you why. I could not bring in Jerome and the fierce side, because I have already the worst and most brutal fruits of it in those Nitrian monks ; and in justice to Christianity, I had to keep things calm and soft as much as I could. x\nd therefore I in- troduce, a little way on, not so ugly a picture as Jerome, whom if I drew I must have given offence ; but beloved Augustine, with all his calm grace and large-heartedness, and polished subtlety and learning, he is the redeeming point on the south of the Mediterranean. " As for the Egyptian monks' silence, you are perfectly right. But they did talk — when allowed — which is just what I show in the first chapter of them. Arsenius is a privileged person. The other monks are kept where they were — dumb lay-figures — praying machines. You observe I don't make them talk. " But, honestly, I am not satisfied with that chapter ; I will tell you why. Arsenius has a right to talk as he does. But Pambo's manner is wrong ; it wants the very element which most proves to me the authenticity of Rosweyde's anecdotes, because it is like nothing you find elsewhere in monk-writings — the rugged, curt, mysterious, epigram- matic, half-snappish, half-arch way of putting everything; or rather suggesting it, and then relapsing into silent thought, which was, I fancy, strained to an affectation among the Egyptians. So I will re-write the 2,;},6 Charles Kings! cy. chapter. Nov/ can a poor son of Adam, with a parish and three children, and as lazy a soul as man ever was plagued with, say more ? " Concerning the. Homer. '^" It is flat, because it is Homer literal ; taken out of its sounding language, and falling dead on our more pam- pered fancies. Besides, I chose a flat bit on purpose. But when I read it to F. she was quite delighted with it, and said it was the first thing which had ever made her really feel what the real beauty and noble- ness of Homer was "As for the theological argument, it's always the same. I agree with every word you say, and yet you won't agree with me. Why can't you hold your view and mine too? Aren't they identical (except about the idea of God's almighty power being the first of which man is conscious). His love is, practically as it ought to be doctrinally, the first in a child's mind, and if you don't make it so, you'll find yourself with the child in much the same fix as Robinson Crusoe, when he began by telling Friday that God was almighty: 'Why God not kill debbil, then ?' which is the root of all Spinozism, Neo-Platonism, and all the rest, starting from an intellectual, not from a moral idea concerning God. " But I won't argue any more ; so don't you answer me, mind ! I wonder what makes me so chatty this morning — mere idleness, I do believe ; never mind. I can't settle again for a few days, and I can't work hard, because I can't play hard, on account of this mighty rain ; and unless I get frantic exercise of body, my mind won't work. I should like to have a 'Nicor' to slay every afternoon; wouldn't I write eight hours a day then ! As it is, my only nicor to-day has been a rabbit about as long as this sheet of paper, which I, my man, and my dog valiantly captured half-an-hour ago in the middle of the flower-beds ! * But slew him not ; awe kept our souls from that,' as Andromache remarks in a certain novel. ' Tlierefore we took him by his silver ears, And made for him a hutch with iron hoops, And put him in the tool-house ; and around The children of the baby-nursing dame The imps who haunt the garden, danced and yelled.' " What do you think of that for a parody ? F. remains very, very well, and so does the infant." TO THE SAME. " Thanks for your critique of * * * * 's book, which I have read a great deal of. You have just said for me what I have been * Hypatia, chap. viii. A Dead Christ. 'i^ii trying lately in vain to get into words. Thank God that there is one more man in the world who has found out the great new metaphysico- theologic law, that if a man sees me, he sees me, whether he happens to know my name or not ! ! ! How has the 'religious world ' fallen into the notion that no one believes in Christ, who does not call Him by the same appellation as themselves ? i. From the dogma-olatry of the last two centuries (Popish and Protestant), Christ has not seemed to them a li\ing Man, or God either, but a black formula on white paper. " 2. Because, as old Fox and Naylor told them all, they have been believing in a dead Christ, not in the live one of the 'Revelations ' — a historic Christ, absent since a.d. 33. And it seems to me as if The Blessed One was just saying no to that saying (I speak with reverence, but surely He wishes us to search out His dealings with man). ' The knowledge of Me as a present King and friend is far more important to you than knowledge of the facts of my life eighteen hundred years ago, because that last is only the cause, the root \ the former is the effect, the fruit. I was born, crucified, rose, that I might be what I AM.' Then, Christ seems (I speak humbly) to be now-a-days trying the Church as He did the disciples on the road to Emmaus, appearing in disguise and anonymous. Cannot He do what he likes ? Is He bound by the Thirty-nine Articles, or Robinson's ' Christian System ? ' Then those who do not know Him, but only facts about Him, will prove their ignorance by denying His presence; those who have Him in their hearts, who personally know and love Him, will know Him without a label; whether in * * ** * ■■'s heart, or in any other verbal heresiarch's. So far I seem to see. But there is more belonging to this — in my eyes the great theological revelation of the day, first started to me by Maurice in Peterborough Cathedral, which I want to talk over with you." TO THE SAME. Jiuic, 1852. As Browning says : ' Come in any shape, As a victor crowned with vine Or a beaten slave, Only come, 'Tis thy coming which I crave' " In three weeks' time, or a month at furthest, we shall be delighted to see thee. My beloved roses will be just in glory, the fish will be just in season ; thanks to the late sj^ring. My old hunter will be up from grass, vol.. I. z 2,^S Charles Kingsley. and proud to carry you and me — per gig — to see the best of men, John Paine, saint and hop-grower, of Farnham, Surrey. Also we will talk of all matters in heaven and earth. That is, unless I am so deeply unthankful, as indeed I am, for all my blessings that the Giver finds it necessary, against His will, to send some bitter among my paradise of sweets .... But What has become of a huge packet I sent to you through Louis ? It contained a burlesque novel in G. W. Reynolds's style, which I had highly finished, and would not lose not for no money. It must and shall be found ; therefore disgorge ! " Oh ! ah ! eh ! .... I have laid a poem and it won't hatch ! Oh for Mr. Cantelo* and his ecc-ecc-ecc cackle callobion ! . . . . Perseus and Andromeda .... I have written a lot in blank verse, and a lot in the metre of Hood's * Hero and Leander ' (a noble poem, and so little known), and I can't please myself Rhymed metres run away with you, and you can't get the severe, curt, simple objectivity you want in them, and unrhymed blank verse is very bold in my hands, because I won't write ' poetic diction,' but only plain English — and so I can't get mythic grandeur enough. Oh for the spirit of Tennyson's ' Gilnone ! ' AVrite, pity, and advise. "... What you say *** writes to a friend about my ' ergon ' being poetry is quite true. I could not write ' Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and I can write poetry .... there is no denying it : I do feel a different being when I get into metre — I feel like an otter in the water, instead of an otter ashore. He can run fast enough ashore, and keep the hounds at a tearing gallop, as my legs found this spring in Snowdonia, but Avhen he takes water, then indeed he becomes beautiful, full of divine grace and freedom, and exuberance of power. Go and look at him in the Zoological Gar- dens, and you'll see what I mean. When I have done * Hypatia ' I will write no more novels. I will write poetry — not as a profession — but I will keep myself for it, and I do think I shall do something that will live. I feel my strong faculty is that sense oi form, which, till I took to poetry, always came out in drawing, drawing, but poetry is the true sphere, combining painting and music and history all in one." TO THE SAME. May 2, 1852. " I send you more Andromeda You will see at once the difference in style between this opening and the latter part — right or wrong, it was instinctive. I felt myself on old mythic, idolatrous ground, and went slowly and artificially, feeling it unreal, and wishing to make Then hatching chickens by artificial heat at the Egyptian Hall. The Androfitcda Myth. 339 readers feel it such. Then wlien I get into real human Greek life, I can burst out and rollick along in the joy of existence. Do you see what I mean ? And if you do, is it too wire-drawn (not for the critics to see, for one expects nothing of them) but for the many to fed, they can't tell why, as they read it ? It is those unconscious, or rather subter-conscious effects which are so vital. ' The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, and canst not tell ' — you understand me — the spirit of a thing which simple folk appreciate often in proportion to their ignorance of word analysis " You know that Andromeda myth is a very deep one. It happened at Joppa, and she must have been a Canaanite ; and I cannot help fancying that it is some remnant of old human sacrifices to the dark powers of nature, which died out throughout Greece before the higher, sunnier faith in human gods ; and that I shall just bring out, or bring in, enougli to make it felt without hurting the classicality, by contrasting her tone about the gods with that of Perseus, whom she is ready to worship as a being of a higher race, with his golden hair and blue eyes. Oh, my dear man, the beauty of that whole myth is unfathomable ; I love it, and revel in it more and more the longer I look at it. If I have made one drawing of Perseus and Andromeda I have made fifty, and burnt them all in disgust. If I conceive a thought (objective, that is, of course), I almost always begin by drawing it again and again, and then the incompleteness of the pencil (for paint I can't) drives me to words to give it colour and chiaroscuro " I was reading Tennyson's ' O^none ' through last night, and thought it more wonderful and glorious than ever. But when you come to me I have a poem (Santa Maura) to show you, I can hardly bear to read it myself; but it is the deepest and clearest thing I have yet done. " I send a scrap more rough copy, which I think more purely Homeric. It is Perseus rushing on the Ore — * As when an osprey, aloft, dark eyebrowed, royally crested . . * * * * * * Halting, he wheels round slowly, in doubt at the weight of his quarry ; Whether to clutch it alive, or fall on the wretch like a plummet, Stunning with terrible heel the life of the brain in the hind head.' Mind the ' terrible Jieel' That is right, a hawk strikes with his heel, and after grips with his whole foot. A fish or duck killed by a hawk is always scored up the neck and hind head ; sometimes ripped up right along the back. If you'll consider ; striking his prey at immense sjieed from behind, he couldn't drive his front claws in. z 2 340 Charles Kingslcy. '' The dark eyebrowed is Homer's ' melanophrus,' and is tlie thing which struck me as most magnificent in a large osprey which I came upon ten yards from me in the Issthal. " For the same reason, doubt not, ' the wind rattUng in his pinions.' A falcon does not, as the herd think, rush silently down head foremost, but drives himself noisily down heels foremost by a succession of pre- ternatural fla])s, the philosophy of which I could never make out. A gull does the same, though he strikes with his beak when he wants to force himself under water ; anything on top he takes as an owl does, by sliding down, or not quite, for an owl's silent fall is more mysterious still. He catches with his beak, and then takes the mouse out of his mouth with his hand, like a Christian. But there's enough natural his- tory for the nonce. There's a hawk ' stooping ' (sketch enclosed). '' . . . I send you more Andromeda. F. says the first ten or twelve lines of Andromeda's speech arc inferior and weak, and I don't doubt she is right. Will you see what they want ? I have written them over three times, and can't suit myself Now, mind ; I want to keep them low for — " I. A young girl who has been standing naked in the spray all night, poor little thing, can't spout ; only when she begins to suspect that this sun god and his vengeance are nothing, she rises into the strength of a new idea. " 2. She is a barbarian, and has no notion (besides fetichism) beyond pleasure and pain, as of an animal. It is not till the thinking, sen- tentious Greek, with his awful beauty, inspires her, that she develops into woman. " I must keep down parts of the poem to give variety ; and it is often ix: better to keep down (quoad imagery) the parts which stand out themselves (or ought to) by pathos, especially in objective classic poetry, when, as in Brownlow North's ' Skaters,' action is everything, and the scenery itself is grand and awful enough to raise the general tone. Moreover, don't you think the classical poets (Greeks, I mean — hang Latin Cockney-flunkeys) did keep down their speeches in that way, and lay on their strength in the objective parts ? I speak of Homer, Hesiod, and the Bucolists. Surely Theocritus does. And weren't they right ? for if you make your speeches the ergon of the poem, it becomes dra- matic, not narrative, and you overstep the form you have chosen. " Now mind, I don't know that all this is not bosh, every word ; and of course, it excuses no Aveakness or niaiscrie, or any other defect. Just tell me carefully, for I will, please God, keep and work over this Andromeda till I have made it something that will live. I don't agree with you about not polishing too much. If you are a verse- Trochees and Spondees. 341 maker, you will, of course, rub off the edges and the silvering; but if you are a poet, and have an idea and one key-note running through the whole, which you can't for the life define to yourself, but which is there out of the abysses, defining you ; then every polishing is a bring- ing the thing nearer to that idea, and there is no more reason in not polishing, than there is for walking about with a hole or a spot on your trousers, a thing which dri\es me mad. If I ha\-e a spot on my clothes, I am conscious of nothing else the whole day long, and just as conscious of it in the heart of Bramshill Common, as if I were going down Picca- dill}' Dear man, did you ever ride a lame horse, and wish that the earth would open, and swallow you, though there wasn't a soul within miles? Or did you ever sit and look at a handsome or well- made man, and thank God from your heart for having allowed you such a privilege and lesson ? Oh, there was a butcher's nephew playing cricket in Bramshill last week, whom I would have walked ten miles to see, in spite of the hideous English dress. One looked forward with delight to what he would be 'in the resurrection.' .... " I think your hint about what Andromeda ought to feel, perfect. Not that I yield to your trocheism one atom. My ear always demands the equivalent of the ' lost short syllable.' In that line, for instance, which you quote from Longfellow, I don't like it, because the trochees weaken it, and that in spite of the great help which they get from ha\ing a comma, or short syllable ' rest ' after each of them. I am quite willing to allow a comma, or other stop, to lengthen a doubt- ful or ' common ' syllable ; for instance — •' and, breaking away, he re- treated,' but not an absolutely short one. To my ear, that verse de- manded to be longer, and repeating it again and again, that exactly what it wanted was a fourth trochee, e.g., four slowlys instead of three, thus supplying just the three short syllables lost by putting three trochees for three spondees. This was a great corroboration to me of my faith, that real classic prosody and ear, when the ear is sufficiently practised, coin- cide. But that verse is not a hexameter. It is a pretty loose form of trochaic verse. Base three trochees, and then two verses combined by an anaeresis at the beginning — .Slowly, slowly, slowly, and slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, and so forth, but has nothing to do with hexameters, the base of which, I believe with Maiden, was three dactyl verses, — 342 Charles Kings ley. unless, indeed, it was identical at first with the primeval Gothic double dactyl of the Edda. Tlien the last syllables cut off, and the two con- nected by an anaeresis — V... -{■ That the last foot was once a dactyl the allowing a spondee shows, and that the feminine caesura — as in this example, and not the male, was the original one, I believe with Maiden, and have, as you may see, adopted it wherever I can, as a matter of ear. One great secret of the run of Greek hexameters, is the predominance of the female csesura. The male should be used next oftenest, to give strength and smartness ; but never where softness or roll is required " I want to aim at the clearest and sharpest objectivity, and even in the speeches of Perseus and Andromeda, the subjective element must come out in sententiousness, not in sentiment. I shall read up the t'Edipus Coloneus, and the Antigone, before I do them, to catch the sententiosity. But I never had dreamed of daring to write hexameters. I should write them merely by ear, as I firmly believe Homer wrote his, and make a word scan two different ways, as he does, whenever I chose, minding always to make accent and metre coincide. As for hexameters being foreign to our language, if you will mind the caesura, and split your sense at that as often as convenient, you can talk prose in hexameters just as easily as in blank verse. Look (it is Coleridge's hint) at the great quantity of the Bible and Prayer-book which is actually unconscious hexameter already. The difficulty is, that while ours is a highly dactylic language, it is not a highly spondaic one, because we have hardly any real diphthongs Now, here I send you what I have rattled off in the last two hours, in the act of dressing and breakfasting. Show it no mercy. F likes it It is a fragment of the vision of the Nereids which pass before Andromeda as she is on the rock. She has been told that it is to appease their wrath that she is sacrificed, and is much astonished to see them go their own way without seeing her, perfectly self-happy. " Onward they came in their joy, and around them the lamps of the sea-nymphs. Myriad fiery globes, swam panting and heaving, and rainbows Crimson and azure and emerald, were broken in star showers, lighting Far through the wine-dark depths of the crystal the gardens of Nereus, Coral and sea-fan and tangle, the blooms and the palm of the ocean, Onward they came in their joy, more white than the foam which they scattered, Laughing and singing, and tossing and twining, while eager, the Tritons Latin and Greek Rules. 343 Blinded with kisses their eyes, unreproved, and above them in worship Hovered the tern, and the sea-gull swept past them on silvery pinions, Echoing softly their laughter ; around them the wantoning dolpliins Sighed as they plunged, full of love ; and the great sea-horses which bore them Curved up their crests in their pride to the delicate arms of the maidens, Pawing the spray into gems, till a fiery rainfall, unharming. Sparkled and gleamed on the limbs of the nymphs, and the coils of the mermen. Onward they went in their joy, bathed round with the fiery coolness, Needing nor sun nor moon, self-lighted, immortal ; but others. Pitiful, floated in silence apart ; in their bosoms the sea-boys. Slain by the wrath of the seas, swept down by the anger of Nereus ; " " We have many syllables in English which are neither long nor short, but between the two, varying with position ; and it requires great nicety of ear to know when they approach most to long or short, for instance — ' sighed at each plunge,' the ch -f pi making each all but long. " Sighed at each roll (the r being always a double consonant in Eng- lish, or ought to be), not quite so long, but still a bad dactyl. ' Sighed at each fall,' each being honestly short before f " Again, I don't think the Greek and Latin rule of a vowel being sometimes long before a mute and liquid will do in English ; be- cause we pronounce evidently more delicately than they. " ' Took a breath,' always will be an anapaest in English, In Irish it will be, ' took a be-reath,' introducing a second short syllable. "And this explains the Latin and Greek rule. They called cauda bruti, Cauda be-ruti, and so seemed to make the (a) in cauda long, when to the ear it was really the second syllable of a dactyl, and they didn't often do it — and we should never. " Moreover, I think a syllable ending in two consonants can't be short before one beginning with two. Though I hardly complain of your ' shop front, the,' because nt has a liquid in it, and is what the Latins hadn't, and we have, a diphthong-consonant, and th is the same. " Every argument you bring convinces me more and more that the theory of our prosody depending on accent is false, and that it really is very nearly identical with the Greek. I don't agree with you about a's, and i's, and e's, and u's being made long by accent merely. You may make them so, but you won't write melodious verses so, I fear. '•' Now for your exam]:)les : — " Kingsley, trochee of course. " Maurice, ditto " Mansfield, last syllal^le common, depending on initial of next word (two liquids). " l^ouis, trochee full. 344 C/iarics Kiiiqshy. " Ludlow, spondee. " Penrose, spondee. "And to prove it, the majority pronounce it so; it happens as I gene- rally hear it, having heard it ever since I was three years old, to be one of the very few perfect un-compound spondees in English. The East- country folks make it what you call an ' accentual trochee.' Pe'nrose the Cornish (where it is a native Celtic name, composed of Pen (a herd) and Rose) an 'accentual iamb.,' or rather spondee, ' Penr-rose.' You should hear a Cornishman give it out. " I have been reading Whewell's dialogues on hexameters in Fraser, which support your theory, and are on the whole excellent. But I don't quite agree yet. I am glad to hear (being a lazy man) that I have, if I choose, more license than I wish for : but I do think that, with proper care, you may have as many spondees, without hurting the rhythm, in English , as you have in Greek, and my ear is tortured by a trochee instead. . . . " I send you a little bit of induction anent spondees — real, not your dirty weak trochees. Folks say there are a great lack of them in Eng- lish, and truly. But in fifty lines of (excluding the terminal trochee spondee) — i. Homer are 48 spcndees; 2. Lucretius, 87 ; 3. Virgil, 116; 4. Ovid's Metamorphoses, about the same; 5. My Andromeda, 32; 6. Hermann and Dorothea, 66. " Therefore, taking Homer as the ideal, our English is not so far off, in spite of its want of spondees. I took Goethe from that exquisite opening of the third canto ; but I must say that either I can't read German, or it goes horribly like a cat in walnut shells quoad rhythm. Virgil I took from that blasphemous doggrel, yclept the opening of the Georgics, and between such bits as ' Curs' atqu' aud ' and ' Ingi'edere et votis jam nunc assuesce vocari ; ' (the last four syllables of which only are not torturing), and so forth. My teeth (I haven't many) were pretty near broken by the time I had read through fifty lines. Ovid always makes me inchned to vomit, so I'll pass him by ; Lucretius is ... . but always noble ; and Homer — greater and greater every day, in soul and in sound. But it seems that in proportion to the badness of the poet is the quantity of his spondees. " I must try for Homers average of a spondee a line. But a great deal — few know how much, is to be done by choosing sonorous words, with big vowels and lots of liquids. Whewell and his school make base noises in their hexameters, and then wonder why people don't like them ; besides they begin verses with ' And ' ! ! ! I enclose my last. Traiislalio/ts. 345 I and my gardener George, and my little whelp Maurice and Dandy, Went out this afternoon fishing ; a better night nobody could wish, Wind blowing fresh from the west, and a jolly long roll on the water. After a burning day and the last batch of May-tlies just rising- Well, I tished two or three shallows and never a fish would look at me. Then I fished two or three pools, and with no more success, I assure you. * I'll tell you what, G.,' said I, ' some rascal's been "studdling " the water ; Look at the tail of that weed there, all turned up and tangled— Tim floddard's Been up the stream before us, or else Bonny Over, and sold us ! ' ' Well, sir,' says he, ' I'll be sworn, some chaps' gone up here with a shove-net ! Pack up our traps and go home, is the word ! ' and by jingo we did it. As I sit here, word for word, that was mine and G.'s conversation." TO THE SAME. ytine, 1852. " Your translation of the ' Drei Burschen ' is far better than one I tried, or two or three I have seen. Not having the German original at hand, I cannot tell whether your theory is correct, but it quite agrees with the ought-to-be's, and assonances of that kind are an absolutely necessary part of ballad-poetry. Yet I object to your ' swart,' the word has a peculiar meaning with us, which we must not break ; and also to ' one hostess.' ' One ' is German and not English ; I would prefer the old ' a certain,' even if I could get nothing betten .... " But we must /wt lose the ' to-day.' It strikes me as i/ie point of the ballad. But that couplet is untranslateable — " Dich lieb' ich immer, dich lieb' ich noch heut Und werde dich lieben in Ewigkeit.'' You cannot English ' immer,' which is generic, and includes the heut and the ewige zeit. And you cannot get the roll of it — firm at first, and trembling in tears for the last five or six syllables. I gave it up five years ago as impossible. " ' St. Maura ' was written six months ago, and was simj^ly the con- centrated outcome of all my martyrology reading. I felt always I should have a thing to say about them, though I read them simply for pleasure .... Some one said it was too long and spun out. Do you think so ? I don't feel I can lose a line of it. It grew of itself an organic whole, and I daren't cut it and hack it . . . ." " I wish you would show this Prologue to Maurice. It is as deep a thing — though not very smooth — as I have said yet, and I mean what I say. 346 Charles Kingsley. ' Linger no more, my beloved, by abbey nnd cell and cathedral ; Mourn not for holy ones mourning of old them who knew not the Father, Weeping with fast and scourge, when the bridegroom was taken from them. Drop back awhile through the years, to the warm rich youth of the nations, Childlike in virtue and faith, though childlike in passion and j)]easure, Childlike still, and still near to their God, while the day-spring of Eden Lingered in rose-red rays on the peaks of Ionian mountains. Down to the mothers, as Faust went, I go, to the roots of our manhood. Mothers of us in our cradles ; of us once more in our glory. Newborn, body and soul, in the great pure world which shall be In the renewing of all things, when man shall return to his Eden Conquering evil, and death, and shame, and the slander of conscience Free in the sunshine of Godhead, and fearlessly smile on his Father. Down to the mothers I go — yet with thee still ! — be with me, thou purest ! Lead me, thy hand in my hand ; and the dayspring of God go before us.' " Now, good-bye. I have a funeral ; and then I must go and catch some pike-bait. 1 had my usual luck yesterday evening — killed a little fish and lost a huge one. . . . Ask Hughes, from me, whether he had heard of that abject "' '" * killing the great pike, thirty pounds weight, — and ask him if it don't give him strange thoughts about Providence ? Seriously, I feel about it, that God is The Giver; and that to such poor half-brutes as '"• "' '■■■ from whom you can expect nothing better, as Hughes knows, God gives those enjoyments which they are capable of thanking Him for — that even so He may lift their hearts to Him, while to such as us He denies them, because we have been given other and higher things. I have not had a decent day's fishing for four years. My luck has been absurdly bad. I was allowed extraordinary success for three years, till I was acknowledged the best fisherman in the neigh- bourhood, and since then I can catch nothing All that stirs up thoughts in superstitious folk like us, who are fools enough to believe in a ' special providence ! ' Oh dear ! when will this braying come to an end ? " PS. — What I have said of ballads is this : that they must be objec- tive, dealing with facts and not feelings — or with feelings as manifested in actions. The union of the objective ballad or epic (for they only difter in size) with the subjective ode, elegiac and satire, makes the drama. The present age writes subjective ballads, and fails of course. " Your best specimens are ' Johnnie of Breadislee ; ' 'Sir Patric Spens 3 ' Lady Maistry, perfectly awful — • ' She carried the peats in her apron lap To burn herself withal.' One or two out of the Danish ballads lately published ; Tennyson's ' Sir Galahad ; ' ' Wee Croodledoo ; ' ' Auld Robin Gray ; ' Lord Willoughby On Hexameters. 347 in Percy's 'Reliques;' 'Hosier's Ghost;' 'When in Porto-bello Lying,' a noble speech ; ' Would you hear a Spanish Lady ?' Camp- bell's ' Hohenlinden;' Uhland's ' Drei Burschen;' Goethe's 'Beggar man and Erl-king.' But the Germans have hundreds." The following letter on Hexameters, though written many years later, comes in appropriately here. "The English language has a prosody of 'longs, shorts, and doubtfuls,' analogous to that of the Greek and Latin, but differing chiefly in this — that our method of pronunciation enables us to keep a vowel short before two, three, or even four consonants, provided a liquid be among them, which vowel would have been made long in the more articulately pro- nounced Greek. " 2. That the true melody and euphony of English verse, such as is accepted by the ear of the ignorant public, depends on the degree to which this prosody is unconsciously followed. " That therefore English metre is not (as commonly said) regulated by accent. "4. That the word 'accent' is a misnomer. In Greek, accent means the raising of the voice, or musical note, on a syllable. This habit may be heard still in Scotch, in Devonshire, in (I believe) Norse, and in many foreign tongues which seem to us 'sing-song,' but not at all in cultivated English. What is mis-called ' accent ' in English is 'arsis,' as opposed to thesis (mis-called accent by music-writers) ; viz., the lay- ing of stress — i.e. loudness, on certain syllables — irrespective of change of musical note. Often the syllable in arsis is pronounced on the stage in a deeper note, to give effect. " 5. The origin of prosody was in arsis and thesis. Limbic verses carried the arsis on the second syllable. Trochaic and dactylic ( = spon- daic) on the first. " 6. Arsis gradually fell, especially on prosodically long syllables, whether long vowels or short ones, followed by several consonants, from the physical fact that to pronounce such required more wind, which (in the exceptional case of the unnatural ' stage whisper') involves more noise, and therefore an unconscious arsis. " 7. In sponda-dactylic metre, like hexameter, the arsis is always on the first syllable of the foot. The key-arsis of the verse should therefore be given by making its first syllable as strong as possible. You have generally kept this rule admirably well. Here and there I see a verse beginning with * To ' or some such word. I am sure this is to be avoided. 34<^ Charles Kingshy. If you only strike the key strongly at the beginning of each verse, the reader's ear gets into rhythm at once and goes all right. " 8. In English — and I suppose in Greek — (if we could have heard it spoken) each word of more than one syllable has its recognised arsis and thesis, which in English generally coincides with its prosody, and is un- accountably mis-called (owing to the ignorant nomenclature of music- writers), its accent, e.g., bounty has a long syllable corresponding with prosody — but what of words of two short syllables ? e.g. bonny, or bonny ? "Here all that we can do to produce rhythm in English is, to put be- fore the first word, or after the second, a syllal)le not only in arsis from its metrical position, but so long-sounding {i.e. difficult to pronounce) as to kill the natural arsis of the short syllable in conventional arsis, and make it short by ear, e.g. in (i.) ' Hey, bonny boy,' the first syllable of bon is killed and made short: but in (2.) 'The bonny, bonny broom,' it remains quasi-long, because pronounced somewhat more long than in the first case, though not as long as broom. " 9. There are certain rules about arsis in English (dependent on logic) in the case of two or more connected words. One important one is, that when a noun and epithet are together, the noun is in arsis, and the epithet in thesis (except in the case of a distinctive). Thus bluesed- deep dit'ch- and so further have the arsis naturally thrown by the reader on the last syllable, and are therefore inadmissible at the end of an hexameter. I came to this conclusion twenty-five years ago in reading attempts at ' English Hexameters,' by Whewell, &c., and still maintain it. The last syllable of the hexameter must be in marked thesis. It is this very rule which gives it its ever-recurring and endless roll. " On analyzing, I found the mistake to lie with old unmusical scholiasts, who told us that the last foot of a hexameter is a spondee. I differ. The basis of the hexameter is a dactyl. The spondee is a mere contraction thereof, the last syllable of the spondee being in thesis, because the two last syllables of a dactyl are always in thesis. The root-foot of the last foot of a hexameter I believe to be a dactyl, which is shortened (as usually in Homer) into a trochee, simply because the last syllable of the dactyl is represented by a rest. Thus, a dactyl equal- ling =^3f=^y^^=it becomes —'^-'sc=s^- ^ j-est being found practically necessary after so long a verse (really a whole stanza if you consider the caesura) and a full breath being necessary, before beginning the next verse, as you will find, whenever you listen to hexameters well read. " I have no more to add, save to apologise for this dry pedantry. The excuse for which is, that it has been brooding in my head for twenty-five years ; and to say, that on my theory, the modern one that trochees A find on the Mount. 349 may be substituted for spondees in English hexameters is not allow- able. Indeed, that seems to me the great cause of failure in Whewell, Herschel, Longfellow, etc. ^^'hen such a verse as " Slowly, slowly, slowly, the days succeeded each other " presents itself, I can only answer, It is pretty, but no hexameter. It looks like one, because the comma after each slowly serves as a rest, and connects slowly into something like a dactyl ; but read without commas, it is some sort of comic trochaic brachycatalectic. " I have felt the extreme difficulty of finding spondees in English. Spondees contained in one word are most rare. I had to make almost all mine out of two ; but if you (as you have done so kindly) praise my hexameters, look at them, whether what force they have is not owing to the use of real spondees — a feat so difficult, that I will never write another, and look with astonishment and admiration at your labours, and at your great success." A friend lent him an old horse this year which gave him constant amusement, and kept him in health, and he writes to Mr. T. Hughes : — " I had just done my work, and seen my poor, and dinner was coming on the table yesterday — just four o'clock, — when the bow- wows appeared on the top of the Mount, trying my patch of gorse ; so I jumped up, left the cook shrieking, and off. He wasn't there, but I knew where he was, for I keep a pretty good register of foxes (ain't they my parishioners, and parts of my flock?) ; and, as the poor fellows had had a blank day, they were very thankful to find themselves in five minutes going like mad. We had an hour and a half of it — scent breast high as the dew began to rise (bleak north-easter — always good weather), and if we had not crossed a second fox, should have killed him in the open ; as it was we lost him after sunset, after the fiercest grind I have had this nine years, and I went back to my dinner. The old horse behaved beautifully ; he is not fast, but in the enclosed woodlands he can live up to any one and earned great honour by leaping in and out of the Loddon ; only four more doing it, and one receiving a mucker. I feel three years younger to-day. " r.S. — The whip tells me there were three in the river together, rolling over horse and man ! What a sight to have lost even by being a-head. " Have you seen the story of the run of January 7, when Mr. 350 Charles Kings ley. Woodburne's hounds found at Blackholme, at the bottom of Winder- mere, and ended beyond Helvellyn, more than fifty miles of mountain. After Applethwaite Crag (where the field lost them) they had a ring on High Street (2700 feet) of an hour unseen by mortal eye; and after that were seen by shepherds in Patterdale, Brother's Water, top of Fair- field (2900) Dunmail Gap; and then over the top of Helvellyn (3050) ;. and then to ground on Birkside Screes— I cannot find it on the maps. But what a poetic thing ! Helvellyn was deep in frost and snow. Oh, that I could write a ballad thereanent. The thing has taken possession of me ; but I can't find words. There was never such a run since we were born; and think of hounds doing the last thirty miles alone!'' (3ne of his many correspondents at this time was Frederika Bremer, the Swedish novelist, who, in the previous autumn among other visitors, paid a visit to Eversley Rectory. She had come to England to see the Great Exhibition, but she expressed one still stronger desire, which was to see Charles Kingsley, whose writings had struck a deep chord in her heart. It would be needless to say that he thought her one of the most highly cultivated women he had ever conversed with, and her sweet gentleness and womanliness attracted him still more than her intellect. After she left Eversley, she sent him Esaia Tegner's " Frithiof s Saga," with this inscription : " To the Viking of the New Age, Charles Kingsley, this story of the Vikings of the Old, from a daughter of the Vikings, his friend and admirer, Frederika Bremer." He had several letters from her, but there is only space for this one, sent with a copy of her " Midnight Sun." FREDERIKA BREMER TO CHARLES KINGSLEY. London, y\w. i, 185 1. •' My young Friend, " Will you allow me to call you in writing, in plain words, what I have called and do call you in my mind and heart ? You must, think then it is a baptismal of the spirit and you must understand it. I have received your books. They shall go with me over the sea to my father- land, and there in my silent home, I shall read them, live in them, enjoy them deeply, intensely. I know it, know it all the better since I have been with you. I have had a dream sometimes of a young brother — like Frederika Bremer. 351 that one that was snatched away from me in his youth ; Hke him but more ardent, a young mind that I could like, love, sympathise with, quarrel with, live with, influence, be influenced by, follow, through the thorny path, through tropical islands, through storm and sunshine, higher and higher ascending in the metamorphosis of existence. I had that dream, that vision again when I saw you, that made me so sad at part- ing. But let that pass. With much we must part. Much must pass. More will remain. The communion of related souls will remain to be revived again and again. I shall hear from you, and I will write to you. Meantime my soul will hover about you with the wings of blessing thoughts. I send you some books ; not the one I thought of, I could not get a copy. But I send a copy of my last book, the ' Midnight Sun.' As you are fond of Natural History, the sketch of the people and provinces of Sweden in the introduction may interest you ; This much belongs to the natural history of a country — the voyage up to the moun- tains of the midnight sun : the scenery there is perfectly true to nature ; I have seen and lived it through myself. Frithiofs Saga I take peculiar pleasure in asking you to accept, as a true follower of Scandinavian mind and life, and as the story of a spirit to whom your own is nearly related. " The universal, the tropical mind seems more embodied in man in the rigid zones of the north, than in those of tropical nature. (It is strange but it seems to me to be so) the old Viking's greatness was that he wanted to conquer the whole world and make it his own. The mission of the spiritual Viking seems to me the higher one to conquer the world to God. So is yours. God speed you ! and He will ! God bless you and yours, your lovely wife first among those, and lastly — me as one of yours in sisterly love." In the autumn of 1852 an effort was made to open the Crystal Palace on Sundays — a move which many thought would stem the tide of Sunday drunkenness, and his friend Mr. George Grove wrote to him on the subject. He replied — TO GEORGE GROVE, ESQ. October 2%, 1852. " I am in sad perplexity about your letter, I have been talking it over with Maurice. He says he shall take the matter in hand in his Lincoln's Inn sermons, and that it is a more fit thing for a London than for a country parson, being altogether against my meddling. My great 352 Charles Kiugsley, hitch is that my family are strongly the other way, and that although my father himself is very liberal on the matter, it Avould pain him dread- fully to see me in the wars with the Evangelical party on that point. His health is bad, and he is very nervous. You are sure to carry your point. But this I can do — I will sound through a friend the Morning Chronicle and Guardian. A little good management on your company's part would get the whole of the High Church on their side— you and the company are as right as a church literally, for the Catholic doctrine and discipline are on your side " Don't fancy me afraid. You and the world know that I am not that : but if I were to tell you all the little ins and outs which make me shrink, you would see that I was right." TO THE SAME. yaimaiy 2, 1853. " I send you an ex-cathedra opinion, which may do even more good than if I appended my too notorious name. But yet I use freely a pamphlet, here enclosed, by the Rev. Baldwin Brown,* which I think the wisest and most eloquent speech, save Maurice's, which I have seen on the matter. " For Publication. " My dear Grove, — I am much shocked to hear that this Anti- Crystal-Palace Agitation is injuring the clergy in the estimation of the laity. Those who have taken part in it must bear their own burden ; for whatsoever they have said and done is really, and ought to be clearly understood to be, the consequence of their own party opinions, and not of the doctrines either of the Bible or of the Church of England. The Church of England knows nothing of that definition of the Sabbath as a fast ; which the Puritans borrowed from the Pharisees and Rabbins of the most fallen and hideous period of Judaism, and which the Lord denounced again and again as contrary to, and destructive of, the very idea and meaning of the sabbath. The Church of England calls Sunday a feast-day, and not a fast ; and it is neither contrary to her ritual letter, nor to her spirit, to invite on that day every Englishman to refresh him- self with the sight of the wonders of God's earth, or with the wonders of men's art, which she considers as the results of God's teaching and inspiration. * Minister of Brixton Independent Church, author of "The Higher Life," "The Home Life," and a remarkable little volume published in 1875, entitled "The Doc- trine of Annihilation in the Light of the Gospel of Love." The Jewish Nation. 