UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Class 
 
 Book 
 
 Volume 
 
Return this book on or before the 
 Latest Date stamped below. 
 
 University 'of Illinois Library 
 
 SEP 20 131*5 
 
 rv r 
 
 Hffi -! 
 
 MAR 16 1^39 
 
 AUG 0 5 1998 
 
 L161 — H 4 1 
 
. LETTERS AND 
 MEMORIES OF 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY 
 
 CHESTER EDITION 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY 
 
 His Letters , and Memories oj 
 His Life 
 
 EDITED BY HIS WIFE 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 MAURICE KINGSLEY 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 Volume I 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 J. F. TAYLOR AND COMPANY 
 
 MDCCCC 
 
Copyright , 1899, 
 
 By J. F. Taylor and Company. 
 
 ^nibcrsttg Press : 
 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 
 
DrtftcateU 
 
 TO THE BELOVED MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 - A RIGHTEOUS MAN 
 
 WHO LOVED GOD AND TRUTH ABOVE ALL THINGS. 
 
 A MAN OF UNTARNISHED HONOR — 
 
 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. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/charleskingsleyh01king_0 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 I819-I838 
 
 Page 
 
 Birth and Parentage — Inherited Tastes — Removal from 
 Devonshire — Clifton — Barnack and its Ghost-Chamber 
 — First Sermon and Poems — Childish Character — 
 Effect of Fen Scenery on his Mind f- Life at Cloveily — 
 School Life at Clifton and Helston — Chelsea — King’s 
 College, London I 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 1838-1842. Aged 19-23 
 
 Cambridge — Visit to Oxfordshire — A Turning Point in 
 Life — Undergraduate Days — Decides to take Orders 
 — Correspondence — Takes his Degree ... 25 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 1842-1843. Aged 23-24 
 
 Leaves Cambridge — Reads for Holy Orders — Extracts 
 from Letters — Ordained Deacon — Curacy of Eversley 
 — Parish Work — Parting Words 45 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 1842-1843. Aged 23-24 
 
 A Year of Sorrow — Curate Life — Letter from Colonel W. 
 
 — Brighter Prospects — Promise of Preferment — Cor- 
 respondence Renewed — The Mystery of Life — Impulse 
 — Enthusiasm — The Pendulum — Wandering Min- 
 strels — Leaves Eversley 72 
 
Vlll 
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 1844-1847. Aged 25-28 
 
 Marriage — Curacy of Pimperne — Rector of Eversley — 
 Parish Work — Personal Influence — Canonry of Mid- 
 dleham — Needs of the Church — Birth of Two Chil- 
 dren — The “Saint's Tragedy" Written . ~ T~ . 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 1848. Aged 29 
 
 Publication of “ Saint's Tragedy ” — Chartist Riots — - Tenth 
 of April — Work in London — Politics for the People — 
 Parson Lot — Professorship at Queen's College Croy- 
 land Abbey — Letters to his Child — Advice to an 
 Author — “ Y east *' — Illness — The Higher View of 
 Marriage — Devonshire 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 1849. Aged 30 
 
 Winter in Devonshire — Illness — Decides on Taking Pupils 
 — Correspondence, — On Romanism. — Visit to London 
 — Social Questions — Fever at Eversley — Renewed 
 Illness — Returns to Devonshire — Cholera in England 
 — Sanitary Work — Bermondsey — Jacob’s Island — 
 Development of “Yeast" — Influence on Young Men 
 — Recollections by Mr. C. Kegan Paul . . . 169 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 1850-1851. Aged 31-32 
 
 Resigns the Office of Clerk in Orders at Chelsea — Pupil 
 Life at Eversley — Publication of “ Alton Locke " — Let- 
 ters from Mr. Carlyle — Writes for “ Christian Social- 
 ist" — Troubled State of the Country — Burglaries 
 — The Rectory Attacked — Heavy Correspondence — 
 Letters on the Romish Question 203 
 
Contents 
 
 ix 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 1S51. Aged 32 
 
 Pagb 
 
 Letters on University Reform — Beginnings of “ Hypatia ” — 
 Personal Traits — Work and Recreation — Teetotal- 
 ism — Opening of the Great Exhibition — Influence of 
 “ Yeast ” — Lecture on Agriculture — Occurrence in a 
 London Church — Visit to Germany — Letter from Mr. 
 
 John Martineau 230 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 1852. Aged 33 
 
 Correspondence — Strike in the Iron Trade — Letters on 
 Political Parties, on Prayer, on Metaphysical Questions 
 — Parson Lot’s Last Words — Letters to Mr. Ludlow — 
 Hexameters — Poetry — Frederika Bremer — Sunday 
 Amusements — To a Jew 273 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 1853. Aged 34 
 
 The Rector in His Church — “ Hypatia ” — Letters from 
 Chevalier Bunsen — Mr. Maurice’s Theological Es- 
 says — Correspondence with Thomas Cooper . . 309 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 1854. Aged 35 
 
 Torquay — Seaside Studies — Sanitary Work — Lectures in 
 Edinburgh — Deutsche Theologie — About Sisterhoods 
 — Crimean War — Settles in North Devon — Writes 
 * “Westward Ho!” 344 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 1855. Aged 36 
 
 Bideford — Crimean War— Death of his friend Charles 
 Blachford Mansfield — “ Westward Ho ! ” — Letters 
 from Mr. Henry Drummond and Rajah Brooke — On 
 Bigots — Drawing Class for Mechanics at Bideford — 
 Leaves Devonshire — Lecture to Ladies in London 
 — On Being an Artist — The “ Heroes ” — Letter on 
 Fam$ V 
 
 366 
 
List of Illustrations 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 Charles Kingsley Frontispiece 
 
 From portrait by Goodall. 
 
 The Rectory and Church at Eversley Page 97 
 
 “ Rufus bucking, April 18, 1855 ” “ 380 
 
 Reproduced from the original sketch by Charles Kingsley 
 

INTRODUCTION 
 
 MORE lasting and beautiful tribute to the 
 
 beloved dead can hardly be imagined than 
 “ Charles Kingsley's Letters and Memories of his 
 Life,” edited by his wife ; and what is most strik- 
 ing, perhaps, is the complete elimination of the 
 author’s own personality. Indeed, but for the 
 avowal on the titlepage, “ by his wife,” the biogra- 
 phy might have been written by some intimate 
 friend, and, for aught the reader knew, the wife of 
 Charles Kingsley might have been a nonentity in 
 the household. 
 
 How different was the reality! His equal in- 
 tellectually, and as a literary critic possibly his 
 superior — with a man’s power of grasping great 
 subjects — she was withal the most womanly of 
 wives and mothers. In all his literary work she 
 was his adviser. Poems, novels, lectures, sermons, 
 passed under her supervision, and often she acted 
 as his amanuensis. The entire care of the house- 
 hold was taken off his shoulders, and if he might 
 be termed the father of Eversley Parish, surely 
 she was do less the mother, — beloved alike by 
 rich and poor. 
 
XIV 
 
 Introduction 
 
 And above all, when overworked and discour- 
 aged, as he was at times, by attacks on his writings 
 and utterances, he could turn to her for comfort 
 and renewed strength : 
 
 “ Till the heart which at even was weary and old 
 Could rise in the morning gay, 
 
 Sweet wife ; 
 
 To its work in the morning gay.” 
 
 It has been commented on that no mention is 
 made of Charles Kingsley's brothers, George and 
 Henry, and of his sister, Mrs. Chaunter; but we 
 also find no reference to Mrs. Kingsley’s own 
 family except the statement that she was the 
 daughter of Pascoe Penfell, Esq., of Tablow. This 
 was done purposely. As she expressed it to one 
 of her children : “ I propose to write a biography 
 of your father — as I saw him and as the world 
 should see him — and not a family history of the 
 Kingsleys and Penfells — any one can do that: 
 but only I know Charles Kingsley’s every thought 
 and action.” 
 
 In her labor of love — for such one must call 
 it — she was pre-eminently successful. It is not 
 always easy to form a true opinion of the man 
 from his writings ; and Charles Kingsley’s very 
 versatility made it the more difficult in his case, so 
 many of his deepest thoughts being expressed in 
 allegory. For instance, in the child’s story of 
 
Introduction 
 
 xv 
 
 44 The Water-Babies,” veiled in exquisite fun, are 
 hidden the deepest riddles of human life and 
 thought ; and his letter in reference to the book 
 written to Frederick Maurice, and printed in the 
 Memories, gives the key note to the underlying 
 mystery, so far as he cared to explain it. This 
 is a single instance, but in many other ways the 
 Memories will interpret the man in his true 
 light to those who did not know him person- 
 ally. This is done principally in the form of his 
 letters, with sufficient comment by the author to 
 make it a short, consecutive, history of her hus- 
 band’s life and works. These letters reveal the 
 reasons for many utterances which might be 
 misunderstood, or, as has happened in several 
 cases, which have been wilfully misinterpreted; 
 and they prove, above all, Charles Kingsley’s in- 
 nate rightmindedness and honesty of purpose. 
 
 Of the charm and beauty of their home life, 
 it is not for me to speak : suffice it to say that 
 the hope, expressed by the Rector of Eversley 
 to his future wife: 
 
 “ So we through this world's waning night 
 May, hand in hand, pursue our way ; 
 
 Shed round us order, love, and light, 
 
 And shine into the perfect day ” — 
 
 was verifed. And now, in a corner of the quiet 
 little church-yard at Eversley, under the shadow 
 
 p 
 
XVI 
 
 Introduction 
 
 of the giant pines they loved so well, stands a 
 white cross over the grave of Charles Kingsley 
 and Fanny Eliza, his wife, united in life and in 
 death, with this inscription carved upon it: 
 
 “ Amavimus, Amamus, Amabimus.” 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TN bringing out these volumes, thanks are due 
 A and gratefully offered to all who have gener- 
 ously 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 pub- 
 lished works ; — but above all, to the friends who 
 have so eloquently borne witness to his character 
 and genius. These written testimonies to their 
 father's worth are a rich inheritance to his 
 children, and God only knows the countless un- 
 written ones, of souls rescued from doubt, dark- 
 ness, error, and sin, of work done, the worth of 
 which can never be calculated upon earth, of seed 
 sown which has borne, and will still bear fruit for 
 years, perhaps for generations to come, when the 
 name of Charles Kingsley is forgotten, while 
 his unconscious influence will endure treasured up 
 in the eternal world, where nothing really good or 
 
XV 111 
 
 Preface 
 
 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. 
 
CHARLES KINGSLEY 
 
“ Sleep after toyle , port after stormie seas f 
 
 Ease after warre, death after life , does greatly please 
 
 Spenser’s “Faerie Queene.” 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 1819-1838 
 
 Birth and Parentage — Inherited Talents — Removal 
 from Devonshire — Clifton — Barnack and its 
 
 Ghost-Chamber — First Sermon and Poems — Child- 
 ish Character — Effect of Fen Scenery on his Mind 
 — Life at Clovelly — School Life at Clifton and 
 Helston — Chelsea— King’s College, London. 
 
 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 he wandered away and away 
 With Nature, the dear old Nurse, 
 
 Who sang to him night and day 
 The rhymes of the Universe. 
 
 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. 
 
 C HARLES KINGSLEY, son of Charles 
 Kingsley, of Battramsley in the New Forest, 
 was born on the 12th of June, 1819, at Holne 
 Vicarage, under the brow of Dartmoor, Devon- 
 shire. His family claimed descent from the 
 
 VOL. I. — I 
 
2 Charles Kingsley 
 
 Kingsleys of Kingsley or Vale Royal, in Dela- 
 mere 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 II 28 . ,, Charles’s 
 father was educated at Harrow and Oxford, and 
 was a man of cultivation and refinement, a good 
 linguist, an artist, a keen sportsman and natural 
 historian. He had been brought up with fair ex- 
 pectations as a country gentleman, but having 
 been left an orphan early in life, and his fortune 
 squandered for him during his minority, he soon 
 spent what was left, and at the age of thirty was 
 obliged, for the first time, to think of a profession. 
 Being too old for the army, he decided on the 
 Church, sold his hunters and land, and, with a 
 young wife, went for a second time to college, and 
 read for Holy Orders at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. 
 He was curate of Holne when his son was born. 
 
 Charles’s mother, born in the West Indies, but 
 brought up in England, was a remarkable woman, 
 full of poetry and enthusiasm. Keenly alive to 
 the charms of scenery, and highly imaginative, she 
 believed that all impressions made on her own 
 mind before the birth of her child, by the roman- 
 tic surroundings of her Devonshire home, would 
 be transmitted to him ; and in this faith gave her- 
 self up to the enjoyment of the exquisite scenery 
 of Holne and Dartmoor, the Chase, the hills, the 
 lovely river Dart which flowed below the grounds 
 of the little parsonage, and of every sight and 
 sound which she hoped would be dear to her 
 child in after life. These hopes were realized, 
 and though her little son left Holne when he was 
 six weeks old, and never saw his birthplace till he 
 
Inherited Talents 3 
 
 was a man of thirty, yet Devonshire scenes and 
 associations had always a mysterious charm for 
 him. 
 
 “ I firmly believe/' he said ill after life, “ in the mag- 
 netic effect of the place where one has been bred ; and 
 have 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. 
 Wherever 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, 
 on the Mendips. It may be fancy, but it is most real, 
 and practical, as many fancies are." 
 
 Charles Kingsley was an instance of the truth of 
 Mr. Darwin's theory, “ That genius which implies 
 a wonderfully complex combination of high facul- 
 ties tends to be inherited;" for, from his father’s 
 side, he inherited his love of art, his sporting 
 tastes, his fighting blood — the men of his family 
 having been soldiers for generations, some of 
 them having led troops to battle at Naseby, 
 Minden, and elsewhere. And from the mother’s 
 side came, not only his love of travel, science, and 
 literature, and the romance of his nature, but his 
 keen sense of humor, and a force and originality 
 which characterized the women of her family of a 
 still older generation. His maternal grandfather, 
 Nathan Lucas, of Farley Hall, who had estates in 
 the West Indies and Demerara, and was for many 
 years a judge in Barbadoes, was a man of science 
 and letters ; a great traveller, and the intimate 
 friend of Sir Joseph Banks and the distinguished 
 John Hunter. His stories of tropical scenes, and 
 reminiscences of the old war times, during which 
 
4 Charles Kingsley 
 
 he had been on board his friend Lord Rodney’s 
 ship, the “ Formidable/’ in the great naval 
 engagement off St. Lucia, were the delight of 
 Charles’s boyhood, and woke up in him that 
 longing to see the West Indies which was at last 
 accomplished. 
 
 “ We are/’ he says himself, when writing to Mr. Galton, 
 in 1865, on his book on Hereditary Talent, where the 
 Kingsleys as a family are referred to, “ but the disjecta 
 membra of a most remarkable pair of parents. Our tal- 
 ent, such as it is, is altogether hereditary. My father 
 was a magnificent man in body and mind, and was said 
 to possess every talent except that of using his talents. 
 My mother, on the contrary, had a quite extraordinary 
 practical and 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. . . 
 
 But to return. His father, after leaving Holne, 
 went to Clifton in Nottinghamshire ; and, while 
 curate there, the Bishop of Peterborough, Dr. 
 Herbert Marsh, made him his Examining Chap- 
 lain and gave him the living of Barnack to hold 
 for six years. Barnack Rectory was a fine old 
 house, built in the fourteenth century, and con- 
 tained a celebrated haunted room called Button 
 Cap, which is still looked upon with mysterious 
 dread by the parishioners. On one occasion, when 
 ill of brain fever, little Charles was moved into this 
 room, and for years afterwards his imagination was 
 haunted by the weird sights and sounds associated 
 with that time in his memory. To this he at- 
 tributed his strong disbelief in the existence of 
 ghosts in later years, telling his own children he 
 
First Composition 5 
 
 had heard too many ghosts in old Button Cap’s 
 room at Barnack to have much respect for them. 
 He thus describes the room to Mrs. Francis 
 Pelham : 
 
 Eversley, 1864. — “ Of Button Cap — he lived in the 
 Great North Room at Barnack. 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 Germans say, 
 rolling the barrels in the cellar about with surprising 
 noise, which was undignified. So he was always 
 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 School- 
 master, 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 ! ” 
 
 Charles was a precocious child, and his poems 
 and sermons date from four years old. His de- 
 light was to make a little pulpit in his nursery, 
 from which, after arranging the chairs for an im- 
 aginary congregation, and putting on his pinafore 
 as a surplice, he would deliver addresses of a 
 rather severe tone of theology. His mother, 
 unknown to him, took them down at the time, 
 
6 Charles Kingsley 
 
 and. the Bishop of Peterborough, to whom she 
 showed them, thought them so remarkable for 
 such a young child, that he predicted that the 
 boy would grow up to be no common man. 
 These are among the specimens his mother 
 kept. The sermon was written at four years 
 old, the poem at four years and eight months. 
 
 FIRST SERMON 
 
 “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 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 ex- 
 ample how we should overcome the devil. It is written 
 in the Bible that we should love our neighbor, and not 
 covet his house, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor his wife, nor 
 anything that is his. It is to a certainty that we cannot 
 describe how thousands and ten thousands have been 
 wicked ; and nobody can tell how the devil can be 
 chained in hell. Nor can we describe how many men 
 and women and children have been good. And if we 
 go to Heaven we shall find them all singing to God in 
 the highest. And if we go to hell, we shall find all the 
 wicked ones gnashing and wailing their teeth, as God 
 describes in the Bible. If humanity, honesty, and good 
 religion fade, we can to a certainty get them back, by 
 being good again. Religion is reading good books, doing 
 good actions, and not telling lies and speaking evil, and 
 not calling their brother Fool and Raca. And if we re- 
 bel against God, He will to a certainty cast us into hell. 
 
Childish Character 7 
 
 And one day, when a great generation of people came to 
 Christ in the Wilderness, he said, Yea ye generation of 
 vipers ! ” 
 
 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.” 
 
 Charles was a delicate, nervous, and painfully 
 sensitive child — he twice had brain fever, and was 
 subject to dangerous attacks of croup. He was 
 always remarkable for his thirst for knowledge and 
 love of physical science. A friend remembers him 
 now, as a little boy in the study at Barnack, re- 
 peating his Latin lesson to his father, 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.” 
 
 At Barnack the boy’s earliest sporting tastes and 
 love of natural history were developed ; for his 
 father was one of the old-fashioned type of Eng- 
 lish clergymen, “ where,” it has been said, “ the 
 country gentleman forms the basis of the charac- 
 ter which the minister of the Gospel completes,” 
 and while an excellent parish priest was a keen 
 sportsman ; so as soon as Charles was old enough, 
 he was mounted on his father’s horse in front of 
 
8 Charles Kingsley 
 
 the keeper on shooting-days to bring back the 
 game-bag — a rich one in days when wild duck 
 and coot, bittern and bustard, ruffs and reeves 
 were plentiful in the Fen. Butterflies of species 
 now extinct, were not uncommon then, and used 
 to delight the eyes of the young naturalist. The 
 sunsets of the Great Fen, all the more striking 
 from the wide sweep of horizon, were never for- 
 gotten, and low flat scenery had always a charm 
 for him in after life from the memory of those 
 days. “ They have a beauty of their own, those 
 great Fens; a beauty as of the sea, of boundless 
 expanse and freedom. Overhead the arch of 
 Heaven spreads more ample than elsewhere, and 
 that vastness gives such cloudlands, such sunrises, 
 such sunsets, as can be seen nowhere else within 
 these isles/’ — (Preface to “ Hereward.”) Again, 
 in a lecture given to a Mechanics’ Institute at Cam- 
 bridge on the Fens, in 1867, he says: 
 
 “ The fancy may linger without blame, over the shin- 
 ing meres, the golden reed-beds, the countless water- 
 fowl, the strange and gaudy insects, the wild nature, the 
 mystery, the majesty — for mystery and majesty there 
 were — which haunted the deep fens for many hundred 
 years. Little thinks the Scotsman, whirled down by the 
 Great Northern Railway from Peterborough to Hunting- 
 don, what a grand place, even twenty years ago, was that 
 Holme and Whittlesea, which is now but a black un- 
 sightly steaming flat, from which the meres and reed- 
 beds of the old world are gone, while the corn and roots 
 of the new world have not as yet taken their place. 
 But grand enough it was, that black ugly place, when 
 backed byCaistor Hanglands and Holme Wood and the 
 patches of the primeval forest ; while dark green alders, 
 and pale green reeds, stretched for miles round the 
 
Life at Clovelly 9 
 
 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 Cottes- 
 more ; 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 floor in their fighting rings, while 
 the sober reeves stand round, admiring the tournament 
 of their lovers, gay with ruffs and tippets, no two of 
 them alike. Gone are ruffs and reeves, spoonbills, bit- 
 terns, 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.” [“ Prose Idylls. ”] 
 
 This picture, stamped on the boy’s young mind, 
 inspired him in after years in writing the story of 
 Hereward the Wake. 
 
 In 1830 Mr. Kingsley gave up the living of Bar- 
 nack, which he had held for Bishop Marsh’s son, 
 and went into Devonshire, where Sir James Hamlyn 
 Williams, of Clovelly Court, presented him to the 
 rectory of Clovelly. 
 
 Here a fresh life opened for Charles ; a new edu- 
 
io Charles Kingsley 
 
 cation began for him ; a new world was revealed 
 to him. The contrast between the sturdy Fen 
 men and the sailors and fishermen at Clovelly — 
 between the flat Eastern Counties, and the rocky 
 Devonshire coast with its rich vegetation, its new 
 fauna and flora, and blue sea with the long Atlan- 
 tic swell, filled him with delight and wonder. At 
 Clovelly he and his brothers had their boat and 
 their ponies, and Charles at once plunged into the 
 study of conchology. 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 impression- 
 able 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 a charm of ro- 
 mance over the 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. Mr. Kingsley’s 
 ministrations in church and in the cottages were 
 acceptable to dissenters as well as church people. 
 And when the herring fleet put to sea, whatever 
 the weather might be, he would start off “ down 
 street,” for the Quay, with his wife and boys, to 
 give a short parting service, at which “ men who 
 worked,” and “ women who wept,” would join in 
 singing the 121st Psalm out of the old Prayer 
 Book, as those only can who have death and 
 danger staring them in the face ; and who, 
 “ though storms be sudden, and waters deep,” 
 can boldly say : 
 
Life at Clovelly 1 1 
 
 “ To Sion’s hill I lift mine eyes, 
 
 From thence expecting aid, 
 
 From Sion’s Hill and Sion’s God 
 Who heaven and earth has made.” 
 
 Such memories made this Psalm, in Tate and 
 Brady’s rough versification, more dear and speak- 
 ing to Charles in after life, than any hymn “ ancient 
 or modern ” of more artistic form. Such memo- 
 ries still make the name of Kingsley a household 
 word in Clovelly. 
 
 A life so full of romantic and often tragic inci- 
 dents must needs leave its mark on Charles’s mind. 
 One day especially' would rise up often before 
 him in contrast to the still summer brightness 
 of Clovelly: 
 
 “when the old bay lay darkened with the gray 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 howl- 
 ing 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 ago- 
 nies of prayer, as corpse after corpse swept up at the feet 
 of wife and child, till in one 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 . 1 . . 
 
 Such were the scenes which colored his boy- 
 hood, were reflected in his after life, and produced 
 the song of “ Three Fishers,” which was not a mere 
 creation of his imagination, but the literal tram 
 
 1 “ North Devon.” (“ Prose Idylls.”) 
 
1 2 Charles Kingsley 
 
 script of what he had seen again and again in Dev- 
 onshire. “ Now that you have seen the dear old 
 Paradise/' he said to his wife, after her first visit to 
 Clovelly in 1854, “you know what was the inspira- 
 tion of my life before I met you.” 
 
 In 1831, Charles went to Clifton, to Mr. Knight’s 
 preparatory school, who describes him as an 
 “ affectionate boy, gentle and fond of quiet,” 
 glad to leave the boys’ school-room and take 
 refuge with his tutor’s daughters and their gov- 
 erness ; capable of making remarkable translations 
 of Latin^verse into English; a passionate lover of 
 natural history; and only excited to vehement 
 anger when the housemaid swept away as rub- 
 bish some of the treasures collected in his walks 
 on the Downs. The Bristol Riots, which took 
 place in the autumn of 1831, were the marked 
 event in his life at Clifton. Pie 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. 
 
 “ It was in this very City of Bristol, twenty-seven years 
 ago,” he says, when giving a lecture there in 1858, “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 under- 
 stood 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 sul- 
 len autumn rain. The fog hung thick over the docks 
 and lowlands. Glaring through that fog I saw a bright 
 
Clifton and Helston 1 3 
 
 mass of flame — almost like a half-risen sun. That, I 
 was told, was the gate of the new jail on fire — that the 
 
 prisoners had been set free ; — that . But why 
 
 speak of what too many here recollect but too well? 
 The fog rolled 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 volcano, from the 
 peak of which the flame streamed up, not red alone, 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 explo- 
 sions down below mingled with the 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 Dundry shining red — the symbol of the old 
 faith, looking down in stately wonder and sorrow upon 
 the fearful birth-throes of a new age. ... It was 
 on the Tuesday or Wednesday after that I saw an- 
 other, and 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, and there was one 
 charred fragment — with a scrap of old red petticoat ad- 
 hering to it, which I never forgot — which, 1 trust in 
 God, I never shall forget. It is good for a man to be 
 
14 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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.” — (Mis- 
 cellanies : Great Cities and their Influence for Good 
 and Evil.) 
 
 From Clifton Charles went to Helston School. 
 His parents had thought of both Rugby and Eton 
 for him. Dr. Hawtry, head-master of Eton, who 
 had heard of the boy's talent, was anxious to have 
 him there, and Dr. Arnold was at that time at Rug- 
 by. But the strong Tory principles and evangel- 
 ical views of his parents (in the former, Charles at 
 that time sympathized) decided them against Rug- 
 by — 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 — “ That fearful curse of stammering,” as 
 he calls it, “ which has been my misery since my 
 childhood.” This was a sore trial to him through 
 life ; and he often wished, he said, as he entered a 
 room or spoke in public or private, that the earth 
 would open and swallow him up there and then. 
 