353 " The letter, moreover, as well as the spirit of the Bible is directly in favour of the arguments brought forward by the Crystal Palace Com- pany's advocates. The Sabbath, it declares, was made for man. And man, it declares to be, not a mere ' soul to be saved ' (an expression nowhere used in Scripture, in its modern sense of a spirit, to be got safely through to some future state of bliss), but as consisting of body, soul, and spirit — meaning by soul what we call intellect and feelings. And therefore any institution, which like the Crystal Palace tends to give healthy and innocent rest and refreshment to body, mind, and tastes, is in accordance in a lower sphere certainly, but still directly in accordance with the letter of the Sabbatical institution, as a day of rest made for man as man. " I think that you would find, — were any real danger to the Crystal Palace scheme to require a wide spread agitation in its favour, that the High Church party, as well as the great majority of ' moderate church- men,' would coincide in this view, and that the present outcry would be found to have proceeded only from that rapidly decreasing Low Church party, which tries to unite most eclectically and inconsistently a watery Calvinism with the profession of the Catholic creeds and formularies of the Church of England. Finnly convinced that in this case the Vox Populi coincides with the Vox Dei, " I remain, yours faithfully, " A High Church Parson." The following letters need no explanation — TO ADOLPH SAPHIR, ESQ., (then a student in Edinburgh.) EvERSLEY, N'ovember I, 1852. ** If I am surprised at your ■tvriting to me, it is the surprise of delight at finding that my writings have been of use to any man, and above all to a Jew. For your nation I have a very deep love, first because so many intimate friends of mine — and in one case a near connexion are Jews, and next, because I believe as firmly as any modern inter- preter of prophecy, that you are still the ' The Nation^ and that you have a glorious, as I think a culminating, part to play in the history of the race. Moreover, I owe all I have ever said or thought about Christianity as the idea which is to redeem and leaven all human life, 'secular' as well as * rehgious,' to the study of tlie Old Testament, without which the New is to me unintelligible ; and I cannot love the Hebrew books without loving the men who wrote them. My reason 354 Charles Kingsley. and heart revolt at that magical theory of inspiration which we have borrowed from the Latin Rabbis (the very men whom we call fools on every other subject), which sinks the personality of the inspired writer, and makes him a mere puppet and mouthpiece ; and therefore I love your David, and Jeremiah, and Isaiah, as men of like passions with myself — men who struggled, and doubted, and suffered, that I might learn from them ; and loving them, how can I but love their children, and yearn over them with unspeakable pity ? " You seem to be about to become a Christian minister. In that capacity your double education, both as a German and as a Hebrew, ought to enable you to do for us what we sadly need having done, almost as much as those Jews among whom your brother so heroically laboured — I mean to teach us the real meaning of the Old Testament and its absolute unity with the New, For this we want not mere * Hebrew scholars,' but Hebrew spirits — Hebrew men ; and this must be done, and done soon, if we are to retain our Old Testament, and therefore our New. For if we once lose our faith in the Old Testa- ment, our faith in the New will soon dwindle to the impersonal ' spiri- tualism ' of Frank Newman, and the German philosophasters. Now the founder of German unbelief in the Old Testament was a Jew. Benedict Spinoza A\T:ote a little book which convulsed the spiritual world, and will go on convulsing it for centuries, unless a Jew undoes what a Jew has done. Spinoza beat down the whole method of rabbinical interpretation — the whole theory of rabbinical inspiration ; but he had nothing, as I believe, to put in their place. The true method of interpretation — the true theory of inspiration is yet sadly to seek. At least such a method and such a theory as shall coincide with history and with science. It is my belief that the Christian Jew is the man who can give us the key to both — who can interpret the New and the Old Testaments both, because he alone can place himself in the position of the men who wrote them, as far as national sympathies, sorrows, and hopes, are concerned — not to mention the amount of merely antiquarian light which he can throw on dark passages for us, if he chooses to read as a Jew and not as a Rabbinist. " I would therefore intreat you, and every other converted Jew, not to sink your nationality, because you have become a member of the Uni- versal Church, but to believe with the old converts of Jerusalem, that you are a true Jew because you are a Christian ; that as a Jew you have your special office in the perfecting of the faith and practice of the •church, which no Englishman or other Gentile can perform for you : neither to Germanize or Scotticise, but try to see all heaven and earth cvith the eyes of Abraham, David, and St. Paul." On Pupil and Parish Work. 355 TO A FRIEND. (Lately ordained, who was thinking of taking pupils, and whom he advised to postpone doing so till he had thoroughly mastered his parish work.) " You know, I think, why I first determined on taking pupils and employing a curate — that I might pay off money sunk by me on church property, where I had only a life interest, to pay for the sins and neglect of my predecessors — to enable me to give up a sinecure, hateful and burdensome to my conscience — to enable me to build and organise schools, and other social improvements in the parish, as opportunity offered. I hoped also that the work of pupils would be a healthy training for my own mind on points necessarily long neglected ; that it might give me an opportunity of saving a young heart or two from this untoward generation .... That by leaving the parish routine work in the hands of a devoted and methodical man, I might find time to labour on those social questions to which I cannot but believe my- self, by strange providences, especially called. I may have been mis- taken — God knows — ' the heart is deceitful above all things.' I may have mistaken laziness and ambition for the voice of God .... I may have incurred the prophet's rebuke, ' Thou hast kept other vine- yards, but thine own vineyard hast thou not kept' And you may have a perfect right to ask me why I should press upon you an entire devo- tion of your time to priestly labour, which I did not impose on myself. But I may answer, that I bought this cessation by seven years of weary, single-handed, uphill toil, ending in a severe illness from over- exertion ; — that I eat my bread in heaviness of heart for very labour and anxiety, let me have seemed as cheerful as I may; and found optics and Homer real relaxations from the crushing weight of an enormous nightmare object, which seemed vaster and more difficult the more I toiled to master it. No wonder, then, if I was tempted to ask some one else to take the simpler (though not less holy or less awful, or requiring less utter devo- tion, self-restraint, methodic exertion) functions of my calling off my hands for awhile — perhaps in the conceited hope of indoctrinating him with my own ideas, and stirring him up to outstrip me — which may God grant — in the great work of uniting the Catholic church of the past with the inevitable democracy of the future. "For such an object, and just as much for the work of preaching Christ's gospel to the poor, awakening the souls of old women, and telling little children of their Father in Heaven, there is needed con- tinual self-examination, self-restraint, continual pains to bring every talent to bear on God's work, to develop and train, even by the most mechanical drudgery, every faculty one finds in oneself. One must give Christ all, and the best which we can make of all, for it is Hi§ A A 2 356 Charles Kingsley. already, bought with His own blood. You may thank God if you have been spared those hours of bitter agony and remorse, those humbling and heart-searching sins, which drive men to Christ like cured demoniacs, to cling desperately to His feet, and refuse to stir from them again for ever ; but surely you will be the last to make the absence of those fear- ful experiences an excuse for less intense loyalty to Him who has pre- served you from them. That you would never do so consciously, I well know (but we do many things in practice, which we should shudder at in reflection) ; and ask yourself, whether your as yet sunny and simple life, to which melancholy itself is a sort of graceful and luxurious phase, may not be keeping you sporting somewhat too much on the sur- face of things, keeping from you those awful questions, more awful than any metaphysic or dialectic speculations in the world. — " Is my heart right with God ? Do I know that wheresoever my will is not utterly His will, I am a sinner and a rebel ? How shall I do His work, before the night Cometh wherein no man can work ? How shall I be faithful in a few things that He may make me ruler over many things ? Am I wTapped up in systems and formulas, even when I am declaiming against them, or am I looking face to face at Almighty God Himself, and the spiritual world of sin and righteousness, heaven and hell on earth ? " " These questions may seem harsh and impertinent ; but, my dear friend, I warn you, in the name of God, that the day is fast coming when no man can work, but only take his wages, such as they are. We live in a time more awful than the world has seen since the Reformation — more awful even than that. The day of the Lord is at hand. Then every man whose heart is not whole with God must be content to have the whole foundations of his faith battered, ground to powder, stone by stone, go down into the hell of doubt — disbelief — perhaps sheer Atheism, or Popery, which is in some cases but Atheism in purple and fine linen. Affliction, persecution, calumny, will be the lot of every man who dares preach the Kingdom of God, and the living Church of the living Christ. Then every man's work will be tried with fire, be sifted with the sieve of vanity, and tried in the fire of the wrath of God .... God give you true grace to stand in that day — I may fall, for aught I know — I should fall now, daily, and give up God as a hard taskmaster, and Christ as a bygone legend, did I not hope and trust utterly that He who has brought me thus far, will never leave me nor forsake me, will drive me back with the thunderbolts of His wrath, every time I dare to wander or gi'ow lazy. Oh my dear friend, pray for me and for yourself, that we may never need those thunderbolts — never need to be taught by bitter shame and agony, how little we have really loved, served, trusted Him of whom we talked so glibly." CHAPTER XII. 1853. Aged 34. T]iE Rector in His Church — "Hypatia" Letters from Chevalier BuxsEN— Mr. Maurice's Theological Essays — Correspondence witu Thomas Cooper. '■ My heart and hope is with thee — Thou wilt be A latter Luther, and a soldier priest, To scare church-harpies from the Master's feast ; Our dusted velvets have much need of thee : Thou art no Sabbath-drawler of old saws, Distill'd from some worm-canker'd homily ; But spurr'd at heart with fieriest energ)', To embattail and to wall about thy cause "With iron-worded proof, hating to hark The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone, Half God's good Sabbath, while the worn-out clerk Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from a throne, Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark Arrows of lightning. I will stand and mark." Tennyson (Early Sonnets), CHAPTER XII. The books which entailed so many letters, now also attracted strangers to Eversley Church on Sunday. Officers from Sand- hurst would constantly walk over, and occasionally a stray clerg}^man would be seen in the free sittings. "Twenty-five Village Sermons" had been published in 1849, and had been brought into notice by a review in the "Times," and " Sermons on National Subjects," perhaps the most remarkable of all his volumes of sermons, had just been brought out. His preaching was becoming a great power. It was the speech of a live man to living beings. " Yes, my friends," he would say, " these are real thoughts. They are what come into people's minds every day ; and I am here to talk to you about what is really going on in your soul and mine ; not to repeat to you doctrines at second hand out of a book, and say, ' There, that is what you have to believe and do, and if you do not, you will go to hell;' but to speak to you as men of like passions with myself; as sinning, sorrowing, doubting, struggling human beings ; to talk to you of what is in my own heart, and will be in your hearts too, some day, if it has not been already " The collect he invariably used before preaching for twenty- four years was the one for the Second Sunday in Advent, till about six years ago, when the question of prayer before sermon being discussed in his parish, he consulted his diocesan (Samuel, Bishop Wilberforce), and decided to abide by his opinion. From that time he used in the morning the Invocation to the Trinity,, in the afternoon the usual Collect and Lord's Pra}-er. After he gave out his text, the poor men in the free sittings- under the pulpit would turn towards him, and settle themselves into an attitude of fixed attention. In preaching he would try to- 360 Charles Kingsley. keep still and calm, and free from all gesticulation ; but as he went on, he had to grip and clasp the cushion on which his sermon rested, in order to restrain the intensity of his own emotion ; and when, in spite of himself, his hands would escape, they would be lifted up, the fingers of the right hand working with a peculiar hovering movement, of which he was quite un- conscious ; his eyes seemed on fire, his whole frame worked and vibrated. It was riveting to see as well as hear him, as his eagle glance penetrated every corner of the church, and whether there were few or many there, it was enough for him that those who were present were human beings, standing between two worlds, and that it was his terrible responsibility as well as high privilege, to deliver a message to each and all. The great festivals of the church seemed to inspire him, and his words would rise into melody. At Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide, and on the Holy Trinity especially, his sermon became a song of gladness ; during Advent, a note of solemn warning. On Good Friday, and through the Passion week evening services, it would be a low and mournful chant, uttered in a deep, plaintive, and at moments almost agonised tone, which hushed his congregation into a silence that might be felt. None who were present one Christmas morning seventeen years ago can forget his tone and look, as after giving out his text from Luke ii., 7, he began : " Mother and child " and after a pause, in which more than one tender heart beat in sad sympathy for any childless mother who might be in the congregation, he went on, — " Think of it, my friends, on Christmas Day. Mother and child. What more beautiful sight is there in the world ? What more beautiful sight, and what more wonderful sight ? " What more beautiful ? That man must be very far from the king- dom of God — he is not worthy to be called a man at all — whose heart has not been touched by the sight of his first child on its mother's bosom. " The greatest painters who have ever lived have tried to paint the beauty of that simple thing — a mother with her babe : and have failed. One of them, Raffaelle by name, to whom God gave the spirit of beauty in a measure in which He never gave it, perhaps to any other man, tried Festival and Fast 361 again and again, for years, painting over and over that simple subject — the mother and her babe — and could not satisfy himself Each of his pictures is most beautiful, each in a different way : and yet not one of them is perfect. There is more beauty in that simple every-day sight than he or any man can express by his pencil and his colours. And yet it is a sight which we see every day." * Again, another Christmas, the sermon was on Music, and the Song of the Angels, in Luke ii. 13, 14, was the text : " Music," he said — then stopped — and all whose eyes were not already- turned to the pulpit, looked up. " Music — There is something very wonderful in music. Words are wonderful enough, but music is even more wonderful. It speaks not to our thoughts as words do : it speaks straight to our hearts, spirits, to the very core and root of our souls. Music soothes us, stirs us up \ it puts noble feelings into us ; it melts us to tears, we know not how ; — it is language by itself, just as perfect in its way as speech, as words ; just as divine, just as blessed. Music has been called the speech of angels ; I will go further, and call it the speech of God himself; — and I will, with God's help, show you a little what I mean this Christmas Day." t Again on Good Friday, when by an old observance the church was crammed with day labourers in their working clothes, who only had their holiday on condition of attending morning ser- vice ; and when besides his usual congregation, the inhabitants from outlying districts, who usually went to other nearer parish churches, and a few strong Calvinistic Baptists, who on other occasions attended chapel, with some who seldom entered a church at all, filled every seat before him, he would speak yet more wonderful words, but in such simple language that all could understand him. " What are we met together to think of this day ? God in pain — God sorrowing — God dying for man as far as God could die. " Now it is this ; — the blessed news that God suffered pain — God sorrowed — God died, as far as God could die — which makes the Gospel different from all other religions in the world ; and it is this too which * The Christ Child. Good News of God, Semi, xviii. t Music. Good News of God, Serm. xvii. 362 Charles Kings ley. makes the Gospel so strong to conquer men's hearts and soften them and bring them back to God and righteousness in a way no other rehgion has ever done. It is the good news of this good day called Good Friday which wins souls to Christ and will win them as long as men are men . . . ." (And then, after describing the careless gods of the heathen sitting happy up in heaven and caring for no man — still less for poor, ugly, deformed, foolish wretches, he burst forth) — "And as there was no love to God before Good Friday, so there was no love to men. But Christ came— God came — and became man. And with the blood of His Cross was bridged over for ever the gulf between God and man, and the gulf between man and man.* . . . ." Again in 1850, when his own heart was oppressed for the people, he thus concluded perhaps the finest sermon he ever preached : " Oh ! sad hearts and suffering ! Anxious and weary ones ! Look to the Cross this day ! There hung your King. The King of sorrow- ing souls, and more the King of Sorrows. Ay, pain and grief, tyranny and desertion, death and hell, He has faced them one and all, and tried their strength, and taught them His, and conquered them right royally ! And since He hung upon that torturing cross, sorrow is divine, godlike, as joy itself. All that man's fallen nature dreads and despises, God honoured on the cross, and took unto Himself, and blest and consecrated for ever. And now, blessed are the poor, if they are poor in heart as well as purse, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are the hungry, if they hunger for righteousness as well as food ; for Jesus hungered, and they shall be filled. Blessed are those who mourn, if they mourn not only for their afflictions, but for their sins, and the sins of those they see around them : for on this day, Jesus mourned for our sins : on this day He was made sin for us who knew no sin, and they shall be comforted. Blessed are those who are ashamed of them- selves and humble themselves before God this day; for on this day Jesus humbled Himself for us, and they shall be exalted. Blessed are the forsaken and despised. Did not all men forsake Jesus this day, in His hour of need ? And why not thee, too, thou poor deserted one ? Shall the disciple be above his master ? No, every one that is perfect, must be like his master. The deeper, the bitterer your loneliness, the more you are like Him Avho cried upon the cross, ' INIy God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me ? ' God in Pain, ser. xxxv. Good news of God. Passion Services. 363 " All things arc blessed now, but sin ; for all things, excepting sin, are redeemed by the life and death of the Son of God. Blessed are wisdom and courage, joy, and health, and beauty, love and marriage, childhood and manhood, corn and wine, fruits and flowers, for Christ redeemed them by His life. And blessed, too, are tears and shame, blessed are weakness and ugliness, blessed are agony and sickness, blessed the sad remembrance of our sins, and a broken heart, and a repentant spirit. Blessed is death, and blessed the unknown realms, where souls await the resurrection day, for Christ redeemed them by His death. Blessed are all things, weak, as well as strong. Blessed are all days, dark, as well as bright, for all are His, and He is ours ; and all are ours, and we are His, for ever. "Therefore sigh on, ye sad ones, and rejoice in your own sadness; ache on ye suffering ones, and rejoice in your own sorrows. Rejoice that you are made free of the holy brotherhood of mourners, that you may claim your place too, if you will, among the noble army of martyrs. Rejoice that you are counted worthy of a fellowship in the sufferings of the Son of God. Rejoice and trust on, for after sorrov/ shall come joy. Trust on ; for in man's weakness God's strength shall be made perfect. Trust on, for death is the gate of life. Endure on to the end, and possess your souls in patience for a little while, and that perhaps a very little while. Death comes swiftly, and more swiftly still, perhaps, the day of the Lord. The deeper the sorrow, the nearer the salvation. The nii^ht is darkest before the dawn ; When tlie pain is sorest, the child is bovn, And the day of the Lord at hand ! " * The evening services for the Passion Week were given at an hour to suit the labouring men on their way home from work, when a few would drop into church, and to those few he preached a short sermon of about fifteen minutes, which a London con- gregation would have gone miles to hear. Those who were present, sometimes only fifteen to twenty besides his own family, will not forget the dimly-lighted church in the twilight of the spring evenings, with its little sprinkling of worshippers, and the silence as of death and the grave, when with a look which he ncv^er seemed to have at any other season, he followed Christ through the sufferings of the Holy Week, beginning with either * Good Friday, scr. vii. National Sermons. 364 Charles Kingsley. the liii. or Ixiii, of Isaiah, on each day its own event, from the First Communion to the Betrayal — the Denial of Peter, the fate of Judas, on to the foot of the Cross. And when "the worst was over," with what a gasp of relief was Easter Even, with its rest and quietness, reached ; and with significant w^ords about that intermediate state, in which he so deeply believed, he would lead our thoughts from the peaceful sepulchre in the garden to the mysterious gate of Paradise. Passion Week was, to him, a time of such real and terrible pain that he always thanked God when it was over ; and on Easter day he would burst forth into a song of praise once more, for the Blessed Resurrection not only of Christ the Lord, but of man, and of the dear earth he loved so well — spring after winter, birth after death. Every gnat that danced in the sunshine on the blessed Easter morn ; every blade of grass in the dear churchyard spoke of hope and joy and a living God. And the flowers in the church, and the graves decked with bright wreaths, would add to his gladness, as he paced up and down before service. Many a testimony has come to the blessing of those village sermons. *' Twenty-five village sermons," said a clergyman working in a great city parish, " like a plank to a drowning man kept me from sinking in the ' blackness of darkness,' which surrounds the unbeliever. Leaning upon these, while carried about by every wind of doctrine, I drifted hither and thither, at last, thanks be to God, I found standing ground." But none who merely read them could tell what it was to hear them, and to see him, and the look of inspiration on his face, as he preached them. While to those his nearest and dearest, who looked forward with an ever fresh intensity of interest to the Sunday services week after week, year after year, each sermon came with double emphasis from the knowledge that the daily life of the week days was no contradiction to, but a noble carrying out of the words preached in Church. His sermons owed much to the time he gave himself for pre- paration. The Sunday services, while they exhausted him physically, yet seemed to have the effect of winding his spirit up to higher flights. And often late on Sunday evening he would talk over with his wife the subject and text of the next week's l7ivitation to Edinburgh, 365 sermon. On Monday, he would, if possible, take a rest, but on Tuesday, to use his own words, it would be set on the stocks. The text already chosen, the method of treating it was sketched, and the first half carefully thought out before it was dictated or written, then put by for a day or two, while yet it was simmer- ing in his brain, and finished on Friday. He seldom put off his sermon till Saturday. This year, begun at Eversley and ended at Torquay, was one of much anxiety and incessant labour. Unable to get a pupil, he was therefore unable to keep a curate. The Sunday services, night schools, and cottage lectures, were done single-handed ; and if he seemed to withdraw from his old associates in the cause of co-operation, and of the working men in London, it was not from want of interest, but of time and strength. He went only once to London, to lecture for the Needlewomen's Association. Constant sickness in the parish and serious illness in his own household gave him great anxiety; while the proceedings of the King's College Council against his friend and teacher, Mr. Maurice, on the ground of the views on eternal punishment, pub- lished in his Theological Essays, depressed him deeply. But the year had its lights as well as shadows; he had the comfort of seeing the first good national school built and opened in his parish ; friends, new and old, came and went — Mr. Maurice fre- quently — Bishop McDougall of Labuan, and Mr. Alfred Tenny- son. His intimacy with Bishop Wilberforce, Chevalier Bunsen, and Miss Mitford deepened ; he made the personal acquaint- ance of several of his hitherto unknown correspondents, and met Mr. Robert Browning and his wife, for the first time, at the house of mutual friends. He had a pressing invitation from Edinburgh to give a course of lectures on the Alexandrian schools, in the Philosophical Institution, to which he answered as follows to Mr. Francis Russell : " It is hardly necessary to say that such an invitation from such a body, even were it not backed by the expected pleasure of seeing you, and the scarcely less wished for pleasure of seeing Edinburgh, must be answered at once in the affirmative, and the subject which is proposed ^66 Charles Kingslcy. is one on which I certainly have something to say, whether right or wrong. But I do not see how I could give what I should consider an honest account of the Alexandrian school of philosophy, witliout speak- ing very directly as an orthodox Christian, and saying a great many things which might very much offend a mixed body of hearers. I am sure that every word of such a lecture proceeding from mc would be an indirect reprobation of Martineau, Emerson, and the modern Neo Platonists, and that no tact of mine could prevent (even if I wished to do so) the analogy from being apparent. " On the other hand I do believe, that if anything will save Presby- terian Scotland from Neo Platonism, into which all Calvinism is. Church after Church, hurling itself by natural revulsion, it is by having the warning of the Alexandrian schools fairly put before them. But can one do this without on the other hand offending many worthy orthodoxites ? " These are questions which you, with your local knowledge, must kindly consider for me, ere I give a definite answer." " Hypatia " this year came out as a book ; and by thoughtful people was recognised not only as a most v^aluable page of history, but as a real work of art. In one section of the English churcli it made him bitter enemies, more bitter, perhaps, than were stirred up by either "Yeast" or the "Saint's Tragedy." "It was," as Dean Stanley truly says, "his moral enthusiasm, which, in the pages of ' Hypatia ' has scathed with an everlasting brand the name of the Alexandrian Cyril and his followers, for their outrages on humanity and morality in the name of a hollow Christianity and a spurious orthodoxy. Read, if you would learn some of the most impressive lessons of Ecclesi- astical history. — Read and inwardly digest those pages, perhaps the most powerful he ever wrote, which close that wonderful story by discriminating the destinies which awaited each of its characters as they passed, one after another, ' each to his own place.' * The work was more appreciated in Germany than in England for some years. " Hypatia," to quote Herr Peter Keulter, of Pesth, a German historian, " Est a la fois une magnifique peinture des moeurs d'une epoque recule'e de I'histoire, a mettre a cote des plus belles jjages de Walter Scott et de quelques unes des pages d'Augustin Thierry, mais encore * Funeral Sermon on Canon Kingsley in Westminster Aljliey. Appreciation of Hypatia by Germans. 367 line profonde etude philosopliique, oil se reflete un esprit de tole'rance que je n'ai jamais rencontre chez un pretre, et qui fait le plus grand honneur a Charles Kingsley. Get homme de bien a-t-il beaucoup d'imitateurs parmi le clerge anglican ? " " I delight in Hypatia^^ said Chevalier Bunsen, when reading it as a serial the year before, " only I cannot get over the hardship against our common ancestors in presenting them in that drunken mood in which they appear as lawless and blood-sucking barbarians and chronic berserkers, rather than what I thought them to be. But I have only just landed Philammon at Alexandria, and therefore am not able to judge." The following letters, written after the book appeared as a whole, are doubly interesting from their allusions to Baron dc Bunsen's own " Hippolytus" : CHEVALIER BUNSEN TO REV. C. KINGSLEY. Prussia House, May, 1853. " I want just to send you a line to wish you joy for the wonderful picture of the inward and outward life of Hypatia's age, and of the creation of such characters as hers and Raphael's, and the other prot- agonists. I have such a longing to see you quietly .... that I had conceived a hope you might be induced to pay me a visit at the seaside. One day by the sea is worth more than a month in this distracting metropolis, or Great Sahara. " I have written, with all the feeling of awe and responsibility, a con- fession of my faith, as conclusive of the Preface to my ' Ignatius and Hippolytus.' .... I am anxious to read it to you, and to speak it to you. " You have performed a great and lasting work, but it is a bold under- taking. You fire over the heads of the public, oloi vw nvdpanoi ua-tv, as Nestor says, the pigmies of the circulating library. Besides, you have (pardon me) wronged your own child most cruelly. Are you aware that many people object to reading or allowing it to be read, because, the author says in the Preface, it is not written for those of pure mind ? * * The passage referred to is the opening paragraph of the Preface where the author says, "A picture of life in the fifth century must needs contain much which will be painful to any reader, and which the young and innocent will do well to leave alton-ether imread. It has to represent a very hideous, though a very great, age; one of those critical and cardinal eras in the history of the human race, in which virtues and vices manifest themselves side by side — even, at times, in the same person — with the most 368 Charles King shy. My daughters exclaimed when they read that in the Preface, after having read to their mamma the whole in numbers to general edification, as they do Bible and Shakspeare every day. I should wish you to have said, that in describing and picturing an age like that, there must here and there be nudities as in nature and as in the Bible. Nudities there are because there is truth. For God's sake, let that Preface not come before Germany without some modified expression. Impure must be the minds who can be offended or hurt by your picture ! What offends and hurts is the modem Lilstcrnhcii, that veiling over indecency, exciting imagination to draw off the veil in order to see not God's naked nature, but corrupted man's indecency. Forgive that I take the child's part against the father ! But, indeed, that expression is not the right, and unjust to yourself, and besides highly detrimental to the book. " You know of the persecution of the Evangelicals, and High and dry against Maurice ! I go to-morrow to Hare, and stay till Tuesday, I am sure you would be more than welcome there, with me and Savage Landor, who arrives also to-morrow; but I am afraid you are not so easily moveable. There is place at the rectory or at Lime; Mrs. Augustus Hare is there and well. " I depend, however, on your being my guest at Carlton Terrace. Take it as a joint invitation from my wife and myself to Mrs. Kingsley and yourself I have been moved to write strange things in the first volume of the new ' Hippolytus,' and in the Key (to which Max Miiller has contributed two most prodigious chapters). You know the spirit writes what he will, and must. The times before us are brimful of destruction — therefore of regeneration. The Nemesis is coming, as Ate. " Farewell, " Ever yours faithfully, "BUNSEN." Again the Chevalier writes September 16, 1853. "I must express to you, in a few words, how much I rejoice in hearing that you intend to propose to Messrs. Tauchnitz to undertake startling openness and power. One who writes of such an era labours under a trouble- some disadvantage. He dare not tell how evil people were ; he will not be believed if he tell how good they were. In the present case that disadvantage is doubled ; for while the sins of the Church, however heinous, were still such as admit of being expressed in words, the sins of the heathen world against which she fought, were utterly undescribable ; and the Christian apologist is thus compelled, for the sake of decency, to state the Church's case far more weakly than the facts deserve." — Preface to *' Hypatia," vii. The Rajah Sir James Brooke. 369 a German translation of your admirable ' Hypatia,' You know what I think about it. You have succeeded in epicizing, poetically and philo- sophically, one of the most interesting and eventful epochs of the world, clothing the spirits of that age in the most attractive fable ; you resus- citate the real history of the time and its leading characters so poetically that we forget that instruction is conferred upon us in every page. I find no book to which I can compare ' Hypatia ' but Hope's ' Anasta- sius.' But how much more difficult, and how much more important is the subject you treat ! I find that my friends, not only here, but also in Germany, share my opinion. I have sent a copy to Abeken, ex- pressing to him my anxiety it should be well translated. It requires a man of unusual knowledge and talents to do justice to the original and to the subject. Now nobody can manage that better than the distin- guished house with which I understand you are connected. May I soon hear that a translation is coming forth ! "I hope you may be able to come to town during the beautiful months of quiet. I shall be settled there for good from 1 5th October. ' Hippolytus ' is coming out in a second edition, but as three different works. " a, Hippolytus and his Age (first volume), newly-written, to match the Picture of the congregational life in the second volume. Two volumes. " b, The Philosophical Key to it ; or Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Language and Religion. Two volumes. ** c, Ajtalecta Ante-Nicaena (the philosophical key). Three volumes. "When you come to town you must stay with me at Carlton Terrace, that we may have quiet night hours and (if you are an early riser) morn- ing hours together, jmter vier Augen, as we say. In the meantime, I remain, " My dear Mr. Kingsley, " Ever yours faithfully, *' BUNSEN." The summer found him busy on Rajah Brooke's affairs, and he writes to Mr. Hughes. EVERSLEY, JuiU 30, 1S53. "Where on earth are the promised manifestos in re Brooke? Riversdale Grenfell is aux anges with the plan, and says we must get a regular man of business to buy the steamer, and manage things for us, and he recommends, as do I, an iron steamer, to be carried out in pieces, and put together. I ani in glorious health. VOL. I. B H 370 Charles Kingsley. July 14, 1853. " I have seen much of Knox in re Rajah Brooke, and am heart and soul in the matter. I have sent his circulars to the Duke of Sutherland, Lord Ellesmere, Lord Carlisle, C. Grenfell, G. Glyn, Bishop of Oxford. Suggest any others. An attack on Mrs. Gaskell produced the following letter : EvERSLEY Rectory, July 25, 1853. " My dear Madam, " I am sure that you will excuse my writing to you thus abruptly when you read the cause of my writing. " I am told, to my great astonishment, that you have heard painful speeches on account of ' Ruth ; ' what was told me raised all my indig- nation and disgust. " Now I have read only a little (though, of course, I know the story) of the book; for the same reason that I cannot read 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' or ' Othello,' or ' The Bride of Lammermoor.' It is too painfully good, as I found before I had read half a volume. " But this I can tell you, that among all my large acquaintance I never heard, or have heard, but one unanimous opinion of the beauty and righteousness of the book, and that, above all, from real ladies, and really good women. If you could have heard the things which I heard spoken of it this evening by a thorough High Church fine lady of the world, and by her daughter, too, as pure and pious a soul as one need see, you would have no more doubt than I have, that whatsoever the * snobs ' and the bigots may think, English people, in general, have but one opinion of ' Ruth,' and that is, one of utter satisfaction. " I doubt not you have had this said to you already often. Believe me, you may have it said to you as often as you will by the purest and most refined of English women. " May God bless you, and help you to write many more such books as you have already written, is the fervent wish of " Your very faithful servant, "C. Kingsley." TO JOHN MALCOLM LUDLOW, ESQ. " Dearest Friend, " Many thanks for your letter, which, had not every moment which neuralgia has spared me been spent in finishing an article for Time and Eternity. 371 Frascr, I should have answered before. I am not surprised at your opinion about ****, and I agree in it. I should not be surprised if ' a fall like David's ' were to be the means of shaking him out of his pre- sent doiible-mmdcdnQ?,?,, for it is double. There is the earnest desire after the right and true, but intermingled with an element too subtle for my stupidity to describe, but which seems all wrong. I do not think that he is now 'convinced of sin,' and there is the mischief; though I do not hold with the formula which places that the first of The Spirit's works, simply because The Spirit pursued no such method with me. Surely if it were so I ought to remember it, but were I to believe in the popular theory of 'conversion,' I must believe myself un-converted. With me the change has been gradual and complex; perhaps I may be a self-deceiver, and my heart no more right with God than **** But is not God The Love, and The Righteousness, The Father — and is not Christ The Man, and The Obedient, The Self-Sacrificing, The Son ? and is not to love them, to love God and Christ, even though emotions of devotion to their personalities should be rare and dull! " Such is my hope about myself. Such is my hope for men like ****, even though they have not yet had revealed to them, as we, thank God, have, that name of Him whom they blindly but truly worship in His attributes — I mean. Father and Son. This is my ground for the salva- tion of such men as Socrates or Antonine, they knew Him, though they knew not His name. . . . ." Mr. Maurice's volume of "Theological Essays" appeared at this time, and the subject of one, on Eternal Life and Death, was the cause of his dismissal from King's College by Dr. Jelf and the Committee. The subject had occupied Mr. Kingsley's mind for years, and the persecution of his friend and teacher roused all his chivalry. " The Time and Eternity Question," he says in ^mting to a friend, " is coming before the public just now in a way which may seriously affect our friend Maurice, unless all who love him make good fight. " Maurice's essays, as you say, will constitute an epoch. If the Church of England rejects them, her doom is fixed. She will rot and die, as the Alexandrian did before her. If she accepts them — not as ' a code complete,' but as hints towards a new method of thought, she may save herself still." 372 Charles Kingsley. TO REV. F. D. MAURICE. EVERSLEY, Jjlly 14, 1853. " I have delayed writing to you about the Essays * till I had read them over many times, which I have now done. " That I agree and admire, is needless to be said. It seems to me that the book marks a new era in English ecclesiastical history .... not that you, single-handed, have caused it : but that you have justified and expressed what is seething in the minds of so many. I was utterly astonished at finding in page after page things which I had thought, and hardly dared to confess to myself, much less to preach. However, you have said them now ; and I, gaining courage, have begun to speak more and more boldly, thanks to your blessed example, in a set of sermons on the Catechism, accompanying your angels' trump on my private penny-whistle Nevertheless, a tail of penny whistles, if they will only keep tune with you, may be useful. For there is much in your book which will be caviare. I believe firmly that it will do more good to the infidels and heretics than to the orthodox, and I will tell you why. The former are not hampered in mind by those forced, dogmatic, syste- matised interpretations of theologic words which are destroying too often in the latter the plain sense of right and wrong, truth and false- hood ; and they will, therefore, take your words in their simple and honest meaning better than ' believers ' and ' churchmen,' who, perhaps unconsciously to themselves, will be substituting for each of your Catholic expressions some ghost of a meaning which they got from Crossman or Watts. Therefore you must expect good pious people to accuse you of misinterpreting scripture and preaching a new gospel (which, indeed, you do), and of the very faults of which you and I should accuse them, that is of partial induction from those texts which seem to make for your ' theory,' and here we of the penny-whistles shall be of use to you, in verifying your inductions by applying them to fresh texts. " Moreover, you must submit to be accused of sentimentalism because you appeal to inward experiences — by the Sadducees, because they have not had these experiences, or don't like to confess them to themselves — and by the Pharisees, because they allow no spiritual experiences to be subjects of theologic inquiry, except those which fit into their system ; and so, indeed, as I have more than once dared to tell them, both disbelieve that man was made in tlie image of God, and that God was made man of the substance of his mother. " On the whole, the outlook is perfectly awful, when one sees the * "Theological Essays.'' Rev. F. D. Maurice and King's College. 373 mountains of rubbish which have to be cleared before people can be made to understand their Bible and prayer-book — and still more awful, when one feels as I do, that I have just as much dirt and dust to get out of my own brain and heart, before I can see to take the mote out of my brother's eye ; and still more awful, when one feels, as one does, that though you are utterly right in asserting what the Bible says to be the keynote of our creeds and prayer-book, yet that there is much, especially in the latter parts of the prayer-book, which does chime in with the popular superstitions ; that though the compilers were indeed inspired, and raised most miraculously above their age, yet they were not always consistent in seeing what was to be said, any more than Augustine was ; and then comes the terrible business of being tempted to twist the tenth word, in order to make it fit the other nine, and of being called an eclectic, and of not being sure whether one is not one really. Not that I am frightened at any such awful prospect. If God is with us who can be against us ? If He has taught us so far, we may trust Him to teach us more, and make our strength as our day is. And if, as one is bound to expect, He does not show us the whole truth in this life, but lets us stop short somewhere, why what matter ? Let Him send by the hand of whom He will. He has set us to carry the lamp in the lamp-race a little further on — why should we pine at having to pass it on to fresh runners ? It is quite honour enough (and I suspect, before we get it done, we shall find it quite work enough) to get one soul saved alive, or one truth cleared from rubbish, before we die." >/)', iSS3. " It seems to me that two courses only are open to you, my dear master. One : to resign your King's College posts at once, with a solemn and sincere printed protest against being required to believe and say things which the Articles of the Church of England do not require. Or, to fight it out to the very last and compel them to the odium of rejecting you. " Either course would excite the sympathy and indignation of vast numbers. It remains to be considered — " I. By which process most truth would be hammered out by the strokes. " 2, Which would give least scandal to the Church, /. c, which would give least handle for heretics of the atheistic school to say, ' Of course his opinions are incompatible with the Church. We always knew it, now it is proved; and he must join us, or start a schism of his own.' 374 Charles Kingslcy. " Now as for the first count. I seriously think that by fighting as long as you can, you might bring the whole eschatological question up into the field in such a way, that they would be forced not only to give their opinions but their reasons^ or unreasons for them ; and then, in the eyes of the world, the triumph is pretty sure, as it is written, ' Oh, that my enemy would write a book ! ' " I think, too, that in this way so much of the real liberality of our Articles and Liturgy might be made evident, as would prevent the heretics having any important case against the Church, and turn the wrath on to the present generation of religionists, and on the bishops, as I wish to save religion and episcopacy, in England. " But if you are so completely a tenant-at-will at King's College that they can dismiss you without making their reasons public, then your only plan, surely, is to forestall them, and throw up your cure on the ground of your rights as an English priest, thereby again pra'enting scandal, in the true sense of the verb. " But whethersoever of these is your plan, will it not be expedient for one of us at least, to get up the question historically? It seems to me that no such bondage has hitherto been formally demanded in the English Church. And if we can prove this point, we prove everything with precedent-worshipping John Bull. The whole matter for the next seven years will practically turn on, not, ' are you right or wrong? ' but 'are you legally and formally j)ermitted or unpermitted?' and that will depend, in a vague business (shame that it should be vague ! ) like this, on — AVere divines since the Reformation allowed to have their own opinions on this point, and yet to hold ecclesiastical preferment? Indeed, paltry as this point may seem, we must have it formally proved or disproved, not only for our own safety, but for the safety of the Established Church. " Now do you know anything about this? Do you know men who do ? Or can you get me put in the way of finding out by being told what books to read, and I will work it out. Let that be my business. We will settle hereafter in what form my results shall be brought into the battle. This seems to me the first indispensable practical act — not of defence, but of offence. " For I would not act on the defensive. If you only go to prove that you may hold what you do, you will either be smashed by the same arguments as smashed the good of Tract 90 with the evil of it, or you will be sorely tempted hereafter dare manus and say, 'If I can't hold this here, I will go where I can hold it ' (not that you will ever yield to that temptation, but that it will come, and must be provided against). But if you go steadily on the offensive, say, I and you must hold this, Consultation with Archdeacon Hare^ 375 and proclaim yourself as the champion of the honest and plain meaning of our formularies, and hurl back the onus probandi ow the popular party, you will frighten them, get a hearing from the unorthodox, and bring over to your side the great mass who fear change, while they love and trust their formularies enough to be glad to have the right interpre- tation of them. " I was struck the other day by the pleasure which a sermon of mine gave not only to my clods, but to the best of my high church gentry, in which sermon I had just copied word for word your Essay on Eternal Eife and Death — of course stating the thing more coarsely, and there- fore more dangerously, than your wisdom would have let you do — and yet people were delighted. " Now forgive me, a thousand times I ask it, if I have seemed to put myself up as a counsellor. You know what I feel for you. But your cause is mine. We swim in the same boat, and stand or fall henceforth together. I am the mouse helping the lion— with this difference, that the mouse was outside the net when she gnawed it, while I am inside. For if you are condemned for these ' opinions ' I shall and must there- fore avow them." EvERSLEY, October 30. " Well, dearest master. .... I shall not condole with you. You are above that : but only remind you of this day's Psalms, which have been to me, strangely enough, the Psalms for the day in all great crises of my life. "Will you please get the correspondence published as soon as possible, and send me down, if possible by return of post, the whole of it, and also Jelf's notice in the Recora. I promise you, I will do nothing without consulting better and wiser men than myself; and I will show you all arguments which I may write. But the time is now come for those who love you to show their colours, and their teeth also. I am too unhappy about you to say much. You must know what I feel. I always expected it ; but yet, when it comes one cannot face it a bit the better. Nevertheless, it is but a passing storm of dust." He now consulted Archdeacon Hare about a protest : he went lo Oxford, and wrote to Cambridge. Archdeacon Hare's reply will show what was proposed, and who were to be taken into counsel. 376 Charles Kingslcy. FROM ARCHDEACON HARE. St. Leonards', November 10, 1853. " My dear Mr. Kingsley, " We know from of old that the Scniores Fatnim were apt to think \\\&Juniores inclined to act too precipitately; and it may perhaps be this drag of old age that makes me think the plan sketcht in your last letter somewhat over hasty. Time is an unimportant element in our proceedings : two or three months spent in the proper preparations will not injure, and may greatly benefit our cause. If we begin with getting a good list of eminent names to head our protest, before we publish it, it will be sure to command attention, and many will follow such leaders; while, if it be circulated as the act of a small number, a cry will be raised against it as issuing from a few latitudinarians, and the priest and the scribe will pass it by on the other side. I should, indeed, be delighted if Keble were to espouse our cause : but I remember some sonnets of his, twenty years ago, on the blessings of the Athanasian Creed, which struck me with terror and awe. Being absent from home, I cannot ascertain how Trench interprets the last parable in Matthew xxv. ; but I would fain hope we might have him : and he, as one of the Professors immediately affected by the recent decision, would rightly take the lead, " Thirlwall writes indignantly of the proceedings. When our project is further advanced, I will wTite to him about it : but he will have to consider how far a Bishop may join in such a protest. Stanley might consult Whateley, who, I fancy, has already written on the subject. " Thompson and Sedgwick would be with us ; and perhaps Whewell also, if our protest were judiciously drawn up. " In the preamble, we must state the immediate ground for the step we take, and the fact, not generally known, that our church has im- plicitly sanctioned the exercise of private judgment on this point, by the retracting of the 42nd Article. It seems to me, too, that we must say something to remove the prima facie objection, which will strike n\ost persons, from the Athanasian Creed ; and I think this may be done without appearing to dogmatize, while it will be a comfort to numbers to have this thorn drawn out of their hearts. " Stanley was in Cheshire the other day : I know not where he is now. " Yours most sincerely, " Julius C. Hare, "Since writing the above, I have a letter from Trench, proposing to come to Hurstmonceaux on Tuesday next. It would be a great delight to us, and would much forward our work, if you could meet him there." Co7'rcspondcnce luith Thomas Coopc}'. 2,11 The following letters to Mr. Thomas Cooper, Chartist (who wrote the " Purgatory of Suicides" in 1843-4, while imprisoned in Stafford Gaol on a charge of sedition), though spreading over several years, will be more interesting if read together without regard to dates. The corresponding letters that called them forth are full of power and vigour, and have been kindly placed by Mr. Cooper at the disposal of the editor, but want of space prevents their publication. When Mr. Kingsley first knew Thomas Cooper, he Avas lecturing on Strauss, in the John Street Lecture Rooms, to working men ; and after long struggles with his own sceptical difficulties, as will be seen by these letters, his doubts were solved, and he became a lecturer on Christianity, a work he continues now at the age of seventy. He is a man of vast reading and indomitable courage. His autobiography, published in 1872, is a remarkable book well worth reading, both for its own sake and for the pictures of working class life and thought, which it reveals.* TO MR. THOMAS COOPER. EvERSLEY, February 15, 1S50. " Many thanks for your paper,t which I read A\-ith increasing in- terest, as it seems to improve each number. On Theological points I will say nothing. We must have a good long stand-up fight some day, when we have wind and time. In the mean time, I will just say, that I believe as devoutly as you, Goethe, or Strauss, that God never does — if one dare use the word, never can — break the Laws of Nature, which are His Laws, manifestations of the eternal ideas of His Spirit and Word — but that Christ's Miracles (not Popish ones) seem to me the highest realizations of those very laws. How ? you will ask — to which I answer. You must let me tell you by-and-bye • in the meantime, recollect that I am not altogether an ignoramus in those Laws of Nature, having devoted, I may say, years of my short life to the beloved study of zoolog}-, botany, geology, and their cognate sciences. " I like exceedingly your tv\-o papers on Whig tactics and Whig * Life of Thomas Cooper, by himself, published by Plodder and Sloughton. London. t A weekly paper, "Cooper's Journal," edited by Thomas Cooper, chiefly on the political and social questions of the day. 378 Charles Kingsley. resolution to take its ease. Is it not written, ' when they shall say peace and safety, then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as travail on a woman with child ' (and old England is even now in mighty birth-throes), ' and they shall not escape ? ' Your friend George Hooper's paper, on France, is both true and eloquent. Your thinkings from Carlyle well chosen. There is much in Carlyle's ' Chartism ' and the ' French Revolu- tion,' and also in a paper called ' Characteristics,' among the miscellanies, which is 'good doctrine and profitable for this age.' I cannot say what /personally owe to that man's wTitings.* " For the notice of our new ' Tailor-dom,' many thanks, but let me say that I have not the honour of having advanced any capital — having none to advance. My only help, alas ! has been a pamphlet, ' Cheap Clothes and Nasty,' which I begged some one to send you. But you are right, a thousand times right, in saying that it is a more important move than any Parliamentary one. It is to get room and power for such works, and not merely for any abstract notions of political right that I fight for the suffrage. I am hard at work — harder, the doctors say, than is wise. But ' the days are evil, and we must redeem the time. Our one chance for all the Eternities, to do a little work in for God, and the people for whom, as I believe. He gave His well-beloved Son. That is the spring of my work, Thomas Cooper \ it will be yours ; consciously or unconsciously it is now, for aught I know, if you be the man I take you for." .... EVERSLEY, N'ovemher 2, 1853. " I am glad you like ' Hypatia.' I wrote it with my whole heart, trusting that I should find at least a few who would read it with their whole hearts, and I have not been disappointed." (Your Jew in ' Hypatia,' Thomas Cooper had said, shows me that you understand me.) " Your friend is a very noble fellow. As for converting either you or him, — what I want to do, is to make people believe in the Incarna- tion as the one solution of all one's doubts and fears for all heaven and earth wherefore I should say boldly, that, even if Strauss were right, the thing must either have happened somewhere else, or will happen some- where some day, so utterly does both my reason and conscience, and, as I think, judging from history, the reason and conscience of the many in all ao-es and climes, demand an Incarnation. As for Strauss, I have read * In speaking of Carlyle once to a Cambridge friend, he said, "Carlyle is an old Hebrew prophet, who goes to prince and beggar, and says, ' If you do this or that you will go to Hell, not the hell that priests talk of— but a hell on this earth.' " Slrmiss and the Gospel. 379 a great deal of him, and his preface carefully.* Of the latter, I must say that it is utterly illogical, founded on a gross petitio pi-incipii ; as for the mass of the book, I would undertake, by the same fallacious process, to disprove the existence of Strauss himself, or any other phenomenon in heaven or earth. But all this is a long story. As long as you do see in Jesus the perfect ideal of man, you are in the right path, you are going toward the light, whether or not you may yet be allowed to see certain consequences which, as I believe, logically follow from the fact of His being the ideal. Poor ****'s denial (for so I am told) of Jesus being the ideal of a good man, is a more serious evil far. And yet Jesus Himself said, ' That if any one spoke a word against the Son of Man {i.e. against Him as the perfect man) it should be forgiven him ' ; but the man who could not be forgiven either in this world or that to come, was the man Avho spoke against the Holy Spirit, i.e. who had lost his moral sense and did not know what was righteous when he saw it — a sin into which we parsons are as likely to fall as any men, much more likely than the publicans and sinners. As long as your friend, or any other man loves the good, and does it, and hates the evil and flees from it, my Catholic creeds tell me that the Spirit of Jesus, ' the Word,' is teaching that man; and gives me hope that either here or hereafter, if he be faithful over a few things, he shall be taught much. " You see, this is quite a different view from either the Dissenters or Evangelicals, or even the High-Church parsons. But it is the view of those old ' Fathers ' whom they think they honour, and whom they will find one day, in spite of many errors and superstitions, to be far more liberal, humane, and philosophical than our modern religionists " Torquay, 1S54. " I must begin my letter by telling you that Mrs. Kingsley has been very ill, and that that has prevented my writing to you before. We are now at Torquay for her health. . . . * This refers to a letter in which Thomas Cooper says, " My friend, a noble young fellow, says, you are trying to convert him to orthodoxy, and expresses great admira- tion for you. I wish you success with him, and I had almost said I wish you could next succeed with me ; but I think I am likely to stick where I have stuck for some years — never lessening, but I think increasing, in my love for the truly divine Jesus — but re- taining the Strauss view of the Gospel." " Ah ! that grim Strauss," he says in a later letter, " How he makes the iron agony go through my bones and marrow, when I am yearning to get hold of Christ ! But you understand me ? Can you help me ? I wish I could be near you, so as to have a long talk with you often. I wish you could show me tliat Strauss's preface is illogical, and that it is grounded on a pditio prijicipii. I wish you could bring me into a full and hearty reception of this doctrine of the Incarna- tion. I wish you could lift off the dead weight from my head and heart, that blasting, brutifying thought, that the grave must be my 'end all.'" 380 Charles Kings ley. " I am now very busy at two things. Working at the sea-animals of Torbay for my friend, Mr. Gosse, the naturah'st, and thundering in behalf of sanitary reform. Those who fancy me a ' sentimentalist ' and a ' fanatic' little know how thoroughly my own bent is for physical science; how I have been trained in it from earliest boyhood ; how I am happier now in classifying a new polype, or solving a geognostic problem of strata, or any other bit of hard Baconian induction, than in writing all the novels in the world ; or how, again, my theological creed has grown slowly and naturally out of my physical one, till I have seen, and do believe more and more utterly, that the peculiar doctrines of Christianity (as they are in the Bible, not as some preachers represent them from the pulpit) coincide with the loftiest and severest science. This blessed belief did not come to me at once, and therefore I complain of no man who arrives at it slowly, either from the scientific or religious side ; nor have I yet spoken out all that is in me, much less all that I see coming ; but I feel that I am on a right path, and please God, I will hold it to the end. " I see by-the-bye that you have given out two ' Orations against taking away human life.' I wish you would let me see them. I should be curious to hear what a man like you says on the point, for I am sure you are free from any effeminate sentimentalism, and by your counte- nance, would make a terrible and good fighter, in a good cause. It is a painful and difficult subject. After much thought, I have come to the conclusion that you cannot take away htmian life. That animal life is all you take away ; and that very often the best thing you can do for a poor creature is to put him out of this world, saying, ' You are evidently unable to get on here. We render you back into God's hands that He may judge you, and set you to work again somewhere else, giving you a fresh chance as you have spoilt this one.' But I speak really in doubt and awe ; and the next question, about the sin of taking away life except judicially or in war, is more difficult still. When I have read your opinions I will tell you why I think the judicial taking away animal life to be the strongest assertion of the dignity and divineness of human life; and the taking away life in wars the strongest assertion of the dignity and divineness of national life. Don't answer me yet, though I know you won't, like our friend * * *. He is a good fellow ; but he is so saturated with Locke that he cannot view anything except through the same spectacles which are used by the very persons whom he denounces ; and till we work clear of Locke and return to Bacon we shall do no good. Thomas Cooper had now re-commenced lecturing at the Hall The Prayer of Desperation. 381 of Science on Sunday evenings, simply teaching theism, for he had not advanced farther yet in positive conviction. " Immediately after I had obeyed conscience," he says in his Autobiography, " and told the people I had been in the habit of teach- ing, that I had been wrong, I determined to open my mind fully to my large-hearted friend, Charles Kingsley, He showed the fervent sympathy of a brother. We began a correspondence which extended over more than a year. I told him every doubt, and described every hope I had ; and he counselled, instructed, and strengthened me to the end " I told him that while I diligently read ' Bridgewater Treatises,' and all the other books with which he furnished me, as a means of beginning to teach sceptics the truth from the very foundation, that the foundations themselves seem to glide from under my feet. I had to struggle against my own new and tormenting doubts about God's existence, and feared I should be at last overwhelmed with darkness and confusion of mind. " No, no !" said my faithful and intelligent friend. "You will get out of all doubt in time. When you feel you are in the deepest and gloomiest doubt, pray the prayer of desperation ; cry out, ' Lord, if Thou dost exist, let me know that Thou dost exist ! Guide my mind by a way that I know not, into Thy truth,' and God will deliver you." At a later period Thomas Cooper writes to say that his lectures were still going on, and he was beginning to find out that the spread of scepticism did not arise from the spread of intelligence among the artizan class as he had thought, but from their dense ignorance and conceit. 't> " I ought to tell you," he says, " that during the last seven months I have gradually been gaining a steady point for my reason, which my heart always longed to gain, and which for twelve years commencing with the dark prison period, I lost. " I must be truthful. It is too late at fifty-one to assume a mask. . . . I have announced for my subjects, for the next two Sunday nights, at the Hall of Science, City Road, ' An Argument for the Being of a God, and the Moral Government of the Universe;' and 'An Argu- ment for a Future State.' Of course I have thrown the whole atheistic camp into alarm, and they threaten dreadful battle ; but I fear not. I can commit myself cheerfully to the care of the All Father. Con- victions of something more may come. . . . " To which Mr. Kingsley replied, 382 Charles Kingsley. " I want much to know how your Sunday evenings arc going on. Do not be disheartened by opposition. You cannot expect to remove in a few weeks the prejudices of years ; but every stroke will tell, and seeds will be sown which will bear fruit after you are dead. " The ignorance which you speak of amazes me most. I had thought that these men were really tolerably up in popular information. Verily ' the j<:^education of the masses,' except in cases like yours of uncom- mon energy and patience, is a failure. More shame to us parsons not to have educated them ; but we are, on the whole, trying our best now. God grant it may not be too late ! " EvERSLEY, September 16, 1855. " Poor **** sent me some time ago a letter of yours which I ought to have answered before, in which you express dissatisfaction with the 'soft indulgence' which I and Maurice attribute to God.* I am sure you mistake us. No men are more ready to say (T at least from ex- perience) that * it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.' All we say is, that God is just, and rewards every man according to his work. " My belief is, that God will punish (and has punished already some- what) every wrong thing I ever did, unless I repent — that is, change my behaviour therein ; and that His lightest blow is hard enough to break bone and marrow. But as for saying of any human being whom I ever saw on earth that there is no hope for them ; that even if, under the bitter smart of just punishment, they opened their eyes to their folly, and altered their minds, even then God would not forgive them ; as for say- ing that I will not for all the world, and the rulers thereof I never saw a man in whom there was not some good, and I believe that God sees that good far more clearly, and loves it far more deeply, than I can, because He Himself put it there, and, therefore, it is reasonable to believe that He will educate and strengthen that good, and chastise and scourge the holder of it till he obeys it, and loves it, and gives up himself to it ; and that the said holder will find such chastisement terrible enough, if he is unruly and stubborn, I doubt not, and so much the better for him. Beyond this I cannot say ; but I like your revulsion into stern puritan vengeance — it is a lunge too far the opposite way, like Carlyle's ; but anything better than the belief that our Lord Jesus Christ was sent into the world to enable bad men to be infinitely rewarded, without doing anything worth rewarding — anything, oh ! God of mercy, as well as jus- tice, than a creed which strengthens the heart of the wicked, by promising * See Vol. IT., page 208. Plato and ike Socratic AletJiod. 383 him life, and makes *** **** believe (as I doubt not he does believe) that though a man is damned here his soul is saved hereafter." Farley Court, 1856. " No words can express the feelings which your last letter has awakened in me. I always expected that the pupils of the Reasoner were shallow and ill-educated. But you have an awful and glorious work before you, and you do seem to be going about it in the right spirit — namely, in a spirit of self-humiliation. '* Don't be do^vn-hearted if outward humiHation, failure, insult, appa- rent loss of influence, come out of it at first. If God be indeed our Father in any real sense, then, whom He loveth He chasteneth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth. And ' Till thou art emptied of thyself, God cannot fill thee,' though it be a saw of the old mystics, is true and practical common sense. God bless you and prosper you. " I send you all the Bridgewater Treatises which I have, and also my * Glaucus,' if you have it not. Out of it you may get a few hints. Have you read Plato ? He is so easily readable in Bohn's cheap translation. Oh for a Socratic method and spirit brought to bear on those men ! It would be as charming to them as new. They don't know what reasoning means. I often think that (in spiritual matters) no one can who has not read Plato. But it is not so. Every wise man is Socratic at heart, because his is the true inductive Baconian method, just as Mr. Jourdain talked prose all his life without knowing it. " All manner of fanatics will try to make a proselyte of you : but you are not, I hope, going to vex yourself with them, any more than to be cajoled by them. Go your own way, and believe only what you do and can believe. The way to true light is a long ladder ; and I am low enough down on it, to be able to reach a hand to you now and then • perhaps you may be higher than I even now in spirit, and more able to help me up : if so, better for you that you should not know it. 1856. "Your letter this morning delighted me, for / see that you see. If you are an old hand at the Socratic method, you will be saved much trouble. I can quite understand young fellows kicking at it. Plato always takes care to let us see how all but the really earnest kicked at it, and flounced off in a rage, having their own notions torn to rags, and scattered, but nothing new put in the place thereof. It seems to me (I speak really humbly here) that the danger of the Socratic method, which issued, two or three generations after in making his so-called pupils the 384 Charles Kingsley. academics mere destroying sceptics, priding themselves on picking holes in eveiything positive, is this — to use it without Socrates' great Idea, which he expressed by ' all knowledge being memory,' which the later Platonists, both Greek and Jew, e.g., Philo and St. John, and after them the good among the Roman stoics and our early Quakers, and German mystics, expressed by saying that God, or Christ, or the Word, was more or less in every man, the Light which lightened him. Letting alone formal phraseology, what I mean, and what Socrates meant, was this, to confound people's notions and theories, only to bring them to look their own reason in the face, and to tell them boldly, you know these things at heart already, if you will only look at what you know, and clear from your own spirit the mists which your mere brain and ' organi- sation and truth,' has wrapt round them. Men may be at first more angry than ever at this ; they will think you accuse them of hypocrisy when you tell them ' you know that I am right, and you wrong : ' but it will do them good at last. It will bring them to the one great truth, that they too have a Teacher, a Guide, an Inspirer, a Father : that you are not asserting for yourself any new position, which they have not attained, but have at last found out the position which has been all along equally true of them and you, that you are all God's children, and that your Father's Love is going out to seek and to save them and you, by the only possible method, viz., teaching them that He is their Father. " I am very anxious to hear your definition of a person. I have not been able yet to get one, or a proof of personal existence which does not spring from a priori subjective consciousness, and which is, in fact, Fichte's. ' I am I.' I know it. Take away my ' organisation,' cast my body to the crows or the devil, logically or physically, strip me of all which makes me palpable to you, and to the universe, still I have the "unconquerable knowledge that * I am I,' and must and shall be so for ever. How I get this Idea I know not : but it is the most precious of all convictions, as it is the first; and I can only suppose that it is a reve- lation from God, whose image it is in me, and the first proof of my being His child. My spirit is a person ; and the child of the Absolute person, the Absolute spirit. And so, young coxcombs, is yours, and yours, and yours. In saying that, I go on ' Analogy,' \vhich is Butler's word for fair Baconian induction. I find that I am absolutely I, an individual and indissoluble person ; therefore I am bound to believe at first sight that you, and you, and you are such also ; and to verify that hypothesis hereafter by such experiments as I can make. This is all I seem to know about it as yet. I wish you'd tell me your definition. Lange, in his noble Leben Jesu (an answer to Strauss on the same Hegelian grounds which Strauss took up), has two introductory chapters hiduction and Science. 385 which you must some day read. He (deriving person from persona, a mask — a character in a play — at last an office, or functionary of any sort) says that the true idea of a person is a being inspired by God, and called by Him to a certain function in His world, persona per quam sonat spiritus, through whom God's spirit speaks. Curious, and possible. " But how utterly right you are in beginning to teach the real meaning of words, which people now (parsons as well as atheists) use in the loosest way. Take even ' organisation,' paltry word as it is, and make them analyse it, and try if they can give any definition of it (drawn from its real etymology) which does not imply a person distinct from the organs, or tools, and organising or arranging those tools with a mental view to a result." " I should advise you to stick stoutly by old Paley. He is right at root, and I should advise you, too, to make your boast of Baconian Induction being on your side, and not on theirs ; for ' many a man talks of Robin Hood who never shot in his bow,' and the * Reasoner' party, while they prate about the triumphs of science, never, it seems to me, employ intentionally in a single sentence the very inductive method whereby that science has triumphed. But these things perhaps you know as well as I. " For the end of your letter. Be of good cheer. When the wicked man turneth from his wickedness (then, there and then), he shall save his soul alive — as you seem to be consciously doing, and all his sin and his iniquity shall not be mentioned unto him. What your 'measure' of guilt (if there can be a measure of the incommensurable spiritual) I know not. But this I know, that as long as you keep the sense of guilt alive in your own mind, you will remain justified in God's mind ; as long as you set your sins before your face, He will set them behind His back. Do you ask how I know that } I will not quote ' texts,' though there are dozens. I will not quote my own spiritual experience, though I could honestly : I will only say, that such a moral law is implied in the very idea of ' Our Father in heaven.' " P. S. I have ordered 'Glaucus' to be sent you. I wish you would consider especially pp. 69-80, 95-7, 100-103. I send you also Harvey's sea-side book, that you may read up the ' Echinus.' I think a lecture simply on the ' Echinus ' would astonish weak minds more utterly than anything I can guess at. I could help you to all facts. As for specimens, I could send you a few. But do you know Dr. Carpenter, at University Hall ? He is a good man, full of desire to teach workmen wisdom, and knows the ' Echini' better than any man on earth. He VOL. I. c c 386 Charles Kings ley. might help you to facts and specimens better than I. But think it over. Can you make drawings ? Again, have you Hugh Miller's in- valuable ' Footprints of the Creation,' a corroboration of Paley against the ' Vestiges ' drawn principally from the geology of his favourite Old Red Sandstone fishes? You will find it useful beyond any modern book. Also, you must get a sight of Owen's new collection of his Lectures. " My father wants to know if you have ever seen old Mendelssohn's (the musician's grandfather) Answer to an Atheist at Hamburgh. I have heard that the book is highly valuable. Do you know ' Kant's Theodicy?' It reveals A Being ; but hardly a Father " Through the exertions of his friends, Thomas Cooper was now given copying work at the Board of Health, of Vv-hich the Rt. Hon. William Cowper was then President : his hearers at the Hall of Science, already made bitter by his deserting the atheist camp, made the fact of his doing government work and taking government pay a fresh ground of opposition to his teaching, and Mr. Kingsley writes : EvERSLEY, March 27, 1856. " Be of ^ood cheer. No man. ever tried to sweep the devil's dust out without being somewhat choked at first ; but you will conquer. If I can be of any use to you, in any way, let me know ; for as for allowing you really to suffer for these jackanapes (un-English as they are in their frivolity and conceit), it shall not be. " Why be shy of work from whomsoever it comes ? yet I can appre- ciate your feeling. Only I would advise strongly that you should conquer it, how^ever honourable to you. Never mind what silly lads (who would be glad to have their own mouths stopped by government pay) may say. If the government of England is not perfect, it is at least not so abominably unrighteous, forsooth, that an honest man need shrink from taking pay from it for doing non-political work. As reasonably might a stonemason refuse to work at the Houses of Parlia- ment because a Tory minister might some day have the upper hand in them ; and be sure this wall lead to something better, and is perhaps meant only as a test of your being inclined to pull in harness " But you must come and see me, and talk over many things. That is what I want. An evening's smoke and chat in my den, and a morn- ing's walk en our heather moors, would bring our hearts miles nearer each other, and our heads too. As for the political move, I can give IVorkijig in Har7iess. 387 you no advice save, say little, and do less. I am ready for all extensions of the franchise, if we have, a governme/it system of education t/iereiinth : till then I am merely stupidly acquiescent. More poor and ignorant voters ? Very well — more bribees ; more bribers ; more pettifogging attornies in parliament ; more local interests preferred to national ones ; more substitution of the delegate system for the representative one. I suppose it ought to be so. Something will come of it. But the chicken will be a \ery queer and unexpected looking one, when it breaks the shell." Rectory, Chelsea, jftiHe 14, 1856. " I called and asked for you at the Board of Health, but you were away ! You must not give up to low spirits — wait awhile, and all will be right. Get into harness, become a habitue' of the place, get every one's good word, and in six months you will be found out to be a ' valuable man ;' and then, in due time, you may say what you like — and rise to something really worth having. " It is, I know it, a low aim (I don't mean morally) for a man who has had the aspirations which you have ; but may not Our Heavenly Father just be bringing you through this seemingly degrading work, to give you what I should think you never had,T-what it cost me bitter sorrow to learn — the power of working in harness, and so actually drawing something, and being of reaWuse. Be sure, if you can once learn that lesson, in addition to the rest yon have learnt, you will rise to something worthy of you yet. My dear Cooper, you are a very cle\er man. But — don't you think that the God who made you is as fully aware of that fact as you or I ? And is it not probable that He is only keeping your powers seemingly useless, till you have learned to use them ? Xow it has seemed to me, in watching you and your books, and your life, that just what you wanted was self-control. I don't mean that you could not starve, die piece-meal, for what you thought right ; for you are a brave man, and if you had not been, you would not have been ali\-e now. But it did seem to me, that what you wanted was the quiet, stern cheerfulness, which sees that things are A^Tong, and sets to to right them, but does it trying to make the best of them all the while, and to see the bright side ; and even if, as often happens, there be no bright side to see, still * possesses his soul in patience,' and sits whistling and working till ' the pit be digged for the ungodly.' " Don't be angry with me and turn round and sa}-, ' You, sir, who never knew what it was to want a meal in }our life, ^who belong to the successful class who /lave. What do you mean by preaching these cold platitudes to me ?' For, Thomas Cooper, I have 388 Charles Kings ley. known what it was to want things more precious to you, as well as to me, than a full stomach ; and I learnt — or rather I am learning a little — to wait for them till God sees good. And the man who wrote ' Alton Locke' must know a little of what a man like you could feel to a man like me, if the devil entered into him. And yet I tell you, Thomas Cooper, that there was a period in my life — and one not of months^ but for years, in which I would have gladly exchanged your circum- stantia, yea, yourself, as it is now, for my circumstantia, and myself, as they were then. And yet I had the best of parents and a home, if not luxurious, still as good as any man's need be. You are a far happier man now, I firmly believe, than I was for years of my life. 'J1ie dark cloud has past with me now. Be but brave and patient, and (I itiiil swear now), by God, sir ! it will pass with you." yuiw 25, 1S56. " I have had a sad time, for a dear friend has died suddenly, or I would have both written again to you, and called again ; but I could not recollect your exact address, and could not get it at the Board of Health, and meanwhile this trouble came, and I had to exert myself for a poor dear man left with a family of young folk, and utterly broken hearted. You are in the right way yet. I can put you in no more right way. Your sense of sin is not fanaticism ; itjs, I suppose, simple consciousness of fact. As for helping you to Christ, I do not believe I can one inch. I see no hope but in prayer, in going to Him yourself, in saying : Lord if Thou art there, if Thou art at all, if this all be not a lie, fulfil Thy reputed promises, and give me peace and the sense of forgiveness, and the feeling that bad as I may be, Thou lovest me still, seeing all, understand- ing all, and therefore making allowances for all ! I have had to do that in past days ; to challenge Him through outer darkness and the silence of night, till I almost expected that He would vindicate His own honour by appearing visibly as He did to St. Paul and St. John ; but He answered in the still small voice only ; yet that was enough. " Read the book by all means ; but the book will not reveal Him. He is not in the book ; He is in the heaven which is as near you and me as the air we breathe, and out of that He must reveal Himself; — neither priests nor books can conjure him up. Cooper. Your Wesleyan teachers taught you, perhaps, to look for Him in the book, as Papists would have in the bread; and when you found He was not in the book, you thought Him nowhere ; but He is bringing you out of your first mistake and idolatry, ay, through it, and through all wild wanderings since, to know Him Himself, and speak face to face with Him as a man speaks with his friend. Aro2iment from Design. 389 Have patience with Him. Has He not had patience with you ? And therefore have patience with all men and things ; and then you will rise again in His good time the stouter for your long battle. " As for worldly matters, there is nothing to be done now, but to trust God to give you the right work in His own good time. He has, you see, given you anchorage-ground when you fancied yourself utterly adrift. Oh, trust this earnest of His care, and ' wait on Providence.' Men may misuse that expression into Micawber's cant, but there is an everlasting truth in it. In such a work as God is doing with you, He will have it all His own way, so that you shall have no chance of mis- taking from whom the blessing comes. " Write again soon. Your letters are always pleasant to me. I should have answered this before ; but I have been living for three days on a vault, and a funeral, and the sight of utter woe." E VERS LEY, Scptcijibcr 10, 1 85 6. " I am truly glad to hear that you are going to preach once more. Your subjects look most hopeful ; and they must do good. I believe that Holyoake's lads have never had the positive side fairly put before them, either on moral or on scientific grounds. To me the inductive argument, from design (Paley's watch), must carry conviction to every unprejudiced mind ; as a fact, it has done so in every age and clime, to YooV of ^^ human race, an inductive proof in time, of its being a sound argument. I don't think that, stoutly and even pedantically asserting yourself to be going on Baconian Induction (as you would be), you need fear saying that on Bacon's method (applied to metaphysic) there is always a vast probability that what everybody believes must be true ; and then expose the self-contradiction of those who in one breath cry up human nature, and man as the measure of all things, and in the next deny the very conclusions to which human nature in all ages and countries has been tending, and often has arrived at. " For yourself, my dear friend, the secret of life for you and for me, is to lay our purposes and characters continually before Him who made them, and cry, ' Do Thou purge me, and so alone I shall be clean. Thou requirest truth in the inward parts. Thou wilt make me to under- stand wisdom secretly.' What more rational behef? For surely if there be any God, and He made us at first. He who makes can also mend His own work, if it get out of gear. What more miraculous in the doctrines of regeneration and renewal, than in the mere fact of creation .at all ? '■'■ And if any one ask, are you fulfilling the duties of which you speak ? 390 Charles Kings ley. Answer boldly as I have had to do to my own people — ' And what if I am not ? I am at least trying ; and to . me my very sins of practice prove more and more that I am right in theory ; for I find that all misery, helplessness, self-contradiction in me comes simply from my not fulfilling; from choosing the evil while I see the good.' One honest confession of this kind works more, by human sympathy, on one's hearers, than years of inhuman (and hypocritical) assumption of papal infallibility and perfection. " I am glad to hear you are regularly at work at the Board. It will lead to something better, doubt not ; and if it be dry drudgery, after all, some of the greatest men who have ever lived (perhaps almost all) have had their dull collar-work of this kind, which after all was useful in keeping mind and temper in order. I have a good deal of it, and find it most blessed and useful." EvERSLEV, ScpUiithcr 21, 1S56. " I send you two sermons I preached to my people last Sunday. I think they will show you more of my thoughts about Hitn than any desultory scribble. " As for ****, ' Be not afraid of their terror, but worship the Lord God in your heart.' He is a poor ignorant man, with a certain sort of acuteness, but shallow (as far as I have seen) as a saucer ; and for that very reason popular. But don't fancy for a moment that his ' Nature ' and ' Necessity ' are anything but paper giants, phantasms of the imagination, wliich fade and vanish before the very same destructive analysis by which he pretends to destroy your God. He can, by that destructive analysis, expose a probable foUacy, in any defini- tion of God. So can you by the same weapons in any definition of Nature. " But here you (and Paley) stand on better ground than he — that Avhen you have both picked each other bone from bone, you can turn round on him, and say, -Now, Dialectic, having destroyed your words * Cause ' and ' Necessity, and * Law ' and ' Nature,' what have you left ? Nothing. But destroy, or seem to destroy, any and every term I use, I am just where I was before. For you have not touched the broad ground of general Induction (the only scientific method of ap- proaching natural phenomena), from which I started, viz., there are organisms in the universe. We know from experience that men, persons, minds, (call them what you will), can create organisms more or less, by design, and we have no evidence that any other cause can. There- fore by fair induction, we, with the vast majority of the human race, are scientifically just in saying, ' Therefore it is reasonable to suppose, as Plato versus Locke. 391 our first inductive guess, that the more perfect organisms of nature (as a flower or an animal is more perfect than a fiddle or a steam- engine), were likewise created — at least constructed by a more perfect person, mind, being, man if you will. Leave alone as yet the question of the ' Eternity of jNIatter ; ' leave alone the question of God's anthropomorphism — even of God's moral righteousness — all that must come after ; but stick to this, and stick it into him. Is not the first Induction on my side, viz., that by all experience there is a probability that the world must have been made by an Infinite Man, if you will ? Hammer away at that, and try, too, to pay him out in his own coin. Try and pick to pieces, by such word-splitting dialectic as Socrates used, his trashy abstractions 'Nature, Law, Necessity,' and make him confess that the law by which a grain of sand is a grain of sand, if it be material (as it must, if nothing but matter exist), must have extension, weight, &c., and a material place within that grain of sand; but if not, then it is either nothing, and there is no law of nature, or immaterial, and then there is more than matter in the universe. On Locke's nominalist philosophy, you can't do this. On Plato's realism you can. I am working out in detail a specimen of what I mean for your use. I'll send it you in a day or two." EVERSLEY, December £,, 1S56. " Your letter is very cheering ; I wish J could tell you as much about probabilities as I can about natural history. " But, for the zoolog}', I will bring you up not only Cuvier, but all the books I can think of. Have you Hiiber on the bee ? It is old, but good. I will bring you Kirby and Spence's entomology, where you will find wonders on bees and ants. Moreover, I can help you, I think, with geological books. Have you read Hitchcock, who is making a noise now ? and did you ever see a ' Boy's Dream of Geology ' ? But the most important book for you is Sedgwick's ' Notes to his University Studies,' containing his refutation of the ' Vestiges of Creation.' I come to town the loth, and must have some talks v.'ith you, for now that vre are got upon my ground of Natural Histor}', I think I could do more to help you in one talk than in three letters. A Lecture on Physical Geography, as showing God's providence and care of man, might be eftective. Do you know ' Guyot's Earth and Man ' ? an admirable book, which I can bring. I am going to get you Agassiz's opening lecture to the British Association this year, which will be quite invaluable to you. Borrow from some one Orr's ' Circle of the Sciences ' : with Owen's ' Tractate on Physiology.' " 392 Charles Kings ley. EvERSLEV, April I, 1857. " Go on and prosper.