 Helston School was then under the head-master- 
 ship of the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, son of Sam- 
 uel Taylor Coleridge. The Rev. Charles A. Johns, 
 who was then second master, and a first-rate bot- 
 anist, soon made himself Charles’s companion, en- 
 couraging his young pupil in all his tastes, and 
 going long rambles with him on the neighboring 
 
Clifton and Helston 15 
 
 moors and on the sea-coast, in search of wild 
 flowers and minerals. Here Charles formed the 
 dearest and most lasting friendship of his life, with 
 Richard Cowley Powles, afterwards Fellow and 
 Tutor of Exeter College, Oxford. 
 
 “It was at Helston, in January, 1833,” says Mr. 
 Powles, “when we were each in our fourteenth year, 
 that Charles and I first became acquainted. I remem- 
 ber the long, low room, dimly lighted by a candle on a 
 table at the further end, where 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. Looking back on those school-boy days, one can 
 trace without difficulty the elements of character that 
 made his maturer life remarkable. Of him more than 
 of most men who have become famous it may be said 
 * the boy was father of the man.’ The vehement spirit, 
 the adventurous courage, the love of truth, the impa- 
 tience 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 observation of the world around him, 
 and the same thoughtful temper of tracing facts to 
 principles. 
 
 “ 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. 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 fore- 
 most ; and on one of the very last times I ever saw him 
 
1 6 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 op- 
 posite 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 favorite 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 in- 
 truder’s putting in his hand as usual the results were dis- 
 astrous. To most boys the surprise of the hawk’s attack, 
 apart from the pain inflicted by her claws, would have 
 been fatal. They would have loosed their hold of the 
 tree, and tumbled down. But Charles did not flinch. 
 He came down as steadily as if nothing had happened, 
 though his wounded hand was streaming with blood. It 
 was wonderful how well he bore pain. On one occa- 
 sion, having a sore finger, he determined to cure it by 
 cautery. He heated the poker red-hot in the school- 
 room fire, and calmly applied it two or three times till he 
 was satisfied that his object was attained. His own en- 
 durance 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. 
 The moral quality that pre-eminently distinguished him 
 as a boy, was the generosity with which he forgave 
 offence. He was keenly sensitive to ridicule ; noth- 
 ing irritated him more ; and he had often excessive prov- 
 ocation 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 
 
Clifton and Helston 17 
 
 had no place for vindictiveness 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-humor. 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 recovering, 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 remem- 
 ber as if it were yesterday. There was no need to tell 
 the awe-struck listeners what had happened. 
 
 “ Charles’s chief taste was for physical science ; for 
 botany and geology he had an absolute enthusiasm. 
 Whatever time he could spare 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 geolo- 
 gist. 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 examina- 
 tion, for instance ; but his industry was intermittent and 
 against the grain. His passion was for natural science, 
 and for art. With regard to the former I think his zeal 
 was led by a strong religious feeling — a sense of the 
 nearness of God in His works. Thus he writes at six- 
 teen years of age to one of two friends, in whose inter- 
 course with each other he was much interested : e 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 
 vol. 1 . — 2 
 
1 8 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 is 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 Judgement ” is the most awful 
 picture I ever saw. It rapt me in awe and horror, and 
 I stood riveted for many minutes in astonishment. 
 What must the original at Dusseldorf be in which the 
 figures are as large as life ! * . . 
 
 In recalling the school days of his pupil, the Rev. 
 Derwent Coleridge writes : 
 
 “ . . . 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 distin- 
 guished. Though not a close student, he was an eager 
 reader and inquirer, sometimes in very out of the way 
 quarters. I once found him busily engaged with an old 
 copy of ‘ Porphyry and Iamblichus,* which he had fer- 
 reted out of my library. Truly a remarkable boy, origi- 
 nal 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 impedi- 
 ment in his speech, rather adding to the effect. In 
 manner he was strikingly courteous, and thus, "with his 
 
Clifton and Helston 19 
 
 wide and ready sympathies, and bright intelligence, was 
 popular alike with all.” 
 
 From Helston Charles writes to his mother: 
 
 “ 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. . . 
 
 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. 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. Give my love to 
 Emily, 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 ques- 
 tion whether that is really ‘ Arabis stricta ; ? Hirsuta, it is 
 very likely to be. If it is *' stricta/ it is a most noble 
 prize. 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 
 lanceolatum ! ! ! Scilla verna, Arenaria verna, Tees- 
 dalia nudicaulis, Ornithopus perpusillus, Carex strigosa, 
 Carex iEden, and several others. 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 
 
20 Charles Kingsley 
 
 South Downs, where I shall be certain to get excellent 
 plants. The orchids are unequalled on the South 
 Downs. . . .” 
 
 February 24, 1836. — I write to tell you that I am quite 
 well and very happy. I have finished Psyche (a Prose 
 Poem) as you asked me. There is no botany yet, but 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 Grauwacke slate are very beautiful and perfect 
 here. . . 
 
 His early poems, which were many, show the 
 same minute observation and intense love of 
 nature. They show too, Mr. Powles says, “ the 
 pains he took to describe exactly what he saw, 
 instead of running off into the vague generalities 
 and commonplaces with which young versifiers 
 often think to take poetry by storm.” But while 
 seemingly absorbed in external objects, the boy 
 lived in a world of his own. He refers to this 
 when at Cambridge. 
 
 i Jj,y ■ ' ' 
 
 “Once the love of nature constituted my whole hap- 
 piness ; in the ‘ shadowy recollections ? and vague emo- 
 tions 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 it produced. I do not shun 
 society as when a boy, because man and his coarseness 
 
Chelsea 21 
 
 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 ” 
 
 In 1836, Lord Cadogan gave his father the living 
 of Chelsea, and the free happy country life was ex- 
 changed for a London home. It was a bitter grief 
 to Charles to leave the West Country, with its rich 
 legendary lore, its botany and geology — to lose 
 the intellectual atmosphere of Mr. Coleridge's 
 house and his valuable library, and, above all, the 
 beautiful natural surroundings of both Helston 
 and Clovelly. The change to a London rectory, 
 with its ceaseless parish work, the middle-class 
 society of Chelsea, 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. 
 
 “ I find a doleful difference,” he writes to Mr. Powles, 
 “ 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 com- 
 pared to Mrs. C., or ; and the girls here have got 
 
 their heads crammed full of schools, and district visiting, 
 and baby-linen, and penny clubs. Confound! ! ! and 
 going about among the most abominable scenes of filth, 
 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 have got here two 
 or three good male acquaintances who kill the time ; one 
 
22 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 4 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.” 1 
 
 Charles now became a day student at King’s 
 College, London, where for two years he had what 
 he called hard grinding work, walking up there 
 every day from Chelsea, reading all the way, and 
 walking home late, to study all the evening. One 
 of his tutors there speaks of him as “ gentle and 
 diffident to timidity.” 
 
 “I have never,” writes another, Archdeacon Brown, 
 “ forgotten the happy intercourse which I had in former 
 days with him, 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 examinations . . . and 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.” 
 
 Charles’s life at Chelsea was not a bright one. 
 His parents were absorbed in their parish work, 
 
 1 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 “ talk shop ” before 
 his children, or lower the tone of conversation by letting it de* 
 generate into mere parochial and clerical gossip. 
 
Chelsea 23 
 
 and their religious views precluded all public 
 amusements for their children. So in his spare 
 hours, which were few and far between, he com- 
 forted himself for the lack of all variety by de- 
 vouring every book he could lay hands on; old 
 plays, old ballads, and many a strange volume 
 picked up at old book-stalls in his walks between 
 Chelsea and King’s College. Percy’s “ Reliques,” 
 Southey, Shelley and Coleridge’s poetry he knew 
 by heart. His love for Wordsworth developed 
 later; but from first to last Sir Thomas Malory’s 
 “ Morte d’Arthur,” and Spenser’s “ Faerie Queene,” 
 were among his most beloved books. Spenser was 
 more dear to him than even Shakespeare, and in 
 later life, when his brain needed rest and refresh- 
 ment, especially on Sunday evenings, he would 
 turn instinctively to Spenser. He was always a 
 good French scholar, and at sixteen he knew 
 enough German to make a translation of Krum- 
 macher’s “John the Baptist” for the Religious 
 Tract Society. Of his first return to Clovelly, in 
 1838, he writes to his mother: 
 
 “Though I have not written to you I have not for- 
 gotten you. . . 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. 
 And, moreover, I am keeping a journal full of thoughts 
 and meditations and 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. . . . 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 
 
24 Charles Kingsley 
 
 has made in me, and how I seem like some spirit in the 
 metempsychosis which 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. Kingsley.” 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 1838-42 
 Aged 19-23 
 
 Cambridge — Visit to Oxfordshire — A Turning Point 
 in Life — Undergraduate Days — Decides to take 
 Orders — Correspondence — Takes his Degree. 
 
 As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood, 
 
 And ebb into a former life, or seem 
 To lapse far back in some confused dream 
 To states of mystical similitude ; 
 
 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 either’s heart and speech. 
 
 Tennyson (Early Sonnets). 
 
 I N the autumn of 1838 Charles Kingsley left 
 King’s College, London, and went up to 
 Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he soon 
 gained a scholarship, being first in his year in 
 the May Examinations, and thence in the joy of 
 his heart he writes home: 
 
 May 31, 1839. — “ You will be delighted to hear that 
 I am first in classics and mathematics also, at the exam- 
 inations, which has not happened in the College for sev- 
 eral years. I shall bring home prizes, and a very decent 
 
26 Charles Kingsley 
 
 portion of honor — the King’s College men are all de- 
 lighted. I am going to stay up here a few days longer if 
 you will 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 will be glad to hear of my success, 
 so you must pardon the wildness of my letter, for I am so 
 happy, I hardly know what to say. You know I am not 
 accustomed to be successful. I am going to-day to a 
 great fishing party at Sir Charles Wale’s, at Shelford.” 
 
 The prize-book he chose was a fine edition of 
 Plato. 
 
 He made many friends in the University who 
 took delight in his society, some for his wit and 
 humor, others for his sympathy on subjects of 
 art, and deeper matters. “ He was very popular,” 
 writes an intimate friend, “ amongst all classes of 
 his companions ; he mixed freely with all, the stu- 
 dious, 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.” Pie was 
 soon in the Magdalene boat, which was in that year 
 high on the river. A letter from the Rev. E. Pit- 
 cairn Campbell, recalls their undergraduate life. 
 
 “ We happened to be sitting together one night on the 
 top of one of those coaches which in our time were sub- 
 scribed for by a number of men, ios. 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 management, wearing wonderful coats and hats, and 
 providing the horses. I remember the drive very well. 
 
Cambridge 27 
 
 The moon was high, and the air was frosty, and we talked 
 about sport and natural history. At last we got upon 
 fishing, and I invited him to come to my rooms to view 
 some very superior tackle. He came at once, inviting 
 me to join him in some of his haunts up the Granta and 
 the Cam, where he had friends dwelling, and hospitable 
 houses open to him. I never shall forget our first ex- 
 pedition. I was to call him, and for this purpose I had 
 to climb over the wall of Magdalene College. This I did 
 at 2 a . m ., and about 3 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 him yielded my heavier rod in order that 
 he might try the lower water with the minnow. He was, 
 however, scarcely out of sight, before I spied, under the 
 alders, some glorious trout rising to caterpillars dropping 
 from the bushes. ... In ten minutes I had three of 
 these fine fellows on the bank. . . . This performance 
 set me up in his opinion, and he took me with him to 
 Shelford, where I executed the feat to which he refers in 
 his Chalk Stream Studies (“ Prose Idylls ”). Oh! what 
 pleasant talk was his, so full of poetry and beauty ! and, 
 what I admired most, such boundless information. Be- 
 sides these expeditions we made others on horseback, 
 and at times we followed the great Professor Sedgwick in 
 his adventurous rides, which the livery stable-keepers called 
 jolly-gizing ! 1 The old professor was generally mounted 
 on a bony giant, whose trot kept most of us at a hand-gal- 
 lop. 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 
 
 1 Professor Sedgwick gave Geological Field Lectures on horse- 
 back to a class in the neighborhood of Cambridge. 
 
28 Charles Kingsley 
 
 method of reaching those try sting-places was not legiti- 
 mate, the greater number preferring the field to the road, 
 so that the unhappy owners of the horses found it neces- 
 sary to charge more for a day’s jolly-gizing than they did 
 for a day’s hunting. To crown our sports, we have now 
 only to add the all-absorbing boating. ...” 
 
 In the summer of 1839 his father took country 
 duty for two months at Ipsden, in Oxfordshire, 
 and settled with his family in the little parsonage 
 house. On the 6th of July, Charles (then an un- 
 dergraduate) 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, with its unsatisfied, hungering, and at times 
 defiant look, bore witness to the state of his mind. 
 It had a sad longing expression too, which seemed 
 to say that he had all his life been looking for a 
 sympathy he had never yet found — a rest which 
 he never would attain in this world. His peculiar 
 character had not been understood at home, 
 and his heart had been half asleep. It woke up 
 now, never to sleep again. For the first time he 
 could speak with perfect freedom, and be met with 
 answering sympathy; and gradually as the new 
 friendship (which yet seemed old — from the 
 first more of a recognition than an acquaintance) 
 deepened into intimacy, every doubt, every thought, 
 every failing, was laid bare. Counsel was asked 
 and given, all things in heaven and earth dis- 
 cussed ; and as new hopes dawned, the look of 
 hard defiance gave way to a wonderful tender- 
 ness, and a “ humility more irresistible even than 
 his eloquence,” which were his characteristics, 
 with those who understood him, to his dying day. 
 
Oxfordshire 29 
 
 The Oxford Tracts had lately appeared, and, 
 while discussing them from the merely human and 
 not the religious standpoint, he fiercely denounced 
 the ascetic view of the most sacred ties which he 
 foresaw would result from them : his keen eye de- 
 tecting 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.” 
 
 He was just like his own Lancelot in “ Yeast,” 
 in that summer of 1839 — a bold thinker, a hard 
 rider, a “ most chivalrous gentleman” — sad, shy, 
 and serious habitually; in conversation at one 
 moment brilliant and impassioned — the next re- 
 served and unapproachable — by turns attracting 
 and repelling: but pouring forth to the one friend 
 whom he could trust, stores of thought and feeling 
 and information, which seemed boundless, on every 
 sort of unexpected subject. It was a feast for any 
 imagination and intellect to hold communion with 
 Charles Kingsley even at the age of twenty. The 
 originality with which he treated every subject was 
 startling, and his genius lit up each object it ap- 
 proached, whether he spoke of “ the delicious 
 shiver of those aspen leaves,” on the nearest tree, 
 or of the deepest laws of humanity and the contro- 
 versies of the day. Of that intercourse truly 
 might these friends each say with Goethe — a For 
 the first time, I may well say, I carried on a con- 
 versation ; 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. . . 
 
30 Charles Kingsley 
 
 Two months of such communion passed away 
 only too quickly, and though from this time for 
 the next four years and a half, the two friends met 
 but seldom, and corresponded at rare intervals, a 
 new life had dawned for both, which neither ab- 
 sence nor sorrow, nor adverse circumstances, their 
 own difference of religious opinions, or the oppo- 
 sition of their relations, could extinguish. Before 
 he left Oxfordshire, 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 faith and 
 unbelief, and between hopes and fears 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 of every kind 
 — boating, hunting, driving, fencing, boxing, duck- 
 shooting in the Fens, — anything to deaden the 
 remembrance of the happy past, which just then 
 promised no future. But through all, God kept 
 him in those dark days for a work he little dreamed 
 of. More than once he had nearly resolved, if his 
 earthly hopes were crushed, to leave Cambridge 
 and go out to the Far West to live as a wild prairie 
 hunter ; to this he refers when for the first time he 
 found himself on the prairies of America on May 
 ii , 1874. 
 
 “We are at Omaha !” he wrote home, “and opposite 
 to us is Council Bluffs ! ! Thirty years ago the palaver- 
 ing ground of trappers and Indians (now all gone), and 
 to that very spot, which I had known of from a boy, and 
 all about it, I meant to go as soon as I took my degree, 
 if, . . . and throw myself into the wild life, to sink or 
 swim, escaping from a civilization which only tempted me 
 
A Turning Point 31 
 
 and maddened me with the envy of a poor man ! Oh ! 
 how good God has been to me. Oh ! how when I saw 
 those Bluffs yesterday morning I thanked God for you, 
 for everything, and stared at them till I cried. . . 
 
 Many years later, when Rector of Eversley, he 
 says, in speaking of this period to a stranger who 
 made full confession to him about his own doubts 
 and difficulties, “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 my- 
 self the riddle of life and this world, till I found 
 that no explanation was so complete as the one 
 which one had learnt at one's mother's knee. 
 Complete nothing can be on this side of the 
 grave, of which St. Paul himself said, that he 
 only saw through a glass darkly; but complete 
 enough to give comfort to the weary hearts of my 
 poor laboring folk, and to mine also, which is 
 weary enough at times. . . 
 
 As time went on his theological difficulties about 
 the Trinity and other Christian doctrines increased. 
 He revolted from what seemed to him then, to use 
 his own words, the “ bigotry, cruelty, and quibbling," 
 of the Athanasian Creed, that very Creed which in 
 after years was his stronghold ; and he had little 
 faith in the clergy with whom he came in contact. 
 
 “ From very insufficient and ambiguous grounds in the 
 Bible, they seem unjustifiably to have built up a huge 
 superstructure, whose details they have filled in accord- 
 ing to their own fancies, 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 flip- 
 pant or bitter — no vein of noisy and shallow blasphemy 
 
32 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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. . . ” 
 December , 1840. — “ You cannot conceive the mo- 
 ments of self-abasement and self-shame I have. . . . 
 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 Chris- 
 tian belief acknowledges. But you believe that you have 
 a sustaining Hand to guide you along that path, an In- 
 vincible Protector and an unerring Guide. I, alas ! have 
 no stay for my weary steps, but that same abused and 
 stupefied reason which has stumbled and wandered, and 
 betrayed me a thousand times ere now, and is every mo- 
 ment 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 envel- 
 oped 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 benevo- 
 lence of Him in 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. . . 
 
 January , 1841. — u . . . I have an instinctive, per- 
 haps a foolish fear, of anything like the use of religious 
 phraseology, because I am sure that if these expressions 
 were used by any one, placed as I now am, to me, I should 
 doubt the writer’s sincerity. I find that if I allow myself 
 ever to use, even to my own heart, those vague and trite 
 
A Turning Point 33 
 
 expressions, which are generally used as the watchwords 
 of religion, their familiarity makes me careless, or rather 
 dull to their sense, their specious glibness hurrying me on 
 in a mass of language, of whose precise import I have no 
 vital knowledge. 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 be- 
 cause I am afraid of the very suspicion of talking myself 
 into a fanciful 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 emo- 
 tions of a few passionate moments for the calm convic- 
 tions which are to guide me through eternity. . . 
 Some day I must tell you of the dreamy days of boy- 
 hood, when I knew and worshipped nothing but the phys- 
 ical ; when my enjoyment was drawn not from the kind' 
 ness 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 inanimate 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 
 o {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 every work of art, and every specimen 
 of life which fed me with the elements of beauty, the 
 Ideal began to expand, dim but glorious, before my boy- 
 ish eyes. I would tell you how I paused on that height 
 vol. 1. — 3 
 
34 Charles Kingsley 
 
 awhile, nor thought that beyond there lay another Ideal 
 — the reflected image of God’s mind ; but that was 
 reserved for a later period. Here I sought happiness 
 awhile, but was still unsatisfied. 
 
 “ I have not much time for poetry , 1 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 knowledge, of worn-out philosophies, 
 and scientific theories long exploded — 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. . . 2 
 
 1 The only poems of this date were “Twin Stars,” and 
 “ Palinodia.” 
 
 2 It is but fair to him to say that in after years his riper judg- 
 ment made him more just to his University and her course of 
 studies, and in the preface to his Alexandrian Lectures, he speaks 
 of what he owes to his Alma Mater. “ In the hey-day of youth- 
 ful greediness and ambition, when the mind, dazzled by the vast- 
 ness and variety of the universe, must needs know everything, or 
 rather know about everything, at once and on the spot, too many 
 are apt, as I have been in past years, to complain of Cambridge 
 studies, as too dry and narrow : but as time teaches the student, 
 year by year, what is really required for an understanding of the 
 objects with which he meets, he begins to find that his university, 
 in as far as he has really received her teaching into himself, has 
 given him, in her criticism, her mathematics, ab ove al l in Plato, 
 something which all the popular knowledge, the lectures, and in- 
 stitutions of the day, and even good books themselves, cannot 
 give, a boon more precious than learning, namely, the art of learn- 
 ing. That, instead of casting into his lazy lap treasures which he 
 would not have known how to use, she has taught him to mine for 
 himself ; and has, by her wise refusal to gratify his intellectual 
 greediness, excited his hunger, only that he may be the stronger to 
 
Undergraduate Days 35 
 
 Cambridge: February, 1841. — “l 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 con- 
 tinually. ... I am reading seven to eight hours a day. 
 I have refused hunting and driving. My trial of this new 
 mode of life has been short, but to ' have begun it is the 
 greatest difficulty. There is still much more to be done, 
 and there are more pure and unworldly motives of 
 improvement, but actions will pave the way for motives, 
 almost as much as motives do for actions. . . . You 
 cannot understand the excitement of animal exercise 
 from the mere act of cutting wood or playing cricket to 
 the manias of hunting or shooting or fishing. On these 
 things more or less most young men live. Every 
 moment which is taken from them for duty or for reading 
 is felt to be lost — to be so much time sacrificed to hard 
 circumstance. And even those who have calmed from 
 age, or from the necessity of attention to a profession, 
 which has become custom, have the same feelings flowing 
 as an 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 can- 
 not 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 
 
 hunt and till for his own subsistence ; and thus, the deeper he 
 drinks, in after years, at fountains wisely forbidden to him while 
 he was a Cambridge student, and sees his old companions grow- 
 ing up into sound-headed and sound-hearted practical men, liberal 
 and expansive, and yet with a firm standing ground for thought 
 and action, he learns to complain less and less of Cambridge 
 studies, and more and more of that conceit and haste of his own, 
 which kept him from reaping the full advantages of her training.” 
 — Alexandria and her Schools. Four lectures, delivered at 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 
 
36 Charles Kingsley 
 
 direct it into the proper channel, and to bring it under 
 subjection. I have been reading Plato on this very sub- 
 ject, and you would be charmed with his ideas. ... Of 
 the existence of this quality there can be no doubt, and 
 you must remember the peculiar trial which this ” (allud- 
 ing 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. . . . 
 
 /: ; W tbs* ..i^ r --As for my degree, I can yet take high honors in the 
 fy , . r University, and get my fellowship. ... I forgot to thank 
 you for the books. I am utterly delighted with them. ” 
 
 S «. fy £* / ' 
 
 The books referred to were Carlyle's works, 
 and Coleridge's “ Aids to Reflection." Carlyle's 
 “ French Revolution," sent previously by the same 
 friend, had had a remarkable effect on his mind 
 before he decided upon taking holy orders, in 
 establishing and intensifying his belief in God's 
 righteous government of the world. The Mis- 
 cellanies," and “ Past and Present," placed him 
 under a still deeper debt to Mr. Carlyle, whom he 
 spoke of as “ that old Hebrew prophet, who goes 
 to prince and beggar and says, ‘ If you do this or 
 that, you shall go to Hell ' — not the hell that 
 priests talk of, but a hell on this earth." 
 
 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 a 
 great change had passed over him, and thus he 
 speaks of it: 
 
 “ I repent, no resolution which I have made — because 
 my determination was not the sudden impulse of a 
 moment — but the expansion into clear certainty of plans 
 which have been most strangely rising up before me for 
 
To Take Orders 
 
 37 
 
 many months. Day after day there has been an involun- 
 tary still small voice directing me to the Church, as the 
 only rest for my troubled spirit in this world or the 
 next. ... I am under a heavy debt to God . . . how 
 can I better strive to pay it than by devoting myself to 
 the religion which I have scorned, and becoming a 
 preacher of purity and holiness — a determined and dis- 
 interested upholder of the only true and perfect system, 
 the Church of Christ. The time passed lately in sor- 
 row . . . has produced a most powerful and vivid 
 change in my every thought, feeling, and intention. I 
 believe and I pray. Can I be what I was ? . . . Every- 
 thing I do, in my studies, in my plans, in my actions is 
 now and shall be done in reference first to God . . . 
 and neither fame or vanity, or excitement of any kind 
 shall (if prayers will avail, as I know they will,) turn me 
 away from the steady looking forward to this end. . . .” 
 
 May , 1841. — “ My only reasons for working for a 
 degree are that I may enter the world with a certain 
 prestige which may get me a living sooner. . . . Several 
 of my intimate friends here, strange to say, are going into 
 the Church, so that our rooms, when we are not reading, 
 are full of clerical conversation. One of my friends goes 
 up for ordination next week. How I envy him his 
 change of life. I feel as if, once in the Church, I could 
 cling so much closer to God. I feel more and more 
 daily that a clergyman’s life is the one for which both my 
 physique and morale were intended — that the profession 
 will check and guide the faulty parts of my mind, while it 
 gives full room for my energy — that energy which had 
 so nearly ruined me ; but will now be devoted utterly, I 
 hope, to the service of God. My Views of theoretical 
 religion are getting more clear daily, as I feel more com- 
 pletely the necessity of faith. . . 
 
 June 12, 1841. — “My birth-night. I have been for 
 the last hour on the sea-shore, not dreaming, but think- 
 ing deeply and strongly, and forming determinations 
 
38 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 recalled. . . 
 
 To his mother he writes from Cambridge: 
 
 June, 1841. — “I 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, perhaps, and more calmly so, than I 
 ever felt before. God grant that this may last. I saw Bate- 
 son to-day, and settled with him as to hours, &c. . . .” 
 
 “ . . . I send you my Sunday evening letter, as a re- 
 fresher to my own mind as well as yours. I am now set- 
 tled to reading for the next five weeks. . . .” 
 
 October , 1841. — “I am going to try what keeping 
 every chapel will do to my mind. I am sure it ought to 
 sober and quiet 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 Shel- 
 ford. 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 Izaak 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.” 
 