* Let me entreat you, in broaching Christianity, to consider carefully the one great Missionary sermon on record, viz , St. Paul's at Athens. There ' the Atonement,' in its sense of a death to avert God's anger, is never mentioned. Christ's Kingship is his theme ; the Resurrection, not the death, the great fact. Oh, begin by insisting, as I have done in the end of ' Hypatia,' on the Incarnation as morally necessary, to prove the goodness of the Supreme Being. Insist on its being the Incarnation of Him who had been in the world all along. Insist on His 'revealing the Father,' by showing that His character was God's character. Pray read Maurice on the Gospel of St. John. The old Calvinistic view of the Atonement is indefensible, and will revolt them : better omit the death even, except as (what the Apostles held it) the means to the resurrection, and the proof of perfect sympathy with all human ill, and of perfect resignation to the Father. Do bear in mind that you have to tell them of The Father — Their Father — of Christ, as manifesting that Father ; and all will go well. God bless you " On the question of future punishment, I should have a good deal to say to you. I believe that it is the a'ux to most hearts." 56, Marina, St. Leonards, May 9, 1857. "About endless torment. (Keep that expression distinct from eternal^ which has been mixed up with it, the former being what the popular creed really holds.) You may say, " I. Historically, that, " a. The doctrine occurs nowhere in the Old Testament, or any hint of it. The expression, in the end of Isaiah, about the fire unquenched, and the worm not dying, is plainly of the dead corpses of men upon the physical earth, in the valley of Hinnom, or Gehenna, where the offal of Jerusalem was burned perpetually. Enlarge on this, as it is the passage which our Lord quotes, and by it the meaning of His words must be primarily determined. " b. The doctrine of endless torment was, as a historical fact, brought back from Babylon by the Rabbis. It was a very ancient jDrimary doctrine of the Magi, an appendage of their fire-kingdom of Ahriman, and may be found in the old Zends, long prior to Christianity. * T. Cooper had written to say that he had now Ijegiin the "grand contest." " God has been so good to me that I must confess Christ, and we shall have greater rage now that I have come to Christianity." Endless Torment. OVJ "(T. St. Paul accepts nothing of it as far as we can tell, never making the least allusion to the doctrine. 'V. The Apocalypse simply repeats the imagery of Isaiah, and of our Lord ; but asserts, distinctly, the non-endlessness of torture, declaring that in the consummation, not only death, but Hell, shall be cast into the Lake of Fire. " e. The Christian Church has never really held it- exclusively, till now. It remained quite an open question till the age of Justinian, 530, and significantly enough, as soon as 200 years before that, endless torment for the heathen became a popular theory, purgatory sprang up synchronously by the side of it, as a relief for the conscience and reason of the Church. "/ Since the Reformation, it has been an open question in the English Church, and the philosophical Platonists, of the i6th and 17th centuries, always considered it as such. "^. The Church of England, by the deliberate expunging of the 42nd Article, which affirmed endless punishment, has declared it authorita- tively to be open. "7/. It is so, in fact. Neither Mr. Maurice, I, or any others, who have denied it, can be dispossessed or proceeded against legally in any way whatsoever. " Exegetically, you may say, I think, a. That the meanings of the word al(ov and atcij/tos have little or nothing to do with it, even if atcov be derived from ad always, which I greatly doubt. The word never is used in Scriptur4 anywhere else, in tlie sense of endlessness (vulgarly called eternity). It always meant, both in Scripture and out, a period of time. Else, how could it have a plural— how could you talk of the 3eons, and asons of ceons, as the Scripture does ? Nay, more, how talk of ovTOi 6 aXix>v, which the translators, with laudable inconsistency, have translated 'this world,' i.e., this present state of things, 'Age,' 'dispensation,' or epoch — aiwj/toj, therefore, means, and must mean, belonging to an epoch, or the epoch, and a\u)vio% KoXaa-is is the punishment allotted to that epoch. Always bear in mind, what Maurice insists on, — and what is so plain to honest readers,— that our Lord, and the Apostles, always speak of being in the end of an age or seon, not as ushering in a new one. Come to judge and punish the old world, and to create a new one out of its ruins, or rather as the S. S. better expresses it, to burn up the chaff and keep the wheat, f.e. all the elements of food as seed for the new world. " I think you may say, that our Lord took the popular doctrine because He found it, and tried to correct and purify it, and put it on a really moral ground. You may quote the parable of Dives and 394 Charles Kingsley. Lazarus (which was the emancipation from the Tartarus theory) as the one instance in which our Lord professedly opens the secrets of the next world, that He there represents Dives as still Abraham's child, under no despair, not cut off from Abraham's sympathy, and under a direct moral training, of which you see the fruit. He is gradually weaned from the selfish desire of indulgence for himself, to love and care for his brethren, a divine step forward in his life, which of itself proves him not to be lost. The impossibility of Lazarus getting to him, or vice versCx, ex- presses plainly the great truth, that each being Avhere he ought to be at that time, interchange of place {i.e., of spiritual state) is impossible. But it says nothing against Dives rising out of his torment, when he has learnt the lesson of it, and going where he ought to go. The common interpretation is merely arguing in a circle, assuming that there are but two states of the dead, 'Heaven' and ' Hell,' and then trying at once to interpret the parable by the assumption, and to prove the assumption from the parable. Next, you may say that the English damnation, like the Greek KoraKpifjis, is perhaps kp'ktu simple, simply means condemna- tion, and is (thank God) retained in that sense in various of our formularies, where I always read it, e.g., ' eateth to himself damnation,' Avith sincere pleasure, as protests in favour of the true and rational meaning of the word, against the modern and narrower meaning. " You may say that Fire and Worms, whether physical or spiritual, must in all logical fairness be supposed to do what fire and worms do do, viz., destroy decayed and dead matter, and set free its elements to enter into new organisms ; that, as they are beneficent and purifying agents in this life, they must be supposed such in the future life, and that the conception of fire as an engine of torture, is an unnatural use of that agent, and not to be attributed to God without blasphemy, unless you suppose that the suftering (like all which He inflicts) is intended to teach man something which he cannot learn elsewhere. " You may say that the catch, ' All sin deserves infinite punishment, because it is against an Infinite Being,' is a worthless amphiboly, using the word infinite in two utterly different senses, and being a mere play on sound. That it is directly contradicted by Scripture, especially by our Lord's own words, which declare that every man (not merely the wicked) shall receive the due reward of his deeds, that he who, &c., shall be beaten with few stripes, and so forth. That the words ' He shall not go out till he has paid the uttermost farthing,' evidently imply (unless spoken in cruel mockery) that he may go out then, and that it is scandalous for Protestants to derive from thence the opposite doctrine, while they call the Papists rogues for proving the perpetual virginity of the B. V. Mary from exactly the same use of fas. The Fire of God. 395 " Finally, you may call on them to rejoice that there is a fire of God the Father whose name is Love, burning for ever unquenchably, to destroy out of every man's heart and out of the hearts of all nations, and off the physical and moral world, all which offends and makes a lie. That into that fire the Lord will surely cast all shams, lies, hypocrisies, tyrannies, pedantries, false doctrines, yea, and the men who lo\e them too well to give them up, that the smoke of their /yaorartcr/xus (/>., the torture which makes men confess the truth, for thai is the real meaning of it ; (Baaui'ta-fx^s means the /ouc/i-stone - by wliich gold was tested) may ascend perpetually, for a warning and a beacon to all nations, as the smoke of the torment of French aristocracies, and Bourbon dynasties, is ascending up to Heaven and has been ever since 1793. Oh, Cooper — Is it not good nev/s that i/iaf fire is unquenchable ; that f/iai worm will not die ? They tried, roe tried in our ignorance, to quench that fire when we put Louis XVI IL on the throne. But the fire burned up him and our chaffy works. The parfi pvitrc tried to kill the worm which was gnawing at their hearts, making them dimly aware that they were wrong, and liars, and that God and His- universe were against them, and that they and their system were rotting and must die. And they put poor Poerios and Madiais in prison, and show all the signs of weak terror, suspicion, spite : but they cannot kill God's worm, Thomas Cooper. You cannot look in the face of many\ a working continental priest without seeing that the worm is at his heart. You cannot watch their conduct without seeing that it is at the heart of their system. God grant that we here in England — we parsons (dissenting and church) may take warning by them. The fire may be kindled for us. The worm may seize our hearts. To judge by the temper of the * Record ' and the ' Morning Advertiser,' it has its fangs in some of our hearts already. God grant that in that day we may have courage to let the fire and the worm do their work — to say to Christ, These too are thine, and out of thine infinite love they have come. Thou requirest truth in the inward parts, and I will thank Thee for any means, however bitter, which Thou usest to make me true. I want to be an honest man,^ and a right man ! And, oh joy, Thou wantest me to be so also. Oh joy, that though I long cowardly to quench Thy fire, I catmot do it. Purge us, therefore, oh Lord, though it be with fire. Burn up the chaff of vanity and self-indulgence, of hasty prejudices, second-hand dogmas, — husks which do not feed my soul, with which I cannot be content, of wliich I feel ashamed daily — and if there be any grains of wheat in me, any word or thought or power of action which may be of use as seed for my nation after me, gather it, oh Lord, into Thy garner. " Yes, Thomas Cooper. Because I believe in a God of Absolute and 39^ Charles Kingslcy, Unbounded Love, therefore I believe in a Loving Anger of His, which will and must devour and destroy all which is decayed, monstrous, abor- tive in His universe, till all enemies shall be put under His feet, to be pardoned surely, if they confess themselves in the wrong, and open their eyes to the truth. And God shall be All in All. " Those last are wide words. It is he who limits them, not I who accept them in their fulness, who denies the verbal inspiration of Scripture. " P.S. When you talk to them on the Trinity, don't be afraid of saying two things. " They will say ' Three in One ' is contrary to sense and experience. Answer, that is your ignorance. Every comparative anatomist will tell you the exact contrary ; that among the most common, though the most puzzling phenomena is multiplicity in unity. Divided life in the same individual of every extraordinary variety of case. That distinction of persons with unity of individuality (what the old schoolmen properly called substance) is to be met with in some thousand species of animals, e.g., all the compound polypes, and that the soundest physiologists, like Huxley, are compelled to talk of these animals in metaphysic terms just as paradoxical as, and almost identical with, those of the theologian. Ask them then, whether, granting one primordial Being who has con- ceived and made all other beings, it is absurd to suppose in Him, some law of multiplicity in unity, analogous to that on which He has con- structed so many millions of His creatures Never fancy that you trouble my temper by asking 7?ic ; my heart and soul, conscience and intellect you do, and bitterly ; all the better for me. " I have said my say on the Trinity in the end of ' Yeast,' and in the end of 'Hypatia.' The argument I used in 'Hypatia' is the same that I used in my letter. A son implies, in the perfect ideal, the like of its parent. The express image of his person. If the one be eternal and almighty, so the other. Good and loving, so the other. I have no more to say. If I had I would. Write again ; your letters are good for me. They bring me low, and make me feel my own ignorance and presump- tion " St. Leonards, May 20, 1857. " I tiave been silent, not because I have forgotten. I have been thinking earnestly on your letter, and this is a fragment of what I think. "Your anecdotes of Romaine and Clarke, (Sec, are new to me, but not surprising, and most significant. I can understand well how men, who Demand of Heart and Reason for the Trviity. 397 considered the business of life to be the delivering men from a fancied Tartarus — to save them from God in fact who intended to move them into endless torture — were quite unable to conceive of the Son as the express image of the Father. How could He be, if the Father intended to damn, and the Son to save ? Thus the Godhead of the Son became to them a necessary part of their scheme of redemption, only because unless He were God, His ' satisfaction ' and His * merits ' would not be ' infinite,' and the Trinity became a mere function of the ' scheme of redemption,' that again being a function of ' the fall.' " This I have seen long, having been brought up among the evan- gelicals ; but I never knew that their old prophets had stated it so na'ively. But see what follows — what has followed in Geneva and Ger- many—what followed with you — when the Tartarus and the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction became incredible, then the Divinity of Christ, be- coming unnecessary, fell to the ground likewise — and socinianism, and at last deism-, followed as a matter of course. Think this out for yourself. It is historically as well as logically, true. '* Now with me. As I have told you, my reason demands a co-equal and co-eternal Son, in order that He may be an ideal and absolute Son at all. Adam Clarke's ' eternal generation being eternal nonsense,' is a very rash, foolish, ignordnt speech ; but pardonable to a man of Locke's school, and therefore unable to conceive of an ever-present and unceas- ing eternity, but referring all things to the conditions of time — unable to conceive that an eternal generation means an ever-present and unceasing one, by which the Father saith at every and all moments of time, * Thou art my Son, t/n's day have I begotten thee.' It is this Lockism Avhich infects all our pulpits, which makes even educated men unable to un- derstand jNIaurice. " But my heart, Cooper, demands the Trinity, as much as my reason. I want to be sure that God cares for us, that God is our Father, that God lias interfered, stooped, sacrificed Himself for us. I do not merely want to love Christ — a Christ, some creation or emanation of God's — whose will and character, for aught I know, may be different from God"s. I want to love and honour the absolute, abysmal God Himself, and none other will satisfy me — and in the doctrine of Christ being co-equal and co-eternal, sent by, sacrificed by, His Father, that He might do His Father's will, I find it — and no puzzling texts, like those you quote, shall rob me of that rest for my heart, that Christ is the exact counterpart of Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being. The texts are few, only two after all ; on them I wait for light, as I do on many more ; meanwhile, I say boldly, if the doctrine be not in the Bible, it ought to be, for the whole spiritual nature of man cries out for it. H^ave you read 398 Charles Kings ley. Maurice's essay on the Trinity in his theological essays? addressed to Unitarians ? If not, you must read it, '' About the word Trinity, I feel much as you do. It seems unfor- tunate that the name of God should be one which expresses a mere numerical abstraction, and not a moral property. It has, I think, helped to make men forget that God is a spirit — that is, a moral being, and that moral spiritual, and that morality (in the absolute) is God, as St. John saith God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him — words which, were they not happily in the Bible, would be now ■called rank and rampant Pantheism. But, Cooper, I have that faith in Christ's right government of the human race, that I have good hope that He is keeping the word Trinity, only because it has not yet done its work ; when it has, He will inspire men with some better one. " Now — I have a plan — could you, could you, come and dine with me at Chelsea Rectory, Church Street, at six to-morrow ? We shall be all alone, and will smoke and talk ad infinituin. Do, pray, I shall not have such another chance for a long time. " I shall call at the Board of Health, God willing, to-morrow afternoon for your answer." EvERSLEY, Jiiiic%, 1857. / " I have delayed \\T:itmg to you that I might send you herewith certain notes for a Trinity Sunday sermon, which has filled my head all the week, and which (if you can read it) may at least set you thinking. One thing / should differ very strongly in, from even the most orthodox of the men you quote. It will not do to say that the Father communi- cated Godhead, or anything, to the Son ; communicates must be the word. An eternal, and therefore ever-present and perpetual generation is the real old Catholic doctrine, and the only safeguard against Arianism. As soon as you introduce priority and posteriority of time, and not merely of moral relation, you get involved in contradiction. It is that Lockite superstition of cognising everything, even God Himself, as under the conditions of time, which makes all the mess now-a-days, though one must not lay the blame on Locke. Calvin is, perhaps, the offender. The whole Calvinistic theolog}^, demonology call it, is based on the fallacy that God is comprehended by time, and that He has not made time (in making the universe) but is made, they can't say how — by time. " I have a most noble volume of sermons by Robertson of Brighton, which will do your heart good. I will lend you them as soon as I have read them through. " God bless you ; go on and prosper. I was sure that your head would lead you to no other conclusion than that at which you have TJie apotheosis of Self-sacrijice. 399 arrived, because your heart was set on truth, and most heartily do I thank God for it. " As to the Hall of Science, do you write and tell me what you will have to pay for the Hall, and how often you want to lecture, and I will see whether there are not honest men enough left in England to secure it for you without its costing you a penny. I can't promise ; but I do think that I could do something, and get something done ; and if we could, it would make the devil very cross indeed. . . ." EvERSLEY, Palm Sunday, ]\IaycJt, 1858. "Most gratifying is this, both to me and your truly affectionate friend "^' ■"' * *. These Sheffield parsons seem a noble set. God prosper them and you. You have a great work before you, and I trust you will get some of it done, and that your old age may be peaceful, useful, and self-contented, after all the storms and struggles of manhood. I cannot but hope that a better intellectual era is dawning for the working men, now that they are beginning to disentangle Christianity from the priest- craft and devils' traditions (of all parties), which have made their better nature, and the very word of God in their hearts, revolt against it. Oh, study that first chapter of St. John, and preach that in all its fulness, and tell them that Christ is in them, a true and healthy manhood, trying to form Himself in them, and make men of them, and you will conquer ! " Remember the lesson of to-day (Matthew xxvi.). The apotheosis of self-sacrifice — a self-sacrificing God — and preach that new and truly Christian idea to what generosity and nobleness is in them." The following is the last letter which passed between the two friends : EvERSLEY, September 23, 1S72. " Mv DEAR Thomas Cooper, " I have been wandering for nearly a fortnight, the only scrap of holiday I have had for two years, and only found your book and letter yesterday. But I have read through your ' Plain Pulpit Talk ' in two evenings, and I am a close and critical reader, and with delight. That a man of your genius and learning should have done the thing well does not surprise me. The delight to me is , the thing which you have done. " I see the thorough right old morality — common to puritans, old^ Anglican Churchmen, apostles, and prophets ; that you hold right to be infinitely right ; and wrong ditto wrong; that you call a spade a spade, and talk to men about the real plagues of their own heart ; as Carlyle 400 Charles Kingsley. says, you 'do not rave against extinct Satans, while quite unaware of the real man-devouring Satan at your elbow.' My dear friend, go on and do that, and whether you call yourself Baptist or Buddhist, I shall welcome you as one who is doing the work of God, and fighting in the battle of the Lord, who makes war /// righteousness. But more. You are no Buddhist, nor even an Unitarian " I happen to be, from reason and science as well as from Scripture and Catholic tradition (I use a word I don't like, but you who have read know that there is no better one as yet), I happen to be, I say, an orthodox theologian, and to value orthodoxy more the more I think, for its own sake. And it was a solid pleasure to me to find you orthodox, and to find you deriving your doctrines concerning right and wrong, and the salvation of men, from orthodox theology. — Pp. 128-131, is a speech of which no sound divine, either of the Church of England or of the middle age, ought to be ashamed. . , . But, my dear friend, whatever you do, don't advocate disestablishing us. We are the most liberal religious body in these realms. In our pale men can meet who can meet nowhere else. Would to God you belonged to us, and we had your powers, as we might have without your altering your creed, with us. But if we— the one remaining root of union — we disestablish and become a sect like the sects, then com- petition, not Christ will be God, and we shall bite and devour one another, till atheism and M. Comte are the rulers of modern thought. I am not mad, but speak the words of truth and soberness; and remember (I am sure you will, though orators at public meetings would not) that my plea is quite disinterested. If the Church of England were disesta- blished and disendowed to-morrow, vested interests would be respected, and I and others living on small incomes till our deaths. I assure you that I have no family livings, or an intention of putting my sons into them. My eldest son — a splendid young fellow — is roughing it suc- cessfully and honourably as an engineer anywhere between Denver, U.S. and the city of Mexico. My next and only other son may possibly go to join him. I can give no more solid proof that, while Radical cockneys howl at me as an aristocrat and a renegade, I am none ; but a believer in the persons of my own children, that a man's a man for a' that." CHAPTER XIII. 1854. Aged 35. Torquay— Seaside Studies — Sanitary Work— Lectures in Edinburgh — Deutsche Theologie— Letter from Baron Bunsen — Crimean War — Settles in North Devon — Writes "Wonders of the Shore" and "Westward Ho." Beyond the shadow of the ship, I watched the water snakes ; They moved in tracks of shining white, And when they rcar'd the elfish hght Fell off in hoary flakes. O happy living things ! no tongue Their beauty might declare : A spring of love gushed from my heart, And I bless'd them unaware. Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner." CHAPTER XIII. " ToRBAY is a place which should be as much endeared to the naturalist as to the patriot and to the artist. We cannot gaze on its blue ring of water and the great limestone bluffs which bound it to the north and south without a glow passing through our hearts, as we remember the terrible and glorious pageant which passed by it in the bright days of July, 1588, when the Spanish Armada ventured slowly past Berry Head, with Eliza- beth's gallant pack of Devon captains (for the London fleet had not yet joined), following fast in its wake, and dashing into the midst of the vast line, undismayed by size and numbers, while their kin and friends stood watching and praying on the cliffs, spectators of Britain's Salamis. The white line of houses, too, on the other side of the bay, is Brixham, famed as the landing-place of William of Orange ; and the stone on the pier-head, which marks his first footprints on British ground, is sacred in the eyes of all true English Whigs ; and close by stands the castle of the settler of Newfoundland, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Raleigh's half-brother, most learned of all Elizabeth's admirals in life, most pious and heroic in death. And as for scenery, though it can boast of neither mountain-peak nor dark fiord, and would seem tame enough in the eyes of a Western Scot or Irishman, yet Torbay has a soft beauty of its own, in the rounded hills which slope into the sea, spotted with parks full of stately timber trees, with squares of emerald grass and rich red fallow fields, each parted from the other by the long line of tall elms, just flushing green in the Spring hedges, which run down to the very water's edge, their boughs unwarped by any blast ; and here and there apple orchards, just bursting into flower in the D D 2 404 Charles Kingsley. Spring sunshine, and narrow strips of water meadow, where the red cattle are already lounging knee-deep in richest grass, within ten yards of the rocky, pebble beach, which six hours hence will be hurling columns of rosy foam high into the sunlight, and sprinkling passengers, and cattle, and trim gardens, which hardly know what frost and snow may be, but see the flowers of Autumn meet the flowers of Spring, and the old year linger smilingly to twine a garland for the new." * In these words Mr. Kingsley describes Torquay, where he passed the winter and spring in 1854, during a leave of absence granted him by the Bishop on account of his wife's health, which had suffered severely from the damp rectory at Eversley. At this time, and for some years to come, the clergy of all parties in the Church stood aloof from him as a suspected person. The attacks of the religious press, perhaps happily for him, had so alarmed the clergy of Torquay, High Church and Evangelical, that all pulpit doors were closed against the author of " Alton Locke," " Yeast," and " Hypatia," and he spent quiet peaceful Sundays with his wife and children for the first time for many years. Once only he was asked to preach in the parish church, and once at the chapel of St. John, in a Lenten week-day service, when the congregation, a High Church one, were surprised at his reverent and orthodox views on the Holy Eucharist. It was a resting time, and the temporary cessation from sermon writing and parish work was very grateful to him, "a combina- tion of circumstances having, during the last year," he wrote to a friend, " so utterly exhausted me, physically and intellect- ually, that I must lie very quiet for a time, and I look forward with some dread even to the research necessary to make my Edinburgh Lectures what they ought to be." Once settled at Livermead, the father and children spent happy hours on the shore, bringing home treasures every afternoon from the rocks and sands, and from occasional dredging expeditions in Tor Bay, to be classified and arranged in the vivarium, and to amuse the invalid. A daily journal of natural history was kept, and hampers of sea beasts, live shells, and growing seaweed sent off * "The Wonders of the Shore," p. 15. Wonders of the Shore. 405 to Mr. P. H. Gossc. His brother-in-law, Mr. Froude, was living close by at Babbicombe, and to this happy time Mr. Kingsley refers when he speaks of " Wanderings among rock and pool, mixed up with holiest passages of friendship and of love, and the intercommunion of equal minds and sympathetic hearts, and of the laugh of children drinking in health from every breeze and instruction in every step, running ever and anon with proud delight to add their little treasure to their father's stock ; and of happy evenings spent over the microscope and the vase, in examining, arranging, preserving, and noting down in the diary the wonders and the labours of the happy busy day." This sea-side life led to a voluminous correspondence, illus- trated by his own beautiful sketches, the contents of which were summed up in an article in the " North British Review" on " The Wonders of the Shore." This article, afterwards de- veloped into " Glaucus," contained not only sketches of natural history, but some of his deepest thoughts on theology as con- nected with the Transmutation Theory and " The Vestiges of Creation," of which Dr. George Johnston, of Berwick-on-Tweed, a distinguished man of science, author of " History of Zoo- phytes," writes : " I did not find any scientific lapses in the pleasant and able article on sea-side pleasures I was too pleased in the perusal to stop and discuss any doubtful or discussable points. What most pleased me was, first and foremost, the heart and earnestness throughout, the short sketches of manners, especially that of the long sea worm,* and the * The sketch of the long sea-worm, of which Professor Johnston speaks, must, though already printed, be given here. " But in the meanwhile there are animals in which results so strange, fantastic, even seemingly horrible, are produced, that fallen man may be pardoned, if he shrinks from them in disgust. That, at least, must be a consequence of our own wrong state ; for every thing is beautiful and perfect in its place. It may be answered, ' Yes, in its place ; but its place is not yours. You had no business to look at it, and must pay the penalty for intermeddling.' We doubt that answer ; for surely, if a man have liberty to do anything, he has liberty to search out freely his heavenly Father's works At all events, whether we were intruding or not in turning this stone, we must pay a fine for having done so ; for there lies an animal as foul and monstrous to the eye as ' Hydra, gorgon, or chima;ra dire,' and yet so wondrously fitted to its work, that we must needs endure for our own instruction to handle, and to look at it. Its name we know not (though here it 4o6 Charles Kingsley. opinions on development. The latter, it seems vain to say it, were in close agreement with those I have held ever since I read ' The Vestiges,' but it would have been in vain for me to have attempted to put them in such a striking and honest and fervid manner. Were it for this exposition alone, the article would have been most valuable. Take it as a whole, it is about the best i)leading for the value of the study of natural history I have read " In this article on the " Wonders of the Shore," he gives his priceless ideal character of the " perfect Naturalist " "As one who should combine in himself the very essence of true chivalry, namely, self-devotion, whose moral character, like the true knight of old, must be gentle and courteous, brave and enterprising, and withal patient and undaunted in investigation, knowing (as Lord Bacon would have put it), that the kingdom of nature, like the kingdom of heaven, must be taken by violence, and that only to those who knock earnestly and lurks under every stone), and should be glad to know. It seems some very ' low ' Ascarid or Planarian worm. You see it ? That black, shiny, knotted lump among the gravel, small enough to be taken up in a dessert-spoon. Look now, as it is raised, and its coils drawn out ! Three feet — six— nine, at least ; with a capability of seem- ingly endless expansion ; a slimy tape of living caoutchouc some eighth of an inch in diameter, a dark chocolate-black, with paler longitudinal lines. Is it alive ? It hangs helpless and motionless — a mere velvet string across the hand. Ask the neighbouring Annelids, and the fry of the rock fishes, or put it into a vase, at home, and see. It lies motionless, trailing itself along the gravel ; you cannot tell where it begins or ends : it may be a dead strip of sea-weed, ' Hiniantlialia lorea ' or ' Chorda filunt ; ' or even a tarred string. So thinks the little fish, who plays over and over it, till he touches at last what is too surely a head. In an instant a bell-shaped sucker has fastened to its side. In another instant, from one lip, a concave double proboscis, just like a tapir's (another instance of the repetition of forms), has clasped him like a finger ; and now begins the struggle, but in vain. He is being ' played ' with such a fishing line as the skill of a Wilson or a Stoddart never could invent ; a living line, with an elasticity beyond that of the most delicate fly-rod, which follows every lunge, shortening and lengthening, slipping and turning round every piece of gravel and stem of sea-weed, with a tiring drag, such as no highland wrist or step could ever bring to bear on salmon or trout. The victim is tired now ; and slowly, yet dextrously, his blind assailant is feeling and shifting along his side, till he reaches one end of him ; and then the black lips expand, and slowly and surely the curved finger begins pack- ing him end foremost down into his gullet, where he sinks, inch by inch, till the swell- ing, which marks his place, is lost among the coils, and he is probably macerated to a pulp long before he has reached the opposite extremity of his cave of doom. Once safe down, the black murderer slowly contracts into a knotted heap, and lies, like a boa with a stag inside him, motionless and blest." — " Glaucus," 97 — 99. New Trcasicres. 407 long, does the Great Mother open the doors of her sanctuary. He must be of a reverent turn of mind too always reverent, yet never superstitious, wondering at the commonest, yet not surprised by the most strange ; free from the idols of size and sensuous loveliness holding every phenomenon worth the noting down ; believing that every pebble holds a treasure, every bud a revelation ; making it a point ot conscience to pass over nothing through laziness or hastiness, lest the vision once offered and despised should be withdrawn, and looking at every object as if he were never to behold it more " He must have that solemn and scrupulous reverence for truth, the habit of mind which regards each fact and discovery not as our own possession, but as the possession of its Creator independent of us, our needs, our tastes — it is the very essence of a naturalist's faculty, the very tenure of his existence ; and, without truthfulness, science would be as impossible now as chivalry was of old " These fragmentary extracts are given in the hope of inducing those who do not know " Glaucus," to read a book which has been a blessing and an inspiration to so many. At this time, while treading in the footsteps of Colonel George Montagu, whose lynx eyes had espied them nearly in the same spot fifty years before, he found washed ashore, in a cave near Goodrington, after a succession of south-easterly gales, a number of Montagu's Chirodota {Synapta digitatd) which had not been seen in the interval. Of these he made many draw- ings, while, with delight, he studied their strange contortions ; and he writes : TO H. P. GOSSE, ESQ. LiVEKMEAD, January 3, 1854. " I jot down w^hat I see of my pink chirodotas, (?) in case yours die. They are quite distinct from scolanthus \ their power is one of ^(Wtraction, not of n'traction : have no retractile longitudinally-lined l)roboscis, and the tentacula from the mouth are twelve in number, not fourteen, and are compound, not simple. Their form is this : carrying a boss or thumb at the hack of the quadri-palmate horns, the smooth palm turned toward the mouth. These arms are con- tinually curving inward to an invisible mouth, generally in alternate pairs, thus : " You will see by my rough sketch what I mean. I can discern no 4o8 Charles Kingsley. solid matter passing into the mouth from their strokes. They are never spread out in a ring as in Johnstone's figure. " One has parted with his tail, in the form of a globe of half inch diameter, from which hang many white filaments, two inches long. Another (perhaps the same) has two similar filaments protruding from his tail, which under a quarter inch power, are full of white globular granules in a glairy mucus. — I can see no more. All these filaments are knotted. The red spots are continued up the back of the arms to the thumb. The body is covered with minute papillae (?) and irregular transverse wrinkles, along the salient ridges of which the red spots generally run. The red spots become more irregular toward the head, and delicate longitudinal pale lines appear between them. '•' I have just been watching the dismemberment of a specimen. It first threw off, without my seeing, a piece about an inch long, with the white filaments protruding at each end ; then recommenced by a con- striction an inch from the end ; the part beyond the constriction rapidly swelled and contracted to half inch, and began a series of violent rotations from right to left, till it had turned itself more than half round on the longitudinal (fig. 2) axis. This circular wrenching continued principally in the part about to separate (which was much more lively than the body of the animal) till the part nearest it swelled and became transparent, disclosing four muscular (?) bands, as in fig. 3. A second constriction and rotations then took place, and I witnessed the separa- tion, as in fig. 4, but no filaments escaped. The first parted bit remains very lively. The parent animal was feeding busily with all its hands the whole time. " The animal has during the night broken itself into six pieces, the filaments protruding at the point of separation or anterior end in each. The process has hurt the water, making it milky ; of the Holothuriae,' the brown have contracted both tentacula and suckers, the white only the suckers, and, taking in a reef in their tentacula, have inflated their heads with water, the mouth pouting in the centre, like an auricula. "N.B. — I have seen Cyprea Europsea during the last few days sus- pend itself from the under-side of low-tide rocks by a glutinous thread, an inch and more in length ; and when in captivity float on the surface by means of a similar thread attached to a glutinous bubble. Johnstone does not mention this. " All the specimens of chirodota have since gone the same way, and become dissolving views, plus an evil and sour smell.'' Each day after a strong gale some fresh treasure was dis- Cardiwn tuberciilaiuni. 409 covered, and a minute report, drawing, and, if possible, live specimen sent off to Mr. Gosse by rail. " My animal," he writes, " is certainly not your pedichinella, and I cannot tell what it is. On describing it to my brother, Dr. Kingsley, very knowing in zoophytes, he confest himself ' beat,' and so am I. The sudden generation of so many individuals in a night was to me very surprising, and also their sudden death by the same afternoon. The animal was attached by the small end, and its motion was in a half circle, accompanied with rapid protrusions and extensions of the anterior part of tlie head. My children first called my attention to the plate ' being full of wonderful things ticking,' which exactly expresses the motion of the goose head and neck. They must have been fully a half line to a line long. " My children and their governess, during my absence, have been three weeks getting out a magnificent Sabella, who has since died, and I have only seen the exuviae : the fans were chocolate and white, as large as a penny ; the body I have seen, though putrid, dark greenish black, about three inches by half inch, with bristles at the joints like the cob-w'orm, the case horny, and apparently some five or six inches long originally. I am in hopes of getting you another from the same spot. " Very low tides come next week, during which I will manage a day at Petit Tor, a day at Tor Abbey, and a day at Goodrington (whence came chirodota and the orange-mouthed Actinia), and then, if you like, finish off by a day's dredging in the deep on your account. The weather is so fine that we may run out a long way, and do a good work. Actinia gemmacea is to me unknown, as is Actinia dianthus. I will try to get more of both the animals which you consider to be their young. " I had ten minutes' walk the other day on Newhaven shore at Edin- burgh, and was astonished by the difference of the fauna. I found Actinia crassicornis double the size I had ever seen it, a case of Auri- conia belgica, Solasta papposa, Cribella oculata, Cyprica islandica, Tklodiola modiolus (unknown here, there abundant), and several other odd things. I longed for more time ! " He was also fortunate enough to come in for a sight of the red-legged Cockle, Cardium tuberculatum, at Torquay. " \Vhat, oh ! what are the red capsicums ? and why are they poking, snapping, starting, crawling, tumbling wildly over each other, rattling 4IO Charles Klngsley. about the huge mahogany cockles, out of which they are protruded ? Mark them well, for you will perhaps never see them again. They are a Mediterranean species, or rather three species, left behind on these extreme south-western coasts, probably at the vanishing of that warmer epoch which clothed the Lizard point with the Cornish heath, and the Killarney mountains with Spanish saxifrages, and other relics of a flora whose home is now the Iberian peninsula, and the sunny cliffs of the Riviera. Rare in every other shore, it abounds in Torbay. You will see tens of thousands of them in every cove for miles this day. ... It is but a shell-fish truly, but the great Cuvier thought it remarkable enough to devote to its anatomy elaborate drawings and descriptions, which have done much to illustrate the curious economy of the whole class of bivalve or double shelled mollusca." — (" Glaucus," PP- 54, 550 In the well-stocked vivarium at home he could study the ways of the lovely little Eolis papillosa, the bright lemon-coloured Doris, and the Cucumaria Hyndmanii, with their wondrous gills and feathers — to common eyes mere sea-slugs, — and varieties of Serpulai, with their fairy fringes only visible at happy moments to those who have the patience to watch and wait for the sight; while the more minute forms of the exquisite Campanularia Syringa and Volubilis, and the Sertularii, and that "pale pink flower of stone," the Caryophyllia Smithii, with numberless others, were examined under the microscope. Before leaving Torquay he made a rough list of about sixty species of Mol- hisks, Annelids, Crustacea, and Polypes found on the shore, nearly all new to him, and revealing a new world of Avondcrs to his wife and children. " Look," he ^ays, " as a specimen of the fertility of the water world, at this rough list of species, the greater part of which you might obtain in an hour, would the rude tide wait for zoologists ; and remember that the number of individuals of each species of polype must be counted by tens of thousands, and also that by searching the forest of sea weed which covers the upper surface, we should probably obtain some twenty minute species more. A goodly catalogue this, surely, of the inhabi- tants of three or four large stones, and yet how small a specimen of the multitudinous nations of the sea. From the bare rocks above high- water mark, down to abysses deeper than ever plummet sounded, is Life in tJie Deep. 411 life, everywhere life ; fauna after fauna, and flora after flora, arranged in zones, according to the amount of light and warmth which each species requires, and to the amount of pressure which they are able to endure. The crevices of the highest rocks only sprinkled with salt spray in spring-tides and high gales, have their peculiar, little univalves, their crisp lichen-like sea-weeds in myriads ; lower down the region of the Fuci has its own tribes of periwinkles and limpets ; below again, about the neap-tide mark, the region of the Corallines and Algge furnishes food for yet another species who graze on its watery meadows ; and beneath all, only uncovered at low spring-tide, the zone of the Lami- narise, is most full of all of every imaginable form of life. So that as we descend the rocks, we may compare ourselves (likening small things to great) to those who, descending the Andes, pass in a single day from the vegetation of the Arctic zone to that of the Tropics. And here and there, even at half tide level, deep rock basins, shaded from the sun, and always full of water, keep up in a higher zone, the vegetation of a lower one, and afford, in miniature, an analogy to those deep ' barrancos' which split the high table-land of Mexico, down whose awful cliffs, swept by cool sea breezes, the traveller looks from among the plants and anknals of the temperate zone, and sees far below, dim through their everlasting vapour-bath of rank hot steam, the mighty forms and gorgeous colours of a Tropic forest."