Correspondence 39 
 
 January, 1842. — “ My degree hangs over my thoughts 
 like a vast incubus keeping me down, and every moment 
 which is not devoted to my 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 inquiries, 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 miser- 
 able 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 borne 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 — legis- 
 late for him accordingly. 
 
 “ Your own boy, 
 
 “C. Kingsley .’ 1 
 
 While at College his physical strength was great. 
 He walked one day from Cambridge to London, 
 fifty-two miles, starting early and arriving in Lon- 
 don at 9 P. M., with ease. For many years after- 
 wards, a walk of twenty to twenty-five miles a day 
 
40 Charles Kingsley 
 
 was simply a refreshment to him ; and during ex- 
 amination time he says : 
 
 “ I have walked ten miles down the Cam to-day and 
 back, pike fishing. My panacea for stupidity and ‘ over- 
 mentation ’ is a day in a roaring Fen wind.” 
 
 In February he went in for his examination, and 
 while it was going on writes to an Oxford friend 
 who was in danger of losing high honors from 
 overwork : 
 
 February 6, 1842. — “. . . 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' ? 
 . . . 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 systematize for itself after you leave college.” 
 
 February 13. — “ . . . As to your degree, leave it in 
 God’s hands. ... You have been, I fear, too much 
 accustomed to consider university honors 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 iroOev kcu 7tol of our wonderful humanity, 
 for the inquiry into the duties and the capabilities of 
 mankind, and its application to their and our own per- 
 fection. 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 
 
Takes His Degree 41 
 
 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 announce- 
 ment 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 excellence, 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 honor- 
 able ambition ; I wish to see it more worthily directed. 
 I have felt it myself; and circumstances, more than my 
 own reason, have weaned me from it. I have been toil- 
 ing almost as hard as you, and in fact much harder than 
 my health would allow, for the last six months. . . . 
 All through life, I fear, or at least, all through youth, age, 
 and perhaps till we shake off the earthly husk, we must 
 more or less use 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 vigor. . . . My 
 degree, I have got — i. e ., my mathematical one. I 
 came out to my great astonishment, and that of my tutor, 
 a tolerable second-class, with very little reading. The 
 classical examination comes on on Monday, and whether 
 I shall get my first-class or not, is the rub. If I do not, 
 I have not health to accuse like you, but previous idleness 
 in my second and first year. So I shall have some cause 
 to repine, if man has cause to repine at anything. I read 
 myself ill this week, and have been ordered to shut up every 
 book till the examination, and in fact the last three weeks 
 in which I had to make a rally from the violent exertion of 
 
42 Charles Kingsley 
 
 the mathematical tripos, have been spent in agonies of 
 pain with leeches on my head . . . just when I ought 
 to have been straining every nerve. I was very fretful, at 
 first, but I have now, thank God, conquered it, and for 
 the last forty-eight hours not thought of the examination. 
 I cannot be low, I may be high. ... I am going 
 after my degree to read divinity for five months (I shall 
 be ordained, I hope, in September,) at a place called 
 Holne, in Dartmoor, Devon. ... I am going there 
 to recover my health, not my spirits — I defy the world 
 to break them. And you will want calm and relaxation 
 after your labors. . . . Come down to see me. . . . 
 Whether you will despise hard beds and dimity curtains, 
 morning baths and evening trout-fishing, mountain mut- 
 ton and Devonshire cream, I do not know, but you will 
 not despise the calm of a few weeks in which to com- 
 mune with God in His works, and to strengthen mind 
 and body together, before you again commence your 
 labors ; for remember always, toil is the condition of our 
 being . Our sentence is to labor from the cradle to the 
 grave. But there are Sabbaths allowed for the mind as 
 well as the body, when the intellect is stilled, and the 
 emotions alone perform their gentle and involuntary 
 functions, and to such a Sabbath I will lead you next 
 summer . 99 
 
 An incident which occured during the examina- 
 tion, and was much talked of at the time, is recalled 
 by Mr. Kewley, Rector of Baldock: 
 
 “ On one morning but one question remained of a 
 paper on mechanics, ‘ Describe a common pump.’ Of 
 the internal machinery of the pump Kingsley was un- 
 able to render a scientific account, but of the outside 
 his vivid imagination supplied a picture which his facile 
 pencil soon transferred to paper. Under the heading, 
 6 Describe a Pump/ he drew a grand village pump in the 
 midst of a broad green, and opposite the porch of an 
 
Takes His Degree 43 
 
 ancient church. By the side of the pump stood, in all 
 pomposity of his office, the village beadle, with uniform 
 and baton. Around were women and children of all ages, 
 shapes, dress, and sizes, each carrying a crock, a jug, a 
 bucket, or some vessel large or small. These were drawn 
 with considerable power, and the whole was lighted up 
 with his deep vein of humor; while around the pump 
 itself was a huge chain, padlocked, and surrounded by a 
 notice, 6 This pump locked during Divine service/ This, 
 Kingsley sent up to the examiner as his answer to the 
 question. I know not whether he got any marks for it ; 
 but it was so clever that the moderator of the year had it 
 framed and hung up on the wall of his room.” 
 
 Dr. Bateson, Master of St. John's, his tutor 
 much beloved, in speaking of Charles Kingsley's 
 career, says : 
 
 “ 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. ... It is too true, as 
 no one lamented more than himself, that from various 
 causes he made but an indifferent use of the opportuni- 
 ties 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 universities. 
 Whether it is that our system of training and of fre- 
 quent examinations, has something in it which is repul- 
 sive 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 them- 
 selves 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 
 
44 Charles Kingsley 
 
 work, until quite the close of his undergraduate career. 
 Then indeed, he seemed an altered man. With wonder- 
 ful ability and surprising 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 undergradu- 
 ate 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 / 7 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 1842-1843 
 Aged 23-24 
 
 Leaves Cambridge — Reads for Holy Orders — Extracts 
 from Letters — Ordained Deacon — Curacy of Eversley 
 — Parish Work — Parting Words. 
 
 “ Blessed is he who has found his work ; let him ask no other 
 blessedness. He has a work, a life purpose ; he has found it, and 
 will follow it ! ” 
 
 Carlyle. 
 
 “Nothing is sweeter than Love, nothing more courageous, 
 nothing higher, nothing wider, nothing more pleasant, nothing 
 fuller nor better in heaven and earth ; because love is born of 
 God, and cannot rest but in God, above all created things. 
 
 “ He that loveth flieth, runneth, and rejoiceth ; he is free and 
 not bound. He giveth all for all, and hath all in all ; because he 
 resteth in One Highest above things, from whom all that is good 
 flows and proceeds. Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of 
 trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of 
 impossibility ; for it thinks all things lawful for itself and all 
 things possible. It is therefore able to undertake all things, and 
 it completes many things, and brings them to a conclusion, where 
 he who does not love faints and lies down. Love watcheth, and 
 sleeping, slumbereth not. Though weary, love is not tired ; 
 though pressed, it is not straitened ; though alarmed, it is not 
 confounded: but as a lively flame, and burning torch, it forces its 
 way upwards, and securely passes through all.” 
 
 Thomas A Kempis. Book III., chap. 5. 
 
 H E left Cambridge in February, exhausted in 
 body and mind, having by six months' des- 
 perate reading done work which should have 
 spread over three years. While studying for Holy 
 Orders, he had the offer of two curacies. 
 
46 Charles Kingsley 
 
 Chelsea: April, 1842. — . . I hope to be or- 
 
 dained in July to the Curacy of Eversley in Hampshire. 
 In the midst of lovely scenery — rich — but not exciting. 
 And you will be with me in your thoughts, in my village 
 visits, and my moorland walks, when I am drinking in 
 from man and nature, the good and the beautiful, while I 
 purge in my vocation the evil, and raise up the falling and 
 the faint. Can I not do it? for have I not fainted and 
 fallen ? And do I not know too well the bitterness that 
 is from without, as well as the more dire one, from within ? 
 . . . My reading at present must be exclusively con- 
 fined to divinity — not so yours. You may still range 
 freely among the meadows of the beautiful, while I am 
 mining in the deep mountains of the true. And so it 
 should be through life. The woman’s part should be to 
 cultivate the affections and the imagination ; the man’s 
 the intellect of their common soul. She must teach him 
 how to apply his knowledge to men’s hearts. He must 
 teach her how to arrange that knowledge into practical 
 and theoretical forms. In this the woman has the nobler 
 task. But there is one more noble still — to find out 
 from the notices of the universe, and the revelation of 
 God, and the uninspired truth which He has made His 
 creatures to declare even in heathen lands, to find out 
 from all these the pure mind of God, and the eternal laws 
 whereby He made us and governs us. This is true sci- 
 ence ; and this, as we discover it, will replace phantoms 
 by reality, and that darkling taper of ‘ common sense/ by 
 the glorious light of certainty. For this the man must 
 bring his philosophy, and the woman her exquisite sense 
 of the beautiful and the just, and all hearts and all lands 
 shall lie open before them, as they gradually know them 
 one by one ! That glorious word know — it is God’s at- 
 tribute, and includes in itself all others. Love — truth — 
 all are parts of that awful power of knowing, at a single 
 glance, from and to all eternity, what a thing is in its es- 
 sence, its properties, and its relations to the whole uni- 
 
Extracts from Letters 47 
 
 verse through all time ! I feel awe-struck whenever I see 
 that word used rightly, and I never, if I can remember 
 use it myself of myself. But to us, as to dying Schiller, 
 hereafter many things will become plain and clear. And 
 this is no dream of romance. It is what many have ap- 
 proximated to before us, with less intellectual, and no 
 greater spiritual advantages ; and strange to say, some of 
 them alo?ie — buried in cloisters seldom — in studies 
 often — some, worst of all, worn down by the hourly 
 misery of a wife who neither loved them nor felt for 
 them : but to those who, through love, have once caught 
 a glimpse of ‘ the great secret/ what may they not do by 
 it in years of love and thought? For this heavenly knowl- 
 edge is not, as boyish enthusiasts fancy, the work of a 
 day or a year. Youth will pass before we shall have made 
 anything but a slight approximation to it, and having 
 handed down to our children the little wisdom we shall 
 have amassed while here, we shall commend them to 
 God, and enter eternity very little wiser in proportion to 
 the universal knowledge than we were when we left it at 
 our birth. But still if our plans are not for time, but for 
 eternity, our knowledge, and therefore our love to God, 
 to each other, to ourselves, to every thing, will progress 
 for ever. 
 
 “ And this scheme is practical too — for the attainment 
 of this heavenly wisdom requires neither ecstasy nor rev- 
 elation, but prayer, and watchfulness, and observation, 
 and deep and solemn thought. And two great rules for 
 its attainment are simple enough — 6 Never forget what 
 and where you are ; 9 and, ‘ Grieve not the Holy Spirit/ 
 And it is not only compatible with our duties as priests of 
 the Eternal, but includes them as one of the means to its 
 attainment, for c if a man will do God’s will, he shall know 
 of the doctrine, whether it be of God.’ They do not 
 speak without scriptural as well as theoretical foundation, 
 who think that we may hereafter be called upon to preach 
 God to other worlds beside our own ; and if this be so, 
 
48 Charles Kingsley 
 
 does not the acquirement of this knowledge become a 
 duty? Knowledge and love are reciprocal. He who 
 loves knows. He who knows loves. Saint John is the 
 example of the first, Saint Paul of the second.” 
 
 In the interval between Cambridge and his cu- 
 racy he began to write the life of St. Elizabeth of 
 Hungary, his ideal saint; which he illustrated 
 with his own exquisite drawings in pen and ink, 
 not intending it for publication, but as a gift book 
 to his wife on his marriage-day, if that day should 
 ever come. 
 
 “When it is finished/’ he says, “I have another work 
 of the same kind to begin — a life of St. Theresa — as 
 a specimen of the dreamy mystic, in contrast with the 
 working ascetic, St. Elizabeth, and to contrast the celi- 
 bate saint with the married one. For this we must read 
 Tersteegen, Jacob Behmen, Madam Guyon, Alban Butler, 
 Fenelon, some of Origen and Clemens Alexandrinus, and 
 Coleridge’s ‘ Aids/ &c., also some of Kant, and a Ger- 
 man history of mysticism. In order to understand 
 puritanism and evangelicalism, we must thoroughly un- 
 derstand asceticism and mysticism, which have to be 
 eradicated from them in preaching our ‘ Message.’ ” 
 
 In the Introduction to this MSS. life he says : 
 
 “ You know what first turned my attention to 
 
 the Oxford Tracts ; but you do not know that my own 
 heart strangely yearned towards them from the first ; that 
 if they had not struck at the root of wedded happiness, I 
 too had been ensnared ! . . . But when I read I soon saw 
 that the Oxford writings contained only half truths : that 
 if what they said was true, much more what they did not 
 say, was true also ! . . . that Popery was their climax — 
 the full development of their theory — the abyss to which 
 
Extracts from Letters 49 
 
 they were hurrying, dallying on the brink, afraid to plunge 
 in, and be honest ! Then came the question, ‘ What is 
 this Popery?’ Was it altogether a lie ? Did all Christen- 
 dom, with the Apostles’ Creed in their mouths and hearts, 
 live a truthless and irrational life for 800 years? Does 
 God ever so desert His Church ? I must know, I said, 
 the truth of this. The soundness of the Reformers, the 
 Catholicity of the English Church, is only certain to him 
 who knows the unsoundness of Popery. What are these 
 Fathers too? If they were fallacies superinduced after 
 their day, how came they, and why, and when? Do men 
 forsake the world for a lie ? Do they die in martyrdom, 
 or self-inflicted tortures altogether for a lie ? Do they go 
 on crusade for a lie’s sake ? Is any great deed the off- 
 
 spring of a lie ? Strange questions ! and not to be 
 answered in a day ! Away with those shallow Encyclo- 
 paedists and Edinburgh Reviewers, with their cant about 
 excited imaginations and popular delusions, and such 
 sense-bound trash ! Being hollow themselves, they 
 fancy all things hollow ! Being sense-bound themselves, 
 they see the energizing Spirit nowhere ! Was there not 
 a spiritual truth, or half truth, or counterfeit of truth in 
 those days as in others, the parent of all religion, all man- 
 liness, all womanhood, all work? Many such thoughts 
 Maurice’s writings raised in me, many such Thomas 
 Carlyle’s, many more the observation, that men never 
 lost sight of Christian charity in their controversies, ex- 
 cept when they did not see that it was a something , right 
 or wrong, which should supply a spiritual want, which 
 their opponents were struggling after. From them I 
 learnt somewhat of true catholicity — of the love which 
 delights to recognize God’s Spirit, through every alloy of 
 age, and character, and circumstance ! 
 
 “ But I would not go on hearsays — Hell is paved with 
 them. To the Fathers I went — from Clement of Rome \ 
 downwards I began to read them, and my task is not half 
 done. At the same time I began with Popish books ; 
 vol. 1 . — 4 
 
50 Charles Kingsley 
 
 not with books written by Protestants against them, or by 
 them against Protestants ; but with books written for Pap- 
 ists, in the full heyday of Rome’s unsuspecting prosperity, 
 before attack was feared, when monks said what they 
 thought, and did what their private judgment and the 
 Church might choose without misgiving or constraint. 
 The acts and the biographies of saints, pictures of Pop- 
 ish life, were my study : their notions and their theories 
 (doctrines men call them), were only worth noticing, as 
 they were the springs of living action. My question was, 
 ‘What must we do , if Popery be right? what if it be 
 wrong ? ’ My heart told me more strongly at every page, 
 that the battle was for life or death to Love ! Is human 
 love unholy — inconsistent with the perfect worship of 
 the Creator ? Is marriage less honorable than virginity ? 
 Are the duties, the relations, the daily food of men, of 
 earth or heaven? Is nature a holy type or a foul prison 
 to our spirits ? Is genius the reflex of God’s mind, or the 
 self-will of man ? These were the heart questions ! And 
 in this book I try to solve them. If I succeed, then we 
 are safe ! If not, then our honest home is Popery — 
 Popery and celibacy. . . . And why have I chosen this 
 biography in particular? Because it is a fair sample of 
 the heart of a Papist, and the work of a Popish saint and 
 heroine, in the days when Popery had a life, a meaning 
 for good and evil — a fair sample, for though superior to 
 all other saints, as gold is to brass, yet she alone shows 
 what the system will effect, when applied to a healthy 
 mind. For her affections had free vent, and did not 
 ulcerate to the surface in brutal self-torture, or lazy 
 mysticism, or unthankful melancholy, or blasphemous 
 raptures. And because, too, she was no ‘ hot-bed 
 saint/ laid on a sick bed, or pent up in a cloister, but 
 abroad and at work, bearing such fruit as Popery can 
 bear, a specimen of what it can effect, when unassisted 
 by an artificial and unnatural mode of life. 
 
 “ Look at her ! . . . Look at the trials, the victories of 
 
Extracts from Letters 5 1 
 
 her heart. ... It is an easy task, for her heart is pure 
 and simple enough to see the life blood of God’s Spirit 
 thrilling through the transparent arteries, yet spotted, 
 alas ! enough from without and from within to let us per- 
 ceive the evil, and see it overcome with good ! ” 
 
 Chelsea : May 7, 1842. — “I have not begun Palm- 
 er’s work on the church yet, and shall not till after my 
 ordination. I am afraid it is not catholic enough to suit 
 me. I hate party books. Men think wrongly when they 
 suppose that in order to combat error, they must not allow 
 their opponents to have the least right on their side ; no 
 opinion in the world hardly is utte?'ly wrong. We must 
 be catholic spirits, and I do not think we shall be the 
 less sound for having been, in the dreary years that are 
 past, tossed about, attached to parties. When I see a 
 man change his opinions often, I say, ‘ This might be made 
 a catholic and valuable mind, if he were well grounded 
 in first principles.’ But alas ! men build on the sand. 
 My great prayer is to be led into all truth. . . . You ask 
 me whether I like Tersteegen. The whole book seems 
 to me a beautiful fallacy ; his great fault the putting out of 
 sight the fact of man’s free will and moral responsibility. 
 
 “ What do you mean by a ‘ father-confessor ’ ? Do 
 not, pray, use such words? I am sure that it is un- 
 womanly for woman, and unmanly for man to make any 
 man his /#//^-confessor. All that another should know 
 of our hearts should be told in the almost involuntary 
 overflowing of love, not in the midst of blushes and 
 trembling to a man who dares to arrogate moral superi- 
 ority over us. I cannot understand the term. I can 
 believe in and think them happy who have a husband- 
 confessor, and a wife-confessor — but a father-confessor is 
 a term I do not allow. ... I can feel veneration as 
 much as any one — perhaps too much , but there is a 
 Christian as well as political liberty, which is quite con- 
 sistent with High-Church principles, which makes the 
 
52 Charles Kingsley 
 
 clergy our teachers — not the keepers of our consciences, 
 but of our creeds . 
 
 • • • • * • • • 
 
 “ I am liking more and more the experimental religion 
 of the Low Church School. I am astonished at the 
 depth and subtlety of knowledge of the human heart, 
 which many of them display. It is so refreshing after the 
 cold dogmatism of the High Church. Both are good in 
 their way. But I want, like such men as Leighton, 
 Jewell, and Taylor, to combine both the dogmatic and 
 the experimental. We must be catholic ; we must hold 
 the whole truth ; we must have no partial or favorite 
 views of Christianity, like the Dissenters and the Tracta- 
 rians. The more I look, the more I see how superior 
 the divines of the seventeenth century were to the present 
 generation, and how they have been belied by the Trac- 
 tarians. . . . These are my secret opinions — mind, I 
 say opinions not convictions. What a man is convinced 
 is true, that God constrains him to tell out fearlessly ; 
 but his opinions — by which are properly meant sus- 
 picions of the truth of a fact which are derived from in- 
 sufficient grounds, these opinions I say, he is bound to 
 keep to himself (except to ask advice on them if they be- 
 long to points where harm may be done), lest having 
 reason to change them, he should find out hereafter that 
 he has been teaching a lie ! ... ” 
 
 June , 1842. — “ . . . Amuse yourself — get poetry and 
 read it — I have a book called ‘ Tennyson’s Poems/ the 
 most beautiful poetry of the last fifteen years. Shall I send it 
 you ? . . . What is our present dreariness and weariness to 
 what it would have been two thousand years ago ? We have 
 now the Rock of Ages to cling to. Then, — there would 
 have been nothing but mist — no certainty but that of our 
 own misery — no hope but the stillness of death — Oh 
 we are highly favored. When I watch the workings of 
 the ancient minds, weighed down with the sense of the 
 mystery of life, and giddy with the ceaseless whirl of 
 
Ordained Deacon 
 
 53 
 
 matter and mind through infinite obscurity, then I feel 
 how safe we are ! Such a man as Lucretius, or Pyrrho, 
 seeing nothing but eternal change — motion — heaven 
 and earth one vast dreary all-devouring vortex, sucking in 
 to destruction all beauty and life and goodness, and re- 
 producing it — with that horrid change-destroyed con- 
 sciousness. Such men as these, to whom the universe 
 seemed one everlasting fiend-dance, infinite in its dreari- 
 ness, eternal in its howlings ; — hero-minds, bowed down 
 with the terror of helplessness, and the degradation of 
 ignorance ; — phantom-builders, trying in vain to arrange 
 the everlasting chaos round them : — these were the wise 
 of old. And we, by the alchemy of God’s Spirit, can by 
 prayer systematize the chaos, and walk upon the rolling 
 mists of infinity, as on solid ground. All is safe — for 
 through all time, changeless and unbroken, extends the 
 Rock of Ages 1 And must we not thank and thank for 
 ever, and toil and toil for ever for Him ? ... Tell me 
 if I am ever obscure in my expressions, and do not fancy 
 that if I am obscure I am therefore deep. If I were 
 really deep, all the world would understand, though they 
 might not appreciate. The perfectly popular style is the 
 perfectly scientific one. To me an obscurity is a reason 
 for suspecting a fallacy. ...” 
 
 In July he was ordained deacon by Bishop 
 Sumner. 
 
 Farnham : July io. — “ God’s mercies are new every 
 morning. Here I am waiting to be admitted in a few 
 hours to His holy ministry, and take refuge for ever in 
 His Temple ! . . . Yet it is an awful thing ! for we 
 promise, virtually at least, to renounce this day not only 
 the devil and the flesh, but the world ; — to do nothing, 
 know nothing, which shall not tend to the furtherance of 
 God’s Kingdom, or the assimilation of ourselves to the 
 Great Ideal, and to our proper place and rank in the 
 great system whose harmony we are to labor to restore 
 
54 Charles Kingsley 
 
 And can we restore harmony to the Church, unless we 
 have restored it to ourselves ? If our own souls are dis- 
 cords to the celestial key, the immutable symphonies 
 which revelation gives us to hear, can we restore the con- 
 cord of the perplexed vibrations round us? . . . We 
 must be holy ! and to be holy we must believe rightly as 
 well as pray earnestly. We must bring to the well of 
 truth a spirit purified from all previous fancies, all medi- 
 cines of our own which may adulterate the water of life ! 
 We must take of that and not of our own, and show it to 
 mankind. It is that glory in the beauty of truth, which 
 was my idol, even when I did not practise or even know 
 truth. But now that I know it, and can practise it, and 
 carry it out into the details of life ; now I am happy ; now 
 I am safe ! . . . 
 
 “ We need not henceforward give up the beautiful for 
 the true, but make the true the test of the beautiful, and 
 the beautiful the object of the true, until to us God 
 appears in perfect beauty ! Thus every word and every 
 leaf which has beauty in it, will be as loved as ever, but 
 they will all be to us impresses of the Divine hand, re- 
 flexes of the Divine mind, lovely fragments of a once 
 harmonious world, whose ruins we are to store up in our 
 hearts, waiting till God restores the broken harmony, and 
 we shall comprehend in all its details the glorious system, 
 where Christ is all in all ! Thus we will love the beauti- 
 ful because it is part of God, though what part it is we 
 cannot see ; and love the true, because it shows us how 
 to find the beautiful ! But back ! back to the thought 
 that in a few hours my whole soul will be waiting silently 
 for the seals of admission to God’s service, of which 
 honor I dare hardly think myself worthy, while I dare 
 not think that God would allow me to enter on them 
 unworthily. . . . Night and morning, for months, my 
 prayer has been : ‘ O God, if I am not worthy ; if my 
 sin in leading souls from Thee is still unpardoned ; if I 
 am desiring to be a deacon not wholly for the sake of 
 
Curacy of Eversley 55 
 
 serving Thee ; if it be necessary to show me my weak- 
 ness and the holiness of Thy office still more strongly, O 
 God, reject me ! , and while I shuddered for your sake at 
 the idea of a repulse, I prayed to be repulsed if it were 
 necessary, and included that in the meaning of my petition 
 1 Thy will be done/ After this what can I consider my 
 acceptance but as a proof that I have not sinned too 
 deeply for escape ! as an earnest that God has heard my 
 prayer and will bless my ministry, and enable me not 
 only to rise myself, but to lift others with me ! Oh ! my 
 soul, my body, my intellect, my very love, I dedicate you 
 all to God ! And not mine only . .. to be an example 
 and an instrument of holiness before the Lord for ever, to 
 dwell in His courts, to purge His temple, to feed His 
 sheep, to carry the lambs and bear them to that foster- 
 mother whose love never fails, whose eye never sleeps, the 
 Bride of God, the Church of Christ ! . . . I would have 
 written when I knew of my success yesterday, but there 
 was no town post. Direct to me next at Eversley ! . . 
 
 And now, at the age of twenty-three, he settled 
 down in Eversley ; little thinking that with a short 
 interval it would be his home for thirty-three years. 
 
 The parish of Eversley 1 (Aper’s lea) was then 
 
 1 “You are right in taking the name of Eversley,” says Mr. 
 Isaac Taylor, author of “ Words and Places,” “ as one of the few 
 remaining records of the former existence of the wild boar in 
 England. In Anglo-Saxon, a wild boar is eofor. An Anglo-Saxon 
 eo commonly answers to modern English e> and Anglo-Saxon ft o 
 modern English v , and Anglo-Saxon o often to English e. All 
 these changes are seen in the word seven , which in Anglo-Saxon 
 was written seofon. Hence Anglo-Saxon eofor would take the 
 English form ever (genitive evers). Ever and eofor are not derived 
 from Latin aper , but are only cousin words derived from a common 
 Aryan parent. The last syllable of Eversley is the Anglo-Saxon 
 tedhy which means a bosky place — a sort of open pasturage more 
 or less wooded, like the unenclosed glades in the New Forest.” 
 