* Dean Stanley's eloquent words, which give a true picture of Charles Kingsley at all times, yet so vividly describe the attitude of his mind during those rare hours of rest and liberty at Torquay, that they must needs be quoted as an illustration to this chapter of his life. *' Such was the wakefulness, such the devouring curiosity, of him whose life and conversation, as he walked amongst ordinary men, was often as of a waker among drowsy sleepers, as a watchful sentinel in advance of the slumbering host Perhaps even more than to the glories and the wonders of man, he was, far beyond Avhat falls to the lot of most, alive and awake in every pore to the beauty, the marvels of nature. That contrast in the old story of ' eyes and no eyes,' was the contrast between him and common men. That eagle eye seemed to discern every shade and form of animal and vegetable life. That listen- ing ear, like that of the hero in the fairy tale, seemed almost to catch the " The Wonders of the Shore," pp. 39, 40. 412 Chayles Kings ley. growing of the grass and the opening of tlie shell. Nature to him was a companion speaking with a thousand voices. And Nature was to him also the voice of God, the face of the Eternal and Invisible, as it can only be to those who study and love and know it. For his was no idle dreamer's pleasure ; it was a wakefulness not only to the force and beauty of the outward world, but to the causes of its mysterious operations, to the explanations given by its patient students and explorers."* To this period, too, his distinguished friend Professor Max Miiller, who came with Mr. Froude to see him at Livermead, refers when he speaks of him " on the Devonshire coast watching the beauty and wisdom of Nature, reading her solemn lessons, and chuckling, too, over her inimitable fun." The " inimitable fun " was enjoyed in watching the movements and manners of the family of the Crustacea, especially the soldier crab, of which he had always several specimens in the vivarium, which were an inexhaustible source of merriment to him, and which yet led him at the same moment to some of the deep, strange specula- tions hinted at so rev^erently in the pages of " Glaucus." « This letter to Mr. Gosse on the same subjects, though of later date, comes in natural sequence to the two former. TO P. IT. GOS.SE, ESQ. EvERSi.EY, IV/iiisiiiiday Evening, Miiy 12, 1856. " I hope you will not think that I am breaking the Sabbath day by expressing to you my thanks for your books, at which I have glanced. I found them, for my own soul, not unworthy comments on that glorious old hymn, ' Oh, all ye works of the Lord,' the traditional ' Song of the Three Children;' and on the still more glorious 104th Psalm, which occur in our Church of England Whitsunday services, as perennial memorials that all the wonders of nature are the work of the Spirit of God. I have often wondered that the Popish elders, from whom we derived those services, were, in spite of their blindness, vouchsafed so much light as to see that the 104th Psalm had anything to do with the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost. Certainly they learnt it from a higher source than their own Manicha^ism. " But now, your books have done me spiritual good, for they have * Funeral sermon on Canon Kingsley, 1iy Dean Stanley. A Microscopic Angel. 413 humbled me, and taught me that I must not pretend to be a naturaUst, but simply look on and admire the work which you and your compeers are doing. No ; when I glanced my eye merely over your division of the Actinire, at the end of your ' Tenby,' I felt how great God's world was, and how small I was ; and that any man who pretends to know even one corner of the Lord's world thoroughly must devote his whole mind and life to it, and not fancy that he can pry into the doings of the Spirit, while he is frittering away his time on half a dozen other hobbies. Indeed, you have all but frightened me away from physical science by making me feel (though not for the first time) how vast it is. " Thus far to-night May 13. " To continue. I like your ' Tenby ' more and more ; I like, too, the way in which you have interspersed local traditions and stories. I am glad, too, to find you so thorough a Protestant. I fancy that you and I should agree there as well as we do about sea-beasts. I have seen a good deal of the other side, no man more, and the more I see of it, the more foolish and harmful I find it, hardening the heart, and deaden- ing the spirit, drawing away the soul from living communion with God, and from vital ' works,' just as much as from vital faith, to outward observances, and mere stage-acting in the house of God, which is to me sickening. "But I want now to talk to you about your exquisite drawings, especially of the Rotifers. They are far better than any I have ever seen, though not better than the drawings of your own I saw at your house. I am channed with the Melicerta ringens. I, too, have seen that wondrous nymph build her house, and could not help fancying that she might be after all as rational a body as I was (putting soul out of the question of course). What can size have to do with intellect ? It is as easy and philosophical to conceive a ' microscopic angel,' as one of those vast beings whose power, not, of course, their size (for what have spirits to do with size ?) St. John symbolizes as standing in the sun. Your larvae of Echinoderms have thrown me into such a state of astonishment, that if I could make my people understand them, I would preach a sermon on them, and ask them (as I often do on other matters), how men can doubt the mysteries of grace, coming from a God who has created such mysteries of nature ? . . . . " Next, I am delighted with the new Actiniae, though one, to my great pleasure, was not new ; I mean Sagartia Venusta. I found her at Clovelly in summer of 1854, on oyster-lumps from deep water, along with Sagartia Nivea : saw she was new to me, and could not make her 414 Charles Kingsley, out. All the specimens were put in a hot window, and died before I could send them to you with the dear lost ' blue plum ! ' Actiniae which I found at Lundy, covered with a thin mucous shirt. That, too, is an undescribed species. The orange-tentacled one is new to me, and, strange to say, I never could find Rosea at Babbicombe, though since I left. Dr. Battersby has been finding it plentifully. If you want a fresh habitat for troglodytes, put down Hastings east rocks, where I found it (for the first time) in hundreds this winter " 'Glaucus' has been much more read than I expected, and has brought me many pleasant letters, and self-introductions, from scientific men. Your handbook to the Aquarium is just what I wanted." But these pursuits, however enchanting, did not engross him to the forgetfulness of the great social questions of the day, and early in the year Ave find him writing to Sir Arthur Helps, about Sanitary matters, and urging the clergy to turn their minds to the subject. " S. G. O. is much pleased with your pamphlet, but fearful of its success as a practical measure, and still more fearful that the parsons cannot be made to bestir themselves in the matter, as indeed am I. I send you in return some copies of my article on Lord Palmerston in ' Fraser.' Be so kind as to spread them, if you know of any quarter in which they may do good." This article was written in consequence of Lord Palmerston's refusal to allow a national fast-day on account of Cholera, for reasons in which Mr. Kingsley deeply sympathised, and which he expresses in a little preface to three cholera sermons preached at Eversley in 1849, and which he now republished as a tract entitled "Who Causes Pestilence .'* " " These sermons," he says, " were preached during the last appearance of the cholera in Great Britain. Since then, both Scripture, reason, and medical experience have corroborated the views which were put forth in them ; and as a clergyman, I feel bound to express my gratitude to Lord Palmerston for having refused to allow a National Fast-day on the occasion of the present re-appearance of pestilence, and so having prevented fresh scandal to Christianity, fresh excuses for the selfish- ness, laziness, and ignorance which produce pestilence, fresh turning Sanitary Science and the Creeds versus Superstition. 4 1 5 men's minds away from the real causes of this present judgment, to fanciful and superstitious ones. " It was to be hoped, that after the late discoveries of sanitary science, the clergy of all denominations would have felt it a sacred duty to go forth on a crusade against filth, and so to save the lives of thousands, not merely during the presence of cholera, but every year. " We cannot plead ignorance as an excuse. The facts of sanitary science are at once so notorious, and so easy of comprehension, that ignorance in an educated man must be either wilful and deliberate, or the consequence of a stupidity which ought to unfit a man for any office or responsibility. This may be the case with some ; but the majority of preachers and ministers seem to care little about sanitary reform, for one of three reasons : — " I. Some fancy that the business of clergymen is exclusively what they choose to call ' spiritual,' and that sanitary reform, being what they choose to call a ' secular ' question, is beyond their province. " This Manichcean and unscriptural distinction still lingers in the minds of a iow, both lay and clerical, especially of those who attach a superstitious importance to the mere act of almsgiving as something which will increase their chance of future happiness, while they seem, in many cases, to make the performance of that duty an excuse for leaving their tenants and parishioners to live the life of swine ; ' paying tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, and neglecting the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and truth ; ' glad enough to give alms for a selfish and superstitious puipose, but without any real wish to raise their poorer brethren permanently to a small share of those comforts without which they could not exist a day. " But I can say, proudly and joyfully, as a clergyman of the Church of England, that this notion is dying out daily under the influence of those creeds which tell men that the Son of God has redeemed all mankind, body, soul, and spirit, and therefore teaches clergymen to look on the physical and intellectual improvement of every human being as a duty no less sacred than his spiritual welfare. Nevertheless, there is still too much of this lazy and selfish Manich^eism left among us ; and on the too probable re-appearance of cholera in the spring, Britain will reap the bitter fruits of it. " 2. Some, again, dislike the notion of its being possible to abolish pestilence by sanitary reform, because it seems to interfere with their own religious theories and doctrines. Of them there is nothing to be said, but that that man is to be pitied who can shut his eyes to facts, and deny the evidence of his own senses and reason, for the sake of preserving his own dark and superstitious calumnies against the God of order, justice, and love. 41 6 Charles Kingsley. *' 3. Some again— and perhaps the larger class— do in their hearts believe the truths of sanitary science ; but they are afraid, especially if they get their subsistence on ' the voluntary principle,' of urging them too plainly and boldly, lest they should attack the vested interests, and thereby excite the displeasure of wealthy and influential members of their congregations. They therefore make a miserable compromise between their interests and their consciences, and put aside sanitary reform as a thing of which it is not safe to think too much, lest it should compel them to say something which might be ' personal ' and ' offensive ' to those of their respectable hearers whose incomes are derived from the filth, disease, and brutality of the lower classes. " Let all these three classes of ministers, of whatever denomination they may be— let them but read a little, a very little, on the subject of sanitary reform. Let them read the excellent sheet issued by the Board of Health, which proves that the number of lives destroyed every year by diseases which sanitary reform can extirpate, is several times greater than the number of lives lost in battle during any year of the great French war. Let them read a pamphlet by Dr. Southwood Smith,* and there see the actual practical results which have been obtained by sanitary reform, and the providing of fit dwellings for the lower classes, not merely in extirpating disease, but in extirpating drunkenness, ferocity, and those coarser vices of which too many preachers speak as if they were the only sins worth rebuking. Let them consider that this is a question involving the lives of thousands and tens of thousands of human beings. Let them consider the enormous power which they might have employed, which they can still employ — each man in his pulpit, his congregation, his parish — to deli^■er those from death whom the covetousness and neglect of man have appointed to die ; and then let them solemnly ask themselves whether, unless they bestir themselves very differently from what they yet have done, their brother's blood will not cry against them from the ground. Let them ask themselves whether it does not cry against them already.. If they believe the doctrines which they preach, let them at least act up to them in the simple practical matter of saving the lives of those committed to their charge. It is not for ministers of the gospel to say with Cain, ' Am I my brother's keeper ? ' As surely as there is a righteous God who judges the earth, He does hear the complaint of the poor, and makes inquisition for blood. As surely as there is a merciful God who answers prayer, He has answered the prayers of those two first Cholera Fasts in the best way in which Results of Sanitary Improvement," by Dr. Southwood Smith. Cholera and tJie Clergy. 417 rational beings could wish a Heavenly Father to answer prayer, namely, by showing us how to extirpate the evil against which we prayed. And if the Bible be true, then as long as ministers are careless about doing that, the only answer they can expect to fasts or prayers is that ancient one, — " ' \<\\t\\ }'e come to appear before Me, who hath required this at your hands, to tread INIy courts ? Bring no more vain offerings ; your Sabbaths and your calling of assemblies I cannot away with ; it is iniquity, even your solemn meeting. Your appointed feasts ]\Iy soul hateth ; they are a trouble to Me ; I am weary to bear them. And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from you ; yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear : your hands arc full of blood. Wash you, make you clean ; put away the evil of your doings from before ]\Iy eyes ; cease to do evil ; learn to do well ; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.' *' This, it seems to me, if the Bible be indeed an inspired book, setting forth God's dealings with man, is the only answer which we can expect to any national prayers, till we have, by sanitary reform, done what God has taught and commanded us to do. " It is time to speak i)lainly and sternly on this matter. Courtesies and circumlocutions are out of place, where the morals, health, lives of thousands are at stake, from the negligence and superstition of those whom God has sent to teach men their duty to Him and to each other. "C.K." Fehriia>y 13, 1854. In February he went to Edinburgh to deliver four lectures on the " Schools of Alexandria," at the Philosophical Institute. It was his first visit to Scotland, and he writes to his wife : Gllilj's IIOTEI., EDlNliURGii, Fchniaiy 2Q, 1854. " Comfortable journey — the scenery from Berwick very curious — quite new to me — mostly a large cliff over the sea. Farming magnifi- cent — steam-engines at every farm. Edinburgh itself deserves all the praises which have been lavished upon it. The esplanade where I sit now is certainly the finest in Great Britain. The public buildings very splendid, and so are the spires and churches, all of grey stone. The Castle in the centre of the city, and Arthur's Seat with its basalt crags, 800 feet high, ready to topple into the town. The general look of the VOL. I. E E 41 8 Charles Kings ley. Pentland Hills to the west is that of Dartmoor from Torquay ; but there is a great rich flat vale between us and them. This afternoon I walked with F. Russell to the Corstorphine Hills, and got a noble view of the city, which there looked very like Oxford, with a huge Windsor Castle in the middle of it, and the Firth of Forth, with its islands and the Fifeshire Hills. Most beautiful, God knows, it was. The people very kindly. Mr, called on me — a man risen from the ranks, and, true Scot-like, was shy and cautious, till he found me out, and then as jolly and cordial as possible. * * * * is a great admirer of Maurice, and quite de-Calvinized. We had a pleasant talk about many things, and he has put me in rather better heart about my lectures, over which I have felt more nervous than I have ever done in my life, and would give anything to run right away home." W.-VRKISTON, IVcdncsday. " The lecture went off well. I was dreadfully nervous, and actually cried with fear up in ray own room beforehand; but after praying I recovered myself, and got through it very well, being much cheered and clapped, .... All the notabilities came, and were introduced to me ; and I had some pleasant talk with Sir James Maxwell. Mr. Erskine, of Linlathen, is a charming old man. " My second lecture went off better than the first, in spite of the delicate points on which it touched. Nothing can exceed the cordi- ality of i^eople. I drove with Mrs. Bonar round the Queen's drive to Arthur's Seat. It is perfectly magnificent — a great wild volcano peak hanging over the city, with Holyrood at the foot. Just starting for Linlathen, via Perth, it being too rough to cross the Forth. The northerly gale is awful. Yesterday, flying snow storms, and strange darkness from N.W. Please let me know the weather at Torquay for the last two days " Linlathen. " This place is very pleasant, and Mr. Erskine delightful. He gave us a long exposition last night, about the indwelling Word, and I am delighted to find that our views seem to agree thoroughly; but I long so painfully for you and the children too, that I have no pleasure or peace in anything, and am counting the days till I get back. Tell Rose and Maurice I have got a strange sponge for each of them, which I picked up upon the shore of the Firth of Tay." Chevalier Bunsen and Deutsche Theologie. 419 WariustoX, February 26. '' Had a charming steam across the Firtli of Forth, Mr. Erskine coming back with me — the day lovely. The day before, we went to the ' vitrified fort' of Laws, and also to Pitkerro, a deHcious old fortified house, full of turrets and nooks. Lecture last night went off well. Smith, the translator of 'Fichte'came up to me and begged me to publish them. People seem surprised at my power of condensing. To me they seem dreadfully trashy. God knows. Erskine and others think they will do much good, but will infuriate the Free Kirk. C * * * * is gone down to London to lecture against ]\Laurice. Russell intends to get Maurice here next winter to lecture on the Social Influence of Christianity as displayed in History." "It is at last over, and I start for England to-morrow. The last lecture was more crowded than ever Altogether it has been (if you had but been with me, and alas ! that poisons everything) one of the most pleasant and successful episodes in my life. I have not met with a single disagreeable — have been heaped with kindness. I have got my say said without giving offence, and have made friends which I hope will last for life. I have seen the very best society in Scotland, and I cannot be thankful enough to God for having sent me here, and carried me through. To-night I dine with Sir * * * * * *, a perfect fine gentle- man of the old school, who was twenty-five years in parliament, and approves highly of ' Alton Locke ' and ' Yeast j' as also does his wife, who told me I had a glorious career before me, and bade God speed me in it." . , . . Returning from Scotland he stopped in London to see how ]\Ir. IVIaurice's affairs were going on, on his way to Everslcy, where he had to remain during a change of curates, " I have just seen Archdeacon Hare, w^ho i.'j looking better; but this business of Maurice's has fretted him horribly. L * * is working, tooth and nail, for Maurice in Lincoln's-inn ; and the working men in London, including many of the old Ciiartists of 184S, are going to present a grand address to IMauricc in St. Martin's Hall, at which, I belie\'e, I am to be chairman. Kiss the babes for me, and tell them I long to be with them on Tor sands. " Did I ever tell you of my delightful chat witli Cunsen ? I have promised him to write a couple of pages preface to Miss Winkworth's translation of the ' Deutsche Theologie,' Oh ! how you will revel in that book !...." 420 Charles Kings ley. EvERSLEY, Sunday Evening, Fcbniaiy, 1854, " .... A very busy day is over, but a very pleasant one. I had a very good congregation in the afternoon, and every one seemed glad to see me. The Erskines asked me to dinner, but I could not go because I have a very heavy evening's work, before going to Lord Palmerston.* Helps is coming out as a hero. What a thought that we may by one great and wise effort save from ten to twenty thousand lives in London alone ! But I am not neglecting the parish. I shall be back to-morrow evening, and in the school at nine on Tuesday morning. Mrs. Erskine has already promised nie a large subscription towards an Anti-Cholera Fund. I will send you the particulars in a day or two I am quite content to stay here and do my duty (till the curate comes), though I long more than ever I did in my life for home and for those dear dear children. Tell Rose I have brought her a souvenir from the north, and Maurice a yellow vine walking-stick, which was given me from Inveraray Castle To-day has been lovely — bright sun — crocuses in full bloom. The dear old treacherous place looking as if it were really healthy. Nothing sanitary done in the parish. Dr. Foster has, I really believe, made a great scientific dis- covery with regard to cholera, and we are going to push it." " . . . . I have nothing to tell you — I work on and on, but am very sad. How can I help being sad in this place? It is like a grave — empty of you and the children. "That 'Deutsche Theologie' is doing me much good. Curious it is, that that, much as I differ from its view of man, is the only kind of religious reading which I love, or which has even any real meaning for my heart. I am further off than ever from a curate God knows best whether or not I ought to be here just now. Still I can't help beating against the wires a little '' The anxieties and expenses of illness were very heavy just now, but he always met them by a brave heart and by cheering words, to one who lamented the labour they entailed on him. EvERSLEY, February. " And — these very money difficulties Has it not been fulfilled in them, ' As thy day so shall thy strength be ?' Have we ever been in any debt by our own sin ? Have we ever really * Deputation on Sanitary subjects. God's Training. /i^i i wanted anything wc needed ? Have we not had friends, credit, wind- falls—in all things, with the temptation, a way to escape? Have they not been God's sending ? God's way of preventing the cup of bliss being over-sweet (and I thank him heartily it has not been) ; and, con- sider, have they not been blessed lessons ? But do not think that I am content to endure them any more than the race horse, because he loves running is content to stop in the middle of the course. To pay them, I have thought, I have written, I have won for us a name which, please God, may last among the names of English writers. Would you give up the books I have written that we might never have been in difficulties? So out of evil God brings good ; or rather, out of neces- sity He brings strength — and, believe me, the highest spiritual training is contained in the most paltry physical accidents ; and the meanest actual want, may be the means of calling into actual life the possible but sleeping embryo of the very noblest faculties. This is a great mystery : but we are animals, in time and space ; and by time and space and oiu" animal natures, are we educated. Therefore let us be only patient, patient ; and let God our Father teach His own lesson, His own way. Let us try to learn it well, and learn it quickly; but do not let us fancy that He will ring the school-bell, and send us to play before our lesson is learnt. " Therefore 'rejoice in your youth, ere the days come when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.' But make to yourself no ghosts. And remember he who says, ' I will be happy some day,' never will be happy at all. If we cannot be happy now with ten times the blessings which nine-tenths of God's creatures have, Ave shall never be happy though we lived a thousand years. Let us lay this solemnly to heart, and take no thought for the morrow." February 27. " The Guards march tomorrow ! How it makes one's blood boil ! We send 10,000 picked men to ^Lalta, en route for Constantinojile, and the French 60,000." EvERSLEY, Ash Wednesday, Manh, 1S54. " We have just had service. Mr. B. cannot come. It is a glorious day for you, thank God. I have just seen the first buttei-fly. I am very lonely. God forgive me for my impatience, when He is heaping me with so many blessings. It is a very wholesome trial for me, and teaches me much about myself, but the struggle is to do anything. One feels so frightfully listless, and the day is a week long " 42 2 Charles Ki7igsley. ". . . . The 'Deutsche Theologie'is come from Buiisen : z>.,both Miss Winkworth's MSS. and Mrs. Malcohii's printed translation. Pray order Mrs. Malcohii's ' Old German Theology,' with a preface by Martin Luther. You never read so noble a book. The Reform Bill is shelved : excellent as it is, it does not much matter at this minute. Two days after our deputation, that bane of London, the Sewers Commission, awoke in the morning, and behold they were all dead men ! Lord Pal- merston, having abolished them by one sentence the night before, and I have not heard that any one is gone into mourning. The Board of Health are now triumphant and omnipotent. God grant that they may use their victory well, and not spoil it by pedantry and idealism ! Baines (capital man that he is !) brings in three clauses, which will reform the whole poor-law, and strike at the root of cottage-destruction. The squires intend to show fight. " God knows it is base of one to sit here fretting about little private evils, while the country is doing so well and tlie ministers so nobly. The war is to pay for itself, year by year, by a five per cent, income-tax, and no more running in debt. The ' Times ' has taken up the cause of sol- diers' wives and families, and a great cause it is. " I feel that after all England's heart is sound : and if it be, what matter whether I am at Eversley or Torquay ? And yet I long to be there. Tell Baby I am coming soon I have got Hawley's secretary dining here with a lot of blue-books, he and I being about a joint pamphlet, 'The Cholera versus the Present Slavery of Union Medical Ofticers.' " In reference to the evidence he gave on sanitary matters as one of a deputation to Lord Palmerston, he says : " I had an opportunity of telling Lord Palmerston a great deal which I trust may save many lives. Remember, it is now a question of blood- guiltiness — that is all. But I am not going to London any more about sanitary matters. The utter inability of the Health of Towns Act to cleanse this or any other neighbouring parish made me consider what I have done as a parochial duty " During the Crimean War in the autumn, he wrote the follow- ing characteristic letter to Mr. Simon, whose noble efforts as Medical Officer of Health for the City of London made him then and ever after one of his heroes as well as friends. Thouo-h of a later date, it comes in most appropriately here. Physical Development or Deterioration. 423 TO J. SIMON, ESQ., M.D. BiDEFORD, North Devon, December 2%, 1854. '■'■ I have just read, with intense pleasure, your City Cholera Re- port, in the columns of the ' Times.' I do not know whether to praise more its cautiousness and modesty, or its eloquence and completeness. Though you may not choose to say that you have saved lives, I shall say it for you, and I only wish that I may have half as fair an account of solid work done to render in at the last account, as that report contains. " Verily the days are coming (they have not been of late years) when, as the Prophet says, ' a man shall be more precious than fine gold ; ' when the lives and manhood of the citizens will be found more valuable to a nation, after all, than the wealth of a few, or even than the mere brute physical enjoyment of vast numbers. And if we are to furnish many more levies of men who Avill equal the heroes of Inkerman, we must open our eyes, and first keep them alive when they are infants, and next, give them such an atmosphere to grow up in, that they shall become men and not rickety monkies : and your labours are helping towards this good end. *' It is a sad thing that ' food for powder ' re(|uires to be of the best quality ; but so it is, and unless the physical deterioration of the lower classes is stopt by bold sanatory reform, such as you have been working out, we shall soon have rifles, but no men to shoulder them ; at least to use the butts of them when required." The " Deutsche Theologic " was translated by Miss Susanna Winkworth at Chevalier Bunsen's request, and Mr. Kingsley was asked to write a preface. He had objections, and consulted Mr. Maurice, who answered him thus : " I think your objections have great force, but I do not see that they need prevent you from stating your conviction that, as a practical work on Ethics, the book fully deserves to be translated and read ; and that the discovery of the only correct MSS. is a reason for introducing it to the public at this time. The religious people have no right to be scan- dalized by any thing that Luther and Spcncr sanctioned. You can say that you, being more severely orthodox tlian they were, cannot swallow all the sentences in it, esteeming them to be too mystical and not quite scriptural, but that nevertheless your judgment in the main jumps with the great Evangelical authorities, and that you conceive they were 424 Chajdes King sky. anxious to enlist such a witness against the self-seeking tendencies of the religion of their time, as you and the translator are to claim him for the same purpose in this day " Chevalier Bunscn writes in the same strain : " My dear Friend, " lAy practical proposal coincides with that of Maurice. Keep to the ethic point, and refer as to the metaphysical terminology to Luther. I may, if required, say a word in the letter to Miss W. about this point, although it would be much better for the book and its readers if you, a clergyman of the Church of England, did it instead. Now, having said so much, let me add a word on the great subject itself. When I read your Preface to Hypatia (which you know I think does not justice to the book), I thought I perceived you had accepted the council-creeds more historically than penetrated them philosophically. Otherwise you could not have praised so much what I must believe to be only a great logical, formal ingenuity, but compared with St. John and the apostolic fathers down to Tertullian and Origen, a perfect and thorough misunderstanding, like that of an anatomist taking the corjDse for the living body. The more I study and think, the stronger that con- viction grows, for the inward witness goes with the outward. You will see that my whole new volume has its centre in pointing to facts which show that I cannot say less than what I do say; that our Confessions of Faith, if taken as making law, must be said frankly to be confessions of the blunders of those who drew them up : like the failure in an equa- tion. The X is not made out, and this is confessed. " I have been at this point from 181 7, when the Theologia Germanica came into my hands at Rome. My Aphorisms* if you read them with reference to this, will tell you more. " The difference of God and Man, of the Logos, Christ and the individual Christian, is that of the Infinite and the Finite, neither more nor less. This is nothing to those for whom nothing exists which is not in space and time ; but much, and enough for all who know that the finite — world and man — has no other key to its understanding except the infinite. No Werdeji y^\\\\QvX the Sein — to oVrw? 6V = 6 oWcoj S>v. " Now the Theologia Germanica says nothing more in the most startling passages. But certainly we have learnt to say it better, and you, the English, ought to help us to say it still better. For this reason I Hippolytus," vol. W., first edition (1852). Righteousness and Justification. 425 have tortured my brains and your language, in laying before you the Apliorisms. " See whether we meet on this divine road. Excuse the hurried and imperfect writing. I hope Mrs. Kingsley is continuing better. A great anxious time of judgment is now hanging over Germany. Dcus piovi- dcbit I I correct two proof-sheets every day. " Ever yours faithfully, " BUNSEN." These letters decided him, and he wrote to Miss Winkworth: Torquay, March 25, 1854. " I am conquered. I have written the preface this day, and will send the MSS. on Monday. Pray translate that Untcrschied der Personal (if you can) ' the distinction of the persons ; ' and then we shall be at least, on that point, a I'abn dit diahlc. I believe Maurice is right. Pray show the preface to him and Bunsen, and whomsoever you like, that we may get the help of any suggested improvement." After the book had been out some time he writes again to Miss \\'inkworth : " You will be glad to hear, I am sure, that your Theologia is being valued by every one to whom I have shown it. Sure I am that the book will do very great and lasting good." In the Preface, which is well worth reading as a whole, these extracts will show how he guards himself from misconception as to his agreement with all the author's views. " To those who really hunger and thirst after righteousness, and who therefore long to know what righteousness is, that they may copy it : To those who long to be freed, not merely from the punishment of sin after they die, but from sin itself while they live on earth; and who, therefore, wish to know what sin is that they may a\oid it : To those who wish to be really justified by faitli, by being made just persons by faith ; and who cannot satisfy either their consciences or reasons by fancying that God looks on them as right when they know themselves to be wrong, or that the God of Trutli will stoop to fictions (mis-called forensic) which would be considered false and unjust in any human court of law : To those who cannot helj) trusting that union witli Christ must be some- thing real and substantial, and not merely a metaphor and a flower of 426 Charles Kings ley. rhetoric : To those, lastly, who cannot help seeing that the doctrine of Christ in every man, as the indwelling Word of God, The Light who lights every one who comes into the world, is no peculiar tenet of the Quakers, but one which runs through the whole of the Old and New Testaments, and without which they would both be unintelligible, just as the same doctrine runs through the whole of the Early Church for the first two centuries, and is the only explanation of them : To all these this noble little book will recommend itself. .... Not that I agree with all its contents. It is for its noble views of righteousness and of sin that I honour it But even in those points in which I should like to see it altered I am well aware that there are strong authorities against me. The very expression, for instance, which most startles me, ' vergottet,' deified or made divine, is used, word for word, both by Saint Athanasius and Saint Augustine, the former of whom has said, ' He became man, that we might be made God ' {Athan. Orat. de Incarn. Verbi, tom. I. p. 108)3 aJ'xi the latter, 'He called men Gods, as being deified by His grace, not as born of His substance ' (Aug. in Ps. xlix. YA. Bened. tom. iv. p. 414). There are many passages, more- over, in the Epistles of the Apostles, which if we paraphrase them at all, we can hardly paraphrase in weaker words. It seems to me safer and wiser to cling to the letter of Scripture : but God forbid that I should wish to make such a man as the author of the Theologia Germanica an offender for a word In many obscure passages words are used in their strict original and scientific meaning, as they are used in the creeds, and not in that meaning which has of late crept into our very pulpits under the influence of Locke's Philosophy. When, for instance, it is said that God is the substance of all things, this expression, in the vulgar Lockite sense of substance, would mean that God is the matter or stuff of which all things are made ; which would be the grossest Pan- theism : but 'Substance,' in the true and ancient meaning of the word, as it appears in the Athanasian Creed, signifies the very opposite; namely, that which sta/ids under the appearance and the matter ; that by virtue of which a thing has its form, its life, its real existence as far as it may have any ; and thus in asserting that God is the Substance of all things, this book means that every thing (except Sin, which is no thing, but the disease and fall of a thing) is a thought of God. " So, again, with Eternity. It will be found to mean not merely some future endless duration, but that ever-present moral world, governed by ever-living and absolutely necessary laws, in which we and all spirits are now ; and in which we shall be equally, whether time and space, exten- sion and duration, and the whole material universe to which they belong, became nothing this moment or lasted endlessly Inadequate Salaries of Parish Doctors. 427 " Its reader must forget all popular modern dogmas and sys- tems, all popular philosophies, and be true to the letter of his Bible, and to the instincts which the indwelling Word of God was wont to awaken in his heart, while he was yet a- little unsophisticated child : and he will find germs of wider and deeper wisdom than its good author ever dreamed of; and that those great spiritual laws which he only applies, and that often inconsistently, to an ascetic and passively con- tem[)lative life, will hold just as good in the family, in the market, in the senate, in the study, ay, in the battle-field itself, and teach him to lead in whatsoever station of life he may be placed, a truly manlike, because a truly Christlike and Godlike life." In the spring he went up to give evidence before the House of Commons on two subjects which he had much at heart — on Sanitary matters and on the insufficient pay of Parish Medical Officers. His experience of eleven years in a parish had con- vinced him that the pay of the parish doctor was much too low' ; and he willingly gave evidence on the subject, dwelling particu- larly on the fact that under their present salaries no medical men could afford, or be expected, to give two of the most impor- tant but most expensive medicines — quinine and cod-li\^er oil. TO MIS WIFE. Chelsea Rectory, May, 1S54. " I have just been having a very happy hour with my mother at the school, where she has a nice little service for the girls, and I have been preaching the little maids a sermon about the 2nd Lesson, to her great delight. This evening I go to the Marshalls' again for some -Stcred music, and this afternoon, of course, to Lincoln's-inn I cannot help looking forward to our twelve months at Northdo^vn (Bide- ford) as a blessed time We never have really wanted yet ; all we have had to do has been — best of all trainings — to live ^y faith, and to exert ourselves. Let us be content, ^^'e do not know what is good for us, and God does. ... I am glad to have been up here. I have seen very much life, and learnt very much. It was just what I wanted after that Devon retirement. I went to meet Gosse at the Linn?ean, and met Darwin (the Voyage of the Beagle). Such a noble face — as the average of the Linnceans, I must say, had, * * * * is a quiet, meek man, and was very anxious to know whether I and Maurice really 'denied the Atonement,' on which point, I think, I satisfied him. 428 Charles Kings ley. *' We had a regular microscopic evening last night. George with his microscope, and Mr. H with his— both magnificent. The things they showed me were enough to strike one dumb. I am enjoying the thought of bringing Gosse's book down to you. He has a whole chapter at the end on the things I sent him most kindly written. *' Tell the dear children I long to see them, and will be home Wednesday, without fail " In the spring, as his wife was not allowed to return to the colder climate of North Hants, he settled with his family at Bideford, where his novel of "Westward, Ho!" was begun, whose opening pages describe his surroundings for the next twelve months. '' All who have travelled through the delicious scenery of North Devon must needs know the little white town of Bideford, which slopes upwards from its broad tide-river paved with yellow sands, and many- arched old bridge where salmon wait for autumn floods, towards the pleasant upland on the west. Above the town the hills close in, cushioned with deep oak woods, through which juts here and there a crag of fern-fringed slate ; below they lower, and open more and more in softly-rounded knolls, and fertile squares of red and green, till they sink into the wide expanse of hazy flats, rich salt marshes, and rolling sand hills, where Torridge joins her sister Taw, and both together flow quietly toward the broad surges of the bar, and the everlasting thunder of the Atlantic swell. Pleasantly the old town stands there, beneath its soft Italian sky, fanned day and night by the fresh ocean breeze, which forbids alike the keen winter frosts, and the fierce thunder heats of the midland ; and pleasantly it has stood there for now, perhaps, eight hundred years, since the first Grenvil, cousin of the Conqueror, return- ing from the conquest of South Wales, drew round him trusty Saxon serfs, and free Norse rovers with their golden curls, and dark Silurian Britons from the Swansea shore, and all the mingled blood which still gives to the seaward folk of the next county their strength and intellect, and even in these levelling days, their peculiar beauty of face and form.""' While there, a lady consulted him about joining a sisterhood, and he replies : "Westward Ho I" Chapter T., p. i. Brotherhoods ami Societies. 429 BlDEKORD, Jltly 24, 1S54. " Madam, " Though I make a rule of never answermg any letter from a lady whom I have not the honour of knowing, yet I dare not refuse to answer yours. First, because you, as it were, challenge me on the ground of my books : and next, because you tell me that if I cannot satisfy you, you will do that, to prevent which, above all things, my books are written, namely, flee from the world, instead of staying in it and tr}'ing to mend it. " Be sure that I can sympathise with you most deeply in }'Our dis- satisfaction with all things, as they are. That feeling grows on me, as I trust in God (strange to say) it may grow on you, day by day. I, too, have had my dreams of New Societies, brotherhoods, and so forth, which were to regenerate the world. I, too, have had my admirations for Old Societies and brotherhoods like those of Loyola and Wesley, which intended to do the same thing. But I have discovered. Madam, that we can never really see how much evil there is around us, till we see how much good there is around us, just as it is light which makes us, by contrast, most aware of darkness. And I have dis- covered also, that the world is already regenerated by the Lord Jesus Christ, and that all efforts of our own to regenerate it are denials of Him and of the perfect regeneration which He accomplished when He sat down on the right hand of God, having all power given to Him in heaven and in earth, that He might rule the earth in righteous- ness for ever. And I have discovered also, that all societies and brotherhoods which may form, and which ever have been formed, are denials of the One Catholic Church of faithful and righteous men (whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, matters not to me) which He has established on earth, and said that hell shall not prevail against it. And when I look back upon history', as I have done pretty carefully, I find that all such attempts have been total failures, just because, with the purest and best intentions, they were doing this, and thereby interfer- ing with the Lord Jesus Christ's way of governing the world, and trying to introduce some new nostrum and panacea of their own, narrow and paltry, compared with His great ways in the deep. "Therefore, though Fox (to take your own example) was a most holy ? man, Quakerism in general, as a means of regenerating the world, has been a disastrous failure. And so (I speak from years of intimate ex- perience) has good John Wesley's Methodist attempt. Both were try- ing to lay a new foundation for human society, and forgetting that one which was already laid, which is Christ, who surely has not been managing 430 CJiarks Kings ley. the earth altogether wrongly, Madam, for iSoo years, or even before that? " So, again, ^\•ith that truly holy and angelic man, St. \'incent de Paul — has he succeeded ? What has become of education, and of the poor, in the very land where he laboured ? God forbid that we English should be in such a state, bad as we are ! The moment the personal influence of his virtue was withdrawn, down tumbled all that he had done. He (may God bless him all the same) had no panacea for the world's ills. He was not a husband or u fcithcr — how could he teach men to be good husbands and (iithers ? You i)oint to what he and his did. I know what they did in South America, and beautiful it was : but, alas ! 1 know, too, that they could give no life to their converts ; they could not regenerate society among the savages of Paraguay ; and the moment the Jesuit's gentle despotism was withdrawn, down fell the reductions again into savagery, having lost even the one savage virtue of coufage. The Jesuits were shut out, by their vows, from political and family life. How could they teac h their pupils the virtues which belong to those states? But all FAiroi)e knows what the Jesuits did in a country where they had every chance ; where for a century they were the real rulers, in court and camp, as well as in schools and cloisters, I mean in France. They tried their very best (and tried, I am bound to believe, earnesdy and with good intent) to regenerate France. And they caused the Revolution. Madam, the horrors of 1793 were'the natural fruit of the teaching of the very men who not only would have died sooner than bring about these horrors, but died too many of them, alas ! by them. And how was this? By trying to set up a system of society and morals of their own, they, without knowing it, uprooted in the French every element of faith in, and reverence for, the daily duties and relations of human life, without knowing it — without meaning it. They would call me a slanderer if they saw my words, and would honestly think me so. May God keep you from the same snare, of fancying, as all ' Orders,' Societies, and Sects do, that they invent a better system of society than the old one, wherein God created man in His own image, viz., of father and son, husband and wife, brother and sister, master and servant, king and subject. Madam, these are more divine and godlike words than all the brotherhoods, ' Societies of Friends,' ' Associations of the Sacred Heart,' or whatsoever bonds good and loving men and women have from time to time invented to keep themselves in that sacred unity from which they felt they were falling. I can well believe that you feel it difficult to keep in it now. God knows that I do : but never will I (and I trust you never will) yield to that temptation which the Devil put before our Lord, ' Cast thyself down from hence, for it is The Duty which lies Nearest. 431 written He shall give His angels charge over Thee, &c.' Madam, whenever we leave the station where God has placed us, be it for ne\er so seemingly self-sacrificing and chivalrous and saintly an end, we are tempting the Lord our God, we are yielding most utterly to that very self-will which we are pretending to abjure. As long as you have a parent, a sister, a servant, to whom you can do good in those simple every-day relations and duties of life, which are most di\ine, because they are most human, so long will the entering a cloister be tempting the Lord your Ciod, And so long, ]\Iadam, will it be the doing all in your power to counteract every word which I have ever written. My object has been and is, and I trust in God ever will be, to make people see that they need not, as St. Paul says, go up into heaven, or go down to the deep, to find Christ, because He, the Word whom we preach, is very near them, in their hearts and on their lips, if they would but believe it; and ready, not to set them afloat on new untried oceans of schemes and projects, but ready to inspire them to do their duty humbly and simply where He has put them — and, believe me, Madam, the only way to re- generate the world is to do the duty which lies nearest us, and not to hunt after grand, far-fetched ones for ourselves. If each drop of rain cJiose where it should fall, God's showers would not fall, as they do now, on the evil and on the good alike. I know — I know from the experience of my own heart — how galling this doctrine is — how, like Naaman, one goes away in a rage, because the Prophet has not bid us do some great thing, but only to go and wash in the nearest brook, and be clean. But, jSLidam, be sure that he who is not faithful in a little will never be fit to be ruler over much. He who cannot rule his own household will never (as St. Paul says) rule the Church of God ; and he who cannot keep his temper, or be self-sacrificing, cheerful, tender, attentive at home, will never be of any real and permanent use to God's poor abroad. " Wherefore, Madam, if, as you say, you feel what St. Francis de Sales calls ' a dryness of soul ' about good works and charity, consider well within yourself, whether the simple reason, and (no shame on you!) be not only because God does not wish you just yet to labour among the poor ; because He has not yet finished educating you for that good work, and therefore will not let you handle tools before you know how to use them. " Begin with small things, ISLidam — you cannot enter the presence of another human being without finding there more to do than you or I, or any soul, will ever learn to do perfectly before we die. Let us be content to do little, if God sets us at little tasks. It is but pride and self-will which says, 'give me something huge to fight, — and I should enjoy that —but why make me sweep the dust ? ' Finally, Madam, be sure of 432 Charles Kmgsley. one thing, that the Lord Jesus Christ is King of this earth, and all therein; and that if you will do faithfully what He has set you to already, and thereby using the order of a Deaconess well, gain to yourself a good foundation in your soul's training, He will give you more to do in His good time, and of His good kind. " If you are inclined to answer this letter, let me ask you not to answer it for at least three months to come. It may be good for you to have read it over a second time. " I am, Madam, " Your obedient servant, "C. KiNCSLEV." TO RE\^ F. D. MAURICE. [On the death of his father.] " I was gladdened to day by the sight of your handwriting, and much ashamed to think that I had not written to you " That I have felt for you and with you, I need not say. But in both sorrows there has been, I had almost said, more good than evil. Still I can conceive the awful feeling of having the roots which connect one with the last generation seemingly torn up, and having to say, * now 1 am the root, I stand self-supported, with no older stature to rest on.' And then one must believe that God is the God of Abraham, and that all live to Him, and that we are no more isolated and self-supported than when we were children on our mother's bosom. But you taught me that, so I need not teach it you. " About Edinburgh. After all, I hope you will not go. It would be leaving so much half done ; tearing so many little growing root-fibres in young men's hearts. I have half regretted several times having men- tioned it to you ■' TO THE SAME. BlDEiORD, October 19. " . . . . We think of nothing here but the war. So many friends and relations are in it. But I can only look on it with satisfaction (awful as war is), and with disgust at the arrogance and virulence of certain daily newspapers, which seem determined, the cowardly hirelings, to hunt Lord Raglan and Sir Charles Napier to death if they could, as they hunted poor Sir John Moore of old. But thank God, Lord Raglan's training under the Duke has taught him to despise in silence the anonymous curs at home, and the disappointed grumblers in camp, who, as his great master knew too well, are worse enemies than any French Elizabethan Books and Men. 433 or Russians. But all will go well, please God ; and ' the ancient spirit is not dead,' as the heights of the Alma prove. " As to your people's college, it is a noble plan. I wish I could help in it. It is certainly the thing which is wanted, and you are the man to get it done. I should like to know the names of your staff — perhaps if I had details I could find you a man or two ; but I am shut up like any Jeremiah here, living on the newspapers and my old Elizabethan books. The novel is more than half done, and a most ruthless bloodthirsty book it is (just what the times want, I think). ***** will be horribly scandalised at the reverence which it pays throughout to that ' much misunderstood politician,' Judge Lynch. I am afraid I have a little of the wolf-vein in me, in spite of fifteen centuries of civilisation, and so, I sometimes suspect, have you, and if you had not you would not be as tender and loving as you are. Sooner one caress from a mastiff than twenty from a spaniel. I wish you were here, I want to ask you a thousand things. I am sometimes very sad ; always very puzzled, and long to be rid (I am ashamed to say) of a great deal of which I ought not to be rid. This war would have made me half mad, if I had let it. It seemed so dreadful to hear of those Alma heights being taken and not be there ; but God knows best, and I suppose I am not fit for such brave work • but only like Camille Desmoiilins, ' une pauvre cre'ature, ne'e pour faire des vers.' But I can fight with my pen still (I don't mean in controversy — I am sick of that. If one went on at it, it would make one a very Billingsgate fishwife, screaming and scolding, when one knows one is safe., and then running away when one expects to have one's attack returned), — Not in controversy, but in writing books which will make others fight. This one is to be called * Westward Ho ! ' and its motto is old Demosthenes'. "If you will consider these things, you will vote worthily t^v Iv Mapa6 magnificent projects, worked out as far as they would go, not wildly and superficially, but on the most deliberate and accurate grounds of science, then thrown away in disapisointment, for some fresh noble dream ; an intense interest in the social and political condition of the poor, which sprang 'up in him, to his great moral benefit, during the last five years of his life. Here were the elements of his schooling — as hard a one^ both voluntary and involuntary, as ever human soul went through. In all my life I never heard that man give vent to a low or mean word, or evince a low or mean sentiment. Though he had never, I suppose, seen much of the ' grand nionde,' he was the most perfectly, well-bred man at all points I ever saw ; and exquisite judges have said the same thing. His secret seemed very simple, if one could attain it ; but he attained it by not trying to attain it, for it was merely never thinking about himself. He was always thinking how to please others in the most trivial matters ; and that, not to make them think well of him (which breeds only affectation), but just to make them conifortable : and that was why he left a trail of light wherever he went. " It was wonderful, utterly wonderful to me in after life, knowing all that lay on his heart, to see the way he flashed dowm over the glebe at Eversley, with his knapsack at his back, like a shining star appearing with peace on earth and good-will to men, and bringing an involuntary smile into the faces of every one who met him — the compelled reflection of his own smile. And his voice was like the singing of a bird in its wonderful cheerfulness, and tenderness, and gaiety. " At last, when he was six and thirty years of age, his victoiy in the battle of life seemed complete. His enormous and increasing labour seemed rather to have quickened and steadied than tired his brain. The 444 Charles Kingsley. clouds which had beset his path had all but cleared, and left sunshine and hope for the future. His spirit had become purified, not only into doctrinal orthodoxy, but also into a humble, generous, and manful piety, such as I cannot hope often to behold again. He had gathered round him friends, both men and women, who looked on him with a love such as might be inspired by a being from a higher world. He was already recognised as one of the most promising young chemists in England, for whose future renown no hope could be too high-pitched ; and a patent for a chemical discovery which he had obtained, seemed, after years of delay and disappointment, to promise him what he of all men coveted least, renown and wealth. One day he was at work on some experiments connected with his patent. By a mistake of the lad who assisted him, the apparatus got out of order, the naphtha boiled over, and was already on fire. To save the premises from the effect of an explosion, Mr. Mansfield caught up the still in his arms, and attempted to carry it out ; the door was fast ; he tried to hurl it through the window, but too late. The still dropped from his hands, half flayed with liquid fire. He scrambled out, rolled in the snow, and so extinguished the flame. Fearfully burnt and bruised, he had yet to walk a mile to reach a cab, and was taken to Middlesex Hospital, where, after nine days of agony, he died like a Christian man. " Oh, fairest of souls ! Happy are those who knew thee in this life Happier those who will know thee in the life to come ! "C. K r- »> They are together now ! Two true and perfect knights of God, perchance on some fresh noble quest ! Little has been recovered of the correspondence of this year, much of Avhich sprung out of the publication of " Westward Ho ! " That book was dedicated to Rajah Brooke and Bishop Selwyn, and produced the following letter from Mr. Henry Drummond, and, at a later period, one from the Rajah himself. Albemarle Street, May 13, 1855. "Dear Sir,— " I have just seen your noble dedication of 'Westward Ho !' to Sir J. Brooke, and have taken the liberty to desire a copy of the shame- ful trial to which he has been subjected to be sent you, as I am sure it will gratify you. I heard from him last week : he is quite well, and all his work prospering. A remarkable thing is about to take place in Sarawak. The people finding themselves dealt with in a manner so Rajah Brooke and " Westward Ho ! " 445 superior to that in which they are dealt with by their own rulers, have considered that the religion of their present governor must be the true religion, and accordingly are about to apply en masse to become members of Brooke's religion. In my opinion the only means which should be used towards heathen is the manifestation of mercy, justice, and truth. The poor bishop's trouble will begin after he has got his converts. " Begging pardon for this intrusion from a stranger, "I am. Sir, " With great admiration of your ^^Titings, " Your obedient Servant, " Henry Drummond." RAJAH SIR JAMES BROOKE TO REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY. Dawlish, March 24, 1S59. " My dear Sir, — " I have long dela3-ed to thank you in person for a very welcome dedication to 'Westward Ho !' but business, with many cares, prevented me. '•' I cannot, however, now that I hear of your kind interest in my cause, and the exertions you are making to advance it, forbear from assuring you of my sense of your good opinion, and the good it does me mentally. My life is pretty well at its dregs, and I shall be glad indeed to pass the few remaining months or years in quiet, and free from the anxieties which must beset the post I have occupied, but which of late years have been increased tenfold, owing to the course or rather no course pursued by the Government. " It is a sad but true experience, that everything has succeeded with the natives, and everything has failed with the English in Borneo. I am anxious to retire, for Sarawak should not be ruled by a failing man, and I would not cling to power when unable to discharge its duties. " In due time I would fain hand over my staff to my successor if permitted ; but if forced to return to Sarawak, to bear its anxieties and share its trials, I shall know it is a duty though a trying one, and shall not begrudge the exertion for the short time I can make it. " Let me thank you, then, for your kindness, and let me have the satisfaction of knowing you before I leave this country. " Whenever I go again to town, I will let you hear from me, in the hope you will invite me to visit you. " Believe me, my dear Sir, " Yours very sincerely, '7. Brooke." 446 Charles Kingslcy. In answer to a valuable critique on "Westward Ho!" Mr. Kingslcy writes : TO J. COLE, ESQ. EvERSLEY, January 7, 1866. "I have received a copy of the 'North Devon Journal,' contain- ing a lecture of yours on Barnstaple, which greatly interested me. Pray let me thank you for it heartily, and say at once, that on any points on which you and I may seem to differ, I give way at once to your plainly superior local knowledge; and cry 'Jainjam cfficaci do mantis sclent ice.'' " I wrote 'Westward Ho !' without any access to town records, much more to state papers, chiefly by the light of my dear old Hakluyt. I had always been puzzled by the small mention of Barnstaple in the documents which I knew, and had supposed that it being t/te port, Bideford vessels were registered as belonging to Barnstaple ; while Sir Richard Grenvile, who then seems to have had one home in Bideford, and another at Tapeley, was lord and master, and took the glory, while he did the work. " As for my date for the ships being stopped before the coming of the Armada, I think I must have got it from some of the Hakluyt Society's publications, for I always tried to be as accurate as possible. But pray convince me of errors as much as }0U will, as long as you do it in the kindly spirit of your lecture. I have evidently been unjust to Barnstaple, simply from ignorance, though the assertion that Bideford (a century after) sent more vessels to the northern trade than any port save Topsham and London is a bona fide quotation Heaven knows if it be true ; for what is true in history? " But even if you proved me wrong twenty times over, I should still rejoice, as a West-countryman, if my crude romance has helped to waken up '\\'est-countr}-men to search out the records of their ancestors' prowess ; and jirove — which I never doubted — that there were more brave fellows ' down-along' than even I had thought of. " Let me add that Froude, my dear friend and our fellow Devonshire man, has thrown much light on the buccaneering of our western men in his last volumes. He has still more facts by him, unpublished. He is going now to Seville, to search, as far as he is allowed, the records of the Inquisition, and expects to find yet more. " Let me add also. Why do you not take up, and work out, the great Exodus from North Devon to Ireland, which began with Queen Eliza- beth, and went on through James's and into Charles's reign ; and which The Unpardonable Sin. 447 left at least Chichesters, Fortescues, St. Legers (these last, my wife's ancestors), as Irish peers, and Dobbs's, Wills's, Berry's, &c., as Irish squires ? — from your part they came, for good or ill — and their history should be worked out. Sir Humphrey Gilbert was the projector of the scheme." TO A WESLEYAN MINISTER. (Who wrote to thank him for his books. ) Ap-il, 1855, " Most truly pleasant it is to me to find that my vrords have gone home to the heart of any man, and much more to that of one employed in preaching Christ's Gospel. Churchman as I am I can bid any man God-speed who really wishes to preach ' deliverance to captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, and an acceptable year of the Lord.' Do you do so ? and is the year of the Lord which you preach accept- able, or awful, horrible, a slander to Him who hateth nothing that He hath made, who hath made all men, and all things, save sin, and desires to deliver men from sin, and therefore will assuredly, unless evil be stronger than good, and God's creation a failure, see His desire ful- filled ? I only ask you this question first that by your answer to it we may know how deep our sympathy extends. " As for works on the working class problems you will find my views, and those of far wiser men than me, in ' Politics for the People.' " And now I thank you heartily for the manner of your letter, and God heartily for the matter of it. Write to me again. I am not a man of many compliments, and you need not be to me a man of many excuses ; for who am I, and who are you, if we both are in earnest, but mortal souls too weak to dispense with any help, any love which can lighten for us the burden of life's stormy and dark road?" TO , ESQ. BiDEFORD, May, 1855. " I was pained enough at the receipt of your letter this morning ; but I can only entreat you not to despair where there is no need to do so. And as for the ' sin against the Holy Ghost,' let neither man nor devil torment you with that old worn-out lie, and slander of God's eternal love and long-suffering. In the first place, all sins whatsoever are sins against the Holy Spirit, whether conscious or unconscious ; but who is mad enough to say that therefore they are without forgiveness ? But the passage which seems to torment you, and has tormented 448 Charles Kingslcy. many, has (if you will read it carefully) a special meaning on the very face of it. " Our Lord says, when the Pharisees said that He cast out devils by Beelzebub, that they were committing an utterly unpardonable sin — blaspheming {i.e. speaking evil of) the Holy Spirit; that is, they were attributing good and godlike deeds, because merciful and beneficent deeds, to an evil princii)le, instead of recognizing in them the sure mark of a Divine principle. In plain English, they were bigots. " This was their sin. And it is one which one often enough sees (shuddering) committed, or something fearfully like it, now-a-days in our religious wars and hatred ; but what has that to do with these struggles between your flesh and God's spirit, while jvur own spirit (as every line of your letter shows) is arrayed on the side of God's spirit against your flesh, and will therefore most assuredly conquer in the end? " Besides, see why this sin of the Pharisees is unpardonable. Because they cannot repent of it. If they could repent they would be forgiven ipso facto. To that primary eternal moral law God has sworn again and again in the bible, and nothing whatsoever can countervail it. But the bigot (I mean, of course, the complete one) cannot repent, simply because he thinks himself right, even though he make out God AVTong ; himself true, though God be a liar; and his insane self-satisfaction forms an eternal bar to any metanoia, or change of mind. Moreover, to repent is to turn from sin, to God ; and how can he, who says he has no sin, and who has forgotten where God is, and what God is, that He is mercy and love, and His Spirit the spirit whose mercy is over all His works? Thus the bigot's moral sense is gone and dead, or rather inverted, and he says to himself, more or less, ' Evil be thou my good.' And such a state of mind must breed fresh sins, misery and ruin to all time and eternity, as long as it lasts. That is the meaning of the matter ; but what in heaven or earth has it to do with you, and your sins, though they be red as blood ? " The other passages in Hebrews about ' impossible to renew them to repentance,' should not trouble you either. Neither vi. 4, and sqq., nor xii. 16-17. They are both distinct warnings addressed to the Jews of that day, that if they did fall back from the Christian development of their national covenant and life, into their old Je\nsh superstition and brutal worldliness, they would perish with their nation ; that a great historic crisis, a one last opportunity for the Jewish nation, was at hand, and if they lost that, the destruction was hopeless. As the event proved, the city and religion being destroyed by Titus, and the Jews remaining spiritually dead to this day. Drawing Class for Young Men. 449 " Remark, too, that Esau, the vety man who ' found no place for repentance,' was not damned ; but blessed in his own way, and in the way which was best for him, as a lower-natured man, and given the 'fatness of the earth, and the dew of heaven,' and a warrior-kingdom ! " So much for the plain fact of texts which the devil and his best emissaries, bigots who make a God in their own image, dark, cruel, and capricious, use to torment poor souls, and frighten them from arising and going to their Father, and saying, Father, I hate myself; but Thou lovest me. I do not understand myself; but Thou dost, and wilt be merciful to the work of Thine own hands. I cannot guide and help myself, but Thou canst, and wilt, too, because Thou art my Father, and nothing can part me from Thy love, or from the love of Thy Son, my King, as often as I come and claim my share in Thee, just because I have nothing, and can bring Thee nothing, but lie at Thy gate as a beggar full of sores, desiring to be fed with the crumbs from Thy table. And if I would feed and nurse in such a case, not my own child merely, but the Russian* who shot him the other day in battle, how much more wilt Thou, whose name is Love, and whose glory is the likeness of Thy Son Jesus Christ, who said, ' Come to me, ALL ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give His Holy Spirit to them that ask him?' " Having no parish work at Bideford, except during an outburst of cholera, when he took a district for house to house visitation, and occasional duty at Northam, Hartland, and Abbot- sham, he lectured on the Fine Arts, and got up a drawing-class for young men, of which one of the members, Mr. Plucknett, (now head of a great firm for the design and manufacture of art furniture and decoration in Warwick and Leamington,) feelingly speaks in a letter to Mrs. Kingsley : Warwick, April, 1876. " I was a youth in Bideford at the time Mr. Kingsley came to reside there, when seeing the young men of the town hanging about wasting their leisure hours in worse than wasting, his heart yearned to do them good. He at first endeavoured to establish a Government School of Art— this, however, failed. He then offered to teach a class drawing — gratuitously. A few of us held a meeting, and hired a * Time of Crimean War. VOL. I. G G 450 Charles Kingslcy. room in the house of the Poet Postman, Edward Capeni, who, althougli a married man, much older than the rest of us, was a most hard- working pupil. I look back upon those evenings at Bideford as the pleasantest part of my life, and, with God's blessing, I attribute my success in life to the valuable instruction I received from Mr. Kingsley : his patience, perseverance, and kindness won all our hearts, and not one of his class but would have given his life for the master. He used, as no doubt you remember, to bring fresh flowers from his conservatory for us to copy as we became sufficiently advanced to do so ; and still further on he gave us lectures on anatomy, illustrating the subject with chalk drawings on a large black board. His knowledge of geometry, perspective, and free-hand drawing, was wonderful ; and the rapid and beautiful manner in which he drew excited both our admiration and our ambition. I have reason to believe that most of the class received lasting benefit, and have turned out well. Personally, I may say, with truth, I have cause to bless the name of Mr. Kingsley as long as I live ; for I left home with little more than the knowledge of my business, and the knowledge of drawing learned in the class. After many years of hard work I am now at the head of a good business, which I am proud to say is well known for the production of art furniture, &c. I often thought of writing to Mr. Kingsley, but diffidence prevented me. The last time I ever saw him was in front of Lord Elcho's cottage, at Wimbledon, at the time the Belgians first came to the camp. I was there representing my corps from Bath as a marksman, and just as I was about to speak to Mr. Kingsley, the Prince of Wales came out on the green and entered into conversation with him, and my oppor- tunity was lost for ever. " Though dead, he yet influences for good thousands of hearts and minds ; and he is now reaping the reward of his noble eftbrts while on earth to add to the sum of human happiness, and thus leave the world better than he found it. I need not speak of the time when the class ceased, and Mr. Kingsley invited us to your house, to bid us farewell, and of our tribute of love and respect to him " This tribute of love was a silver card-case, which was very precious to him, given at the close of a happy evening, when the class came to supper at North Down House. The mention of the " black board " will remind many, of his masterly sketches, in public lectures and at his own school, where he liked always to have a black board, with a piece of chalk, to illustrate his teaching by figures, which spoke sometimes as A Lecture to Ladies. 451 eloquently as his words. His sense of form was marvellous, and, when in doors, he was never thoroughly at ease without a pen or pencil in his hand. In conversation with his children or guests his pencil was out in a moment to illustrate every sub- ject, whether it was natural history, geological strata, geography, maps, or the races of mankind. And even when writing his ser- mons his mind seemed to find relief in sketching on the blotting- paper before him, or on the blank spaces in his sermon-book, characteristic heads, and types of face, among the different schools of thought from the mediaeval monk to the modern fanatic. At Bristol, when he was President of the Educational Section at the Social Science Congress, as he sat listening to the various speakers, pen in hand, for the ostensible purpose of making notes, he covered the paper with sketches suggested by the audience before him or by his own imagination ; and when the room was cleared, unknown to him, people would return, and beg to carry off every scrap of paper he had used, as mementos. In the end of May he left Devonshire and went up to London, before settling at Eversley. He there gave a lecture to the Working Men's College, and one of a series to ladies interested in the cause of the labouring classes. The subject he took was, The work of ladies in the Country Parish. The lecture, valuable in itself, is doubly so, as the result of the first eleven years of his labour among the poor, and some extracts are given to show the human and humane rules by which he worked his parish. " I keep to my own key-note," he says — "I say, Visit whom, when, and where you will ; but let your visits be those oftvomen to women. Con- sider to whom you go — to poor souls whose life, compared with yours, is one long malaise of body, and soul, and spirit — and do as you would be done by; instead of reproving and fault-finding, encourage. In God's name, encourage. They scramble through life's rocks, bogs, and thorn-brakes, clumsily enough, and have many a fall, poor things ! But why, in the name of a God of love and justice, is the lady, rolling along the smooth turnpike road in her comfortable carriage, to be calling out all day long to the poor soul who drags on beside her, over hedge and ditch, moss and moor, barefooted and weary hearted, witli G G 2 452 Charles Kingslcy. half a dozen children at her back — ' You ought not to have fallen here ; and it was very cowardly to lie down there ; and it was your duty as a mother, to have helped that child through the puddle ; while as for sleeping under that bush, it is most imprudent and inadmissible?' Why not encourage her, praise her, cheer her on her weary way by loving words, and keep your reproofs for yourself — even your advice ; for she does get on her way after all, where yoti could not travel a step forAvard ; and she knows what she is about perhaps better than you do, and what she has to endure, and what God thinks of her life-journey. The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its joy. But do not you be a stranger to her. Be a sister to her, I do not ask you to take her up in your carriage. You cannot ; perhaps it is good for her that you cannot. .... All I ask is, do to the poor soul as you would have her do to you in her place. Do not interrupt and vex her (for she is busy enough already) with remedies which she does not understand, for troubles which you do not understand. But speak comfortably to her, and say, * I cannot feel with you, but I do {tt\for you : I should enjoy helping you — but I do not know how — tell me. Tell me where the yoke galls ; tell me why that forehead is grown old before its time : I may be able to ease the burden, and put fresh light into the eyes ; and if not, still tell me, simply because I am a woman, and know the relief of pouring out my own soul into loving ears, even though in the depths of despair.' Yes, paradoxical as it may seem, I am convinced that the only way to help these poor women humanly and really, is to begin by confessing to them that you do not know how to help them ; to humble yourself to them, and to ask their counsel for the good of themselves and of their neighbours, instead of coming proudly to them, with nostrums, ready compounded, as if a doctor should be so confident in his own know- ledge of books and medicine as to give physic before asking the patient's symptoms. » « * « « " I entreat you to bear in mind (for without this all visiting of the poor will be utterly void and useless) that you must regulate your conduct to them and in their houses, even to the most minute particu- lars, by the very same rules which apply to persons of your own class. .... Piety, earnestness, affectionateness, eloquence — all may be nullified and stultified by simply keeping a poor woman standing in her own cottage while you sit, or entering her house, even at her own request, while she is at meals. She may decline to sit ; she may beg you to come in : all the more reason for refusing utterly to obey her, because it shows that that very inward gulf between you and her still A JVomau and a Sister. 453 exists in her mind, which it is the object of your visit to bridge over. If you know her to be in trouble, touch on that trouble as you would with a lady. Woman's heart is alike in all ranks, and the deepest sorrow is the one of which she speaks the last and least. We should not like any one — no, not an angel from heaven, to come into our houses without knocking at the door, to say, ' I hear you are very ill off — I will lend you a hundred pounds. I think you are very careless of money, I will take your accounts into my own hands.' And still less again, ' Your son is a very bad, profligate, disgraceful fellow, who is not fit to be mentioned ; I intend to take him out of your hands and reform him myself.' " Neither do the poor like such unceremonious mercy, such untender tenderness, benevolence at horseplay, mistaking kicks for caresses. They do not like it, they will not respond to it, save in parishes which have been demoralized by officious and indiscriminate benevolence, and where the last remaining virtues of the poor, savage self-help and independence, have been exchanged for organized begging and hypocrisy. W" ^ ijt T^f" ^ " Approach, then, these poor women as sisters — learn lovingly and patiently (aye, and reverently, for there is that in every human being which deser\'es reverence, and must be reverenced if we wish to under- stand it); learn, I say, to understand their troubles, and by that time they will have learnt to understand your remedies. For you have remedies. I do not undervalue your position. No man on earth is less inclined to undervalue the real power of wealth, rank, accomplish- ments, manners — even physical beauty. All are talents from God, and I give God thanks when I see them possessed by any human being ; for I know that they too can be used in His service, and brought to bear on the true emancipation of woman — her emancipation not from man (as some foolish persons fancy), but from the devil, ' the slanderer and divider,' who divides her from man, and makes her live a life-long tragedy, which goes on in more cottages than palaces — a vie a part, a vie incomprise — a life made up half of ill-usage, half of unnecessary self- willed martyrdom, instead of being, as God intended half of the human universe, a helpmeet for man, and the one bright spot which makes this world endurable. Towards making her that, and so realizing the primeval mission by every cottage hearth, each of you can do some- thing ; for each of you have some talent, power, knowledge, attraction between soul and soul, which the cottager's wife has not, and by which you may draw her to you, by human bonds and the cords of love ; but she must be drawn by them alone, or your work is nothing, and though 454 Charles Kingsley. you give the treasures of Tnd, they are valueless equally to her and to Christ ; for they are not given in His name, which is that boundless tenderness, consideration, patience, self-sacrifice, by which even the cup of cold water is a precious offering — as God grant your labour may be ! " Again, as to teaching boys, he adds : " There is one thing in school work which I wish to press on you. And that is, that you should not confine your work to the girls ; but bestow it as freely on those who need it more, and who (paradoxical as it may be) will respond to it more deeply and freely — the boys. I am not going to enter into the reason why. I only entreat you to believe me, that by helping to educate the boys, or even by taking a class, as I have seen done with admirable effect, of grown-up lads, you may influence for ever, not only the happiness of your pupils, but of the girls whom they will hereafter marry. It will be a boon to your own sex, as well as to ours, to teach them courtesy, self-restraint, reverence for physical weakness, admiration of tenderness and gentle- ness, and it is one which only a lady can bestow. Only by being accustomed in youth to converse with ladies will the boy learn to treat hereafter his sweetheart or his wife like a gentleman. There is a latent chivalry, doubt it not, in the heart of every untutored clod ; if it dies out in him, as it too often does, it were better for him I often think that he had never been born ; but the only talisman which will keep it alive, much more develop it into its fulness, is friendly and revering intercourse with women of higher rank than himself, between whom and him there is a great and yet blessed gulf fixed." ***** One secret of his own influence was this loving, human teach- ing. In writing at this time to an unknown correspondent, who consulted him about his ragged-school work, in which he was just then greatly discouraged, he says : "As for the ragged school, I would say, though they curse, yet bless thou — teach there all the more ; tell these lads and men that they have a Father in heaven — show that you believe it, by your looks, your manner, and common geniality, and brotherly kindness, and general hopefulness of tone ; and let them draw their own conclusions. God their Father will take good care that the good seed shall grow."' Suffering working out Perfection. 455 During a few days' absence he writes to his wife : EVERSLEY, July 16, 1855. " . . . . After all, the problem of life is not a difficult one, for it solves itself so very soon at best — by death. Do what is right the best way you can, and wait to the end to knoio. Only we priests confuse it with our formulae, and bind heavy burdens. How many have I bound in my time, God forgive me ! But for that, too, I shall receive my punishment, which is to me tlie most comforting of thoughts " Yes— * 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death for which we pant, More life, and fuller, that I want.' You are right — that longing to get rid of walls and roofs and all the chrysalis case of humanity is the earnest of a higher, richer state of existence. That instinct which the very child has to get rid of clothes, and cuddle to flesh — what is it but the longing for fuller union -with those it loves? But see again (I always take the bright side), — If in spite of wars and fevers, and accidents, and the strokes of chance, this world be as rich and fair and green as we have found it, what must the coming world be like ? Let us comfort ourselves as St. Paul did (in infinitely worse times), that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed. It is not fiir either to St. Paul or to God — to quote the one text about the creation groaning and travailing, without the other, which says, that it will not groan or travail long. Would the mother who has groaned and travailed and brought forth children — would she give up those children for the sake of not having had the pain ? No. Then believe that the world and every human being in it who has really groaned and travailed, will not give up its past pangs for the sake of its then present perfec- tion, but will look back on this life, as you do on past pain, with glory and joy. Oh ! let the bible tell its own tale, and be faithful to its plain words, honestly and carefully understood, and all will be well. I come to-morrow .... and I shall see my darling children." They now settled at Eversley; but as winter approached, the damp obliged him, on his wife's account, to leave the rectory again ; but not his people, to his and their great joy. He took a house for six months on Farley Hill, a high and dry spot in the next parish. In the intervals of parochial work and lectures at the various diocesan institutes, he brought out a volume of 45 6 C harks Kings ley. ''■ Sermons for the Times," and wrote a book of Greek fairy tales for his children, which came out at Christmas, as "The Heroes," dedicated to "Rose, Maurice, and Mary." " I love these old Hellenes heartily, and should be very ungrateful if I did not, considering all they have taught me, and they seem to me like brothers, though they have all been dead and gone many hundred years, so I wish to be the first to introduce you to them, and to say, ' Come hither, children, at this blessed Christmas time, when all God's creatures should rejoice together, and bless Him who redeemed them. Come and see old friends of mine, whom I knew long ere you were born. They are come to visit us at Christmas, out of the world where all live to God ; and to tell you some of their old fairy tales which they loved when they were young, like you.' .... Next to the old romances which were written in the Christian middle age, there are no fairy tales like these old Greek ones for beauty, wisdom, and truth, and for making children love noble deeds, and trust in God to help them through." TO J. M. LUDLOW, ESQ. Farley Court, AW'., 1855. " . . . . Some of your hints are valuable. I feel what you say about not Greek and too Greek ; but I had laid my account with all that before I wrote. If I tell the story myself as you wish, I can'/ give the children the Greek spirit— either morally or in manner, therefore I have adopted a sort of simple ballad tone, and tried to make my prose us metrical as possible. The archaisms are all slips in the rough copy, and shall be amended, as shall all recondite allusions; but you must remember as to modernisms, that we Cambridge men are taught to translate Greek by its modern equivalent even to slang. As to the word • thrall,' about which you are so wroth, I was not aware that I was wrong. It shall be amended with thanks. My own belief is, that by taking the form I have, I shall best do what I want, translate the children back into a new old world, and make them, as long as they are reading, forget the present, which is the true method of a — 7nusc- nicnt, while the half metrical form will fix it in their minds, and give them something to think over. I don't agree with you at all, nor does F., about omitting allusions which the children can't understand. She agrees with me that that is just what they like. " Read, Oh read Longfellow's song of ' Hiawatha' — never mind a few defects, old hole-picker ; but read a set of myths as new as delight- ful, and cause Tom Hughes to read them likewise." Fa7ne and Praise. 