 Mr. Taylor was not aware that part of the parish of Eversley 
 was called Bramshill ; i. e ., Brawnshill, or the Hill of Wild Boars, 
 which sustains his theory. M. K. 
 
56 Charles Kingsley 
 
 mostly common land, divided into three hamlets, 
 each standing on its own little green, surrounded 
 by the moorland with young forests of self-sown 
 fir trees cropping up in every direction. It was on 
 the borders of Old Windsor Forest; and the old 
 men could remember the time when many a royal 
 deer used to stray into Eversley parish. The 
 population was very scattered — “ heth croppers ” 
 from time immemorial and poachers by instinct 
 and heritage. Every man in those days could 
 snare his hare, and catch a good dinner of fish in 
 waters not then strictly preserved; and the old 
 women would tell of the handsome muffs and 
 tippets, made of pheasants' feathers, not got with 
 money, which they wore in their young days. To 
 use their rector's own words, after he had lived 
 among them for sixteen years : 
 
 “ The clod of these parts is the descendant of many 
 generations of broom squires and deer stealers ; the in- 
 stinct of sport is strong within him still, though no more 
 of the Queen’s deer are to be shot in the winter turnip 
 fields, or worse, caught by an apple-baited hook hung 
 from an orchard bough. He now limits his aspirations to 
 hares and pheasants, and too probably once in his life 
 ‘ hits the keeper into the river,’ and re-considers himself 
 for a while over a crank in Winchester jail. Well, he 
 has his faults, and I have mine. But he is a thorough 
 good fellow nevertheless. Civil, contented, industrious, 
 and often very handsome ; a far shrewder fellow too — 
 owing to his dash of wild forest blood from gypsy, high- 
 wayman, and what not — than his bullet-headed and 
 flaxen-polled cousin, the pure South Saxon of the chalk 
 downs. Dark-haired he is, ruddy, and tall of bone ; 
 swaggering in his youth : but when he grows old a thor- 
 ough gentleman, reserved, stately, and courteous as a 
 prince. ...” — [“ Winter Garden — Prose Idylls.”] 
 
Curacy of Eversley 57 
 
 Of the peculiar feature of the parish — its fir 
 trees — including the three fine specimens on the 
 rectory lawn, which were his joy and pride, he 
 says: 
 
 “ Whether, as we hold traditionally here, the Scotch fir 
 was re-introduced by James I. when he built Bramshill 
 for Henry the prince, or whatever may have been the 
 date of their re-introduction, here they are, and no one 
 can turn them out. In countless thousands the winged 
 seeds float down the southwest gales from the older trees ; 
 and every seed which falls takes root in ground which, 
 however unable to bear broad-leaved trees, is ready by 
 long rest for the seeds of the needle-leaved ones. . . . 
 Truly beautiful — grand indeed to me it is — to see young 
 live Nature thus carrying on a great savage process in the 
 heart of this old and seemingly all-artificial English land ; 
 and reproducing here, as surely as in the Australian bush, 
 a native forest, careless of mankind. . . .” — [“ Winter 
 Garden — Prose Idylls.”] 
 
 July 17th was Charles Kingsley’s first day of 
 public ministration in Eversley Church. “ I was 
 not nervous,” he says, “ for I had prayed before 
 going into the desk that I might remember that I 
 was not speaking on my own authority, but on 
 God’s, and the feeling that the responsibility (if I 
 may so speak) was on God and not on me quieted 
 the weak terror I have of offending people.” 
 Before his coming, the church services had been 
 utterly neglected. It sometimes happened that 
 when the rector had a cold, or some trifling ail- 
 ment, he would send the clerk to the church door 
 at eleven, to tell the few who attended that there 
 would be no service. In consequence the ale- 
 houses were full on Sunday and the church empty r 
 
58 Charles Kingsley 
 
 and it was up-hill work getting a congregation 
 together. 
 
 For the first six weeks of his curate life he lived 
 in the rectory house, and the following letter con- 
 tained a sketch of the lawn and glebe from the 
 drawing-room windows and a plan of the room. 
 
 Eversley Rectory: July 14, 1842. — “ Can you 
 understand my sketch ? I am no drawer of trees, but the 
 view is beautiful. The ground slopes upward from the 
 windows to a sunk fence and road, without banks or 
 hedges, and then rises in the furze hill in the drawing, 
 which hill is perfectly beautiful in light and shade, and 
 color. . . . Behind the acacia on the lawn you get the 
 first glimpse of the fir-forests and moors, of which five- 
 sixths of my parish consist. Those delicious self-sown 
 firs ! Every step I wander they whisper to me of you, 
 the delicious past melting into the more delicious future. 
 ‘ What has been, shall be/ they say ! I went the other 
 day to Bramshill Park, the home of the seigneur de pays 
 here, Sir John Cope. And there I saw the very tree 
 where an ancestor of mine, Archbishop Abbott, in James 
 the First’s time, shot the keeper by accident ! I sat 
 under the tree, and it all seemed to me like a present 
 reality. I could fancy the noble old man, very different 
 then from his picture as it hangs in our dining-room at 
 Chelsea. I could fancy the deer sweeping by, and the 
 rattle of the cross-bow, and the white splinters sparkling 
 off the fated tree as the bolt glanced and turned — and 
 then the death shriek, and the stagger, and the heavy fall 
 of the sturdy forester — and the bow dropping from the 
 old man’s hands, and the blood sinking to his heart in 
 one chilling rush, and his glorious features collapsing into 
 that look of changeless and rigid sorrow, which haunted 
 me in the portrait upon the wall in childhood. He never 
 smiled again ! And that solemn form always spoke to 
 me, though I did not then know what it meant. It is 
 
Parish Work 
 
 59 
 
 strange that that is almost the only portrait saved in the 
 wreck of our family. 1 * * * * * As I sat under the tree, there 
 seemed to be a solemn and remorseful moan in the long 
 branches, mixed with the airy whisper of the lighter 
 leaves that told of present as well as past ! I am going to 
 dine at one to-day, and walk all the cool of the evening, 
 for my head is sadly worn of late, and I have been ser- 
 mon-writing all the morning. My books are not come 
 yet, and I cannot set to work in earnest — perhaps it is 
 as well, for I want rest, though I shall not forget about 
 6 making fatigue a plea for indolence. 7 I go to the school 
 every day, and teach as long as I can stand the heat and 
 smell. The few children are in a room ten feet square 
 and seven feet high. I am going after dinner to read to 
 an old woman of 87 ; so you see I have begun. This is 
 a plan of my room. It is a large, low, front room, with a 
 light paper and drab curtains, and a large bow window, 
 where I sit, poor me, solitary in one corner. . . .” 
 
 July 16. — “. . . The great mysticism is the belief 
 which is becoming every day stronger with me that all 
 symmetrical natural objects, aye, and perhaps all forms, 
 colors, and scents which show organization or arrange- 
 ment, are types of some spiritual truth or existence, of a 
 grade between the symbolical type and the mystic type. 
 When I walk the fields I am oppressed every now and 
 then with an innate feeling, that everything I see has a 
 meaning, if I could but understand it. And this feeling 
 of being surrounded with truths which I cannot grasp, 
 amounts to indescribable awe sometimes ! Everything 
 
 1 This picture of Archbishop Abbott, by Vandyke, came into 
 the family through William Kingsley, born 1626, Gentleman of 
 the Privy Chamber to Charles II., son of William Kingsley, Arch- 
 
 deacon of Canterbury, and Damaris his wife, who was a niece to 
 
 Robertus Abbott, Archbishop of Canterbury. The archbishop 
 
 was a great friend of Lord Zouche, then owner of Bramshill Park,, 
 
 and while on a visit there accidentally killed the keeper with a 
 
 bolt from his cross-bow aimed at a stag. He was suspended for a 
 
 time in consequence. 
 
6o 
 
 Charles Kingsley 
 
 seems to be full of God’s reflex, if we could but see it. 
 Oh ! how 1 have prayed to have the mystery unfolded, at 
 least hereafter! To see, if but for a moment, the whole 
 harmony of the great system ! To hear once the music 
 which the whole universe makes as it performs His 
 bidding ! Oh, that heaven ! The thought of the first 
 glance of Creation from thence ! when we know even as we 
 are known ! and He, the glorious, the beautiful, the 
 incarnate Ideal shall be justified in all His doings, and in 
 all and through all and over all ! When I feel that sense 
 of the mystery that is around me, I feel a gush of 
 enthusiasm towards God, which seems its inseparable 
 effect ! ... All day, glimpses from the other world — 
 floating motes from that inner transcendental life, have 
 been flitting across me, just as they used in childhood, 
 when the seen and the unseen were one, an undistinguish- 
 able twin mystery ; the one not yet forgotten, the other 
 not yet learnt so perfectly as to dazzle, by its coarse glare, 
 the spirit-perceptions which the soul learnt to feel in 
 another world. . . . Have you not felt that your real soul 
 was imperceptible to your mental vision, except at a few 
 hallowed moments ? that in every-day life the mind, look- 
 ing at itself, only sees the brute intellect, grinding and 
 working; not the Divine particle, which is life and 
 immortality, and on which the Spirit of God most prob- 
 ably works, as being most cognate to Deity ? . . . More 
 and more do I see daily the tremendous truth that all our 
 vaunted intellect is nothing — nothing but a noble 
 mechanism, and that the source of feeling is the soul. 
 This thought begins to explain to me the mysteries of 
 moral responsibility and moral culture. . . 
 
 Aug., 1842. — “ To-day it is hotter than yesterday, if 
 possible, so I wandered out into the fields, and have been 
 passing the morning in a lonely woodland bath — a little 
 stream that trickles off the moor — with the hum of bees, 
 and the sleepy song of birds around me, and the feeling 
 of the density of life in myriads of insects and flowers 
 
Parish Work 
 
 61 
 
 strong upon me, drinking in all the forms of beauty which 
 lie in the leaves and pebbles, and mossy nooks of damp 
 tree roots, and all the lowly intricacies of nature which no 
 one stoops to see ; and while eye and ear were possessed 
 with the feeling that all had a meaning — all was a type 
 — a language, which we should know in heaven, the in- 
 tellect was not dreaming asleep, but alternately investigating 
 my essay- subject, and then wandering away to you. And 
 over all, as the cool water trickled on, hovered the 
 delicious sense of childhood, and simplicity, and purity 
 and peace, which every temporary return to a state of 
 nature gives ! A woodland bath to me always brings 
 thoughts of Paradise. I know not whether they are fore- 
 tastes of the simple bliss that shall be in the renovated 
 earth, or whether they are back glimpses into the former 
 ages, when we wandered — Do you remember ? — beside 
 the ocean of eternal love ! 
 
 “ 1 Hence in a season of calm weather, 
 
 When inland far we be, 
 
 Our souls have sight of that eternal sea 
 That brought us hither ! 
 
 Can see the children sport upon the shore, 
 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.’ 
 
 " I read some of the sermons by authors of ; Tracts for 
 the Times,’ which you gave me. There is the same 
 moaning piety in them, and something darker. I was 
 frightened at a sermon of Newman’s on 6 Christian 
 Reverence,’ in which he tries to show that Christ used 
 to ‘ deter 9 people and repel them ! He illustrates it by 
 the case of the young ruler, and says that fie was severe 
 on Nicodemus, and that ‘ He made Himself strange and 
 spake roughly’ to those who inquired. This is very dark 
 and dismal. I had thought that we were to ‘ come boldly 
 to the throne of grace/ But, no! we are to return, 
 under Christianity, to the terrors of the law. We are to 
 become ‘ again entangled with the yoke of bo?idage 9 
 (mind that verse), by having to expiate our own sins by 
 
62 Charles Kingsley 
 
 fasting, alms, and penance ! Is this the liberty with which 
 Christ has made us free ? I declare (I speak under God’s 
 correction and with reverence) that if these doctrines be 
 Christianity, we should be happier here, and safer here- 
 after, as Jews or heathens ! . . . Can you not see what 
 my horror of Popery and Tractarianism arises from ? Do 
 you not see that if you once allow of good works having 
 any expiatory power, you do away with all real morality, 
 because you destroy its disinterestedness ! If a man does 
 good works to be saved from hell by them, what is he but 
 selfish? We ought to do good works from gratitude to 
 Christ, and from admiration of His character. . . . 
 
 “ Do you not see the noble standard of Christian 
 morality, and its infinite superiority to this? . . . Talk- 
 ing of the Tractators — so you still like their tone / And 
 so do I. There is a solemn and gentleman-like, and 
 gentle earnestness which is most beautiful, and which I 
 wish I may ever attain. But you have just as much rea- 
 son for following them, or even reading them much on 
 that account, as the moth has for fluttering round the 
 candle because it is bright. The case is hackneyed but 
 the analogy is perfect. 
 
 “ The Christian religion is all through anthropomorphic, 
 or suited to the intellect and feelings of finite man, and 
 proposing the worship of a God, not only manifested as 
 similar to us in intellect and feelings, but even incarnate in 
 a human body. ... Now this religion appeals to the 
 intellect of mankind for its truth, as you will find in many 
 parts of Scripture — a plain fact that it is comprehensible 
 by that intellect ; that is to say, all the anthropomorphic 
 part of it. All that part again which connects this particu- 
 lar scheme , with God’s infi?iite scheme of eternity and the 
 whole universe, is transcendental, and not to be under- 
 stood, and there we must not intrude. Such are the 
 doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, Free will, and 
 Predestination, and the operation of the Holy Spirit. 
 
Parish Work 63 
 
 But for all parts of the religion which belong particularly 
 to the Christian scheme, there we are commanded to 
 search the Scriptures and satisfy ourselves as thoroughly 
 as we can. Do not then assume a ‘ voluntary humility/ 
 which we are cautioned against, and of which we know 
 that it produced in the early ages the heresy of worship- 
 ping angels, because men thought they were too vile and 
 ignorant to address God. 
 
 u . . . The body the temple of the Living God. . . . 
 There has always seemed to me something impious in the 
 neglect of personal health, strength, and beauty, which 
 the religious, and sometimes clergymen of this day affect. 
 It is very often a mere form of laziness. ... I could not 
 do half the little good I do do here, if it were not for that 
 strength and activity which some consider coarse and de- 
 grading. 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 hardihood 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. ... Is it not an awful proof that mat- 
 ter is not necessarily evil, that we shall be clothed in 
 bodies even in our perfect state ? Think of that ! ... It 
 seems all so harmonious to me. It is all so full of God, 
 that I §pe 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 
 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 ? 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 ! 
 
64 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 in- 
 tellectual skill. So I am trying to become (harmoniously 
 and consistently) all things to all men, and I thank God 
 for the versatile mind He has given me. . . .” 
 
 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 past- 
 ure. He knew, too, every fox earth on the moor, 
 the “ reedy hover ” of the pike, the still hole where 
 the chub lay, and had always a word in sympathy 
 for the huntsman or the old poacher. With the 
 farmer he could discuss the rotation of crops, and 
 with the laborer the science of hedging and ditch- 
 ing. And in giving sympathy he gained power. It 
 was this year, in a great crisis of his life, that Mr. 
 Maurice’s “ Kingdom of Christ” was put into his 
 hands — a book to which he always said that he 
 owed more than to any he had ever read. To some 
 it may seem strange that Carlyle’s works thould 
 have laid the foundation to which Coleridge’s and 
 Maurice’s were the superstructure : but Chevalier 
 Bunsen, in a remarkable passage in his “ Hyppoly- 
 tus” (vol. ii. p. 21-23), where he strikes the point 
 of contact between the three authors, explains their 
 influence on such minds as Charles Kingsley’s. 
 
 Circumstances now caused a long break in this 
 correspondence; and the faith and patience with 
 which he met the trial may be seen in these part- 
 
Working and Waiting 65 
 
 mg words, intended for one eye only, but from 
 which the following extracts have been made, in 
 the hope they may be a help to those who have 
 the same thorny road to travel without such a 
 friend and guide. 
 
 Eversley: August, 1842. — “. . . Though there may 
 be clouds between us now, yet they are safe and dry, free 
 from storm and rains — our parted state now is quiet 
 gray 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 los- 
 ing by trusting too much to Him ! . . . Do not,” he had 
 said previously, “ suppose that I augur ill from our dis- 
 appointment — rather the contrary. I have always been 
 afraid of being too successful at first. I think sorrow at 
 the beginning augurs well for the happiness of a con- 
 nection that must last for ever.” . . . “ There are two 
 ways at 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 un- 
 necessarily. 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 I love — by looking 
 at the wrong side ? ’ Make this your habit. Every gift 
 vol. 1 . — 5 
 
66 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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, then, the 
 thought strikes you that we are punished for our sins — 
 mourn for them, and not for the happiness which they 
 have prevented. Rather thank God that He has stopped 
 us in time, and remember His promises of restoring us if 
 we profit by his chastisement. ... In cases of love to 
 God and working to His glory in the first and second in- 
 tention read Taylor’s ‘Holy Living. 1 But eschew his 
 Popish fallacy about duties as different from perfections. 
 Every step in love and to God, and devotion to Him is a 
 duty ! That doctrine was invented to allow mankind to 
 exist, while a few self-conceited shut themselves up in a 
 state of unnatural celibacy and morbid excitement, in 
 order to avoid their duty, instead of doing it. Avoid the 
 Fathers, after Origen (including him), on this account — 
 their theories are not universal. . . . 
 
 “ . . . You may think too much ! There is such a 
 thing as mystifying one’s self ! Mystifying one’s self is 
 thinking a dozen thoughts in order to get to a conclusion, 
 to which one might arrive by thinking one — getting at 
 ideas by an unnecessarily subtle and circuitous path : 
 then, because one has been through many steps, one 
 fancies one has gone deep. This is one form of want of 
 simplicity. This is not being like a little child, any more 
 than analyzing 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. 
 
Working and Waiting 6 7 
 
 " Aim at depth. A thought is deep in proportion as 
 it is near God. You may be subtle, and only perceive a 
 trifling property of the subject, which others do not. To 
 be deep, you must see the subject in its relation to God 
 — yourself — and the universe ; and the more harmoni- 
 ous 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, full of soft rain, and pure light ! 
 
 “ Again : remember that habit, more than reason, will 
 cure one both of mystifying subtlety and morbid fear ; 
 and remember that habits are a series of individual volun- 
 tary 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 habit, in cases in which intellectual, not moral 
 obliquity, or constitutional ill-health is the cause of fail- 
 ure. 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.’ 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. ist. From His 
 dealings in History. This is the real Philosophy of His- 
 tory. Read Arnold’s 1 Lectures on Modern History/ 
 (Oh ! why did that noblest of men die ? God have 
 mercy upon England ! He takes the shining lights from 
 us, for our national sins !) And read as he tells us to 
 read, not to study man k la Rochefoucault, but God k la 
 David ! 
 
 “ 2d. From His image as developed in Christ the 
 
68 Charles Kingsley 
 
 Ideal, and in all good men — great good men — David, 
 Moses, St. Paul, Hooker, the four Oxford martyrs, 
 Luther, Taylor, Howard. Read about that glorious 
 Luther! and like him strive all your life to free men 
 from the bondage of custom and self, the two great 
 elements of the world that lieth in wickedness ! Read 
 Maurice for this purpose, and Carlyle. 
 
 “ 3d. From His works. Study nature — not scien- 
 tifically — that would take eternity, to do it so as to reap 
 much moral good from it. Superficial physical science is 
 the devil's spade, with which he loosens the roots of the 
 trees prepared for the burning. Do not study matter for 
 its own sake, but as the countenance of God. Try to 
 extract every line of beauty, every association, every 
 moral reflection, every inexpressible feeling from it. 
 Study the forms and colors of leaves and flowers, and 
 the growth and habits of plants ; not to classify them, 
 but to admire them and adore God. Study the sky. 
 Study water. Study trees. Study the sounds and scents 
 of nature. Study all these, as beautiful in themselves, 
 in order to re-combine the elements of beauty ; next, 
 as allegories and examples from whence moral reflections 
 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 melancholy day to make you melancholy, you worship 
 the creature more than the Creator. No sight but has 
 some beauty and harmony. Read geology — Buckland’s 
 book, and you will rise up awe-struck and cling to God. 
 
 “ Study the human figure, both as intrinsically beautiful 
 and as expressing mind. It only expresses the broad 
 natural childish emotions, which are just what you want 
 to return to. Study 4 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 
 
Working and Waiting 69 
 
 and paint figures. If you can command your hand in 
 drawing a tree, you can in drawing a face. Perfect your 
 coloring. ... It will keep your mind employed on 
 objective studies, and save all morbid introversion of 
 mind — brooding over fallen man. It will increase your 
 perception of beauty, and thereby your own harmony of 
 soul and love to God.. Practise music, — I am going to 
 learn myself, merely to be able to look after my singers. 
 
 . . . Music is such a vent for the feelings. . . . Study 
 medicine. ... I am studying it. . . . Make yourself 
 thoroughly acquainted with the wages, wants, and habits, 
 and prevalent diseases of the poor wherever you go. Let 
 your mind freely forth. Only turn it inwards at prayer 
 time, to recollect sins of 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 holiness. Let your studies, then, be objective entirely. 
 Look forward to the future with hope. Build castles if you 
 will, but only bright ones, and not too many. Better to live 
 in the Past. We cannot help thanking God for that ! 
 Blessed Past! Think of all God has done for us. . . . Be 
 happy. . . . Weep, but let them be tears of thankfulness. 
 
 “ Do not be too solicitous to find deep meanings in 
 men’s words. Most men do, and all men ought to mean 
 only what is evident at first sight in 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 under- 
 stand it. It will digest itself. It did so when you were 
 
jo Charles Kingsley 
 
 a baby. Look round you much. Think little and read 
 less. Never give way to reveries. Have always some 
 employment in your hands. When you are doing nothing 
 at night, pray and praise ! . . . 
 
 “ See how much a day can do ! I have since nine this 
 morning, cut wood for an hour ; spent an hour and more 
 in prayer and humiliation, and thereby established a 
 chastened but happy tone, which lasts till now ; written 
 six or seven pages of a difficult part of my essay ; taught 
 in the school ; thought over many things while walking ; 
 gone round two-thirds of the parish visiting and doctoring ; 
 and written all this. Such days are lives — and happy 
 ones. One has no time to be miserable, and one is 
 ashamed to invent little sorrows for one’s self while one 
 is trying to relieve such grief in others as would kill us , 
 if we gave way to fancies 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 commonplace book, and put into it, not only 
 facts and thoughts, but observations on form, and color, 
 and nature, and little sketches, even to the form of beau- 
 tiful 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. Try to put everything in its place 
 in the great system ... seeing the realities of Heaven 
 and Earth.” 
 
 In speaking of this time to a friend placed in 
 somewhat similar circumstances, he writes after his 
 marriage : 
 
 “ I have already been through that ordeal of separation 
 which now seems to threaten you ; but my experience 
 
Working and Waiting 71 
 
 may be valuable to you — God knows how valuable it 
 was to me ; and that I rank that 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 Blessed Lord alone we must look 
 for the fulfilment of our desires ; that these desires, which 
 men call carnal, are truly most spiritual, most beloved 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 experi- 
 enced — I know, and therefore 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 prayer 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 involun- 
 tarily, and as it were by inspiration, fixed — from a quarter 
 where I least expected — by means of those who had been 
 most utterly opposed 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, ‘ My Father , 
 Thy will be done.’ And why shouldn’t it be with you 
 as it has been with me ? 99 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 1842-1843 
 
 Aged 23-24 
 
 A Year of Sorrow — Curate Life— Letter from Colo- 
 nel W. — Brighter Prospects — Promise of Prefer- 
 ment — Correspondence Renewed — The Mystery of 
 Life — Impulse — Enthusiasm — The Pendulum — Wan- 
 dering Minstrels — 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.” 
 
 YEAR passed by of silence and self-discipline, 
 
 hard reading and parish duties. That sor- 
 row 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 happy, for 
 the less hope, the more faith. . . . God knows what is 
 best for us, and very lucky that He does, for I am sure 
 we do not. Continual resignation, at last I begin to find, 
 is the secret of continual strength. ‘ Daily dying , / as 
 Behmen interprets it, is the path of daily living . . . 
 
 His mother paid him a visit in the autumn of 
 this year, and thus describes his home : 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
Curate Life 73 
 
 Eversley : 1842. — “ Here I am, in a humble cottage 
 in the corner of a sunny green, a little garden, whose 
 flower-beds are surrounded with tall and aged box, is 
 fenced in from the path with a low white paling. The 
 green is gay with dogs, and 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 place ! and the thought of this 
 brightens every trial. There is independence in every 
 good sense of the word, and yet no loneliness. The 
 family at the Brewery are devoted to Charles, and think 
 they cannot do enough for him. The dear old man says 
 he has been praying for years for such a time to come, 
 and that Eversley has not been so blessed for sixty years. 
 Need I say rejoice with me. Here I sit surrounded by 
 your books and little things which speak of you. . . 
 
 During his first year of curate life he had little 
 society outside his parish except at Sandhurst, 
 where he had friends in the Senior department of 
 the Military College; and he writes to an old 
 Cambridge companion, Mr. Wood, to beg for a 
 visit in his solitude. 
 
 “ Peter ! 
 
 “ Whether in the glaring saloons of Almack’s, or 
 making love in the equestrian stateliness of the park, or 
 the luxurious recumbency of the ottoman, whether break- 
 fasting at one, or going to bed at three, thou art still 
 Peter, the beloved of my youth, the staff of my academic 
 days, the regret of my parochial retirement ! — Peter ! I 
 am alone ! Around me are the everlasting hills, and the 
 everlasting bores of the country ! My parish is peculiar 
 for nothing but want of houses and abundance of peat 
 bogs ; my parishioners remarkable only for aversion to 
 
74 Charles Kingsley 
 
 education, and a predilection for fat bacon. I am wast- 
 ing my sweetness on the desert air — I say my sweetness, 
 for I have given up smoking, and smell no more. Oh, 
 Peter, Peter, come down and see me ! Oh that I could 
 behold your head towering above the fir-trees that sur- 
 round my lonely dwelling. Take pity on me ! I am 
 ‘ like a kitten in the washhouse copper with the lid on ! 9 
 And, Peter, prevail on some of your friends here to give 
 me a day’s trout-fishing, for my hand is getting out of 
 practice. But, Peter, I am, considering the oscillations 
 and perplex circumgurgitations of this piece-meal world, 
 an improved man. I am much more happy, much more 
 comfortable, reading, thinking, and doing my duty — 
 much more than ever I did before in my life. Therefore 
 I am not discontented with my situation, or regretful that 
 I buried my first-class in a country curacy, like the girl 
 who shut herself up in a band-box on her wedding night 
 {vide Rogers’s i Italy 7 ). And my lamentations are not 
 general (for I do not want an inundation of the froth and 
 tide- wash of Babylon the Great), but particular, being 
 solely excited by want of thee, oh, Peter, who art very 
 pleasant to me, and wouldst be more so if thou wouldst 
 come and eat my mutton, and drink my wine, and admire 
 my sermons, some Sunday at Eversley. 
 
 “ Your faithful friend, 
 
 “ Boanerges Roar-at-the-Clods.” 
 
 His friend responded to his call. “ I paid him 
 a "visit,” he says, “ at Eversley, where he lived in a 
 thatched cottage. So roughly was he lodged that 
 I recollect taking him some game, which was dried 
 to a cinder in the cooking and quite spoiled; but 
 he was as happy as if he were in a palace. . . 
 
 Another friend, Colonel W., thus recalls their 
 intercourse : 
 
 . . My memory often runs back to the days at 
 Sandhurst, when I used to meet dear Kingsley continually 
 
Brighter Prospects 75 
 
 in his little curate rooms, at the corner of the Green at 
 Eversley; when he told me of his attachment to one 
 whom he feared he should never be able to marry, and 
 that he supposed that he should live the rest of his life 
 reading old books, and knocking his head against the 
 ceiling of his room, like a caged bird. And well I re- 
 member a particular Sunday, when walking with him to 
 his church in the afternoon, having dined with him at 
 mid-day. It was a lovely afternoon in the autumn — 
 passing through the corn in sheaf, the bells ringing, and 
 people, young and old, gathering together near the 
 church. — He, looking down on the Rectory-house, said 
 to me — ‘ How hard it is to go through life without wish- 
 ing for the goods of others ! Look at the Rectory ! Oh, 
 if I were there with a wife, how happy/ &c. God 
 seemed to hear the desire of His creature, for when the 
 next year’s corn was in sheaf, you were with him at the 
 Rectory. And he has told me in after years that his life 
 with you was one of constantly increasing love. I called 
 at his cottage one morning, and I found him almost 
 beside himself, stamping his things into a portmanteau. 
 ‘ What is the matter, dear Kingsley ?’ — ‘ I am engaged. 
 I am going to see her now — to-day .’ I was so glad, 
 and left him to his joy. I loved Kingsley as well as man 
 can love man. . . 
 
 In September, 1843, his prospects brightened; 
 for, through the kindness of Lord Sidney Osborne, 
 a relation of his future wife, Lord Portman prom- 
 ised him a small living, and in the mean time 
 recommended him for the curacy of Pimperne, 
 near Blandford, which, with a good house, would 
 soon be vacant. The correspondence, which had 
 dropped for a year, was now resumed. 
 
 Helston : September , 1843. — “• • • What a thought 
 it is that there is a God ! a Father, a King ! a Husband 
 
j6 Charles Kingsley 
 
 not of individuals, that is a Popish fancy, which the 
 Puritans have adopted — but of the Church — of col- 
 lective humanity. Let us be content to be members ; 
 let us be, if we may, the feet, lowest, hardest worked, 
 trodden on, bleeding, brought into harshest contact with 
 the evil world ! Still we are members of Christ's 
 Church ! . . . How fearfully and wonderfully we are 
 made. I seem all spirit, and my every nerve is a musical 
 chord trembling in the wind ! . . . and yet I am sane, 
 and it is all real. I could find no vent for my feelings, 
 this afternoon, but by bursting out into the Te Deum, to 
 no known chant, but a strange involuntary melody which 
 told all. If I could but sing now ! I used to know only 
 melancholy songs. I wandered about moaning in one 
 eternal minor key. ... In heaven we shall sing involun- 
 tarily. All speech will be song ! . . . Pray night and 
 day, very quietly , like a little weary child, to the good 
 and loving God, for everything you want, in body as well 
 as soul — the least thing as well as the greatest. Nothing 
 is too much to ask God for — nothing too great for Him 
 to grant : Glory be to Thee, O Lord ! — and try to thank 
 Him for everything. ... I sometimes feel that eternity 
 will be too short to praise God in, if it was only for mak- 
 ing us live at all ! . . . What blessings we have had ! 
 How we must work in return for them. Not under 
 the enslaving sense of paying off an infinite debt, but 
 with the delight of gratitude, glorying that we are God’s 
 debtors. . . . 
 
 “ . . . What an awful weapon prayer is ! Mark xi. 
 24 saved me from madness in my twelve months' sor- 
 rows ; and it is so simple, and so wide — wide as eternity, 
 simple as light, true as God himself ; and yet it is just the 
 last text of Scripture which is talked of, or preached on, 
 or used ! Verily , 6 when the Son of Man cometh shall He 
 find faith on the earth ? ? 
 
The Mystery of Life 77 
 
 u . . . You must love these Cornish men ! they are 
 the noblest men in England — strong, simple-hearted, 
 united, working — ‘ One and all/ is their motto. Glori- 
 ous West country ! I told some of them the other day 
 that if I ever married it should be a Cornish woman. 
 . . .You must not despise their accent, for it is the 
 remains of a purer and nobler dialect than our own, and 
 you will be surprised to hear me when I am merry, burst 
 out into pure unintelligible" Devonshire ; when I am very 
 childish, my own country’s language comes to me like a 
 dream of old days ! . . 
 
 Eversley : October . — “ About the wind’s moaning. 
 
 It is a great mystery. All nations have fancied that there 
 may be evil spirits in it. It used to terrify me as a child, 
 and make me inexpressibly melancholy as a youth. But 
 no bad weather now has a lowering effect on me — but 
 rather a calming one. Of course some of this is to be 
 attributed to my familiarity with night in all its characters. 
 And the moaning of the wind now seems to me the groan- 
 ing and the travailing of the whole creation, under the 
 purifying changes, bitter and destructive, yet salutary, of 
 storms and thunder clouds ! In the renewed earth there 
 will be no winter, no storms ! Perpetual, calm day ; with, 
 perhaps, just change enough for incident — if incident be 
 not a necessity for fallen nature only ! . . .” 
 
 “ . . . That is no metaphor , when the Psalmist calls 
 on all things to praise God, from the monsters of the 
 deep to i worms and feathered fowls ! ’ They are all 
 witnesses of God, and every emotion of pleasure which 
 they feel is an act of praise to Him ! I dare not say an 
 unconscious act ! This is not imagination, for imagina- 
 tion deadens the feelings (so men say, but I do not un- 
 derstand — that word imagination is so much misused), 
 but /, when I feel thus, seem to see all the universe at 
 one glance, instinct with The Spirit , and feel ready to 
 turn to the first beggar I meet, and say, ‘ Come, my 
 
78 Charles Kingsley 
 
 brother, all this is thine, as well as mine ! Come, and 1 
 will show thee thy goodly heritage ! ’ Oh, the yearning 
 when one sees a beautiful thing to make some one else 
 see it too ! Surely it is of Heaven \ ... 1 Every crea- 
 ture of God is good, if it be sanctified with prayer and 
 thanksgiving ! ’ This, to me, is the master truth of Chris- 
 tianity ! I cannot make people see it, but it seems to me 
 that it was to redeem man and the earth that Christ was 
 made Man, and used the earth ! . . . Can there be a 
 more glorious truth for us to carry out? one which will 
 lead us more into all love and beauty and purity in 
 heaven and earth ? one which must have God’s light of 
 love shining on it at every step, if we are to see it through 
 the maze of our own hearts and the artificialities of the 
 world? . . . All the events of our life, all the workings 
 of our hearts seem strangely to point to this one idea. 
 As 1 walk the fields, the trees and flowers and birds, and 
 the motes of rack floating in the sky, seem to cry to me : 
 ‘Thou knowest us ! Thou knowest we have a meaning, 
 and sing a heaven’s harmony by night and day ! Do us 
 justice ! Spell our enigma, and go forth and tell thy 
 fellows that we are their brethren, that their spirit is our 
 spirit, their Saviour our Saviour, their God our God ! ’ 
 
 “ And every man’s and woman’s eyes too, they cry to 
 me, they cry to me through dim and misty smugglings : 
 ‘Oh do us justice! we have human hearts within! we 
 are not walking statues ! we can love, we can worship, 
 we have God’s spirit in us, but we cannot believe it our- 
 selves, or make others believe it ! Oh teach us ! and 
 teach others to yearn for love and peace ! Oh make us 
 One. All the world-generations have but One voice ! 
 How can we become One ? at harmony with God and 
 God’s universe ! Tell us this, and the dreary, dark mys- 
 tery of life, the bright sparkling mystery of life, the cloud- 
 checkered, sun-and-shower mystery of life is solved ! for 
 we shall have found one home and one brotherhood, and 
 happy faces will greet us wherever we move, and we 
 
Impulse 79 
 
 shall see God ! see Him everywhere, and be ready to 
 wait for the renewal, for the Kingdom of Christ per- 
 fected ! We came from Eden, all of us : show us how 
 we may return, hand in hand, husband and wife, parent 
 and child, gathered together from the earth and the sea, 
 from the past and the future, from one creed and another, 
 and take our journey into a far country, which is yet this 
 earth. A world-migration to the heavenly Canaan, 
 through the Red Sea of Death, back again to the 
 land which was given to our forefathers, and is ours 
 even now, could we but find it ! ” 
 
 “ I want to talk to you about Impulse. That word, in 
 its common use, is one of my enemies. Its proper and 
 original meaning, if it has any, is the exciting effect of the 
 will (the spiritual part) on the flesh. And where a man 
 acts from impulse, it is because his flesh is at harmony 
 with, and obeys, his spirit. I know what impulse is, when 
 it has driven me, in putting out a fire, through blazing 
 rafters and under falling roofs, by an awful energy which 
 must be obeyed. Now there is nothing, in this, sinful in 
 itself. On the contrary, if the will which drives be a 
 spiritual and holy will, it is the highest state of harmony 
 and health, the rare moments of life, in which our life is 
 not manifold, but one — body and soul and spirit work- 
 ing together ! Such impulses have led martyrs to the 
 stake. Such an impulse kept the two women-martyrs at 
 Coventry in the midst of the flames loose and unbound ! 
 Such an impulse drove Luther on through years and 
 years, till he overthrew the Popedom ! Such impulses 
 are exactly what the world despises, and crushes as en- 
 thusiasm, because they are opposed to the cold, selfish work 
 of the brute intellect — because they make men self-sacri- 
 ficing, because they awaken all that childish earnestness 
 and simplicity, and gushing tears, and passionate smiles, 
 which are witnesses and reproofs to the world of what she 
 has lost, and therefore is trying to fancy she can do without ! 
 
80 Charles Kingsley 
 
 Yet the world will devour the most exciting works of fiction 
 — thereby confessing that ‘ romance 7 and c enthusiasm 7 
 have a beauty, even to her — but one which she hates to 
 see practised, because her deeds are evil, and her spiritual 
 will is dead, or dying ! The fault of impulse is, that one’s 
 whole life is not impulse ! that we let worldly wisdom 
 close again over the glimpse of heaven-simplicity in us, 
 and so are inconsistent ! and so we acknowledge (even 
 the most religious), the world’s ways to be our general 
 rule, and impulse our exception ; discord our practice, 
 harmony our exception ; and then the world, who is very 
 glad after all to get religion on her side, says and truly, 
 Oh ! these religieux do hold our principles as the great 
 principles, and themselves avoid and despise ‘enthusiasm 7 ! 
 
 “ People smile at the ‘ enthusiasm of youth 7 — that 
 enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back at 
 with a sigh, perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own 
 fault that they ever lost it. Is it not strange, that the 
 only persons who appear to me to carry to the grave with 
 them the joyousness, simplicity, and lovingness and trust 
 of children, are the most exalted Christians ? Think of St. 
 John, carried into the Church at Smyrna, at the age of 
 ninety-nine, and with his dying breath repeating the $ame 
 simple words, 6 Little children, love one another . 7 77 
 
 cc . . . As to self-improvement, the true Catholic mode 
 of learning is, to ‘ prove all things , 7 as far as we can without 
 sin or the danger of it, and ‘ hold fast that which is good . 7 
 Let us never be afraid of trying anything, though copied 
 from people of different opinions to our own. And let 
 us never, never be afraid of changing our opinions — 
 not our knowledge. If we should find fasting unsuc- 
 cessful, we will simply give it up — and so on with all 
 practices and opinions not expressed in Scripture. That 
 is a form of pride which haunts the more powerful minds, 
 the unwillingness to go back from one’s declared opinion : 
 but it is not found in great child-like geniuses. Fools 
 
The Pendulum 81 
 
 may hold fast to their scanty stock through life, and we 
 must be very cautious in drawing them from it — for 
 where can they supply its place ? Therefore, there is no 
 more unloving, heartless man-murderer, than the man who 
 goes about trying, for the display of his own 4 talents/ to 
 shake people in their belief, even when that belief is not 
 sound. Better believe in ghosts 4 with no heads and jack- 
 boots on/ like my Eversley people, than believe in nothing 
 but self! Therefore Maurice’s loving, Christian rule is, 
 4 Never take away from a man even the shadow of a 
 spiritual truth, unless you can give him substance in 
 return/ . . . But those who discover much truth — 
 ay, who make perhaps only one truth really their own, 
 a living integral law of their spirits — must, in develop- 
 ing it, pass through many changes of opinion. They must 
 rise, and fall back, and rise higher again, and fall and 
 rise again, till they reach the level table-land of truth, 
 and can look down on men toiling and stumbling in the 
 misty valleys, where the rising sunlight has not yet found 
 its way. Or perhaps, their own minds will oscillate, like 
 a pendulum, between Dualism and Unitarianism, or High 
 Church and Low Church, until the oscillations become 
 gradually smaller, and subside into the Rest of Truth ! — 
 the peace which passes understanding ! I fancy it is a 
 law, that the greater the mind, the stronger the heart, the 
 larger will the oscillations be, but the less they will be 
 visible to the world, because the wise man will not act 
 outwardly upon his opinions until they have become 
 knowledge, and his mind is in a state of rest. This 
 I think the true, the only doctrine of Reserve — reserve 
 of our own fancies, not of immutable truth. And one 
 thing more I do see — that as with the pendulum, those 
 oscillations are caused by the very force which at last 
 produces rest ; God’s Spirit, working on a man, draws 
 him down towards rest, and he, by the elastic legerete of 
 the flesh, swings past the proper point into the opposite 
 extreme, and has to be drawn back again down. And 
 
 VOL. i. — 6 
 
82 Charles Kingsley 
 
 another thing I see — that the pressure of the surround- 
 ing air, which helps the force of gravity in producing rest, 
 is a true emblem of the force of healthy ties and duties, 
 and the circumstances of God’s universe — those things 
 which stand round . . . . Let a man once break free 
 from them, and from God’s Spirit by self-will or heart- 
 iessness, and he will oscillate, as the pendulum would, 
 for ever ! He will become like one of the ancient 
 philosophers — like the gnostics, like the enthusiasts 
 (ascetic-mystics often) of every age. . . 
 
 Eversley: October 27 th . — . . As to ( Honor 
 
 all men,’ you are quite right. Every man should be 
 honored as God’s image, in the sense in which Novalis 
 says — that we touch Heaven when we lay our hand on 
 a human body ! . . . The old Homeric Greeks I think 
 felt that, and acted up to it, more than any nation. The 
 Patriarchs too seem to have had the same feeling. . . . 
 I have been making a fool of myself for the last ten 
 minutes, according to the world’s notion of folly, for there 
 have been some strolling fiddlers under the window, and 
 I have been listening and crying like a child. Some quick 
 music is so inexpressibly mournful. It seems just like 
 one’s own feelings — exultation and action, with the 
 remembrance of past sorrow wailing up, yet without 
 bitterness, tender in its shrillness, through the mingled 
 tide of present joy ; and the notes seem thoughts — 
 thoughts pure of words, and a spirit seems to call to me 
 in them and cry/ Hast thou not felt all this?’ And I 
 start when I find myself answering unconsciously, ‘ Yes, 
 yes, I know it all ! ’ Surely we are a part of all we see 
 and hear ! And then the harmony thickens, and all dis- 
 tinct sound is pressed together and absorbed in a confused 
 paroxysm of delight, where still the female treble and the 
 male base are distinct for a moment, and then one again 
 — absorbed into each other’s being — sweetened and 
 strengthened by each other’s melody. . . . Why should 
 
 I not cry? Those men have unconsciously told me my 
 
 1 
 
Wandering Minstrels 83 
 
 own tale ! why should I not love them and pray for them ? 
 Are they not my benefactors? Have they not given me 
 more than food and drink? Let us never despise the 
 wandering minstrel. He is an unconscious witness for 
 God’s harmony — a preacher of the world-music — the 
 power of sweet sounds, which is a link between every age 
 and race — the language which all can understand, though 
 few can speak. And who knows what tender thoughts 
 his own sweet music stirs within him, though he eat in 
 pot-houses, and sleep in barns ! Ay, thoughts too deep 
 for words are in those simple notes — why should not we 
 feel them ? . . 
 
 “ . . . I have heard from Dr. W. this morning, and he 
 asks me to take possession of Pimperne on April 6th. 
 So that is settled. I am not, and will not (please God 
 to help me, as He has hitherto) be anxious about any- 
 thing. Why should we weary out the little life we have 
 left in us, when He has promised to care for us, and 
 make us renew our youth, and heap us with everything 
 that is good for us ! ... I look forward with quiet 
 certainty of hope, day and night ; believing, though I 
 can see but little day, that all this tangled web will resolve 
 itself into golden threads of twined, harmonious life, 
 guiding both us, and those we love, together, through 
 this life to that resurrection of the flesh, when we shall 
 at last know the reality and the fulness of life and love. 
 Even so come, Lord Jesus ! 
 
 “ . . . I am full of plans for Pimperne, or wherever 
 else God may place us. We must have a regular rule of 
 life, not so as to become a law, but a custom. . . . 
 Family prayers before breakfast; 8.30 to 10, household 
 matters ; 10 to 1, studying divinity, or settle parish 
 accounts and business — our doors open for poor parish 
 visitants ; between 1 and 5, go out in all weathers, to visit 
 sick and poor and to teach in the school ; in the evening 
 we will draw, and feed the intellect and the fancy, o . , 
 
84 Charles Kingsley 
 
 “ We must devote from 9 to 12 on Monday mornings 
 to casting up our weekly bills and accounts, and make a 
 rule never to mention them, if possible, at any other time ; 
 and never to talk of household matters, unless urgent, but 
 between 9 and 10 in the morning; nor of parish business 
 in the evening. I have seen the gene and misery which 
 not following some such rule brings down ! We must 
 pray for a spirit of order and regularity and economy in 
 the least things. . . . 
 
 “ This is a very homely letter, but not an outward one ; 
 for all the business I have talked of has a spiritual mean- 
 ing. If we can but keep alive a spiritual meaning in 
 every little action, we shall have no need to write poetry 
 — our life will be a real poem. ... I have been think- 
 ing of how we are to order our establishment at Pimperne. 
 While we are in Somersetshire (next January, a season of 
 solemn and delightful preparation for our work) we will 
 hunt out all the texts in the Bible about masters and ser- 
 vants, to form rules upon them ; and our rules we will 
 alter and improve upon in time, as we find out more and 
 more of the true relation in which we ought to stand to 
 those whom God has placed under us. ... I feel more 
 and more that the new principle of considering a servant 
 as a trader, who sells you a certain amount of work for a 
 certain sum of money, is a devil’s principle, and that we 
 must have none of it, but return as far as we can to the 
 patriarchal 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 
 
 1 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 would have given their lives for their 
 master. It is only just to add that the mistress of the house was 
 as much beloved as the master, and that they remained with her 
 after his death as tried and valued friends of the family rather 
 than servants. (M. K.) 
 
Leaves Eversley 85 
 
 ties of humanity, they must be turned out of door 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 the continual open verbal reference of everything, 
 even to the breaking of a plate, to God and God’s prov- 
 idence, as the Easterns do. The reason why God’s name 
 is so seldom in people’s mouths is not that they reverence 
 Him, as they say, too much to talk of Him (!!!), but 
 because they do not think of Him ! 
 
 “ About our Parish. No clergyman knows less about 
 the working of a parish than I do ; but one thing I do 
 know, that I have to preach Jesus Christ and Him cruci- 
 fied, and to be instant in that, in season and out of sea- 
 son 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 pray- 
 ing for our people, by preaching to them, in church and out 
 of church (for all instruction is preaching — vide Hooker) 
 — by leading them to pray 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 
 hiring of a servant, the reproving of a child. 
 
 u 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 nowa- 
 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 
 
86 Charles Kingsley 
 
 hearing them to 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 instruc- 
 tion. 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 there- 
 fore 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 favorite 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, . . „ 
 entreating God’s mercy on the country, as children of a 
 land fast hurrying to ruin in her mad love of intellectual- 
 ity, mammonism, and false liberty ! . . . 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 — all 
 more or less sound, towards true Christianity, and there- 
 fore true national prosperity. But will they hear the 
 voices which warn them ? . . . Now I must bid good 
 night, and read my psalms and lessons and pray. . . 
 
 “ . . . I must 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 1800 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 
 
Leaves Eversley 87 
 
 that this dissatisfaction at existing evil (the feeling of all 
 young and ardent minds), this struggle to escape from the 
 4 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 
 uncertainly ; as it has done such men as Shelley, and 
 Byron, and others ; trying vainly every loophole, beating 
 against the prison bars of an imperfect system ; neither 
 degraded 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? 
 
 u 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 1 there is no end of 
 them ; mud, fire, acids, alkalies, every foreign ingredient 
 contaminating 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 in 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 humanity, 
 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 diffi- 
 culty. Let us read the Bible as we never read it before. 
 
88 ^Charles Kingsley 
 
 Let us read every 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 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. ... 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 ful- 
 ness 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 thres- 
 hold 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 ! . . . Ay, better to stay humbly on 
 earth among the duties and affections of humanity, in 
 contact with, and acting on, the material and visible, con- 
 tented to walk till wings are given us wherewith to fly. 
 Better far ! for while we labor, dressing and tilling the 
 garden which God has given us, even though sin have 
 
Leaves Eversley 89 
 
 made us ashamed, and our bodies, and souls, and spirits 
 become defiled in our daily work, and require to be 
 washed in Christ His blood ; and though there are thorns 
 and briers 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 labors, 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 laborers shall call 
 to us through dark thickets, and across broad lawns ; and 
 every bird, and bud, and herb will smile on us and say, 
 ‘You have not despised us, you 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, each being made one, 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 element, 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, after all, to me the great fact.’ God is 
 the great fact , objectively, in the pure truth of things ; 
 
90 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 Himself, because men, not content with the mixed 
 idea of God which the Bible gives, have turned from it to 
 contemplate a ‘pure’ (?) imagination of their own in- 
 venting. — 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 chil- 
 dren, 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 pathology 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. 
 
Leaves Eversley 9 1 
 
 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 we 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 fancies. . . 
 
 “Do you wish to help me? Pray for my successor, 
 that he may serve God and God’s people here better 
 than I have done ; and may build, on the foundation that 
 I have laid, such stuff as may endure in the day of trial ! 
 And oh ! pray that he may save me from blood-guiltiness, 
 by warning those whom I have neglected. . 
 
 His last sermon was on Romans xiii. 7, on the 
 duty of obeying ministers — entreating his people 
 to look up to his successor, and to pray for the 
 success of his work in Eversley. 
 
 “ Now why do I say this to you ? In order that when 
 I am gone, you may do better without me, than you have 
 done with me. I know that I have neglected many of 
 you very much — that I have done my whole duty to 
 none of you. May God forgive me for it. But I have 
 tried to teach you that you are all God’s children. I 
 have tried to teach you what a noble Church yours is — 
 what a mine of wisdom there is in the Church Services — 
 Psalms and Lessons. I have told you the use and mean- 
 ing of the two sacraments, and entreated you to use them 
 aright. I have told you that faith without works, profes- 
 sion without practice, is dead ; and I have shown you 
 that to live with Christ in the next world, you must live 
 like Christ in this. . . ” 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 1844-1847 
 
 Aged 25-28 
 
 Marriage — Curacy of Pimperne — Rector of Eversley 
 — Parish Work — Personal Influence — Canonry of 
 Middleham — Needs of the Church — Birth of Two 
 Children — The Saint’s Tragedy Written. 
 
 Schiller at Jena, a few months after his marriage . 
 
 . . Life is quite a different thing by the side of a beloved 
 wife, than 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 fine, 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 Schiller. 
 