457 TO THE SAME. Farley Court, Dec. 30, 1855. " And for this fame, &c., " I know a little of her worth. " And I will tell you what I know. " That, in the first place, she is a fact ; and as such, it is not wise to ignore her, but at least to walk once round her, and see her back as well as her front. " The case to me seems to be this. A man feels in himself the love of praise. Every man does who is not a brute. It is a universal human faculty ; Carlyle nicknames it the sixth sense. Who made it ? God or the devil? Is it flesh or spirit? a difticult question; because tamed animals grow to possess it in a high degree ; and our meta- physic does not yet allow them spirit. But, whichever it be, it cannot be for bad : only bad when misdirected, and not controlled by reason, the faculty which judges between good and evil. Else why has God put His love of praise into the heart of every child which is born into the world, and entwined it into the holiest, filial, and family affec- tions, as the earliest mainspring of good actions? Has God appointed that every child shall be fed first with a necessary lie, and afterwards come to the knowledge of your supposed truth, that the praise of God alone is to be sought ? Or are we to believe that the child is intended to be taught as delicately and gradually as possible the painful fact, that the praise of all men is not equally worth having, and to use his critical faculty to discern the praise of good men from the praise of bad, to seek the former and despise the latter ? I should say that the last was the more reasonable. And this I will say, that if you bring up any child to care nothing for the praise of its parents, its elders, its pastors, and masters, you may make a fanatic of it, or a shameless cynic : but you will neither make it a man, an Englishman, nor a Christian. " But 'our Lord's words stand, about not seeking the honour which comes from men, but the honour which comes from God only !' True, they do stand, and our Lord's fact stands also, the fact that He has created every child to be educated by an honour which comes from his parents and elders. Both are true. Here, as in most spiritual things, you have an antinomia, an apparent contradiction, which nothing but the Gospel solves. .A.nd it does solve it ; and your one-sided view of the text resolves itself into just the same fallacy as the old ascetic one. ' We must love God alone, therefore we must love no created thing.' To which St. John answers pertinently, ' He who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?' If you love your brethren, you love Christ in them. If you love their 458 Charles Kings ley. praise, you love the praise of Christ in them. For consider this, you cannot deny that, if one loves any person, one desires that person's esteem. But we are bound to love all men, and that is our highest state. Therefore, in our highest state, we shall desire all men's esteem. Paradoxical, but true. If we believe in Christmas-day; if we believe in Whitsunday, we shall believe that Christ is in all men, that God's spirit is abroad in the earth, and therefore the dispraise, misunderstanding, and calumny of men will be exquisitely painful to us, and ought to be so ; and, on the other hand, the esteem of men, and renown among men for doing good deeds will be inexpressibly precious to us. They will be signs and warrants to us that God is pleased with us, that we are sharing in that ' honour and glory' which St. Paul promises again and again, with no such scruples as yours, to those who lead heroic lives. We shall not neglect the voice of God within us ; but we shall remember that there is also a voice of God without us, which we must listen to ; and that in a Christian land, vox populi, patiently and discriminately listened to, is sure to be found not far off from the vox Dei. " Now, let me seriously urge this last fact on you. Of course, in listening to the voice of the man outside there is a danger, as there is in the use of any faculty. You may employ it, according to Divine reason and grace, for ennobling and righteous purposes ; or you may degrade it to carnal and selfish ones ; so you may degrade the love of praise into vanity, into longing for the honour which comes from men, by pandering to their passions and opinions, by using your powers as they would too often like to use theirs, for mere self-aggrandisement, by saying in your heart — qiiam pidchrum digito jfionstrari ct dicier hie est. That is the man who wrote the fine poem, who painted the fine picture, and so forth, till, by giving way to this, a man may give way to forms of vanity as base as the red Indian who sticks a fox's tail on, and dances about boasting of his brute cunning. I know all about that, as well as any poor son of Adam ever did. But I know, too, that to desire the esteem of as many rational men as possible; in a word, to desire an honourable and true renown for having done good in my generation, has nothing to do with that ; and the more I fear and struggle against the former, the more I see the exceeding beauty and divineness, and everlasting glory of the latter as an entrance into the communion of saints. " Of course, all this depends on whether we do believe that Christ is in every man, and that God's spirit is abroad in the earth. Of course, again, it will be very difficult to know who speaks by God's spirit, and who sees by Christ's light in him ; but surely the wiser, the humbler path, is to give men credit for as much wisdom and rightness as pos- The Voice Within and the Voice Without. 459 sible, and to believe that when one is found fault with, one is probably in the wrong. For myself, on looking back, I see clearly with shame and sorrow, that the obloquy which I have brought often on myself and on the good cause, has been almost all of it my own fault— that I have given the devil and bad men a handle, not by caring what people would say, but by not caring — by fancying that I was a very grand fellow, who was gouig to speak what I knew to be true, in spite of all fools (and really did and do intend so to do), while all the while I was deceiving myself, and unaware of a canker at the heart the very opposite to the one against which you warn me — I mean the proud, self willed, self- conceited spirit which made no allowance for other men's weakness or ignorance ; nor again, for their superior experience and wisdom on points which I had never considered — which took a pride in shocking and startling, and defying, and hitting as hard as I could, and fancied, blasphemously, as I think, that the word of God had come to me only, and went out from me only. God forgive me for these sins, as well as for my sins in the opposite direction ; but for these sins especially, because I see them to be darker and more dangerous than the others. " For there has been gradually revealed to me (what my many read- ings in the lives of fanatics and ascetics ought to have taught me long before), that there is a terrible gulf a-head of that not caring what men say. Of course it is a feehng on which the spirit must fall back in hours of need, and cry, ' Thou God knowest mine integrity. I have believed, and therefore I will speak; Thou art true, though all men be liars ! ' But I am convinced that that is a frame in which no man can live, or is meant to live ; that it is only to be resorted to in fear and trembling, after deepest self-examination, and self-purification, and earnest prayer. For otherwise, Ludlow, a man gets to forget that voice of God without him, in his determination to listen to nothing but the voice of God within him, and so he falls into two dangers. He forgets that there is a voice of God without him. He loses trust in, and charity to, and reverence for his fellow-men ; he learns to despise, deny, and quench the Spirit, and to despise prophesy ings, and so becomes gradually cynical, sectarian, fanatical. " And then comes a second and worse danger. Crushed into self, and his own conscience and schema mundi, he loses the opportunity of correcting his impression of the voice of God within, by the testimony of the voice of God without ; and so he begins to mistake more and more the voice of that very flesh of his, which he fancies he has con- quered, for the voice of God, and to become, without knowing it, an autotheist. And out of that springs electicism, absence of tenderness for men, for want of sympathy 2vit/i men ; as he makes his own con- 460 C/iar/cs Kingsley. science his standard for God, so he makes his own character the standard for men ; and so he becomes narrow, hard, and if he be a man of strong will and feelings, often very inhuman and cruel. This is the history of thousands — of Jeromes, Lauds, Puritans who scourged Quakers, Quakers who cursed Puritans ; Nonjurors, who though they would die rather than offend their own conscience in owning William, would plot with James to murder William, or devastate England with Irish Rapparees and Auvergne dragoons. This, in fact, is the spiritual diagnosis of those many pious persecutors, who, though neither hypo- crites or blackguards themselves, have used both as instruments of their fanaticism. " Against this I have to guard myself, you little know how much, and to guard my children still more, brought up, as they will be, under a father, who, deeply discontented with the present generation, cannot but express that discontent at times. To make my children 'banausoi,' insolent and scoffing radicals, believing in nobody and nothing but themselves, would be perfectly easy in me if I were to make the watch- word of my house, ' Never mind what people say.' On the contrary, I shall teach them that there are plenty of good people in the world, that public opinion has pretty surely an undercurrent of the water of life, below all its froth and garbage, and that in a Christian country like this, where, with all faults, a man (sooner or later) has fair play and a fair hearing, the esteem of good men. and the blessings of the poor, will be a pretty sure sign that they have the blessing of God also ; and I shall tell them, when they grow older, that ere they feel called on to become martyrs, in defending the light within them against all the world, they must first have taken care most patiently, and with all self-distrust and humility, to make full use of the light which is around them, and has been here for ages before them, and would be here still, though they had never been born or thought of The antinomy between this and their own conscience may be painful enough to them some day. To what thinking man is it not a life-long battle ? but I shall not dream that by denying one pole of the antinomy I can solve it, or do anything but make them, by cynicism or fanaticism, bury their talent in the earth, and not do the work which God has given them to do, because they will act like a parson who, before beginning his sermon, should first kick his congregation out of doors, and turn the key ; and not like St. Paul, who became all things to all men, if by any means he might save some." CHAPTER XV. 1856. Aged 37. Winter at Farley Court— Letters to Mr. Bullar— Letter from a Sailor at Hong Kong — Union Strikes — Fishing Poem and Fishing Flies— Study of Phrvgan^ — The Sabbath Question — Invitation to Snowdonia — Visit to North Wales— American Visitors — Preface to Tauler's Sermons, " I am very sorry for what you say about my not writing any tiling startling ; because it shows that .... you are beginning to judge me in part upon the reports of others. There are some people whom 1 must j/rtr//^, if I am to do any good. . . . But to startle the majority of good and sensible men, or to startle, so as to disgust at once a majority of any sort, are things which I most earnestly should wish to avoid. At the same time, I do strongly object on principle to the use of that globing, unnatural, and silly language (for so it is in us now), which men use one after another till it becomes as worn as one of the old shillings." — Dr. Arnold. CHAPTER XV. The winter of 1856, spent at Farley Court, a lovely spot in Swallowfield parish, adjoining to and overlooking Eversley, was a bright and happy one. Living on high ground, and in a dry house, acted as a tonic to him as well as to his family, and infused fresh life into his preaching and his parish work. In his night-schools, which were well attended, he gave lec- tures on mines, shells, and other subjects connected with Natural History, illustrated with large drawings of his own. The ap- pearance of a ghost in the neighbourhood, which had greatly alarmed his parishioners, but which he stalked down and found, as he expected, was a white deer, escaped from Calverly Park, led to his preaching a sermon on Ghosts to his people. The old incubus of the Crimean War was removed after two years pressure, and the new one of the Indian Mutiny, which weighed even more heavily upon him from the thought of the sufferings of women and children, was as yet in the future, and his heart rebounded again. The formation of the camp at Aldershot created fresh interests for him at this time and during his remaining years, by bringing a new element into his congrega- tion at Eversley, and giving him the friendship of many Crimean and Indian officers. In July he was at Aldershot on the memorable occasion of the Queen's first inspection of the rem- nant of her Crimean army, and saw the march-past of the dif- ferent regiments before Her Majesty, who was on horseback — a sight never to be forgotten, and which impressed him deeply. In August the long dreamt of expedition to Snowdon with his friends Mr. Tom Hughes and Mr. Tom Taylor, which resulted in the writing of " Two Years Ago," was accomplished. His spare hours were devoted to the study and classification of the 464 Charles Kingsley. Phryganae, which was carried on more by the side of trout streams in North Wales and in an occasional day's fishing at Wotton and Wild Moor, than in his own study. He con- tributed articles to the " North British Review " on Art and Puritanism, and to " Eraser's Magazine " on Mystics and Mysticism,* and began his new romance. During the summer and autumn many a pilgrimage was made by Americans to the home of the author whose works were then perhaps more appreciated at the other side of the Atlantic than in his own country. Among these were Mrs. Beechcr Stowe and her sister, Mrs. Perkins, The' following letters will show the life and vigour which marked his private correspondence this year : TO T. HUGHES, E.SQ. FaRI.KY COIRT. " I ^vish you would make a vow, and keep it strong ; for F. says, that if you will, I may : and that is not to ' cross the sea like Sophia,' but to go with me to Snowdon next summer for a parson's week, /. e. twelve days. For why ? I have long promised my children a book to be called ' Letters from Snowdon,' and I Avant to rub up old memories, and to get new ones in parts which I have not seen. You do not know how easy it is. You get second class into the mail at Euston Square at 9 p.m., and breakfast at Aber, under the Carnadds, next morning. An ordnance map, a compass, fishing-tackle, socks, and slippers are all you want. Moreover, I do know where to fish, and one of the crackest fishers of the part has promised to give me as many flies of his own making as I like, while another can lend us boat or coracle, if we went to fish Gwynant Dinas. I conceive that, humanly speaking, if we went to work judgmatically, we could live for \2s. a-day at the outside (if we are canny, at less), kill an amount of fish perfectly frightful, and all the big ones, by the simple expedient of sleeping by day, walking evening and morning, and fishing during the short hot nights. Wales is a cheap place, if you avoid show inns ; and, save a night at Capel Curig, we need never enter a show inn. We may stay two or three days at Pen-y-G\\7rrryynnw"vvdddelId there — I can't spell it, but it sounds Pennygoorood, which is the divinest pig-sty beneath the canopy, and at Beddgelert old Jones the clerk, and king of * Since published in the Miscellanies. Body and Soul. 465 fishermen, will take us in — and do for us— if we let him. The parson of Bedgelert is a friend of mine also, but we must depend on our own legs, and on stomachs, which can face braxy mutton, young taters, Welsh porter, which is the identical drainings of Noah's flood turned sour, and brandy of more strength than legality. Bread horrid. Fleas MCCCC ad infinitum. Bugs a sprinkling. For baths, the mountain brook ; for towel, a wisp of any endogen save Scirpus triqueter, or Juncus squarrosus ; and for cure of all ills, and supple- ment of all defects, baccy. Do come — you have no notion of the grandeur of the scenery, small as it is compared with the Alps." TO , ESQ. February 2"], 1856. " Your letter delighted me ... . *** gave me your message. My answer is, I am going to preach on ' Saved by Hope ' to my people, on Sunday, and also when I preach for my father at Chelsea, on (D.V.) April 27, for the District Visiting Society .... With regard to *** I fear neither you nor any man can give him a fresh back to his head : enlarge that deficient driving wheel in the cerebellum, so as to keep the thinking and feeling part of the brain at work. It is sad to see how much faults of character seem to depend on physiognomic defects ; but do they really depend upon it ? Is a man's spirit weak because he has a poor jaw, and a small back to his head ; or is his jaw poor, and his cerebellum small, because his spirit is weak ? I would fain believe the latter ; fain believe that the body is the expression of the soul, and is moulded by it, and not, as Combe would have it, the soul by the body : my reason points to that belief ; but I shrink from my own reason, because it seems to throw such tremendous moral responsibility on man, to forbid one's saying ' poor fellow, it is not his fault, it is a constitutional defect ;' for if one says that a man is not responsible for the form of his own soul — where does all virtue and vice go to ? And this brings one straight to the question of madness, on which I fully agree with you. I said so in print, long ago, in a sermon on Ahab at Ramoth Gilead, which you will find in my first set of National Sermons. And I have seen cases myself which I could attri- bute to nothing else. I cannot but believe that a peculiar kind of epilepsy of which I have had two cases among the poor of my parish, and some of the horrible phenomena of puerperal mania, are 'the unclean spirit' of the New Testament. I am perfectly certain that the accesses of mingled pride, rage, suspicion, and hatred of everybody and everything, accompanied by the most unspeakable sense of loneliness VOL. I. H H 466 Charles Kingslcy. and 'darkness'' (St. John's metaphor, for it is the only one), which were common to me in youth, and are now, by God's grace, very rare (though I am just as capable of them as ever, when I am at tmawares and give place to the devil by harsh judgments or bitter words) were and are nothing less than temporary possession by a devil. I am sure that the way in which those fits pass ofif in a few minutes, as soon as I get ashamed of myself, is not to be explained by ' habit' either physical or moral (though ' moral habits' I don't believe in), but by the actual intervention of an unseen personage, I believe our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, driving away that deyil. I had once a temporary madman here among our cottagers, who in his first fit tore ofif his clothes and ran away into the woods naked. (I suspect that desire of nakedness to be the blind efifort to be merely himself, and to escape from the sense of oppression caused by some thing or being, over and above self, i.e. from possession). In that fit I did not see him, it was before I came here. In his second he turned melancholy mad, walked up and down in silence, and when he spoke, declared that the devil had hold of him, and would not let him sleep. The Doctor luckily believed in demo- niacal possession, and came to me, saying, ' I can't cure this man's mind by making his liver act. You must make his liver act by curing his mind.' I went to the patient and agreed with him fully, that the devil was in him ; and I said, I will tell you why he is in you ; because, my dear man, you have been a thief, and a cheat, and a liar' (as all the world knew), ' and have sold yourself to the father of lies. But if you will pray to God to forgive you (and then I set forth those precious promises in Christ, which the Record thinks I don't believe), and ' will lead a new and honest life, you may snap your fingers at the devil.' And after awhile the man got well, and has had no return for seven years. I did that in the face of the troublesome fact, that his son (and a great rogue too) was subject to melancholy madness also, and that his sister was evidently cracked — her madness being causeless jealousy. That looked like a ' constitutional ' defect in the family blood ; but I thought the man must know his own business best, and took him at his word, and on the same plan I had very fair success with his son also. But enough — only pray write to me again on this matter that we may compare notes. I cannot tell you the relief to me to find a man like minded ; and therefore write, when you have a spare five minutes, on any matter. You are one by whose confidence I feel honoured, and I do not use that word lightly. " There is much more in your letter I must answer another day." Whai Does Man Know? 467 TO JOHN BULLAR, ESQ. March 12, 1 856. " Your letters are very pleasant ; but they weigh me down with the thought of how little one knows — and after all how little man knows. I have craved after knowledge — I have not found it. I have with Solo- mon given my heart to know madness and folly, yet acquainting myself with wisdom, and can only say with ' the Faust of the Old World,' Cast thy bread on the waters and thou shalt find it after many days. Give a portion to seven and also to eight, for thou knowest not what evil shall be on the earth. Hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. As for wisdom it is vanity, and much study is a weariness to the flesh, and of making many books there is no end. " Knowing ? ' Knowest thou how the bones grow in the womb of her that is with child ? ' or why the little Diatomaceae split into separate cells when their time is come? Everywhere, skin deep below our boasted science, we are brought up short by mystery impalpable, and by the adamantine gates of transcendental forces and incomprehensible laws — gates of which the Lord, v/ho is both God and Man, alone holds the key, and alone can break the seal : and if He has not broken them for Himself, He has not broken them for us. I, too, have tormented my soul with metaphysics and thought about thinking, and I know no more than at first, and from Locke to Kant and Hegel, I believe nobody knows. What are we each of us but — ' An infant crying in the night, An infant crying for the light, And with no language but a cry. ' " Is it likely to be less so, then, with theologies and ecclesiastical systems ? It was not so with St. Paul, certainly, even granting him to have been (what he never asserted himself to be) infallible. He has no ecclesiastical system. The facts of church arrangement in his time as far as he mentions them, are utterly different from anything which has been seen in Christendom for more than a thousand years. ' God hath set some in the church, first apostles, prophets, evangelists, workers of miracles, helps, &c.' What does all that mean ? Nobody knows, but each tries to squeeze out of it a word or two, which will fit their little theory, Popish or Protestant. Those prophesyings, unknown tongues, interpretations, all that mysterious machinery, which he speaks of in I Cor. xiv. as an integral part of assembled worship and as a peculiar proof of God's presence, and the influence of His spirit — What have we like that } What even was it ? Nobody knows. In one place he 468 Charles Kingslcy. seems to look down on it, almost as a form of hysteria — in another to exalt it as the very power of God. I can't understand it, and I know nobody who does. " While as for doctrine — he says himself that he only knows in part, and prophesies in part — sees through a glass darkly — that his knowledge is but as that of a child, speaking and understanding as a child, and hat all the knowledge he has shall vanish away, just as the tongues will lail and the prophecies cease, and that all which will endure will be charity, real, active, love ; that the intellectual element, and its outward manifestations, of system and worship and perhaps dogma, are tem- porary, and the moral-spiritual one the only permanent eternal thing of which he has hold. And yet I am asked to build up out of St. Paul's writings a complete system of theology and anthropology * tout rond* without a flaw, or a point for doubt . And when I turn to St. James I find him contradicting St. Paul so flatly in words, as to exercise all the ingenuity of commentators to make the two agree {iis no doubt they do) in fundamental doctrine. And when I turn to St. John, I find an entirely new aspect of the truth \ and in his first chapter an assertion that it was ' to those icho bdici'cd on Him that He gave power to become the children of God' in the face of St. Paul's appeal to the very heathen poets that all men are the offspring of God. And in Galatians iv. that the difference between the heathen and the Christian, or perhaps between the human race before and after Christ, is that the one is God's child under tutors and governors, and the other God's full grown and conscious son who has received the vlodiuia, which is 7tot adoption vlonolijais, but the mere putting on the toga virilis. How am I to reconcile them? I know not. And now perhaps you have been thinking me little better than a sceptic, yet I am not. Some things I see clearly, and hold with desperate clutch. A Father in Heaven for all, a Son of God incarnate for all — (That incarnation is the one fact which is to me worth all, because it makes all others possible and rational, and without it I should go mad,) and a Spirit of the Father and the Son — (I attach infinite importance to that double procession — the Holy Spirit of the Greek Church is to me nothing and no-sense), who works to will and to do of His own good pleasure — in whom ? In every human being in whom there is one spark of active good, the least desire to do right, or to be of use — the fountain of all good on earth. Beyond that I see little, save that right is divine and all conquering — wrong utterly infernal, and yet weak, foolish, a mere bullying phan- tom, which would flee at each brave blow, had we courage to strike at It in God's name. " But, as for speculations as to what man's soul or unseen element is, Life^ Death, and Hell. 469 and what happens to it when he dies, theories of Elysium and Tartarus, and of the future of this planet and its inhabitants, I leave them to those who see no miracles in every blade of grass, no unfathomable mysteries in every animalcule, and to whom Scripture is an easy book, of which they have mastered every word, by the convenient process of ignoring three-fourths of it. I don't complain of them ; they are happier than I. If they saw more than they do, perhaps it would cripple them, dazzle, and terrify them. And it is a very great and priceless blessing to the country, that some 16,000 tolerably well-bred and necessarily respectable persons should be set up by the law, to tell people, in some confused way, yet truly, that doing wrong is infinitely harmful, and doing right is infinitely blessed and useful, and that God is (more or less according to each man's scheme) a good God, and a living God, and a God who watches them, and will by no means clear the guilty, and will in some way have mercy on the penitent, and reward the righteous-doer ; and that He has proved this by sending His Son to be made man, and die for men, though the reason and meaning of this latter fact, like the extent of the former one, they may not be able to speak of very rationally or coherently. If they be not scriptural, at least they make the Church as she should be, a ' witness and keeper of Holy writ,' and preserve it for generations happier than ours, who will find in it, I doubt not, treasures of which we never dreamed, even though they may cease to impute to Scrip- ture the infallibility which it never claims, much more to deny its flat declarations for the sake of their own theories. Yes, Mr. Bullar, you complain that the Church of England is fallen to a low ebb. She is no lower (I think her a great deal higher) than any other Christian denomination. She will be higher as long as she keeps her Articles, which bind men to none of the popular superstitions, but are so cautious, wide, and liberal, that I could almost believe them to have come down from heaven. But as soon as a generation of Bishops arises (either High or Low) who persist in demanding of candidates for ordination the popular creed, making those articles mean that creed, and nothing else, then God help us ; for the day of the Lord will be at hand, and will be revealed in flaming fire, not merely to give new light and a day-spring from on high to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, but to bum up out of sight, and off the universe, the chaff, hay, and stubble, which men have built on the One Living foundation Christ, in that unquenchable fire, of which it is written that Death and Hell shall one day be cast into it also ; to share the fate of all other unnatural and abominable things ; and God's universe be — , (what it must be some day, unless it be a failure, the imperfect work of an imperfect workman, and God is to be eternally baffled by evil — ) very good. How that will 470 Charles Kings ley. happen, I know not, neither care. But I know how it will 7wt happen ; not by God having, as some fancy, to dcstruy this planet as a failure and a blot, nor by the larger part of the human race passing endless time in irremediable torments. One such case ought to be enough to destroy the happiness of all the saved (unless they are grown suddenly cruel), and keep all heaven one everlasting agony of compassion. To believe that God should determine to torments endless one whom He could reform, is an insult to His love and justice, which I will die rather than utter. And it is an equal insult to His wisdom, to say that He is, too, (what words shall I use without blasphemy?) to be unable to ' reform,' convince, persuade, and soften the worst and stupidest heart, I mean even merely externally by actual argument, by reformatory discipline, however severe, which should prove to the man by sharp pangs that he was a fool, and that evil-doing would not pay ; and by that win- ning love, returning good for evil, which, as we all know, is the most })Owerful of all to soften and convert. But much more by the most powerful influence of all, the direct transcendental working of God's spirit on the man's spirit, which, I suppose, we are to believe in, unless we are Arminians. "Till mankind have come to their senses on thij^point, I see but little hope for Christianity, and between me and the hearts of all good men, whom I long to embrace, that horrible dream yawns as a great gulph fixed. I cannot look them in the face without an effort, because I know that they hold a notion, which is to me an immoral superstition, borrowed from the old heathens and rabbis (though our Tartarus is ten times as cruel and immoral as Virgil's), and of which no apostle seems to know anything whatever ; and worse, because I know they would regard me with horror, if they knew that I disbelieved it. " Therefore, my dear Mr. Bullar (as you are one to whom I have been strangely drawn), if you like the rest, believe in Tartarus, and hold that our I^ord came to promulgate that doctrine, and not (as His plain words seem to me to do) to correct those very notions in the rabbis which have descended to us from them, then let us not try to hold any more coun- sel together concerning the deep things of God. It will be honest on neither side, if both our theology and our anthropology differ by one enormous and all-important postulate. Let us talk of sanitary and social reform, and of birds and flowers, of the little pleasures of the sunshine and the spring, which are still allowed to the human race before it descends into endless flame, agony, and despair, while a few (and, per- haps, I among them) ascend to a ' heaven,' where I should be ashamed to be happy for one moment. Meanwhile, I shall cherish in secret the hope that the night is nigh past, that if not I, yet at least my children, Calvinism. 471 will see a second European reformation, Tartarus follow its more foolish, but far less immoral and infernal child Purgatory, and the whole of Christendom leap up as men freed suddenly from the weight of a hideous nightmare to give thanks and glory to Him who descended into hell, and ' harrowed it ' as the glorious old words, now long forgotten, say, — Who died for us, and all mankind." TO REV. F. MAURICE. Farley Court, March, 1856. " . . . . I enjoy your sermons weekly very much, and a good deal which you say in them, hits me very hard. What glib cruelty and non- sense I have talked in past times ! If I wanted a proof of the ' corrup- tion of human nature,' I could find no plainer one than the way in which really amiable and thoughtful people take up with doctrines which out- rage their own reason and morality, simply because they find them ready- made to their hands ; and now it seems as if the second-hand creed was actually conquering. I go into no middle-class house, religious or irreligious, without finding their whole religious library composed of the very school which we are fighting against — Adam Clarke, C , S , etc. And what hope would one have, if one did not know that underneath all this lay the strangest unrest in, and dissatisfaction with, and disbelief in it all. I wish I could have some talk with you ; for unless I can get from you some of your moderate and charitable and two-sided notions, I shall begin to regard Calvin as a child of the Devil, and Calvinism as the upas-tree, which Satan planted in the Lord's garden at the Reformation to poison all with its shade. The influence of Calvinism abroad seems to me to have been uniformly ruinous, destruc- tive equally of political and moral life, a blot and a scandal on the Reformation ; and now that it has at last got the upper hand in England, can we say much more for it?" TO JOHN BULLAR, ESQ. 1856. ". . . . Since I saw you I have felt a great deal. A dear friend has suddenly lost a wife, who also was very dear to us. I was on the spot and saw all ; and it was very dreadful, in spite of all the perfect hope behind. God help us, what cobwebs we all are ; why should He not sweep us away, as He does better than us ? It is a very searching thought. . . . How such moments as these draw men near each other ! Mrs. Kingsley last night just escaped a horrible accident, from 472 Charles Kiiigsley. the fall of a horse. I felt her danger draw me nearer to every one whom I esteemed, by shocking me with the fearful possibility of loneliness- — though only for a time at worst — still loneliness, and very dreadful." Among the letters of this year, he was deeply touched by the following- from a naval officer, dated H.M.S. " St. George," off Hong Kong : " Among the many blessings for which I have had to thank God this night, the most special has been for the impressions produced by your noble sermon of ' Westward Ho !' Some months ago I read it for the first time, then sailed on a long cruize, and now on returning have read it again with prayer that has been answered, for God's blessing has gone with it. I feel as I never felt before, that Protestantism is the religion of this life especially, and that I have been heeding the future to the neglect of the living present. Many a day of late, thinking of you, I have gone on deck to my duty and seen God, where theoretically only I have been in the habit of looking for Him, on the sea, and in the clouds, and faces of men ; and the Holy spirit descending, has stirred my pulses with the sense of universal love prevailing, above, around, and beneath. " ' O Uncreate, unseen, and undefined, source of all light, and foun- tain of all mind, lurks there in all the wide expanse, one spot — above, around, beneath, where Thou art not V I am able to speak of God and of religion with less of the humiliating hesitation that I am accustomed to, and trust that He will give me that manliness that will enable me so to talk of His workings, which, alas ! we are in the habit of practically ignoring. Accept, then, my dear sir, this tribute to your own manly, plain, and practical preaching. Doubtlessly it has found an echo far and wide ; to * roll from soul to soul, and grow for ever, and for ever 1' " May God raise up for us many such teachers, and long preserve you in all your faculties of heart and head, to testify of Him, and prepare the world for the coming of Christ. *' Sir Michael Seymour has morning prayers, daily, in his own ship — an almost solitary instance in the navy; but as the admiral sets the example, may we not hope that the good old habit of those days when ' first, above all things,' it was provided ' that God be duly served tNnce every day,' is returning? ' Once the welcome light has broken, "Who shall say What the unimagined glories Of the clay, A Sailors Testimony. 473 What tlie evil that shall perish In its ray ? Aid the dawning tongue and pen, Aid it hopes of honest men ; Aid it paper — aid it type — Aid it for the hour is ripe ; And our earnest must not slacken Into play, Men of thought and men of action Clear the way !' " Ever, I pray so to continue, I remain, my dear sir, " Your grateful brother in the faith, "R. N." " P.S. — As a nautical man I must take the liberty of pointing out one little nautical error, and only one. You describe the cable of the ' Rose' as rattling through the hawse-hole, forgetting that then (and for 230 years afterwards) hemp cables alone were used in which there is little rattle, as any one who has been compelled to work them will testify. Yet, on second thought, you are not far out, for before letting go hemp cables you get a range up before the bilts, which portion runs out rapidly enough ; but it is not done now with chain. You would have made a first-rate sailor, sir ! " This was one among the many letters which he received about his novel of "Westward Ho!" The writer some years after- wards made himself known to him as Captain Alston, of H.M.S. " St. George," and a strong personal attachment was formed between the two men who had so much in common ; and up to Captain Alston's lamented death, which occurred a short time before that of his friend, he consulted Mr. Kingsley on all points connected with his noble work, which was latterly on board the Reformatory Training Ships on the Thames and the Clyde. After his first visit to Eversley, Captain Alston writes : " It does not pay, my dear Mr. Kingsley, to stay with you. I don't know when I felt so miserable as I did yesterday. Positively I thought incipient heart-breaking had commenced ; it felt very like it — chokiness and all that, in the train going up. I thought I should shake it off after dinner, but could not. My pipe made me worse, for it re- minded me only of your snuggery, your arm-chair, your talk, and your 474 Charles Kings ley. kindness. The more I feel kindness the more incapable I api of thank- ing people for it to their face. In the land of the hereafter we shall know each other. Then soul will come to soul, and you will know how much I care for you ; the red Indian spirit won't let him write the proper word (or perhaps it is from those old hard hearts, the sons of Odin, one inherits this reserve), and I will put it down to race, and bide that time, and say no more about it. " Salute all in the two houses for mc, and take a Dicu voiis garde from "A. H. Alston." The following letters on Strikes and Trades' Unions, though of different dates, are placed together. TO J. NICMOLLS, E.SQ. EVERSLEV, March 28, 1856. " I have carefully read your admirable lecture.* I think it calcu- lated to do great good, and I admire your boldness in lifting up your voice to expose the tyranny of ' Union' Strikes. From my own expe- rience of demagogues (which has not been small), I can well believe every word you say as to the ' humbug' connected with the inner work- ing of them. As for the prospects of ' Association,' on which you touch so fairly and candidly, my experience goes with yours as to associations for production. The failure in those which I have seen fail, has always been their democratic constitution and anarchy. The secret of success, in those which I have seen succeed, has been the presence of some one master-mind ; and even he has had hard work, unless backed by bene- volent capitalists, who have been able to say to refractory members, ' Well, we hold the supplies, and if you kick, we withhold.' Association will be the next form of industrial development, I doubt not, for pro- duction ; but it will require two generations of previous training, both in morality and in drill, to make the workmen capable of it. Association for distribution is what I look to with far higher hope. I am sure, for example, that if the method of the ' People's Stores and Mills (flour)' at Rochdale, were generally carried out, the saving to wages, to public honesty, and (considering the present adulteration of goods) to public health, would be immense. I invite your attention to this side of the question. * A Lecture by Mr. NicliDlls, a Manchester gentleman, on Union Strikes. Manchester Mill-ozvners. 475 " I am exceedingly pleased with what you say of the present temper of mill-owners, and, from experience of my own, I fully believe it. The old generation, let us trust, is passing away, and, with the new, wider views and nobler aims are coming in. But I cannot, in justice to the working men, forget the temper of the nouveaiix riches of Manchester, during the forty years ending, say 1848, — who were not even free- traders, till they found that cheap corn meant cheap wages, and of whom, certainly, the hardest masters and the most profligate men were to be found among those who had risen from the working classes. I fear that, some twenty years ago, the relations between the average of young masters and the girls of the factory, would not bear a close investigation ; and were the unspoken cause, among brothers and sweet- hearts, of fearful indignation, which only found vent in political agita- tion, and rendered them easy dupes to those who told them that their masters' interests were as much opposed to theirs, as their luxury certainly was to the morality of their female relations. Let us honestly call a spade a spade, and recollect this fact, and the other fact that these mill-owners had been, for the last forty years, collecting vast heaps of people from every quarter (even bringing labourers from Ireland to degrade the civilized labour-wage to the level of what the Irish- men would take), without the least care as to their housing, education, Christianising or anything else, till the manufacturing towns became sinks of unhealthiness, profligacy, ignorance, and drunkenness. The mere fact that life in Manchester was shortened seventeen years, in com- parison with life in the country, is very awful. Then agree with me, that though the repentance and amendment of the present generation may (and I trust in God, from what I see, will) cure and atone for all ; yet that there is an arrear of moral debt, of which the workmen cannot but be aware, and that this does rankle, and will rankle for a few years to come. God grant that it may be a few ; and, meanwhile, owe no grudge to those who have stoutly declared (as I have) that such careless heaping together of human beings is a sin in the sight of God and man. " The only weak point in your whole lecture, in my eyes, is where you deal with profits. Your general political economy is simply unde- niable ; but, in respect of profits, you overlook this fact : — The present system has enabled the mill-owners, when successful, to raise themselves and their families into a state of very great luxury, of a rough kind. It has not made any improvement in the condition of the working people, which is to be compared therewith. I know what Manchester mill- owners' society has been, and is, in most cases, now, on an average ; and as far as self-denial in the gratification of wishes goes, I don't see 4 7^ Charles Kmgslcy. (save where * respectability' interferes in the case of elder men) that there is much difference in that virtue (or has not been till lately) between master and man, while the man's temptations have been much greater than his master's. Noble exceptions there are, of course ; so there are among the men, as I know well. But, on the whole, is the 'commutation of profits' {i.e. wages) fairly commuted, when the master's share raises him to every luxury, while the man remains where he was, and must so remain as a class, — for no abstinence from drink would give him a chance of developing his fortunes, similar (in its degree) to that which his master has ? " I wish, if you take the trouble to answer this letter, you would explain this to me. I shall be glad to have it explained ; for it is always pleasant to find a thing right which one thought wrong. I comfort myself with the thought, that the present system, though it does not improve the individual, finds means of average subsistence for greater and greater numbers ; but that cannot be meant as a final theorem of manufacturing life. The whole manufacturing idea is too magnificent, even in its present clumsy actual form, to end so!^ On the receipt of this, Mr. Nicholls wrote back at once, urging several considerations in support of his views, and like- wise in defence of his " order." EvERSLEY, April a,, 1856. " Thanks for the second lecture, which has just come. I will read it most carefully. All I say is — convince me that the system is right, and no one will be more glad than I to find one more right thing on the earth than I supposed ; while, as for altering my mind and begging pardon, a man must be a very little fellow indeed, who has any difficulty in so doing. " But what I feel more is the personal part of the correspondence. I would not for the world have written to you as I did, had I known that you yourself were a Manchester manufacturer : for why should I be rude to any man ? And yet I am glad that it so happened ; for it has proved to me what I have often heard, that you gentlemen were frank and open speakers, who took a hard blow and returned it with interest, and bore no malice after all. So, now, so far from suffering you to apologise to me for ' plain speaking,' I must apologise to you for mine, and if I have exaggerated, forgive me. Be sure, that I shall believe your impressions of a system in which you have been brought up, rather than my own of the same, which I have only peeped at and read of." Trades Unions. 