 I N December, 1843, he left Eversley, as he then 
 thought, for ever, “ this beloved place, hahowed 
 to me by my prayers, my tears, my hopes, my 
 first vows to God — my paean of pardoned sin and 
 answered prayers, . . and in * January, 1844, 
 was married to Fanny, daughter of Pascoe Grenfell 
 and Georgiana St. Leger his wife. He was to 
 have taken possession of the curacy of Pimperne 
 in the spring: but the living of Eversley falling 
 
Curacy of Pimperne 93 
 
 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 the Sunday duty. The following 
 are extracts from his daily letters to his wife : 
 
 Salisbury : March 28, 1844. — “ I have been walking 
 round the cathedral — oh ! such a cathedral ! Perfect 
 unity, in extreme multiplicity. 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 simpli- 
 city 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 center 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 supporters. Fit 
 emblem of the result of curbing systems. The moment 
 the tower escapes above the level of the roof, it bursts 
 into the wildest luxuriance, retaining the general char- 
 acter 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 re- 
 taining the harsh and severe lineaments of the school in 
 
94 Charles Kingsley 
 
 which it had been bred. And then its self-willed fancies 
 exhaust themselves, and it makes one final struggle up- 
 ward, 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 perma- 
 nence, or shelter, or beauty — as that spire ends, in the 
 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 ! It 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. . . . The repose is so 
 wonderful. It awes you, too, without crushing you. You 
 can be cheerful under its shadow, but you could not do a 
 base thing. ... It is lucky I took down my tackle, for I 
 am promised a day’s trout fishing to-morrow. . . .” 
 March 31. — “ . . . 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 Izaac 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: April 1. — “The road from here to 
 Pimperne, over the downs, is about three miles of the 
 most beautiful turf and natural woodland, through Cran- 
 
Curacy of Pimperne 95 
 
 borne 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 grays and greens, 
 yet quite as sublime in 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 beauti- 
 ful. . . . More and more I find that Carlyle’s writings do 
 not lead to gloomy discontent — that theirs is not a dark 
 but a bright view of life ; 1 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 conven- 
 tional language that no ear is shocked by the oft-repeated 
 formulae of ‘ original sin’ and ‘unconverted hearts/ and 
 so on. Let us in all things take Dr. Johnson’s golden 
 rule : * First clear your mind of cant ! ’ ” 
 
 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 
 
 1 Many years after this, Professor Shairp, speaking of his first 
 conversation with Mr. Kingsley, said he told him that, often when 
 he was tired or depressed, the book he would turn to was Car- 
 lyle’s “ French Revolution.” 
 
96 Charles Kingsley 
 
 thrown away, that in them we shall have learnt what 
 might have escaped 11s in the quiet routine of a parish, 
 and yet which are wanted there — as weeds and water- 
 flowers show themselves in the rapid eddies, while they 
 are buried deep in the still reaches of the river. . . .” 
 
 April 21. — “I have been reading Wordsworth’s 
 ‘ Excursion/ with many tears and prayers too. To me 
 he is not only poet, but preacher and prophet of God’s 
 new and divine philosophy — a man raised up as a light 
 in a dark time, and rewarded by an honored age, for 
 the simple faith in man and God with which he delivered 
 his message ; whose real nobility is independent 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 what is the use of talking to 
 hungry paupers about heaven? ‘Sir/ as my clerk said to 
 me yesterday, t 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! S. G. O. 1 is deep 
 in statistics and abuses. 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 ourselves refined. The re- 
 fined 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. . . 
 
 Chelsea, May . — “ I shall return to you Monday, per- 
 haps rector of Eversley ! A bright future opens. Blessed 
 be God. . . .” 
 
 . . All is settled at last. Sir John has given me 
 the living, and he wishes me to settle there as soon as 
 
 1 The Rev. Sidney Godolpliin Osborn, who had married a sister 
 of Mrs. Kingsley. (M. K.) 
 
\ 
 
 LIP “ Y 
 
 Ot 
 
 UNIVERSITY of ILLINOIS 
 
. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 incoming tenant >t no 
 
 . 
 
 t, . .i • • ' itl i : r d:r:.;c works had • oc 
 
 
 
The Rectory and Church at Eversley. 
 
Rector of Eversley 97 
 
 possible. God never fails those who put their trust in 
 Him. . . . Congratulations, as you may suppose, are 
 plentiful . . . and I had the pleasure of bringing the 
 news myself to Eversley. ... I took the whole duty at 
 St. George’s Hospital yesterday morning, and preached a 
 charity sermon at St. Luke’s in the afternoon, and at the 
 old church in the evening ; and am very tired, body and 
 mind. . . . My brain has been in such a whirl that I 
 have had no time for deep thoughts. I can understand, 
 by the events of the last few days, how the minds of men 
 of business, at the very moment they are wielding the 
 vastest commercial or physical power, may yet be de- 
 graded and superficial. One seems to do so much in 
 4 business,’ and yet with how little fruit ! we bustle, and 
 God works. That glorious, silent Providence — such a 
 contrast to physical power, with its blast furnaces and 
 roaring steam-engines ! Farewell till to-morrow. . . .” 
 
 He and his wife now settled in the Rectory at 
 Eversley ; and life flowed on peacefully, notwith- 
 standing 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 incoming tenant got no 
 dilapidation-money, and had arrears of poor’s 
 rates and the pay of his predecessor’s curate to 
 meet. The house was damp and unwholesome, 
 surrounded with ponds, which overflowed with 
 every heavy rain, and flooded not only the gar- 
 den and stables, but all the rooms on the ground 
 floor, keeping up master and servants sometimes 
 all night bailing out the water in buckets for hours 
 together; and drainage works had to be done be- 
 fore it was habitable. From these causes, and 
 from the charities falling almost entirely on the 
 vol. 1 . — 7 
 
gS Charles Kingsley 
 
 incumbent, the living, though a good one, was for 
 years unremunerative ; but the young rector, 
 happy in his home and his work, met all diffi- 
 culties bravely. New clubs for the poor, shoe 
 club, coal club, maternal society, a loan fund and 
 lending library, were established one after another. 
 An intelligent young parishioner, who was till lately 
 schoolmaster, was sent by the rector to the Win- 
 chester Training College ; an adult evening school 
 was held in the rectory all the winter months ; a 
 Sunday-school met there every Sunday morning 
 and afternoon ; and weekly cottage lectures were 
 established in the outlying districts for the old and 
 feeble. The fact of there being no school-house 
 had the good effect of drawing the people within 
 the humanizing influences of the rectory, which 
 was always open to them, and will be long associ- 
 ated in the minds of old and young at Eversley 
 with the kind and courteous sympathy and the 
 living teaching which they all got from their pas- 
 tor. At the beginning of his ministry there was 
 t scarcely a grown-up man or woman among the 
 laboring class who could read or write — for as 
 boys and girls they had all been glad to escape 
 early to field work from the one school — a stifling 
 room, ten feet square, where cobbling shoes, teach- 
 ing, and caning went on together. As to religious 
 instruction, they had had none. The church was 
 nearly empty before he came as curate. The 
 farmers' sheep, whqn 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 
 
Rector of Eversley 99 
 
 cracked kitchen basin inside the font held the 
 water for Holy Baptism. At the altar, which 
 was covered by a moth-eaten cloth, stood one 
 old broken chair ; and so averse were the church- 
 wardens to any change, that when the rector made 
 a proposal for monthly communions, it was only 
 accepted on his promising himself to supply the 
 wine for the extra celebrations . 1 
 
 The evil results of such years of neglect could 
 only be conquered by incessant labor, and his 
 whole energies were devoted to the parish. He 
 had to redeem it from barbarism : but it was a 
 gentle barbarism, for the people were a kindly 
 people, civil and grateful for notice, and not 
 demoralized by indiscriminate almsgiving. He 
 made a point of talking to the men and boys at 
 their field work, and was soon personally intimate 
 with every soul in the parish, from the mothers 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 which characterized 
 him through life, and made him eager to learn 
 from every laboring man what he could tell 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 ; so that he soon got 
 the parish thoroughly in hand. It was by daily 
 house-to-house visiting in the week, still more 
 than his church services, that he acquired his in- 
 fluence. If a man or woman were suffering or 
 dying, he would go to them five and six times a 
 
 1 The church was renovated, repaired, and decorated about 
 eighteen years later ; and the churchyard was enlarged and planted 
 with shrubs. (M. K.) 
 
ioo Charles Kingsley 
 
 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. But, 
 then, to use his first curate’s words, “ What re- 
 spect he had for the poor ! I can think," he says, 
 “ of no other word. It was not simply that he 
 cared for them exceedingly, and was kind, feeling, 
 sympathetic, that he would take any amount of 
 trouble for them, that those whom he employed 
 became simply devoted to him. - — It was far more 
 than this. There was in him a delicate, deep re- 
 spect 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. . . 
 
 At this time he seldom dined out; never during 
 the winter months, when the adult school and the 
 cottage readings took up six evenings in the week ; 
 he was uneasy away from his work, and rarely left 
 the parish except for a few days at a time to take 
 his family to the sea-side. His chief 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 did not wish to be made a magis- 
 trate lest he should have to sit in judgment on his 
 parishioners. He could not afford to hunt, nor 
 would he have done soon first settling in Eversley 
 for other reasons ; though the temptation was 
 great, from the fact that for some years the fox- 
 hounds (now known as Mr. Garth's) were kept at 
 Bramshill, Sir John Cope being master. But often 
 has one who knew his every passing thought, and 
 
Parish Work 
 
 i oi 
 
 watched him closely, seen the tears start in his 
 eyes as horses and hounds swept by the rectory. 
 When, in after years, he took a gallop now and 
 then to refresh himself, and to meet his friends in 
 the hunting field, where he was always welcome, it 
 was on some old horse which he had picked up 
 cheap for “ parson’s work.” “ Another old screw, 
 Mr. Kingsley,” was said to him more than once by 
 middle-class men, who were well aware that he 
 knew a good horse when he saw it; and who per- 
 haps respected him all the more for his self-denial . 1 
 
 Sir John Cope's stablemen were a respectable 
 set of men, and most regular at church. The 
 rector had always a friendly word with the hunts- 
 man and whips ; and soon won their respect and 
 affection. Of this they early gave 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 to the rectory for weekly in- 
 struction, the stud groom was among the first to 
 present himself, bringing a message from the 
 whips and stablemen to say they had all been 
 confirmed once, but if Mr. Kingsley wished it, 
 they would be happy to come again ! It had 
 been the custom in Eversley to let the catechu- 
 mens get over as they could to some distant 
 church, where four or five parishes assembled to 
 meet the bishop, with little or no preparation, and 
 in consequence the public-houses were unusually 
 full on the day of confirmation, which often ended 
 in a mere drunken holiday for boys and girls, who 
 
 1 He was not only a superb horseman : but could ride across 
 country equally well in the deep clays and over the big banks and 
 blind ditches of South Berks and North Hants and over the 
 sweeping grass pastures of Beachmoor Vale — a very rare qualifi- 
 cation, as hunting men know. (M. K.) 
 
102 Charles Kingsley 
 
 had many miles to walk, and had neither superin- 
 tendence nor refreshment provided by the way. 
 But now matters were differently arranged. On 
 the six Sundays previous to the confirmation, the 
 catechism, creeds, and office of confirmation were 
 explained publicly; and during those six weeks 
 each candidate was taught separately as well as in 
 class. On the day itself the young people assem- 
 bled early for refreshment at the rectory, whence 
 they started in vans for Heckfield church. He 
 himself went with the boys, and his wife or some 
 trustworthy person with the girls, never losing 
 sight of them till they returned, the girls to their 
 homes, the boys and men 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 earnest words from their rector. Thus the 
 solemn day was always associated with pleasant 
 thoughts and an innocent holiday, which made 
 them more inclined to come to him the week fol- 
 lowing to be prepared for Holy Communion. 
 The appearance and manner of the Eversley cate- 
 chumens — the quiet dresses and neat caps pro- 
 vided for the girls — were often remarked on. It 
 may seem a trifling matter to dwell on now when 
 such things are common in all parishes : but 
 
 thirty-two years ago Eversley set the example on 
 confirmation as well as on many other days. 
 
 His preaching from the first was remarkable. 
 The only fault which Bishop Sumner found with 
 the sermons he took up to him before 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 an empty 
 
Personal Influence 103 
 
 church. His original mind and common sense 
 alike revolted from the use of conventional and 
 unmeaning phraseology; and as to him all the 
 facts of life were sacred, he was equally unfettered 
 in the subject-matter of his sermons. 
 
 “The great difference,” he said, in writing on this 
 point to his wife, “ which strikes me between St. Augus- 
 tine 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 in- 
 finitely above that half-faith of our present systems, which 
 makes religion a thing apart, explains by it only a few phe- 
 nomena of man’s existence (whose number is limited by cus- 
 tom so closely, that thousands of subjects are considered 
 unfit for the pulpit) ; and leaves the rest of the universe a 
 terra incognita to the religious thinker, to be travelled only 
 by the Mammonite and the physical philosopher.” 
 
 During the summer of 1844 he made the 
 acquaintance of the Rev. Frederick Denison 
 Maurice; soon to become his dear “Master.” 
 He asked his advice on all his parish difficulties, 
 telling him that to his “ works he was 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?” 
 
 His own happiness at this time deepened his 
 sympathies, and he writes to a friend then in great 
 anxiety : 
 
104 Charles Kingsley 
 
 August 5, 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 even, burdened with difficulties, no hope of 
 a living . . . and yet through all filled with the most ex- 
 traordinary 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 without, 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 was 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 believing firmly that His promises had a real, not a 
 mere metaphorical meaning, 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 happi- 
 ness — of our purses — of our least amusements — and 
 that the faithlessness of this day, and the Manichaeism 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 spiritualize 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 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 
 
Personal Influence 105 
 
 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 God 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 sumus et quare victuri gigni- 
 mur ,’ 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 over- 
 crust humanity, and look at man and man’s destiny, as 
 God constituted it. You must leave self — forget self — 
 you must discipline self till she lays down, and ceases 
 clamoring for a vote in the Parliament of men. You 
 must throw off the proud system-seeking intellect 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 construct a religion for yourself from the Bible ; 
 or if you very wisely think this, as I do, a sheer impossi- 
 bility, you must use the help of all men, all schools, all 
 sects, all ages, all histories — enter into all, sympathize 
 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 
 
io6 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 impeni- 
 tently into habitual sin. . . . Let me hear from you, 
 and take the earliest opportunity of introducing you to 
 my dear wife.” 
 
 Next year the news of his brother, Lieut. Kings- 
 ley’s death from fever in Torres Straits, on board 
 H. M. S. “ Royalist,” reached England, and he 
 writes to his wife : 
 
 February 26, 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 everlasting No ! / As far as externals go, it has been 
 very sad. The sailors say commonly that there is but a 
 sheet of paper between Torres Straits and Hell. And 
 there he lay, and the wretched crew, in the little brig, 
 roasting and pining, day after day — never heard of, or 
 hearing of living soul for a year and a half. The com- 
 mander died — half the crew died — and so they died 
 and died on till, in May, no officer was left but Gerald, 
 and on the 1 7th 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 boat- 
 swain, had to promote himself to keep the pennant 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 
 
Canonry of Middleham 107 
 
 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 Eng- 
 land. All parties are in confused and angry murmur at 
 they know not what — every one is frightened. . . 
 
 Early -in 1845, Dean Wood, having two vacant 
 stalls at his disposal in the Collegiate Church of 
 Middleham, offered one to his son, and the other 
 to Charles Kingsley, his son’s old college friend. 
 The canonries were honorary, and had neither duty 
 nor stipend connected with them, but being of 
 historic interest, the two friends gladly accepted 
 them, and went down together to be inducted. He 
 was charmed with Yorkshire, its people, and its 
 scenery, and writes from Middleham to his wife : 
 
 May 18, 1845. — “At the station I met the Dean and 
 Peter, and went down with them. After a confused dog- 
 sleep night, the gray morning broke in on the country 
 beyond Derby — of that peculiar furrowed cast which 
 marks the beds above the coal, like 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 hid- 
 den 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, 
 
108 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 promontory of Pen- 
 hill, and wanders up towards the lakes, bearing with her 
 the Kendall mail, and two tortured horses, for which the 
 knacker’s yard cries, indignant. The hospitalities here 
 seem perpetual.” 
 
 May 22. — “What 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 Cres wick’s ; they 
 are exact likenesses 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. 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 xtent and magnificence sur- 
 passed everything 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 ‘ Aysgack Force,’ 
 
 — a force, being in plain English, a waterfall. Ley burn 
 Scar, a magnificent terrace of rock, rising above the val- 
 ley through a ‘ talus ’ of wood, I saw 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 
 
Needs of the Church 109 
 
 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.” 
 
 May 23. — “ I send you some flowers, gathered yester- 
 day from the ruins of Jervaulx Abbey, dismantled by con- 
 nivance 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 stiff 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 ; 
 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 state of parties in Church and State, espe- 
 cially the former, now lay heavy on his heart, 
 which echoed Dr. Arnold’s words, “ When I 
 think of the Church, I could sit down and pine 
 and die.” — (Life, Vol. II. p. 137), and this made 
 him 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. On 
 all these subjects it was his comfort to pour out 
 his thoughts to his friend Mr. Powles, Fellow of 
 Exeter College, Oxford. 
 
 December 1 1, 1845. — “ About the ‘ Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge 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 
 
1 1 o Charles Kingsley 
 
 God help us all ! for such a distempered tangled juncture 
 must end in the cutting of the Gordian knot, by the higher 
 or lower powers ; and as the higher have fairly denied 
 their cutting ability and have given it up, perhaps the 
 lower may try their hands at it. I would, if I were hover- 
 ing between nine shillings a week and the workhouse, as 
 the sum of all attainabilities this side of Heaven. God 
 help us all ! I say again ; for there is no counsel to be 
 got anywhere from man, and as for God's book, men 
 have made it mean anything and nothing, with their 
 commenting and squabbling, and doctrine picking, till 
 one asks with Pilate, 4 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? 
 
 44 1 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 cockpit, 
 wherein main after main of cocklets — the 4 shell ' alas ! 
 scarce 4 off their heads ’ — come forth to slay and be 
 slain mutually, for no quarrel, except 4 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 4 Sapientum 
 templa serena , despicere unde queas alios , atque cernere 
 passim err antes ' 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. 
 
 44 Nobody trusts nobody. The clergy are split up into 
 innumerable parties, principally nomadic. Everyone 
 afraid to speak. Everyone unwilling to listen to his 
 neighbor; 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 
 
I T I 
 
 Needs of the Church 
 
 Puseyites, or the Papists, or 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.’ . . . The 
 principles which the great kings and bishops of the Middle 
 Ages, and our reformers of the 16th century felt to be the 
 foundation of a Church and nation, are now set at nought 
 equally by those who pretend to worship the Middle Ages, 
 and those who swear by the reformers. And Popery and 
 Puritanism seem to be fighting their battle over again in 
 England, on the foul middle ground of mammonite infi- 
 delity. They are re-appearing in weaker and less sincere 
 forms ; but does that indicate the approach of their in- 
 dividual 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 ? . . . 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 
 labor. The latter I have, thank God ; but for doctrines ! 
 Verily, in England, doctrines, as Carlyle says of customs 
 in France in ’93, are c 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 
 
1 1 2 Charles Kingsley 
 
 Asphaltic lake of Polemics! Oh, teeming tropic sea 
 of Eros ! of love of man as man, of marriage, and 
 lessons which the hearth and home alone can teach 
 — Heaven’s glories, the face of Christ our Lord even 
 mirrored in their pure Eden depths ! and oh, foolish 
 heart of mine, which will try and try to think and under- 
 stand, instead of 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. . . . God bless you and * * * *, and 
 admit you in His good time into the inner temple of the 
 Garden of Eden, which surely exists st;ill on earth, for 
 those who have faith and purity enough to believe in 
 their own high honors.” 
 
 Eversley : 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 , ctgroj 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 every- 
 thing 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 entre 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 un- 
 rivalled powers of self-adaptation — ay, of adapting him- 
 self 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 <j>v\aKes in the Republic are in 
 the only state fit for men of mind, yet discovered, except one 
 
Needs of the Church 1 1 3 
 
 — Sewell is not far out there. The <f>v\aKcs 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. 
 
 “But first, young men of this day must get faith. I am 
 more and more painfully awake to the fact that the curse 
 of our generation is that so few of us deeply believe any- 
 thing. 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 6 Record,’ that it attacks directly, and not by im- 
 plication. 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 
 dilettantism’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 something — 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 your sky, like a Greenland sun, never set- 
 ting 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 * * 
 vol. 1 . — 8 
 
1 1 4 Charles Kingsley 
 
 December , 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. Waiving the question of its evil or 
 its good, we cannot stop it. Let us Christianize 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 license, or pedantic con- 
 stitution-mongering, but the rights of man as man — his 
 individual and direct responsibility to God and the State, 
 on the score of mere manhood and Christian grace) be 
 not the very pith 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 spiritually 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, and 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. ‘ The real struggle of the day will be, not 
 between Popery and Protestantism, but between Atheism 
 and Christ/ And here we are daubing walls with un- 
 
Needs of the Church 115 
 
 tempered mortar — quarrelling about how we shall patch 
 the superstructure, forgetting that the foundation is gone 
 
 — Faith in anything. As in the days of Noah with the 
 Titans — as in the days of Mahomet with the Christian 
 sects of the East — they were eating, and drinking, and 
 quarrelling, no doubt, and behold the flood came and 
 swept them all away. And even such to me seems the 
 prospect of the English Church. . . 
 
 To his wife : 
 
 Eversley: May, 1846. — “. . . I got home at four 
 this morning after a delicious walk — a poem in itself. 
 I never saw such a sight before as the mists on the heath 
 and valleys, and never knew what a real bird-chorus was. 
 I am lonely enough, but right glad I came, as there is 
 plenty to do. ... I shall start to-morrow morning, and 
 walk on to you at 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. 
 I stood in the middle of the flying army, and saw the 
 whole to my great delight. Certainly man, even in the 
 lowest grade, is infinitely wonderful, and infinitely brave 
 
 — give him habit and self-confidence. To see all those 
 
 little poisonous insects crawling over H., 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 4 instinct ’), which takes 
 with them the form of loyalty, prudence, order, self-sacri- 
 fice. How do we know that they have no souls ? ‘ The 
 
 beasts which perish ? ’ Ay, but put against that 4 the 
 spirit of the beast which goeth downward to the earth ? — 
 and whither then ? 4 Man perished},’ 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 interesting day 
 yesterday in London. Called on * and found him 
 undergoing all the horrors of a deep, and as I do think, 
 
1 1 6 Charles Kingsley 
 
 healthy baptism of fire — not only a conversion, but a 
 discovery that God and the devil are living realities, fight- 
 ing 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. . . 
 
 1846 passed uneventfully in the routine of parish 
 work and domestic happiness. He never cared to 
 leave his quiet home, doubly enriched by the pres- 
 ence of a little daughter. A singing class was 
 started on Hullah’s plan to improve the church 
 music, which had been hitherto in the hands of 
 three or four poor men, with a trombone and two 
 clarionets. This, and other adult classes, brought 
 his people on several nights in the week up to the 
 rectory, where the long unfurnished dining-room 
 served the purpose of schoolroom. In 1847 his 
 eldest son was born, and named after Mr. Maurice, 
 who, with Mr. Powles, stood sponsor 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 real holi- 
 day since his marriage, which he earned by taking 
 the Sunday services of Pennington, near Lyming- 
 ton. Here he had the new luxury of a horse, and 
 explored the forest, dear to him from old associa- 
 tions with his father’s youth 1 and manhood, day by 
 day, with deep delight. In the enjoyment of the 
 sea-shore with his beloved ones, with leisure to 
 
 1 See page 1 of this volume. 
 
The Saint’s Tragedy 1 17 
 
 watch his babies at play, and in solitary rides, his 
 heart’s spring bubbled up into song once more, 
 and he wrote many ballads, — among them, “ The 
 Red King,” the “ Outlaw,” “ Oh, she tripp’d over 
 Ocknell plain.” It was only either at some great 
 crisis of his life, or when his surroundings were, as 
 now, in perfect harmony, that he could write 
 poetry. Here, too, he laid up a store of impres- 
 sions for a New Forest Novel which was begun 
 many years later, but never completed. 
 
 This year his “ Life of St. Elizabeth,” which was 
 begun in prose in 1842, and had been gradually 
 growing under his hand, took the form of a drama. 
 He finished it in the summer : but being doubtful 
 as to whether it was worth printing, he decided 
 nothing till he had consulted the Dean of Windsor 
 and other friends on whose judgment and poetical 
 verdict he could rely. Their opinion was unani- 
 mous ; but the difficulty was to find a publisher who 
 would undertake the work of a young and unknown 
 author. He took the MSS. to London, from 
 whence he wrote to his wife : 
 
 “ I breakfasted with Maurice this morning, and went 
 over a great deal of St. Elizabeth, and I cannot tell you 
 how thankful I am to God about it. He has quite changed 
 his mind about scene 1. of act ii., Elizabeth’s bower. He 
 read it to Powles, who is decidedly for keeping it in just 
 as it is, and thinks it ought to offend no one. He is very 
 desirous to show the MSS. to A. G. Scott, Mrs. H., 
 Coleridge, Tennyson, and Van Artevelde Taylor. He 
 says that it ought to do great good with those who can 
 take it in, but for those who cannot, it ought to have a 
 preface ; and has more than hinted that he will help me 
 to one, by writing me something which, if I like, I can 
 prefix. What more would you have? . . . Coleridge’s 
 
1 1 8 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 in- 
 creases love ! It is positively good sometimes to be 
 parted, that one’s affection may become conscious 
 of itself, and proud, and humble, and thankful 
 accordingly. ...” 
 
 “. . . St. Elizabeth 1 is in the press,” he writes joy- 
 fully a few days later to Mr. Powles, “ 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.” 
 
 1 This was published under the name of “ The Saint’s Tragedy.” 
 
 (M. K.) 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 1848 
 Aged 29 
 
 Publication of “ Saint's Tragedy " — Parish Work — 
 Chartist Riots — Tenth of April — Work in London 
 
 — Politics for the People — Parson Lot — A Profes- 
 sorship at Queen's College — Croyland Abbey — Let- 
 ters to his Child — Advice to an Author — “Yeast" 
 
 — Illness — The Higher View of Marriage — Devon- 
 shire. 
 
 “ This is true liberty when freeborn men 
 Having to advise the public may speak free ; 
 
 Which 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 Milton. 
 
 T HIS year, so marked in the history of 
 Europe, was one of the most important of 
 Charles Kingsley’s life. “ The Saint’s Tragedy,” 
 which was published soon after Christmas, gave 
 him in one sense a new position, especially among 
 young men at the universities. It was eagerly 
 read at Oxford, and fiercely attacked by the high 
 church party, who were made still more bitter 
 against its author by the publication of “ Yeast ” 
 in the summer. He was surprised himself to find 
 the interest the drama had excited at Oxford ; and 
 while on a visit there he writes to his wife : 
 
 y 
 
 “ I may, I suppose, tell you that I am here under- 
 going the new process of being made a lion of, at least so 
 
120 Charles Kingsley 
 
 Powles tells me. They got up a meeting for me, and the 
 club was 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 of the ‘ Saint's Tragedy,' 
 very much. Of course he did not go to the bottom on 
 the Love and Marriage question; but there he showed 
 his sense. . . .” 
 
 “ Kingsley had not,” says a friend in speaking of this 
 period, “ 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 dissat- 
 isfied with the high church teaching, which then was that 
 of the most earnest tutors in Oxford. There were, in- 
 deed, some noble exceptions, — Jowett of Balliol, Powles 
 of Exeter, Congreve of Wadham, Stanley of University, 
 Clough of Oriel. But they were scattered, and their in- 
 fluence 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 look at its author 
 with the deepest interest ; it was a privilege to have been 
 in the room with him.” 
 
 Though it excited no great interest in the liter- 
 ary world in England, it was read and appreciated 
 in Germany; and in the highest quarters in this 
 country the genius of the author was recognized. 
 Baron de Bunsen thus expresses his opinion in 
 strong, some may think extravagant, terms to Pro- 
 fessor Max Muller, some years later: 
 
I 21 
 
 The Saint’s Tragedy 
 
 “ As showing Kingsley’s dramatic power I do not hesi- 
 tate to call ‘ The Saint’s Tragedy ’ and ‘ Hypatia/ by far 
 the most important and perfect works. In these, I find 
 the justification of a hope 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 VIII., 
 another series from Edward VI. to the landing of Wil- 
 liam of Orange. . . . The tragedy of ‘ St. Elizabeth ’ 
 shows that Kingsley can grapple, not only with the novel, 
 but with the more severe rules of dramatic art.r 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, 
 i Let the dead bury their dead : ’ and the time has come 
 that Kingsley should do so.” 
 
 The political events of 1848 which shook all 
 Europe to its very foundation, stirred his blood, 
 and seemed for the time to give him a super- 
 natural strength, which kept up till the autumn, 
 when he completely broke down. 
 
 “ It is only by an effort,” says Mr. Tom Hughes, in 
 his Preface to “ Alton Locke/’ “that one can now realize 
 the strain to which the nation was subjected during that 
 winter and spring, and which, of course, tried every indi- 
 vidual man also, according to the depth and earnestness 
 
122 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 laboring 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 ; probably because, as a country parson, he was 
 more directly in contact with one class of the poor than 
 any of them. How deeply he felt for the agricultural 
 poor, how faithfully he reflected the passionate and rest- 
 less 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.” 
 
 “ So vividly did he realize the sufferings of the poor,” 
 to quote another friend, “ so keenly did he feel what he 
 deemed the callousness and incompetence of the Govern- 
 ment and the mass of the upper 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 right- 
 eous God. In later years this feeling gradually left him. 
 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.” 
 
 It was while in this state of mind that he wrote 
 “ The Day of the Lord.” — [Poems, p. 263.] 
 
 His parish work this year was if possible more 
 
Parish Work 
 
 1 2 3 
 
 vigorous than ever. Every winter’s evening was 
 occupied with either night-school at the rectory, 
 about thirty men attending; or little services in 
 the outlying cottages for the infirm and laboring 
 men after their day’s work. During the spring 
 and summer a writing class was held for girls in 
 the empty coach-house ; a cottage school for in- 
 fants was opened on the common — all preparing 
 the way for the national school that was built 
 some years later, and for which the teacher was in 
 training. The parish made a great step forward. 
 The number of communicants increased. The 
 Passion week daily services and sermons seemed 
 to borrow intenser fervor and interest from his 
 sympathy in the strange events of the great world 
 outside the small quiet parish, and though poorly 
 attended, still gathered together a few laboring 
 folk. He preached to his people on emigration, 
 on poaching, and on the political and social dis- 
 turbances of the day. He wrote his first article 
 for “ Fraser’s Magazine,” “ 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. In addition to parish and 
 literary work he accepted the professorship of 
 English Literature and Composition at Queen’s 
 College, then in its infancy, of which Mr. Maurice 
 was President, and lectured once a week in Lon- 
 don. He was also proposed for the professorship 
 of Modern History at King’s College. He was in 
 constant communication with Mr. Maurice and the 
 knot of remarkable men who gathered round him, 
 and made acquaintance with Bishop Stanley of 
 Norwich, and his distinguished son; with Thomas 
 
i 24 Charles Kingsley 
 
 Carlyle, Archdeacon Hare, Thomas Hughes, Tom 
 Taylor, Arthur Helps, John Hullah, John Malcolm 
 Ludlow, and many others at work in the same 
 cause. 
 
 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 to see what was going on ; and on 
 the morning of the 10th of April went up with his 
 friend Mr. John Parker, publisher, who had been 
 spending the Sunday at Eversley. Mr. Parker, 
 like many owners of property in London, was 
 nervous and anxious about the results of the day, 
 telling Mrs. Kingsley, half in joke as he left the 
 door, that she might expect to hear of his shop 
 having been broken into, and himself thrown into 
 the Trafalgar Square fountains by the mob. On 
 arriving in town, they went to the Strand, then on 
 to Mr. Maurice's; and in the afternoon Mr. Kings- 
 ley and Mr. Ludlow walked to Kennington Com- 
 mon, where pouring rain damped the spirits of the 
 crowds assembled. By midday post he wrote to 
 his wife. 
 
 “. . . 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 Hol- 
 born, and are going to send up only the legal number of 
 delegates to the House. 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 write by the latest post. . . .” 
 
 April 11, 8 a. m. — “All as quiet as a mouse as yet. 
 The storm is blown over till to-morrow, but all are under 
 
Chartist Riots 125 
 
 arms — specials, police, and military. Maurice is in 
 great excitement. He has sent me to Ludlow, 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 Archdeacon 
 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.” 
 
 Evening. — “ The events of a week have been crowded 
 into a few hours. I was up till 4 this morning, writing 
 posting placards under Maurice's auspices, one of which 
 is to be got out to-morrow morning, the rest when we 
 can get money. Could you not beg a few sovereigns 
 somewhere, 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 
 has given me the 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 4 Tracts for the Times, 
 addressed to the higher orders. Maurice is a la hauteur 
 des circonstances — 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 ! ” 
 
 April 12. — “. . . 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, &c. are going to set to work, to supply the place 
 of the defunct ‘Saturday Magazine.' I send you my 
 
1 26 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 10s. towards bringing out more, and Maurice is sub- 
 scription-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 profes- 
 sorship. I will be down at Winchfield to-morrow. Kiss 
 the babes for me. Parker begs to remark that he has 
 not been thrown into the Trafalgar fountain. ...” 
 
 This was the Placard : 
 
 “WORKMEN OF ENGLAND !” 
 
 “You say that you are wronged. Many of you are 
 wronged ; and many besides yourselves know it. Almost 
 all men who have heads and hearts know it — above all, 
 the working clergy know it. They go into your houses, 
 they see the shameful filth and darkness 1 in which you 
 are forced to live crowded together ; they see your chil- 
 dren growing up in ignorance and temptation, for want 
 of fit education ; they see intelligent and well-read men 
 among you, shut out from a Freemen’s just right of voting ; 
 and they see too the noble patience and self-control with 
 which you have as yet borne these evils. They see it, 
 and God sees it. 
 
 “ Workmen of England ! You have more friends 
 than you think for. Friends who expect nothing from 
 you, but who love you, because you are their brothers, 
 and who fear God, and therefore dare not neglect you, 
 His children ; men who are drudging and sacrificing 
 themselves to get you your rights ; men who know what 
 your rights are, better than you know yourselves, who are 
 trying to get for you something nobler than charters and 
 dozens of Acts of Parliament — more useful than this 
 
 1 The Window tax was not then taken off. 
 
Tenth of April 127 
 
 ‘ fifty thousandth share in a Talker in the National Palaver, 
 at Westminster ’ 1 can give you. You may disbelieve 
 them, insult them — you cannot stop their working for 
 you, beseeching you, as you love yourselves, to turn back 
 from the precipice of riot, which ends in the gulf of uni- 
 versal distrust, stagnation, starvation. You think the 
 Charter would make you free — would to God it would ! 
 The Charter is not bad; if the men who use it are not 
 bad! 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 ? 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 your- 
 selves into meaning ‘license, ’ 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 Mammon- 
 ites 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 15 th, he returned to Eversley much ex- 
 hausted. He preached on the Chartist riots to his 
 own people the following Sunday; and now work- 
 
 1 Carlyle. 
 
128 Charles Kingsley 
 
 ing in his parish, writing for the “ Politics,” 
 and preparing his lectures for Queen’s College, 
 filled up every moment of time. The various 
 writers for the new periodical continually came 
 to Eversley to talk over their work with and con- 
 sult him. 
 
 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 fol- 
 lowed 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 interven- 
 ing years entirely changed the conditions of the labor 
 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. . . . Our purpose is to give some 
 slight sketch of him ... 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 laboring 
 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 super- 
 fluous 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 ground. For through all the many notices 
 of him which appeared after his death, in January, 1875, 
 
Work in London 
 
 1 29 
 
 there ran the same apologetic tone as to this part of his 
 life's work. While generally, and as a rule cordially, 
 recognizing his merits as an author and a man, the writers 
 seemed to agree in passing lightly over this ground. 
 When 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 Par- 
 son Lot of those “ Politics for the People ” which made 
 no little noise in their time, and as Parson Lot he de- 
 clared 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 probably 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 confirmation and encouragement 
 in the example of Parson Lot for the mischievous and 
 cowardly distrust of anything like enthusiasm amongst 
 young men, already sadly too prevalent 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. . . . My 
 first meeting with him was in the autumn of 1847. • • • 
 Mr. Maurice had undertaken the charge of a small dis- 
 trict 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 
 vol. 1. — 9 
 
130 Charles Kingsley 
 
 and talked over. Suggestions were made and plans con- 
 sidered ; 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 meet- 
 ings, amongst whom was Charles Kingsley. His poem, 
 
 ‘ The Saint’s Tragedy,’ and the high regard and admira- 
 tion which Mr. Maurice had for him, made him a notable 
 figure in that small society, and his presence was always 
 eagerly looked for. What impressed me most about him 
 when we first met was his affectionate deference to Mr. 
 Maurice, and the vigor and incisiveness of everything he 
 said and did. He had the power of cutting out what he 
 meant in a few clear words, beyond any one I have ever 
 met. The next thing that struck one was the ease with 
 which he could turn from playfulness, or even broad 
 humor, to the deepest earnest. At first I think this 
 startled most persons, until they came to find out the real 
 deep nature of the man ; and that his broadest humor 
 had its root in a faith which realized, with extraordinary 
 vividness, the fact that God’s Spirit is actively abroad in 
 the world, and that Christ is in every man, and made him 
 hold fast, even in his saddest moments, — and sad mo- 
 ments 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 
 
Work in London 131 
 
 there suggested, and adopted by him, as a familiar nom 
 de plume. . . . The name was chiefly made famous by 
 his writings in 6 Politics for the People/ the ‘ Christian 
 Socialist/ and the ‘ Journal of Association/ . . . by ‘ Alton 
 Locke/ and by tracts and pamphlets, of which the best 
 known [is] ‘ Cheap Clothes, and Nasty.’ ... In order 
 to understand and judge the sayings and writings of 
 Parson Lot fairly, it is necessary to recall the condition of 
 the England of that day. — Through the winter of 1847-8, 
 amidst wide-spread distress, the cloud of discontent, of 
 which Chartism was the most violent symptom, had been 
 growing darker and more 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. ...” 1 
 
 On the 6th of May the first number of “ Politics 
 for the People ” appeared. Its regular contribu- 
 tors were nearly all university men, clergymen of 
 the Church of England, London barristers, men of 
 science; among them Archdeacon Hare, Sir 
 Arthur Helps, Professor Conington, and a well 
 known London physician. A few letters from 
 working men were admitted. It was a remark- 
 able though short-lived publication; and those 
 whose opinions of the “ Radicals, Socialists, 
 Chartists,” who set it on foot, were formed by 
 the public press, without having read the book it- 
 self, would be surprised at the loyal, conservative, 
 serious tone of its contents, and the gravity, if not 
 severity, with which it attacked physical force 
 Chartism, monster meetings, and the demand for 
 universal suffrage by men who had neither educa- 
 
 1 Preface to “ Alton Locke,” and “ Cheap Clothes, and Nasty,” 
 by Thomas Hughes, Q.C. 
 
i 3 2 Charles Kingsley 
 
 tion nor moral self-government to qualify them for 
 a vote. Extracts are now given from his Letters to 
 Chartists, to avoid misconception as to “ that burn- 
 ing language ” of which the “ Times” of January 
 25th, 1875, speaks, which Parson Lot used when 
 he said “ that the People's Charter did not go far 
 enough" : 
 
 “ 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 those who laugh at your petition of the 
 1 oth 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 
 honorable and courteous answer, whichever way it may 
 be. But my only quarrel with the Charter is, that it does 
 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 
 yoii 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 any one will tell me of a country 
 where a charter made the rogues honest, or the idle indus- 
 trious, I shall alter my opinion of the Charter, but not till 
 then. It disappointed me bitterly when I read it. It 
 seems a harmless cry enough, but a poor, bald, constitu- 
 tion-mongering cry as I ever heard. That French cry of 
 4 Organization of Labor ’ is worth a dozen 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 
 
Politics for the People 133 
 
 afraid to rebuke you boldly at first. Why do you your- 
 selves 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 news- 
 paper, and found one in a shop where ‘The People’s 
 Charter,’ and ‘ Lamartine’s Address to the Irish Deputa- 
 tion,’ 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 bropght 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 
 liberty ” must be in a very poor way ; heaven-born brother- 
 hood has fraternized here with some very blackguard 
 brethen.’ ... No ! as I read on, I found that almost 
 the only books puffed 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 : 
 ‘ 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 
 
134 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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, with- 
 out ever starting such an impertinent and c personal ’ re- 
 quest, 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 convinced 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 excite- 
 ment, 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 c sacred duty of order ’ will lay the storm again ? 
 What spirit is there but the devil’s spirit, in bloodthirsty 
 threats of revenge ? What brotherhood ought you to have 
 with the 6 United Irishmen ’ 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, 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 
 
Parson Lot 
 
 1 35 
 
 poor man’s cause and the poor man’s God, I protest 
 against this unnatural alliance ! I denounce the weapons 
 which 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? Will 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 “ the Bible demands for 
 the poor as much, and more, than they demand for them- 
 selves ; 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 labor, or any 
 other Morrison ’s-pill measure Can give — and yet of a 
 future, which will embrace all that is good in these, a 
 
136 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 through- 
 out : it is the thought which runs through the whole Bible, 
 justice from God to those whom men oppress, glory from 
 God to those whom men despise. Does that look like 
 the invention of tyrants and prelates ? You may sneer ; 
 but give me a fair hearing, 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.” 
 
 “ I think,” said Mr. Hughes, ct I know every line which 
 was ever published under the signature, 4 Parson Lot/ and 
 I take it upon myself to say that there is in all that 4 burn- 
 ing language’ nothing more revolutionary than the ex- 
 tracts given from his letters to the Chartists. ... In the 
 early summer of 1848, some of those who felt with him 
 that the 4 People’s Charter ’ had not had fair play or 
 courteous treatment, and that those who signed it had 
 real wrongs to complain of, put themselves into communi- 
 cation 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 everyone’s attention at 
 once — 4 1 am a Church of England parson ’ — a long 
 pause — ' and a Chartist ’ ; and then he went on to ex- 
 plain how far he thought them right in their claim for a 
 reform of Parliament ; how deeply he sympathized with 
 
Parson Lot 
 
 1 37 
 
 their sense of the injustice of the law as it affected them ; 
 how ready he was to help in all ways to get these things 
 set right ; and then to denounce their methods in very 
 much the same terms as I have already quoted from his 
 letters to the Chartists. Probably no one who was present 
 ever heard a speech which told more at the time. . . . 
 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. . . . The memo- 
 rials of his many controversies lie about in the periodi- 
 cals of that time, and any one who cares to hunt them up 
 will be well repaid, and struck with the vigor of the defence, 
 and still more with the complete change in public opinion 
 which has brought the England of to-day clean round to 
 the side of Parson Lot . 1 . . 
 
 Among his contributions to “ Politics for the 
 People ” were the first three of a projected series on 
 the National Gallery and the British Museum. 
 
 NO. I. — 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 coloring, when 
 they are wearied with dull bricks and mortar, and the ugly 
 colorless 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 
 1 Preface to “ Alton Locke,” by T. Hughes, Q. C. 
 
138 Charles Kingsley 
 
 thoughtfulness, and affection, and nobleness of mind, even 
 by the expression of the countenance. The poet Words- 
 worth, talking of training up a beautiful country girl, says : 
 
 6 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 mould the maiden's form , 
 
 By silent sy?npathy. 
 
 And she shall bend her ear 
 
 In many a secret place 
 
 Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 
 
 And 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. Never lose an opportunity of seeing any- 
 thing beautiful. Beauty is God’s handwriting — a way- 
 side 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 paradise of refreshment. Of course, if he 
 can get the 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 pic- 
 tures, 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 
 
Parson Lot 
 
 '39 
 
 watches and watches till he seems to hear the foam whis- 
 per, 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 which shall be hereafter — 
 ay, which shall be ! Believe it, toil-worn worker, in spite 
 of thy foul alley, thy crowded lodging, thy grimed cloth- 
 ing, 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 love- 
 lier 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 come — 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 pic- 
 tures ; 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 
 
140 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 countenance seems to grow handsomer and nobler 
 on the spot, and drink in and reflect unknowingly, the 
 beauty of the picture he is studying. See how some 
 laborer’s face will light up before the painting which tells 
 him a noble story of by-gone days. And why? Be- 
 cause 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 men of like 
 passions with himself, and his man’s heart understands 
 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, thought- 
 ful, kindly ; you only want to have these pictures ex- 
 plained 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 pic- 
 tures 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.” 
 
 NO. II. — NATIONAL GALLERY 
 
 “Any one who goes to the National Gallery in Trafal- 
 gar Square, and passes right through into the furthest 
 
Parson Lot 
 
 I 4 I 
 
 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 4 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 ser- 
 mon, too, many a time. I never enter that gallery with- 
 out 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 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 ? 9 
 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 char- 
 acter 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 — 6 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 it- 
 self about the man whom it represents. In the first place, 
 
142 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 every one’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 circumstances — things which stand 
 round the man (as the word means), and not the whole 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 vul- 
 gar 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 a pathetic portrait, or 
 picture of passion, we shall get one particular temporary 
 expression of his face — perhaps joy, sorrow, anger, dis- 
 gust — 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 thoughtful- 
 ness or his carelessness, written there once and for ever ; 
 — what he would be, though 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 com- 
 plete character, so that we should know him if any one 
 
Parson Lot 
 
 T 43 
 
 talked to us of his character, even without telling us his 
 likeness. 
 
 “ We may see at once that he has been very hand- 
 some ; but it is a peculiar sort of beauty. How delicate 
 and graceful all the lines in his face are ! — he is a gentle- 
 man 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 laborers, 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- 
 
144 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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. 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 calmly 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 him- 
 self, 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 mistake 
 
Parson Lot 145 
 
 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 magnifi- 
 cent national hall in which they hung ; but the spirit of 
 them is not passed away. Even now, Venice, Bellini’s 
 beloved motherland, 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 
 merchants 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, vic- 
 torious character of the old man’s face, and see how all 
 the rest of the picture agrees with it, in a complete har- 
 mony, as all things in a first-rate picture should. The 
 dress, the scenery, the light and shade, the general ‘ tone 9 
 of color 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 sympathize with the human beings 
 painted. Now here, because the face is calm and grand, 
 the color and the outlines are quiet and grand likewise. 
 How different these colors are from that glorious ‘ Holy 
 Family p of Francia’s, next to it on the right ; or from 
 that equally glorious ‘ Bacchus and Ariadne 9 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 
 vol . 1. — 10 
 
1 46 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 straight- 
 ness 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 right- 
 eous, 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.” 
 
 The third article was on the British Museum, 
 and seems like an unconscious prophecy . 1 When 
 he wrote it many schemes were afloat in his own 
 mind, which he lived to see carried out in the 
 
 1 Mr. Kingsley, in common with Thomas Hughes, and many 
 others, later worked strenuously to have the British Museum, the 
 National Gallery and the South Kensington Museum in London 
 opened to the public on Sunday afternoons ; but the opposition 
 
Parson Lot 
 
 J 47 
 
 great exhibitions of 1851 and i860, in the various 
 local industrial exhibitions at Manchester and else- 
 where, and in the throwing open of our cathedrals 
 to the public. But he was before his age in these 
 as in many other matters. 
 
 “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 infin- 
 itely more wonderful than the highest art ; and in the 
 commonest hedgeside leaf lies a mystery and beauty 
 greater than that of the greatest picture, the noblest statue 
 — as infinitely greater as God’s work is infinitely greater 
 than man’s. But to those who have no leisure to study 
 nature in the green fields (and there are now-a-days too 
 many such, though the time may come when all will 
 have that blessing), to such I say, go to the British 
 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 Englishman, and therefore I 
 have a right here. I can glory in these noble halls, as if 
 they were my own house. . . .’ ” 
 
 After an appeal to deans and chapters and to 
 rich collectors, he goes on : 
 
 was so strong in certain quarters that their hopes were not 
 realized till 1896, when the South Kensington was opened, 
 followed by the National Gallery and British Museum. 
 
 (M. K.) 
 
/ 
 
 148 Charles Kingsley 
 
 “ 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 com- 
 bine 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, 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 libra- 
 ries. 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, whatever 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 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 
 
Parson Lot 
 
 149 
 
 should have been hidden for ages, in all their splendors 
 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 un- 
 seen beauty, created? my brain grew dizzy between 
 pleasure and thought ; and, as always happens when one 
 is most innocently delighted, ‘ I turned to share the joy/ 
 as Wordsworth says ; and next to me stood a huge, 
 brawny coal-heaver, in his shovel hat, and white stockings 
 and high-lows, gazing at the humming-birds as earnestly 
 as myself. As I turned he turned, and I saw a bright 
 manly face, with a broad, soot-grimed forehead, from 
 under which a pair of keen flashing eyes gleamed won- 
 dering, 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 ‘ fraternized ’ 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 — ‘ Is n’t that beautiful ? 9 ‘ Well, that is ! ’ 
 
 And then both turned back again, to stare at our 
 humming-birds. 
 
 “ I never felt more thoroughly than at that minute 
 (though, thank God, I had often felt it before) that all 
 men were brothers ; that fraternity and equality were not 
 mere political doctrines, but blessed God-ordained facts ; 
 that the party- walls of rank and fashion and money were 
 but a paper prison of our own making, which we might 
 break through any moment by a single hearty and kindly 
 feeling; that the one spirit of God was given without 
 respect of persons ; that the beautiful things were beautiful 
 alike to the coal-heaver and the parson ; and that before 
 the wondrous works of God and of God’s inspired genius, 
 the rich and the poor might meet together, and feel that 
 
150 Charles Kingsley 
 
 whatever the coat or the creed may be, c A man f s a man 
 for a’ that/ and one Lord the maker of them all. 
 
 “ For believe me, my friends, rich and poor — and I 
 beseech you to think deeply over this great truth — that 
 men will never be joined in true brotherhood by mere 
 plans to give them a self-interest in common, as the 
 Socialists have tried to do. No : to feel for each other, 
 they must first feel with each other. To have their 
 sympathies in common, they must have not one object of 
 gain, but an object of admiration in common ; to know 
 that they are brothers, they must feel that they have one 
 Father ; and a way to feel that they have one common 
 Father, is to see each other wondering, side by side, at 
 his glorious works ! 
 
 “ Parson Lot. ” 
 
 He had a sore battle to fight at this time with 
 his own heart, and with those friends and relations, 
 religious and worldly, who each and all from their 
 own particular standpoint deprecated the line he 
 took, and urged him to withdraw from this sym- 
 pathy with the people, which must necessarily, 
 they thought, injure his prospects in life. “ But," 
 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, mis- 
 understood, slandered, and that, bitterest of all, by the 
 very people he loved best, and understood best, I alone 
 am to escape. My path is clear, and I will follow in it. 
 He who died for me, and who gave me you, shall I not 
 trust Him through whatsoever new and strange paths he 
 may lead me ? . . 
 
At Queen’s College 151 
 
 “ 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. ... All I hope is,” he adds, “ that we 
 shall be bold — 4 draw the sword, and throw away the 
 scabbard.' 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 the unreturning ferry-boat perish. Let us for- 
 ward. God leads us, though blind. 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 for- 
 get His gracious promises. 4 They had an eye unto Him 
 and were lightened; 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 
 Himself — as He ought. 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 sym- 
 pathy, before we begin scolding. ...” 
 
 To the same, July, 1848. — u I should have answered 
 yesterday your noble and kind letter, had not my after- 
 
152 
 
 Charles Kingsley 
 
 noon been employed in forcing a cruel, lazy farmer to 
 shoot a miserable horse which was rotting alive in front of 
 my house, and superintending its death by aid of one of 
 my own bullets. What an awful wonderful thing a violent 
 death is, even in a dumb beast ! 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 him 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 long- 
 ings which would force him to become something far 
 better than a novelist ; but for myself, chaotic, piecemeal, 
 passionate, ‘ lachemar ’ as I am, I have fears as great as 
 your own. I know the miserable, peevish, lazy, con- 
 ceited, 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 con- 
 dition of the poor, and our duty to them, which I have no 
 doubt He has taught many more, but He has not set any 
 one else to speak about them in the way in which I am 
 speaking. He has given me a certain artistic knack of 
 utterance (nothing but a knack), but He has done more. 
 He has made the ‘ Word of the Lord like 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-woodsfor nothing? Surely the edu- 
 cation which He has given me, so different from that which 
 
At Queen’s College 153 
 
 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 Izaak Walton, as it has done in our 
 day to that truly noble man, Captain Marryat. Therefore 
 I must believe 4 Se tu segid la tua stella ’ with Dante, that 
 He who ordained my star will not lead me into tempta- 
 tion, but through it, as Maurice says. Without Him all 
 places and methods of life are equally dangerous — with 
 Him, all equally safe. Pray for me, for in myself I am 
 weaker of purpose than a lost greyhound, lazier than a 
 dog in rainy weather. 
 