477 TO , ESQ. (Of Sheffield.) EvERSLEY, Passion Monday, 1856. " No one, I hope you will believe me, more heartily wishes that such matters as you write to me on could be altered. But, after years of experience, trial, and disappointment, I am convinced that they cannot. The thing must be left alone ; and the only advice I can give is, emigrate ; but never strike. I look forward to a time in^ which such things will be righted by a general labour-news and wages-arbitration ; but I have no means of starting either ; and I don't think the world will have for many a year to come. " I am very sad about all these matters ; but all I can recommend is, J>caa', and making the best use, and most prudent use, of wages when they are to be got. If one half the hundreds of thousands which have been spent by trades' unions in interfering with the natural accidents of trade, had been spent in insuring (by association for relieving overstocked labour markets) against those accidents, all might have been well ; but now, I see little before the English workman but to abide as he is, and endure. " If you want to know more of what I mean, I will gladly tell you." To a friend at Sheffield, in 1862, he wrote on the same topic : " If these trade unions are to be allowed to exist, they can only exist on the ground of being not only organs for combination, but for keeping the combination men within the law. If they will not disprove that such outrages have been committed by union men ; if they will not, in honour to their own class, be the first to drag such hounds to justice; if they will do nothing to free themselves from the old stigma that from 1820-48, they have themselves notoriously engaged in such outrages and murders — then let them be put down by law as incapable morally as politico-economically. With you I have defended the right of com- bination among the workmen, in hope that they would become wiser than of yore. But if they continue to murder, I see nothing for them but the just judgment of public opinion which will sweep them away, and I fear inaugurate a reign of tyranny and of capital. I and others have been seeing with dread the growing inclination of the governing classes to put down these trade unions, &c., by strong measures. What am I to say when I see the working men themselves, in the face of this danger, justifying the measures of those who wish to be hard on them ? I have seen enough of trade unions to suspect that the biggest rogues 478 Charles Kingsley. and the loudest charlatans are the men who lead or mislead the honest working men ; but if the honest working men themselves make no move towards detecting and exposing the authors of such outrages, they must suffer with their blind and base leaders. If they fancy they are too strong for the classes above them, that they can defy the laws of England and the instincts of humanity, then they will find themselves mistaken, even if they have to be taught their folly by a second Bristol riots or a second Peterloo." In March, 1856, among many other letters about his books came one from a perfect stranger, as he called himself, dated from Cambridge, saying, he felt compelled after reading the " Sermons for the Times " to express his own deep debt of gratitude : " I immediately took them to a friend, whose remorse for a past course of sin has often led him to the very verge of suicide, and he has just been to me with a heart full of grateful delight, and told me that the sermon on ' Salvation' has made him a completely new creature. I have ventured to trespass on your time, because I cannot help thinking that a minister of God must have sore trials to bear, and bitter disappoint- ments, and the experience that he has planted, not altogether in vain, the good seed, cannot but be consoling." In writing to another stranger who had made full confession of his doubts and difficulties to him, INIr. Kingsley says : " Your experiences interested me deeply, and confirm my own. An atheist I never was ; but in my early life I wandered through many doubts and vain attempts to explain to myself the riddle of life and this world, till I found that no explanation was so complete as the one which one learnt at one's mother's knee. Compldc nothing can be on this side of the grave, on which St. Paul himself said, that he only saw through a glass darkly ; but complete enough to give comfort to the weary hearts of my poor labouring folk, and to mine also, which is weary enough at times I am much pleased to hear what you say about your mother. Believe me, the good old-fashioned Church folk, when they were good, were nearer the truth than either Exeter-Hallite or Puseyite " With spring his thoughts turned to fishing ; and one April morning when the south-westerly wind wafted certain well- Fishing and Flies. 479 known sounds from the Camp, the South-Western Railway, and Heckfield Place, to the little Rectory, these lines were written and put into his wife's hand : Oh blessed drums of Aldershot ! Oh blessed south-west train ! Oh blessed, blessed Speaker's clock, All prophesying rain ! Oh blessed yaffil, laughing loud ! Oh blessed falling glass ! Oh blessed fan of cold grey cloud ! Oh blessed smelling grass ! Oh bless'd southwind that toots his horn Through every hole and crack ! I'm off at eight to-morrow morn, To bring sicch fishes back ! April I, 1S56. TO TOM HUGHES, ESQ. Farley Court. "When can you come and see us? We return to Eversley on Easter Monday ; all that week swallowed up in confirmations, leastwise till Thursday ; and just coming home is a confused time ; but if you can't come any other time you must e'en come then ; for come you must. This ^ gracious rain ' will put the fish all right in a week, and we might run to Farnham or elsewhere, for a day (more I can't spare), to see what a large march-brown, and a red or a golden palmer would do. I have great hopes of fishing this spring, and am organising a series of ' leaves ' from everybody round. I think I can get eight or nine leaves for day's fishing, and eight or nine days is more than 1 can take, for half of them are sure to be bright, or calm, or morning frosts, or something catawompous and nuUificative. How do you stand towards 'Rev. Popham ' (as the tradesmen would call him) ? I have the promise of fishing, and a bed with ' Rev. John,' and would ask for the fishing if you would come too. But it wouldn't be worth while if we couldn't also do Kennet, or Lambourne at Newbury, in our way back. When does your Duke give up Donnington ? or is it of any use to get a day out of the club on the big river? They offered me one (leastwise the secretary did). Is there aught to be killed in those tracks ? Next Wotton. I have ' taken the lunars ' (as the middies say) of Wotton on the big map of Surrey^ and find it on the Blackwater rail, at such 480 Charles Kingslcy. distance that I could leave my house at seven, and see the ghost of the author of ' Sylva' (delightful old gentleman, too, to see) by nine. There- fore I could get there and back in a day and meet you. The fishing seems a chain of pondicules or pondlets, fed by a chalk spring out of Lcith Hill. As a geologist, I know what that ought to be. Leith Hill is 900 feet ; highest chalk point, save Inkpen Beacon, south of Hungerford. Valley of Holmesdale, say 500 — a good fall, and on chalk now and then, when with a gentle ripple and a clear burning sun, fish yield themselves to the embraces of a little saucy march-brown, or a minnow, and a fat black alder, or again a real yellow sally (which ain't yellow, but orange legs and lemon body, if you can get them). 1 hat's the sport ; to throw your fly, and let it sink (never draw it), and in half a minute take it out gently to see if aught's at the end of it, and if so, hit him as if you loved him, and hold on. Therefore let's go to Wotton ; but only for one day. You must come home with me in the evening, per Blackwater rail ; my dog- cart will meet us at the station, and we will start early next morning — • whither? / think, to my happy fishing-ground. We w^ill fish both streams ; and, oh, my goodness ! — leastwise if w^e have a sou'w^ester — all's in that blessed sound. Shelley was an ass when he wrote his ode to the south-west wind. He didn't know what the dear old Zephyros was good for ; who does, but we the heirs of all creation, masters of 'water the mother of all things?' " As for going to J. Paine, this is my ipsedavit. Paine Esquire's fishing was good when it was Paine Esquire's ; but since it has become clubbate, clubbified, or beclubbed, it is, as a man might say, by-too-many- respectable-of-the-town-of-Farnham-gents-continually-and-with-thum])ing- brass-and-other-minnows-becoopered. " Given a strong May fly about two days on, and a warm sou'wester with gleams, you might do the gun-trick, for there are M. fishes ; but don't you desire that you may obtain the said combination of your planets ? Wheeler at Troyle only allows one rod, and has not enough for two. So / think the happy fishing-ground will be the place. " What a lot of nonsense I have writ ! and all about nothing ; for I shall see you, my dear old fellow, on the 26th, d.v. But I like writing to you, and that's the truth; you are so jolly; and most people want to make me wiser when they write, as if I hadn't found out with Solomon, that all is vanity and vexation. ****** " Enclosed is the portrait of the gentleman who told Thomas Hughes that he would fish at Wotton on Whitmonday, totally forgetting that it was the club day, and he had the club sermon to preach, and the club dinner to eat. I am an ass, that I am, as the parson remarked. But Whit Caddises mid Caper ers. 481 Tuesday I can go ; therefore, O friend, forgive, and correct the conse- quences of my exceeding stupidity, and try to fix AVhit-Toosday. Now. If you can come early on Friday, you'll come in for my tithe luncheon, and be introduced to some of my jolly yeomen. If you can be here Monday, you'll see the club, and dine wi'em — oh that you would ! They would enjoy it so — and then Ave could start to Wotton simultaneous next morning. "The Saturday fishing stands; but this is a black planet for it. However, it'll change before then, and how the fish will feed when the change comes. If you get free, get a few sized stone flies, darkish colour, fine lot of yellow about the tail ; also half-a-dozen smallest governors, but with pale partridge wing, and pale HONEY-coloured tail ; pheasant wings and orange tails are only fit for cockneys to catch dace with at Hampton Court. Mind what I say, I'll change off a brace of either from you for any flies of mine you like ; also bring me (and I will pay thee) i lb. avoirdups. of Skinner's best Bristol birdseye. You mind that last, or I'll send you back for it. Do you her ? " Opes opens. The glass has stopped going up, and is thinking about going down. Wind has chopt from N.N.W. to E.N.E. {luith the sun which an't as good as against ; but may indicate a break after two or three days of going round with the sun, and fine weather) evins grant ! for I'm froze. — Coughing in limbo, and every soul in the parish in the flenzies. Handkerchers is riz on the market I guess, this last month. " Mind your March browns — certain till the black alder comes out, which he won't here for three weeks, unless we have a sudden change." TO J. H. STAINTON, ESQ., F.L.S. Aprils, 1856. '' Dear Sir,— " I am glad to find that we have a mutual acquaintance in Lubbock, who is a great friend of mine, and as good as he is clever. I wish he would take up these caddises. But I would work at them myself, if you would entrust them to me. I see three years' work at least before getting them at all in order, if (as you say) the thing has not been done ; for my belief is, that the species are either very local, or very variable, depending on differences of soil and river-bed, and that they will give a great deal of trouble. My fishing-tackle maker sickened me the other day by — 'you talk of yellow sallies, sir, I've seen twenty different sorts — a different sort for every stream;' and (allowing for exaggeration) if this is the case with one fly, local, not common and strongly marked, what must be the case with the herd ? I VOL. I. II 482 Charles Kings ley. will do what I can this year to arrange the typical species of our Hamp- shire, Surrey, and Berkshire streams (chalk, or iron gravel), and may get a few Snowdon species in August. My belief is that the generality of Snowdon species are quite distinct from ours, - out of the lowest deep (as I have had to do) — Thou art not Siva the de- stroyer. Thou art not even Ahriman and Ormuzd in one. And yet, if Thou art not, why does Thy universe seem to say that Thou art? Art Thou a ' Deus quidam Deceptor,' after all? — No. There is something in me — which not nature, but Thou must have taught me — which cries and will cxy : Though Thou slay me, as Thou hast slain world on world aheady — though I and all this glorious race of men go down to Hades widi the ichthyosaurs and the mammoths, yet will I trust in Thee. Though St. J'eter's words be fulfilled (as they may to-morrow by the simplest physical laws) and the elements melt with fervent heat, and the earth and all the works therein be burned up — yet I know that my Redeemer, He who will justify me, and make me right, and deliver me out of the grasp of nature, and proclaim my dominion over nature, liveth, and will stand at the latter day upon the earth, and in some flesh or other I shall see Cod, see Him for myself as a one and accountable moral being for ever. But beetles and zoophytes never whispered f/iaf to me. Any more than the study of nature did to * * * * or to Cuvier himself. It can teach no moral theology . It may unteach it, if the roots of moral theology be not already healthy and deep in the mind. I hinted ^at in ' Glaucus ' : but I would do no more, because many readers mean by ' moral ' and ' theo- logy ' something quite different from what you and I do, and would have interpreted it into a mere iteration of the old lie that science is danger- ous to orthodoxy. " But I won't talk of myself, save to say that I sometimes envy you, who are not distracted from work at the really lumian truths, by the number of joints in a grub's legs. I have been longing to bear from you ; and I ought to have written to you, but had nothing to say. My life runs on here in a very simple, easy way, what \<\\\\ the i)arish and Snozvdon. 48 7 Mrs. Kingsley, and the children, and a little literary Avork, in which I am trying to express in a new form the ideas which I have got from you, and which I have been trying to translate into all languages, from 'The Saint's Tragedy' to 'Glaucus.' I have no other work on earth, a.nd want none. *' I am glad to hear you are going to Ireland. It will be indeed a re St and amnsc/ncnt in the deepest sense. Only I do wish that you would halt halfway, and come across to Hughes and me, were it but for a day. Do try — you will pass our door (Snowdon's two doors) at Bangor and at Caernarvon. Why not stop and come to Beddgelert, from Caer- narvon thirteen miles, if but for a day — all of you, and let me have the delight of leading Mrs. Maurice's pony up Snowdon, making a wreath of Alp club-moss for your niece's hat, as a testimony that she has been in the other luorld, the next world, I should say, for there are three or four worlds above it again. Or at least let me show you Froude's home at Plasgwynant, which was the original Eden (for three months in the year only, though). '' Do think of this, and do not — do not talk of your time being short,, for you have much to do yet — all the more, perhaps, because you do not know what it is. The cloud is always thickest when and where the wind is about to shift, and roll it all away out of the blue sky. " Do think of my little plans, and say yes if you possibly can. Remember us both most lovingly to dear Mrs. Maurice." The " Farewell " to his niece, Mrs. Theodore Walrond, theiT Charlotte Grenfell, was written this year, and as the second versC;. by some mistake, was not published, it is given entire here : My fairest child, I have no song to give you ; No lark could pipe in skies so dull and grey ; Yet, if you will, one quiet hint I'll leave you, For every day. I'll tell you how to sing a clearer carol Than lark who hails the dawn or breezy down ; To earn yourself a purer poet's laurel Than Shakspeare's crown. Be good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever ; Do lovely things, not dream them, all day long ; And so make Life, Death, and that vast For Ever, One grand sweet song. Ray Lodge, 1856. 488 Charles Kingsley. TO TOM HUGHES, ESQ. EvERSLEY, 1856. " My dear Old Lad, — " Froude cannot go with us; so are you willing to go to Snow- don ? Killarney is finer, I know, and there are saumons ; but there axe saumons in Snowdon — I know where, and we may have them in August if we be cann}-. I'll show you a rock where you are sure of one. And I want to go there, for several reasons : but Killarney is very tempting \ only, as I get old, somehow, I don't like new places; I like to thumb over the same book, and trot over the same bog, and feel 'homey' wherever I be. " Now if so be as we go to Snowdon, there is our tracks, &c. Buy the two sheets of the Ordnance Maps (I'll go share in pence), which comprises the country from Aber and Bangor north, to Port Madoc and Festiniog south. Consider, behold, and perpend ; then send 'em on to me, in the coat pocket of one Hughes, Esq., from a Saturday night to a Monday morning, and we will talk it out. My jjlan would be this — " There is no inn in Snowdon which is not awful dear, Excepting Pen-y-gwrj-dd (you can't pronounce it, dear), Which standeth in the meeting of noble valleys three. One is the vale of Gwynant, so well beloved by me, One goes to Capel-Curig, and I can't mind its name, And one it is Llanberris Pass, whicli all men knows the same. Between which radiations vast mountains does arise. As full of tarns as sieves of holes, in which big fish will rise, That is, just one day in the year, if you be there, my boy, About ten o'clock at night, and then I wish you joy. Now to this Pen-y-gwrydd inn I purposeth to write. (Axing the post town out of Froude, for I can't mind it quite), And to engage a room or two, for let us say a week. For fear of gents, and Manichees, and reading parties meek, And there to live like fighting-cocks at almost a bob a day. And ai'terwards toward the sea make tracks and cut away, All for to catch the salmon bold in Aberglaslyn pool. And work the flats in Traeth-Mawr, and will, or I'm a fool. And that's my game, which, if you like, respond to me by post ; But I fear it will not last, my son, a thirteen days at most. Flies is no object ; I can tell some three or four will do, And John Jones, Clerk, he knows the rest, and ties and sells 'em too. Besides of which I have no more to say, leastwise just now. And so, goes, to my children's school and umbly makes my bow. C. K. Warnboroiigh Trout. 489 TO THE SAME. EvERSLEY, 1856. " Of all men on earth I should like to have Tom Taylor for a third. Entreat him to make it possible, and come and be a salvidge man with us \ and tell him I can show him views of the big stone work which no mortal cockney knows, because, though the whole earth is (given to the children of men, none but we jolly fishers get the plums ai.nd raisins of it, by the rivers which run among the hills, and the lakes Vi'hich sit a-top thereof. Tell him I'll show him such a view from Craig- y-Rhaidyr of Snowdon from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, as tourist never saw, nor will see, 'case why, he can't find it; and I will show him the original mouth of the pit, which is Llyn Dulyn, and the lightning lake, where the white syenite is blasted into shivers, which make you shiver, if you be sentimental — but / only think of the trouts — which the last I saw killed in Llyn Melch was 3I pounds, and we'll kill his wife and family ; and crow-berry and desolate Alpine plants grow thereby, and we will sleep among them, like love among the roses, Thomas. And oh, what won't we do, except break our necks? and I'll make Tom Taylor come down over Craig-y-Rhaidyr, which is 700 feet of syenite, the most glorious climb I know, and the original short-cut to Ludlow at Festiniog ; but wouldn't do on a hot day, or a dark night. " I think you ought to come to me Saturday night, Strettell will be here ; but I'll get you a bed in the village. We should go to Reading by the 5.30 train, which will get us to Wolverhampton, 8.35, and there wait for the Holyhead mail at 12.44, which will drop us at Bangor at 5 in the morning. There we can either go on by coach to Pen-y-Wynod, or walk on in the cool of the morning, fishing as we go, and send our traps by coach, to be dropped for us. Pray bring a couple of dozen moderate lake-sized hooks, to tie flies on, for I am out of hooks, except the very biggest size, salmon-peel size, in fact. " You'll be pleased to hear that I got a fishing at Lady Mildmay's famous Warnborough preserve last night — the day was B. B. B., burn- ing, baking, and boiling, and as still as glass, so I did not tackle-to till 5.30 — and between that and nine I grassed twenty fish, weighing twenty- two pounds, besides losing a brace more whoppers. Biggest brace killed, three pounds and two pounds — a dead bright calm, and a clear stream— in fifteen minutes I had three fish, two of three pounds and one of two pounds, but lost one of them after a long fight. Not so shady, Tom, for all on shorvi-fly and capcrcr. " Mind and don't get those flies too small. A size larger than what I said would be no harm, but I don't mind small hooks, if a big fly be 490 Charles Kingslcy. tied thereon — see what a difference a wise man and a fool may make. (Here was a sketch of two tlies — 'wise men's fly,' and 'cockney maiden's fly.') Let's have lots for our money, say I, in flies, as in all things. Why do fish take your caperer, spite of his ugliness, but because he looks the fattest one they ever saw yet ? Think over these things. " Poor dear Charles's * book has come at last. I think it perfect. Tell Ludlow he was quite right in altering as little as possible, and that I am to review it in ' Fraser's.' The ' Saturday ' has already got a review in hand." At last the happy day in August was fi.Kcd, and the following invitation sent before the three friends started for Snowdonia : THE INVITATION. Come away with me, Tom, Term and talk is done ; My poor lads are reaping, Busy every one. Cvnates mind the parisli, Sweepers mind the Court, ^Ve'II away to Snowdon For our ten days' sport. Fish the August evening Till the eve is past, Whoop like boys at pounders Fairly played and grassed. When they cease to dimple. Lunge, and swer\'e, and leap, Then up over Siabod, Choose our nest, and sleep. Up a thousand feet, Tom, Round the lion's head, Find soft stones to leeward And make up our bed. Eat our bread and bacon. Smoke the pipe of peace, And, ere we be drowsy. Give our boots a grease. Homer's heroes did so. Why not such as we ? What are sheets and servants ? Superfluity. Pray for wives and children . * " Letters from P.iraguay, by Charles Blachford Mansfield. " The Invitation. 491 Safe in slumljer curled, Then to chat till midnight O'er this babbling world. Of the workmen's college, Of the price of grain, Of the tree of knowledge, Of the chance of rain ; If Sir A. goes Rome ward. If Miss B. sings true, If the lleet comes homeward, If the mare will do, — Anything and everything— Up there in the sky Angels understand lis, And no "saints" are b_v. Down, and bathe at day-dawn, Tramp from lake to lake, "Washing brain and heart clean Every step -we take. Leave to Robert Browning Beggars, fleas, and vines ; Leave to mournful Ruskin Popish Apennines, Dirty Stones of Venice And his Gas-lamps Seven ; We've the stones of Snowdon And the lamps of heaven. AVhere's the mighty credit In admiring Alps ? Any goose sees "glory " In their " snowy scalps." Leave such signs and wonders For the dullard brain, As testhetic brandy, Opium and cayenne ; Give me Bramshill common (St. John's harriers by), Or the vale of Windsor, England's golden eye. Show me life and progress. Beauty, health, and man ; Houses fair, trim gardens. Turn where'er I can. Or, if bored with "High Art," And such popish stuff, One's poor ear need airing, Snowdon's high enough. While we find God's signet Fresh on English ground, Why go gallivanting 492 Charles KingslcyK \Vith the nations round ? Tliough \vc try no ventures Desperate or strange ; Feed on common-places In a narrow range ; Never sought for Franklin Round the frozen Capes ; Even, with Macdougall,* Bagged our brace of apes ; Never hael our chance, Tom, In that black Redan ; Can't avenge poor Brereton Out in Sakarran ; Tho' we earn our bread, Tom, By the dirty pen, \Vhat we can we will be, Honest Englishmen. Do the work that's nearest, Though it's dull at whiles. Helping, when we meet them, Lame dogs over stiles ; See in every hedgerow Marks of angels' feet, Epics in each pebble Underneath our feet ; Once a year, like schoolboys, Robin-Hooding go. Leaving fops and fogies A thousand feet below. On the nth of August they started, and in the train he writes home. " A glorious day. Snowdonia magnificent. The sensation of going through the tubular bridge very awful and instructive. The sound of it, the finest bass note I have ever heard. Anglesey, an ugly wild flat place, like Torridge Moors, with great dunes of blown sand along the coast, fit for those weird old Druids " Capel Curig, 12 August, 1S56. " We are sleeping here, being too tired to get an inch further. We never slept forty winks last night in the train ; started from Bangor at 5, and were on our legs till 5 p.m. We went up Nant Francon, then up to Idwal. Fish would not rise ; but the rivers are flooded, and, Bishop of Labuan. Snowdonia. 493 therefore, we shall have noble sport. But the glory was what I never saw before, all those grand mountains, ' silver- veined with rills,' cataracts of snoiv-white cotton threads, if you will, zigzagging down every rock-face — sometimes 1000 feet — and the whole air alive with the roar of waters. The greenness and richness of the mountains after our dusty burnt-up plains, is most refreshing. "All day we had steaming gleams; but the clouds on Glydyr VaA\T only broke to form again, and we had twenty showers, shrouding the cliffs with long grey veils of lace. I wish I could tell you what colour the mountains are. Not pink, not purple, not brown, but a sort of pale pink madder, with vast downs of bright green grass interspersed. And oh, as we walked past Colonel Pennant's cyclopean walls at Bangor, and saw that great gap high up in the air ten miles off, and knew that we should be in it ere noon, it was like a dream ; and all the more dreamy for the sleeplessness of the past night. We found a noble fountain, which Colonel Pennant has built by the roadside, and there washed our- seh-es into our senses, and went on. At Bethesda we tried for break- fast, at six A.M., and were refused by all the few houses which were open, till we found a nice little woman, who gave us infinite broiled ham, tea, and porter, to carry up the hills. We tried Ogwen River for salmon peel, amid those exquisite parks and woods ; but it was too much flooded. By night I had picked my first Saxifraga stellaris, and knew that I was in the foj-mcr world. The parsley fern is growing between every stone, and the beech fern too, but the latter very poor. I have dried for the children the water-lobelia, and Sparganium natans, to do which I walked up to my knees on Idwal. I had not pluck to go up to the Fvvll Du. Tell my mother I am going there shortly. Snowdon is now looking like a great grey ghost with seven heads, and as soon as one head is cut off a fresh one grows ; but more are cut off than grow, and the clouds which stream up from the S.W. fall lower and lower, and have now canopied the whole head of Moel Siabod, who is looking in at our window 2000 feet down, the impudent fellow, though I am 1000 feet high. Wherefore we shall have more rain. . . . " To-morrow up at six; walk to Pen-y-gwryd, and then up to Edno !" Pen-y-gwryd. " I have had, as far as scenery is concerned, the finest day I ever had. We started for Edno at 10, but did not find it till 2, because we mistook the directions, and walked from 10 till i'3o over a Steinerne Meer, a sea of syenite and metamorphic slate which baffles all descrip- tion, 2000 ft. above Gwynant, ribs and peaks and walls of rock leaping 494 Charles KingsUy. up and rushing down, average 50 to 100 ft, covered with fir, club moss, crowberry and bearberry, and hng, of course. Over these wc had to scramble up and down, beating for Edno lake as you would beat for a partridge, but in vain. All we found was one old cock grouse, who went off hollowing ' Cock-cock-what-a-sliame-cock-cock ' till we were fairly beat. In des])air we made, not a dash, but a crawl, at Mocl Meirch (' Margaret's Peak,' some pathetic story I suppose), which rises about ICO ft. above the stony sea, a smooth ])yramid of sandy-j^ink syenite. Hughes got up first, by a crack, for the walls are like china, and gave a who-whoop ; there was Edno half a mile beyond, and only a valley as deej) as from Finchampstead church to the river to cross, beside a few climbs of 50 ft. So there we got, and eat our hard-boiled eggs and drank our beer, and then set to, and caught just nothing. 'Jhe fish, always sulky and capricious, would not stir. But the delight of being there again, 2200 ft. up, out of the sound of aught but the rush of wind and water and the whistle of the sheep (which is just like a penny whistle ill-blown), and finding oneself «/ home there ! Every rock, even the steps of slate and footholds of grass which and I used to use, just the same. Unchanged for ever. It is an awful thought. Soon we found out why the fish wouldn't rise. The cloud which had been hang- ing on Snowdon, lowered. Elebog and Cnicht caught it. It began to roll up from the sea in great cabbage-headed masses, grew as dark as twilight. The wind rolled the lake into foam ; we staggered back to an old cave, where we shall sleep, i)lease God, ere we come home, and then the cloud lowered, the lake racing along in fantastic flakes and heaps of white steam hiding everything 50 yards off one minute, then leaving all clear and sharp-cut pink and green. While out of it came a rain of marbles and Minnie bullets — a rain which searches, and drenches, and drills. Luckily I had on a flannel shirt. We waited as long as we dared, and then steered home by compass, for we could not see 50 yards, except great rows of giants in the fog, sitting humped up side by side, like the ghosts of the sons of Anak staring into the bogs. So home we went, floundering through morass and scrambling up and down the giants, which were crags 50 to 100 ft. high, for we dared not pick our road for fear of losing our bearings by comijass. And we were wet — oh, were we not wet ? but, as a make-weight, we found the " Grass of Par- nassus " in plenty, and as we coasted the vale of Gw}'nant, 1,500 ft. up, the sight of Snowdon, sometimes through great gaps of cloud, some- times altogether hidden, the lights upon that glorious vista of Gwynant and Dinas, right down to Hebog— the flakes of cloud rushing up the vale of Gwynant far below us — no tongue can describe it. I could see Froude's iir-wood, and home- close, quite plain from Moel Meirch. It looked as if Visitors Book at Peti-y-gwryd. 495 you could have sent a stone into it, but it was four miles off. I have got for you grass of Parnassus ; Alpine club-moss ; ladies' mantle ; ivy- leaved campanula; beech fern ; A. Oreopteris (sweet fern). " The great butterwort is out of flower (as is the globe flower), but it stars every bog with its shiny yellow-green stars of leaves. Good bye. I am up at half-past 3 for Gwynant, which is full of salmon. " P.S. — I have just got your dear letter. Tell Rose that I am drying all the plants I can for her. . . . Tell Maurice I saw a grouse and a water-ouzel— lots of these last. . . ." When the brief holiday came to an end, the three friends were asked by the landlord of the inn, at Pen-y-gwryd, to vv^rite their names in his visitors' book. The following verses were speedily composed, and though the autographs have been cut out of the book by some tourist the lines v/ere preserved : TOM TAYLOR. I came to Pen-y-gwryd with colours armed and pencils, Eut found no use whatever for any such utensils ; So in default of them I took to using knives and forks, And made successful drawings — of Mrs. Owen's corks. CHARLES KINGSLEY. I came to Pen-y-gwryd in frantic hopes of slaying Grilse, Salmon, 3 lb. red-fleshed Trout, and what else there's no saying ; Eut bitter cold and lashing rain, and black nor'eastern skies, sir, Drove me from fish to botany, a sadder man and wiser. TOM HUGHES. I came to Pen-y-gwryd a larking with my betters, A mad wag and a mad poet, both of them men of letters ; Which two ungrateful parties after all the care I've took Of them, make me write verses in Henry Owen's book. T. T. We've been mist-soal<'d on Snowdon, mist-soak'd on Glyder Vawr, We've been wet through on an average every day three times an hour ; We've M-alk'd the upper leathers from the soles of our balmorals ; And as sketchers and as fishers witli the weather have had our quarrels. C. K. But think just of the plants which stuff d our box, (old Yarrel's gift,) And of those which might have stuff 'd it if the clouds had given a lift : Of tramping bogs, and climbing cliffs, and shoving down stone fences For Spider^'ort, Saussurea, and Woodsia ilvensis. 496 Charles Kingsley. T. H. Oh my clear namesake's breeches, you never see the like. He burst them all so shameful a crossing of a dyke. But Mrs. Owen patch'tl them as careful as a mother, With flannel of three colours— she hadn't got no other. T. T. But can we say enough of those legs of mountain muttons, And that onion sauce lies on our souls, for it made of us three gluttons? And the Dublin stout is genuine, and so's the Burton beer ; And the apple tarts they've won our hearts, and think of souftlets here f C. K. Resembling that old wom.in that never could be quiet, Though victuals (says the child's song) and drink formed all their diet : My love for plants and scrambling shared empire with my dinner, And who says it wasn't good must be a most fastidious sinner. T. II. Now all I've got to say is, you can't be better treated ; Order pancakes and you'll find they're the best you ever eated. If you scramble o'er the mountains you should bring an ordnance map ; I endorse all as previous gents have said about the tap. T. T. Pen-y-g^vryd, when wet and worn has kept a warm fireside for us, Socks, boots, and never-mention-ems, Mrs. Owen still has dried for us ; With host and hostess, fare and bill so pleased we are that, going. We feel for all their kindness, 'tis we not they are Owen ! T. H. T. T, C. K. Nos tres in uno juncti hos fecimus versiculos ; Tomas piscator pisces qui non cepi sed pisciculos, Tomas sciagraphus, sketches qui non feci nisi ridiculos, Herbarius Carolus monies qui lustravi perpendiculos. T. H. There's big trout I hear in Edno, likewise in Gwynant lake, And the governor and black alder are the flies that they will take, Also the cockabundy, but I can only say, If you think to catch big fishes I only Hope you may. T. T. I have come in for more of mountain gloom than mountain glory, But I've seen old Snowdon rear his head with storm-tossed mist wreaths hoary ; I stood in the fight of mountain winds upon Bwlch-Cwm-y-Llan, And I go back an unsketching but a better minded man. The Rectory Lanni. 497 c. K. And I too have another debt to pay another way, For Kindness shown by these good souls to one who's far away, Even to this old colly dog who tracked the mountains o'er, For one who seeks strange birds and flowers on far Australia's shore. In the course of the autumn several American friends came and went : one from the Southern States, thus recalls his visit and the Rectory life at Eversley in 1856 : '' ... It is your own fault if Eversley does no more seem to me a name. When I think of Mrs. Kingsley and of you I seem to myself to be sitting with you still in those quaint old rooms. Still Maurice comes by with an insect or a flower, or just a general wonder and life in his eyes — still I hear the merry laugh of the little Princess, and see Dandy lying lazy, smiling and winking in the sun ; and I fill my olive-wood pipe, and saunter in and out of the aromatic old study and lounge, a new man and a happier one, on the sloping green lawn, under the good old fir-trees. And so I talk on as if I were with friends long known, and known long to be cherished much. All of which is wholly your fault and Mrs. Kingsley's. ... If you are not too busy, I am sure you will write and tell me how the novel advances (Two Years Ago !), and how Eversley in all its regions is " TO FRANCIS RUSSELL, ESQ. Eversley, 1856. " I am horror-struck. Mrs. Kingsley declares I have never answered your letter The perpetual variety of work which I have been in must be my excuse if I am guilty. To-day, however, I have no excuse of work, being idle, from having been rolled into a pancake yesterday by a horse, who lay on me for five pleasant minutes at the bottom of a ditch. We were delighted with the Parnassia, and astonished at your knack of drying. I never saw flowers dried so well. As for the vivarium, everything and all information, is to be got from a man named A. Lloyd, 21, Portland Road. But if your friend be at Edinburgh, an hour's work at low tide at the back of Musselburgh pier will give him all that is wanted, and the hints in ' Glaucus ' ought to be enough as to preserving them alive. I have no news to tell you. I work in the parish and wTfite, and seldom get out to kill a great pike or two. Such an autumn I never remember. All our summer gardens are still untouched by frost, and the country looks as it did in June. 198 Charles Kingslcy. "What do you think of the peace prospects? France l)anknipt ; the Emperor's hfe not worth two years' purchase. Russia bullying as badly as ever, and Italy at a dead-lock. I give the peace two years to live. AN'ill it live one ? Oii^ht it to live one?" Mr. Kingslcy having been asked to write a preface to Taulcr's Life, now writes to Miss Winkworth. EvERSLEV, August 8, 1856. " I shall be most happy to write the preface to Tauler's Sermons. Believe me, I have no fear of Pantheism in Tauler. I shall be delighted to do all I can tp spread your translation. Believe me, you will be doing a good work ; may it prosper ! I need not say, remember me most affectionately to Chevalier Bunsen, and thank him (ought I not to thank you too?) for the 'Signs of the Times,' which has taught me much. .... You will be glad to hear, I am sure, that your ' 'J'hcologia ' is being valued by everyone to whom I have recommended it, and I have more hope of Tauler, because, as I suppose, he is more like the teaching (in form) to which the many have been accustomed, and which they can understand. I would certainly leave out the Romanist passages ; I am sure that they are really only excrescences, which have nothing to do with the real bone and muscle of his or any man's soul ; and if you do not omit them, your chance of a hearing is gone My hope is that the Evangelicals will read Tauler, even though they may shrink from the ' Theologia.' " December I, 1856. " I am at present busy with the Preface to Tauler. I am delighted with him. Only two passages I want to ask you about, if it be not too late. " I. On page 287, for ' receirr^,' surely read ' rece'wti/i.' " In line 9, for ' bringing forth,' surely read ' begotten,' or ' being begotten.' * " As they stand, these two words make no sense, and if they be so in your MS,, must be, I should think, misreadings. Tauler is surely * The passage referred to in "Tauler's Life and Sermons" is this : — "By these things they arc hindered from coming to the best and highest truth, for they ought to keep themselves free and empty of all that is accidental — even as our Lord is free and alone, and receiveth Himself ever afresh, without interval or time from His Heavenly Father — and in the same Now is ever without ceasing begotten afresh in perfectness, with thankful praise, into the majesty of the Father in co-equal dignity." Taulers Life and Sermons. 499 speaking of that most important and now utterly forgotten doctrine of the eternal (/. e., never-ceasing) generation of the Son from the Father, which Eckhart also held so clearly. "Next, in p. 317, 'has no longer any distinct perception of virtue or vice.' May I ask for a little explanation on this? Does Tauler mean virtue and vice in the casuist sense, as mere acts involving rewards and punishments, and that the soul loses any distinct percep- tion of them from having got altogether into the ground of perfect love from which all virtue springs, and so feeling, for the time, no resistance against that love in itself, prompting it to transgress law ? Can you so word it, as to escape the chance of people's mistaking the expression (as they surely will) for ' no perception of the distinction between virtue and vice' — which, as we know, was what the brethren of the Free Spirit caricatured Eckhart's doctrine into ? * " Pray take care of this, for the devil is very busy, and no one knows better than he, that ' nothing is stronger than its weakest part,' or more ready to point out the said weakest part to a Pharisee, or a Sadducee, or a scribe." The preface was written, as he says, with great diffidence. Like the preface to the " Theologia," it goes down into the deep things of God, and is worthy of its subject — especially the passages on the Mystics ; they are too long to quote, but the closing pages must be given if only to tempt thoughtful persons to read the book itself, of which Mr. Kingsley says : "They will find the same spiritual food which they have found already in St. Bernard, A' Kempis, and Madame Guyon ; and find there also, perhaps more clearly than in any mystic writer, a safeguard against the dangers which especially beset them ; against the danger of mistaking their passing emotions for real and abiding love of good ; against exalting any peculiar intuition which they may think they have attained into a source of self-glorification, and fancying they become something by the act of confessing themselves nothing. For with * "Tauler's Life and Sermons," p. 317. "And then, while it (the soul) beholds God, and then becomes more united with Him, the union may become such that God altogether pours Himself into it, and draws it so entirely into Himself that it no longer has any distinct perception of virtue or vice, or recognizes any marks by which it knows what it is itself. But God regards the soul as a creature. There- fore let the light of grace overpower the light of nature in you ; for the higher knowledge the soul attains in the light of grace, the darker does it deem the light of nature." 500 Charles Kings icy. Taulcr, whether he be right or wrong in any given detail, practical righteousness of the divincst kind and loftiest kind is at once the object, and the means, and the test, of all upward steps. God is the Supreme CJood which man is intended to behold ; but only by being inspired by Him, owing all to Him, and copying Him, can he behold Him, and in that sight find his highest reward, and heaven itself. "But there are those who, opprest by doubts and fears and sorrows very different from those of which I have just spoken, may find in Tauler's genial and sunny pages a light which will stand them in good stead in many an hour of darkness. There are those, heaped beyond desert with every earthly bliss, who have had to ask themselves, in awful earnest, the question which all would so gladly put away. Were I stripped to-morrow of all these things, to stand alone and helpless as I see thousands stand, what should I then have left ? . . . . Tremblingly they have turned to religion for comfort, under the glaring eye of the dark spectre of bereavement, but have felt about all commonplaces, however true, as Job felt of old : miserable comforters are ye all ! Oh 1 that I knew where I might find Him. . . . To such Tauler can tell something, of that still waste, where a man, losing all things else, shall find himself face to face with God, and hear from Him that which no man can utter again in words even to the wife of his bosom. " And for ' darker struggles and deeper problems,' and ' the abyss of boundless doubt,' Tauler can solve these for no man, but he can tell how he solved them for himself; how he came to find an eternal light shining for ever in that utter darkness, which the darkness could not comprehend ; an eternal ground in the midst of that abyss, which belonged not to the abyss, nor to the outward world which had vanished for the moment, nor to space, nor time, nor any category of human thought, or mortal existence ; and that its substance was the everlasting personal good, whose love is righteousness. Tauler can point out the path by which he and others came to see that light, to find that rock of ages ; — the simple path of honest self-knowledge, self- renunciation, self-restraint, in which every upward step towards right exposes some fresh depth of inward sinfulness, till the once proud man, crushed down Hke Job and Paul, by the sense of his own infinite mean- ness, becomes like them, a little child once more, and casts himself simply upon the generosity of Him who made Him " And then, so Tauler will tell him, there may come to him the vision, dim, perhaps, and fitting ill into clumsy words, but clearer, surer, nearer to him than the ground on which he treads, or than the foot which treads it, — the vision of an everlasting spiritual substance, most human and yet most divine, Who can endure ; and Who, standing The Vision of God. 501 beneath' all things, can make their spiritual substance endure likewise, though all worlds and stars, birth, and growth, and death, matter, space, and time, should melt in very deed, — ' And like the baseless fabric of a vision, Leave not a rack behind. ' * * Preface by Rev. Charles Kingsley to the "History of the Life of Rev. John Tauler," of Strasbourg, temp. X340. THE GREAT FIR TREES ON THE RECTORY LAWN AT EVERSLEY. END OF VOL. I. 3RADEURV, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTER?, WHITEFRIARS. L<^ L P Q_ /n « S r, •^' a'' #» ^^ % University of California Library Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date scamped below. Ph 310/82 als 5-9188 ^' QL JAN 1 1 200O t; Xi .RARYO/ vni •biiti s 3 f ^ - '^y^- ^"^ j^ ^J^ \^ ^\«[UNIVEB% 5;^lOSANCnfj> INrtJWV hoiimi^"^ %oimi^'^ c4cOfCAllF0«jj^ ^ ^OFCAIIFO^;^ ^ -^ ir. irf \ I. •51 CO so > so ^OfCAllF0% \\^ ^mm\\^ 5^ ^ ^lOSANCElfx^ aOFCA1IF0% ^OFCAllF0fi5(;> %a3AiNn3WV** "^^AHvaani^ '^(?Aavaanii>^ ^VllBRARy«c 33 ^OFCAllFOff^ /\Mt-UNlVtR% ^lOSANCflfX^ ^^WEUNIVER% < ^lOSANCflfj*^ o ^^Aavaani^ <(^a3Nvsoi^ ^MAwnaftV c ^^V\E•UNIVER% A^lUBRARYOc ^TilDNVSOV^^ %83AINfl-3WV^ ^^OJIIVDJO'^ ^OFCAIIFOR^ ^