 But I feel intensely the weight of your advice to write 
 no more novels. Why should I ? I have no more to 
 say. When this is done I must set to and read. The 
 symbolism of nature and the meaning of history must be 
 my studies. Believe me I long for that day — The pangs 
 of intellectual labor, the burden of spiritual pregnancy, 
 are not pleasant things. A man cannot write in the fear 
 of God without running against the devil at every step. 
 He cannot sit down to speak the truth without disturbing 
 in his own soul a hornet swarm of lies. Your hack-writer 
 of no creed, your bigot Polyphemus, whose one eye just 
 helps him to see to eat men, they do not understand 
 this ; their pens run on joyful and light of heart. But no 
 more talk about myself. Will 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. 
 
 “ Many, many thanks for charming letters ; 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 in- 
 finite space ; a sort of Jacob’s Ladder, one end on earth 
 
154 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 ! 
 
 In the summer he made an expedition with Mr. 
 Maurice to Croyland Abbey, near Peterborough, 
 which gave him many inspirations for his story of 
 “ Hereward.” “ We spent there a priceless day,” 
 he says; “ these days with Maurice have taught 
 me more than I can tell. Like all great things, 
 he grows upon one more and more.” He wrote 
 several letters to his little daughter at this time, 
 full of poetry and natural history. 
 
 “My Darling Miss Rose, 
 
 “Your Daddy is going to write you a very long letter, 
 and you must ask your darling Mam to read it to you. I 
 will tell you what I have seen since I have been away. 
 Mr. Maurice and Daddy went to Cambridge, and saw all 
 the beautiful churches, and Daddy was so happy, and 
 thanked God so for giving him a darling Miss Rose and 
 Maurice and their blessed mother, and then we went in a 
 boat down the river to Ely, and the water was all full of 
 little fishes, that swam up and down under the boat ; and 
 Daddy went to Batesbite Loch into a house, and there 
 were such beautiful butterflies, that people catch in the 
 Fens. And then we went sailing down — sailing down 
 for twenty miles — down the most beautiful deep river 
 
Croyland Abbey 155 
 
 till we came to Ely. And there was a church, such a 
 beautiful church, on the top of a hill, with so many 
 towers and steeples, and Mr. Maurice and Daddy went 
 to it, and heard all the people say their prayers, and they 
 prayed to God for Daddy and Mam, and Miss Rose, and 
 little brother, and all the people that are good, and Daddy 
 was so happy ; and then we went to Peterborough, where 
 Daddy used to go when he was a little boy, and there 
 was a very big tortoise there, and Daddy used to go and 
 see it eat strawberries. And at Peterborough, Daddy and 
 Mr. Maurice went to the Cathedral to hear the little boys 
 sing, and Daddy was so happy, and they prayed for Miss 
 Rose and Maurice and their dear mother. And then 
 Daddy took a dog-cart and drove Mr. Maurice to Croy- 
 land, and there was such a beautiful church, all tumbled 
 down. And Daddy and Mr. Maurice went up to the 
 top of the tower, and all underneath them there was quite 
 flat fen, so very flat and smooth, and beautiful fields of 
 wheat and beans, and oats and rape-seed, and such great 
 ditches, quite straight and flat, and great high banks, with 
 the roads on the top of the banks, for fear the water 
 should come and drown people. And Daddy and Mr. 
 Maurice stood on the top of the great high tower, and 
 Daddy said, ‘ When will the good people come and build 
 up this beautiful church that is tumbled down?’ — and 
 then Daddy cried. And Mr. Maurice said, ‘ Wait a little, 
 and the good God will come down out of heaven, and 
 send all the good people back again, and then the beauti- 
 ful church will be built up again, and everybody will be 
 so good, and nobody will be sick any more. . . . And, 
 Mr. Maurice said, 4 if you will be very good, and not be 
 cross, or get into passions, you will see all the good 
 people come out of the sky — and then everybody will 
 be so happy/ And Daddy was very glad to hear what 
 Mr. Maurice said. 
 
 “ Now, I have got a very bad pen, like a stick, and I 
 cannot write any more. And I will write you a long 
 
156 Charles Kingsley 
 
 letter to-morrow and tell you what a beautiful place I am 
 in, and all about the stork, and the owls, and the beauti- 
 ful birds and butterflies that are in Daddy’s room. . . . 
 
 “ Your dear Daddy.” 
 
 Duxford. — “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 beautiful 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 garden to run about — what fun ! And to- 
 
Letters to his Child 157 
 
 morrow Daddy is going to see the beautiful pictures at 
 the Fitzwilliam Museum, and the next day he is going to 
 fish at Shelford, and the next day, perhaps, he is coming 
 home to his darlings at Eversley Rectory, for he does 
 not know what to do without them. . . . How 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, 
 
 “ Charles Kingsley/' 
 
 He made acquaintance this year with Mr. 
 Thomas Cooper, the Chartist author, to whom 
 he writes : 
 
 Eversley, June 19, 1848. — “Ever since I read your 
 brilliant poem, 6 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 dis- 
 trust 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 fraternize? 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 sympathize 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 4 Politics of the People/ under the 
 name of Parson Lot. Now I had hailed with cordial 
 pleasure the appearance of the ‘ Commonwealth/ and 
 sympathized thoroughly with it — and here was this very 
 
158 Charles Kingsley 
 
 ‘ 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 I far my 
 superiors in worth, just because I was a clergyman, the 
 very office which ought to have testified above all others, 
 for liberty, equality, brotherhood, for time and eternity. 
 I felt myself bound, then, to write to you, to see if 
 among the nobler spirits of the working classes I could 
 not make one friend who would understand me. My 
 ancestors 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 ‘mediaeval 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 6 aristocrat/ It is not 
 enough for me that they are mistaken in me. I want to 
 work with them. I want to realize my brotherhood with 
 them. I want some one like yourself, intimately ac- 
 quainted 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 neighbors, and a time-server, be- 
 cause you have intellect enough to see both sides of a 
 question. If you will allow me to call on you, you will 
 very much oblige me. I send you my poem as some- 
 thing of a 4 sample/ At first sight it may seem to hanker 
 after feudalism and the middle age. I trust to you to 
 
Advice to an Author 159 
 
 see a deeper and somewhat more democratic moral 
 in it. . . 
 
 To J. C., Esq., 1848. — “ I have delayed answering your 
 letter because I did not wish to speak in a hurry on a sub- 
 ject so important to you. 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 rjOos of 
 them I thoroughly agree ; it is in the ira 60s 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 dramatical do not mean in 
 dialogues and scenes, but in impersonation and repre- 
 sentation. 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) phenomenon of 
 history, man, and the universe. This the last generation 
 of poets have done, and the world will be satisfied with 
 nothing less henceforward. 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. . . . 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 any- 
 body else worth hearing, unless by reading and using 
 
160 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 
 literature ; 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 intel- 
 lectual 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 4 Thalaba,’ Ariosto, Spenser, and 
 the ‘ Old Ballads/ through almost every school, classic 
 and modern, 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 paintings since I 
 was a little boy — and all I can say is, I do not know half 
 enough to be a poet in the nineteenth century, and have 
 cut the Muse pro tempore . Again, you have an infinity 
 to learn about rhythm and metre, and about the 
 coloring and chiaroscuro of poetry; how to break up 
 your masses, and how to make masses ; high lights and 
 shadows ; major and minor keys of metre ; rich coloring 
 alternating 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 ‘ continued 
 surprise in expectation/ and c expectation in surprise.’ 
 
 “ Now don’t be angry with me ; because I think you have 
 a poetic faculty, 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.” 
 
 To , Esq. — “ The extreme importance which I 
 
 attach to the marriage question, and my great dissatisfac- 
 
On Marriage 161 
 
 tion with my lame defence of the truth on the point, 
 compels 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 com- 
 mon, in the sense-bound world. 
 
 44 Man is a sexual animal. Sense tells us this, indepen- 
 dent of Scripture, and Scripture confirms it — c male and 
 female created he them ’ ; and again, 4 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 ; 1st, That spirit shall control, and matter be 
 controlled. 2nd, That spirit shall will, and matter 
 express that will. For the true idea of rule is, where the 
 subject is not merely restrained by his king, but fulfils 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. 
 
 VOL. I. — II 
 
1 62 Charles Kingsley 
 
 “ 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, 4 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 enabling 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; e.g ., State Authority v. Ecclesiastical 
 Authority, and Free Will v. Predestination. 
 
 “ In fulness of time God raised up Christian art, 
 chivalry, and woman worship as witnesses for the other 
 pole, *>., 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 merely to be the slave of the 
 spirit, it was meant to be its symbol — its outward 
 expression. In this day 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 expres- 
 sions of our inward and spiritual state. ... 4 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 4 help meet,’ without whom it is not 
 good for him to be, and joined to whom they two became 
 one being of a higher organization than either had alone 
 
On Marriage 163 
 
 — 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 intermarriage 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 solemnized with the loved one can be 
 transferred to no other — which 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 to 
 choose a lower state, without having first striven to the 
 'very uttermost for the higher. And it is a sin to disbe- 
 lieve 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 
 
164 Charles Kingsley 
 
 of faith is sin ; they, therefore, prayed for grace to avoid 
 that which in them would have been sin, and they ob- 
 tained it. Were I a Romanist, I should look on a con- 
 tinuance 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 
 that 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.’ 1 
 
 . . . 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 for- 
 get 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 t for the hard- 
 ness of our heart,’ 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 
 1 Corinthians vii., he is talking of marriage on its low- 
 est ground . . . and here is the key to the whole chap- 
 ter. 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 
 
 1 “ Saint’s Tragedy,” Act II. Scene ix. 
 
On Marriage 165 
 
 have never comprehended the magnificent idea of mar- 
 riage, which he unfolds to his beloved Ephesians, the 
 blameless Church to whom he speaks of nothing but the 
 deepest and most glorious truths. True, there is a bless- 
 ing 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. 
 
 “ But if a man, on the other hand, — as men have done, 
 as I must believe St. Paul did, when I read Ephesians v. 
 and 1 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 direc- 
 tion 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 honor which men could heap on him, just 
 because the sacrifice is so great — just because he gives 
 up a present and manifest honor and blessing — his 
 rights as man made in God’s image — committing him- 
 self to God to repay him. But what has this to do with 
 mere selfish safety and easy saving of one’s own soul ? 
 
1 66 Charles Kingsley 
 
 “ 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 marriage 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 under- 
 stand 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 myste- 
 ries 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 realize 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 me 
 if I have seemed too dogmatic. But God has showed 
 me these things in an eventful and blissful marriage history, 
 and woe to me if I preach them not.” 
 
 Some words of his written in 1872, in which he 
 defines a “ noble fear” as one of the elements of 
 that lofty and spiritual love which ruled his own 
 daily life, may explain why he speaks above of 
 entering the married state with “ solemn awe and 
 self-humiliation,” and why he looked upon such 
 married love as the noblest education a man’s 
 character could have : 
 
 “ Can there be true love without wholesome fear? And 
 does not the old Elizabethan ‘ My dear dread 9 express 
 the noblest voluntary relation in which two human souls 
 can stand to each other? Perfect love casteth out fear. 
 Yes : but where is love perfect among imperfect beings, 
 save a mother’s for her child? For all the rest, it is 
 through fear that love is made perfect ; fear which bridles 
 
Devonshire 
 
 167 
 
 and guides the lover with awe — even though misplaced — 
 of the beloved one's perfections ; with dread — never 
 misplaced — of the beloved one's contempt. And there- 
 fore it is that souls who have the germ of nobleness 
 within, are drawn to souls more noble than themselves, just 
 because, needing guidance, they cling to one before whom 
 they dare not say, or do, or even think an ignoble thing. 
 And if these higher souls are — as they usually are — 
 not merely formidable, but tender likewise, and true, then 
 the influence which they may gain is unbounded — both 
 to themselves, and to those that worship them. ...” 
 
 “ Yeast” was now coming out monthly in 
 “Fraser’s Magazine.” It was written with his 
 heart’s blood. No book ever took so much out of 
 him. After busy days in the parish he would sit 
 down and write it deep into the night. The 
 state of the laboring classes in country as well 
 as town absorbed him. Brain and nerves were 
 continually on the stretch, and the cry of his soul 
 was : 
 
 “ 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.” 
 
 One Sunday evening after his two services had 
 been got through with difficulty, he broke down 
 utterly, and his medical man, alarmed at his 
 weakness, ordered complete change. All literary 
 work, except an occasional review for “ Fraser ” 
 was stopped; but as during a month’s rest at 
 Bournemouth he gained nothing, he had to pre- 
 pare for a longer absence in Devonshire, where he 
 spent the following winter and spring. 
 
Charles Kingsley 
 
 1 68 
 
 TO HIS WIFE 
 
 Eversley: October 27. — . . Please God I shall 
 
 be back 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 addled. 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 J. CONINGTON, ESQ. 
 
 Ilfracombe : December 30. — “ . . . I am so dissatis- 
 fied with ‘Yeast, 5 that I shall lay it by pro tem. 1 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. But in the meantime I am 
 hardly up to much work. I have Mrs. Jamieson’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, 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 Clough’s ‘ Bothie ’ with penny whistle and banjo. . . . 
 I am mending in health, from the joint action of idleness, 
 the climate of Paradise, and glorious cliff scenery, and 
 hope to have Maurice staying with me next week.” 
 
 1 “Yeast” was finally published in book-form in 1851. (M. K.) 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 1849 
 Aged 30 
 
 Winter in Devonshire — Illness — Decides on taking 
 Pupils — Correspondence — On Romanism — Visit to 
 London — Social Questions — Fever at Eversley — 
 Renewed Illness — Returns to Devonshire — Cholera 
 in England — Sanitary Work — Bermondsey — Jacob’s 
 Island — Development of “ Yeast ” — Influence on 
 Young Men — Recollections by Mr. C. Kegan Paul. 
 
 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 sensation 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 
 sensation 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 honor is precisely in proportion to our passion. 
 
 Ruskin, “ Sesame and Lilies.” 
 
 M R. MAURICE with other friends came to 
 visit him at Ilfracombe, and all 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. 
 
 tl Not as of old, like Homeric Achilles, Kvbei yatW, 
 
 Joyous knight errant of God, thirsting for labor and strife, 
 No more on magical steed borne free through the regions of 
 ether, 
 
170 Charles Kingsley 
 
 Fruit-bearing autumn is gone ; let the sad, quiet winter hang 
 o’er me — 
 
 Blossoms would fret me with beauty ; my heart has no time 
 to be-praise them ; 
 
 Gray rock, bough, surge, cloud, waken no yearning within. 
 
 Sing not, thou skylark above ! . . . 
 
 Scream on, ye sea fowl ! my heart echoes your desolate cry. 
 
 Sweep the dry sand on, thou wild wind, to drift o’er the 
 shell and the sea-weed; 
 
 Sea-weed and shell, like my dreams, swept down the pitiless 
 tide.” 1 
 
 For months he could do nothing but wander on 
 the seashore with his wife and babies collecting 
 shells and zoophytes, while dreaming over “The 
 Autobiography of a Cockney Poet/’ which in the 
 autumn was to develop into “ Alton Locke.” 
 Of this, he says to a friend : 
 
 “ I have some hope, as it 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. . . . Tell Charles I have found to-day 
 another huge comatula, and bottled him with his legs, by 
 great dodging. I am always finding something fresh.” 
 
 Illness had obliged him to resign his professor- 
 ship at Queen’s College, where, besides two in- 
 troductory lectures on literature and composition, 
 he had given a course on Early English Litera- 
 ture. To Mr. Strettell who took his work there, 
 he writes : 
 
 “ I left off before the Conquest, my next lecture would 
 have been on Edward the Confessor — the difference 
 between a good man and a good king — like him and 
 
 1 Elegiacs. Poems, p. 275. 
 
Decides on Taking Pupils 171 
 
 Louis XVI. The rotting of the Anglo-Saxon system. 
 . . . Go your own way ; what do girls want with a 
 ‘ course of literature’? 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. ... I read out some Caedmon — no ^Elfric — 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 something from the Voluspa and Edda. Show 
 them the peculiar wild, mournful, 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. . . 
 
 The expenses of illness had now to be met, and 
 he consulted Mr. Maurice and Mr. A. J. Scott, 
 Principal of Owens College, Manchester, about 
 taking pupils. 
 
 “ Will you excuse another word about pupils ? ” he 
 writes to Mr. Scott. . . . “I am not going to talk 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 can succeed in doing that, 
 I shall do what no salary can repay — and what is not 
 
172 Charles Kingsley 
 
 generally done, or expected to be done, by private 
 tutors. . . 
 
 “That is what is wanted,” Mr. Scott remarked, 
 “and it is what Charles Kingsley will do.” Mr. 
 Maurice wrote also to Professor Thompson, of 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, about pupils for him. 
 
 “ I do not know,” he says, “ 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 delights 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 conver- 
 sation 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. . . 
 
 But, notwithstanding the efforts of his friends, 
 so strong a prejudice had been created against 
 him by his writings, that no pupils were forth- 
 coming till the following year, when Mr. Richard 
 Martineau ventured to place his son with him. 
 
 His leave of absence was now extended; grad- 
 ually the rest told upon him, and he cheerily 
 writes to his parents, who had provided for his 
 duty at Eversley : 
 
 “ I now am 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.” 
 
 Ilfracombe : April Fool's Day , 1849. — “ 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 
 
Correspondence 173 
 
 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 my dietetics. Mansfield and I go 
 geologizing and shell-picking ; but ah ! ! ! ‘ ther baint no 
 shells ! Where be they gwan ? ’ I went to Morte yes- 
 terday, 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 Cap- 
 stone, 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. I find my climbing head 
 surer than ever, and can placidly 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 Barnstaple was enough. What a mys- 
 terious curse-blessing is this same 4 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, valor, 
 civilization — woe to those who fancy it fine to turn cos- 
 mopolite, and by becoming 4 citizens of the world/ lose 
 the very idea of citizenship for the sake of doing what a 
 
174 Charles Kingsley 
 
 navigator’s dog or a gipsy’s donkey can do a great deal 
 better. Pray tell me how and where to find shellso 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 0 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 could n’t find. Pray inform me how to get 
 shells ; and pray don’t say that 6 Yeast ’ is written by me. 
 I shall be able to do better with it by remaining incog. 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 off 
 their stalk, and go about with legs and arms, and the beauty 
 in shape and color is wonderful. I enclose a drawing.” 
 
 The spring was spent at Lynmouth, and while 
 there he had the joy of introducing his wife’s 
 sister and Mr. Froude 1 ^ his beloved Clovelly, 
 from whence he writes home : 
 
 “ Only a few lines, for the post starts before breakfast. 
 We got here all safe. ... 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. 
 
 1 This sister of Mrs. Kingsley's was Mr. Froude’s first wife. 
 
 (M. K.) 
 
On Romanism 
 
 *75 
 
 To-day I lionize C. over everything. Kiss the children 
 for me.” 
 
 The following letter was written to a young 
 man going over to Rome. Several pages have 
 been lost, which will account for any want of 
 sequence. 
 
 Clifton: May n, 1849. — “ 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 7rapa tov \6yov, 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 denunciations about the ‘ scarlet woman ’ or the 
 ‘ little horn.’ I cannot but regard with awe, at least, if 
 not reverence, a form 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 sympathize 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. 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 nineteenth century shall be 
 again among us, turned to their only true destination — 
 the worship of God? Have I shed no bitter, bitter tears 
 of shame and indignation in cathedral aisles, and ruined 
 abbeys, and groaned aloud, ‘ Ichabod, Ichabod, the glory 
 is departed,’ etc.” [Here some pages are lost.] 
 
176 Charles Kingsley 
 
 “ 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? What plainer signs of 
 it, than the fact that He has made you, and educated 
 you as a Protestant Englishman. Here, believe it — 
 believe the 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 Eng- 
 land 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, ‘ ccelum, non animum , mutant , qui tra?is mare 
 cur runt? Ultra-montanism will be a new system; but 
 not, I think, a new character. Certain outward acts, and 
 certain inward feelings, which are all very nice, and right, 
 and pleasant, will be made easier for you there than 
 here : you will live so charmingly by rule and measure ; 
 not a moment in the day but will be allotted out for you, 
 with its appropriate acts of devotion. True, now you 
 are a man, standing face to face with God ; then you will 
 (believe one who knows) find yourself a machine, face to 
 face, not with God, but with a priest and a system, and 
 
On Romanism 
 
 177 
 
 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 Shakespeare, a 
 Raleigh, a Bacon, Milton, Newton, Faraday, Brooke — 
 will you barter away that inestimable gift because Italian 
 pedants, who know nothing of human nature but from 
 the books of prurient celibates, tell you that they have 
 got a surer ‘ dodge ’ for saving your soul than those have, 
 among whom God’s will, not your own, has begotten and 
 educated you ? But you ‘ will be able to rise to a greater 
 holiness there.’ Holiness, sir? Devoutness, you mean. 
 The ‘ will of God ’ is your holiness already, and you may 
 trust Him to perfect His will in you here — for here He 
 has 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 Ronie is the place to get that , and a poor pitiful 
 thing it is when it is got — not God’s ideal of a man. 
 . . . And do not fancy that you will really get any spirit- 
 ual 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 your- 
 self not believing in Romish doctrines about saints and 
 virgins, absolutions and indulgences, but only believing 
 in believmg them — an awful and infinite difference, on 
 which I beseech you earnestly to meditate. You will 
 find yourself crushing the voice of conscience, common- 
 sense, and humanity — I mean the voice of God within 
 you, in order to 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 
 vol . 1. — 12 
 
178 Charles Kingsley 
 
 the English ideal, and you will find amid all your dis- 
 content and doubts, that the habits of religious excite- 
 ment, 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. 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 unfair, for you will have to renounce the conclu- 
 sions of the understanding when you go to Rome. How 
 then can you let it lead you to a system which asserts in 
 that it has no right to lead you anywhere at all ? 
 
 “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 tempta- 
 tions 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-tvventy 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 
 
Visit to London 179 
 
 attending a Chartist meeting and a workmen’s 
 meeting on the Land Colonization question, and 
 from Chelsea he writes to his wife: 
 
 . . I could not write yesterday, being kept by a 
 poor boy who had fallen off a truck at Croydon and 
 smashed himself, whom I escorted to Guy’s Hospital. 
 I breakfasted with Bunsen, such a divine-looking man, 
 and so kind. I have worlds to tell you. Met F. New- 
 man last night. I had a long and interesting talk with 
 Froude. . . . 
 
 June 10. — “ Went with Ludlow to Lincoln’s-inn Chapel 
 on Sunday 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 co-operative friends. 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. C., a complete Red Repub- 
 lican and Fourrierist, who says nothing but Christianity 
 can save France or the world. London is perfectly hor- 
 rible. 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 Vil- 
 lage sermons are being lent from man to man, among 
 the South London Chartists, at such a pace that C. 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.” 
 
 June 12. — “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 
 
180 Charles Kingsley 
 
 will tell you all when I can collect myself. . . . This 
 morning I breakfasted with Dr. Guy, and went with him 
 Tailor hunting, very satisfactory as yet. . . . Yesterday 
 afternoon with Professor Owen at the College of Sur- 
 geons, where I saw unspeakable things. ... I am afraid 
 I must stay up till Thursday. I cannot get through my 
 work else. Kiss our babes for me. . . 
 
 He now settled at Eversley again, and threw 
 himself into the full tide of parish work with the 
 loving help of his first curate, the Rev. H. Percy 
 Smith, of Balliol. The summer of 1849 was 
 unhealthy; cholera was brooding over England, 
 and a bad low fever broke out at Eversley, which 
 gave him incessant work and anxiety. The 
 parishioners 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 
 watching the case of a laborer’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 broke down, 
 and London doctors advised a long sea voyage. 
 But he dreaded the long loneliness, and went to 
 Devonshire instead, hoping that a month’s quiet 
 and idleness would restore him. From thence he 
 writes to his wife at Eversley: 
 
 Appledore : August 10. — “ Here I am. ... A deli- 
 cious passage down, in which I fell in with a character, 
 a Cornish shipowner and fruit-vessel captain, who has 
 insisted 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 Cornish men, a great admirer of 
 
In Devonshire 1 8 1 
 
 your father . 1 Strange, what a name your father seems to 
 have made for himself. The man is a thorough Cornish- 
 man : shrewd, witty, religious, well informed, a great 
 admirer of scenery ; talks about light, and shadow, and 
 coloring more like an artist than a brown-fisted merchant 
 skipper, with a mass of brain that might have made any- 
 thing 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 
 6 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 coloring since the spring; 
 showers, succeeded by gleams of sun, give a wonderful 
 freshness and delicacy to all the tints. Dear old Lyn- 
 mouth and Ilfracombe, I loved them, because they seemed 
 so full of recollections of you and the children.” 
 
 Clovelly. — “ Safe settled at Mrs. Whitefield’s lodg- 
 ings. 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 night, like a ferret in a rabbit burrow — 
 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 1 2 ft. square, 
 on the first floor, a jessamine and a fuchsia running up 
 the windows. 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, I see 
 from my windows, piled below me, the tops of the nearest 
 houses, and the narrow paved cranny of a street, vanish- 
 ing downwards, stair below stair, and then above all, up 
 
 1 Pascoe Grenfell, Esq., M.P., President of the Royal Exchange, 
 and one of the Copper Kings of England. 
 
 (M. K.; 
 
x 9 2 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 Ilfra- 
 combe, 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 noddles of doc- 
 tors have persuaded people that fish gives the choleia. . . . 
 Friday I had a charming sail with a poor fellow, who 
 thought 2 s. 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 ir. and 
 went to Torridge just for the afternoon — caught my 
 basket full, and among them one 2 lbs. ! ! 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 con- 
 tinued succession of Wesleyan hymns, sung in parts most 
 sweetly (every one sings here, and sings in tune, and 
 well). We dined at the farm-house ; dinner costing me 
 is. g 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, with their peaks and chasms 
 lined with sea fowl— -the coloring wonderful — pink 
 gray granite, with bright yellow lichen spots, puip e 
 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 lllimitab e 
 Atlantic — not green— but an intense sapphirme black- 
 ' blue, such as it never is inshore, and so clear, that every 
 rock and patch of sea-weed showed plain four hundred 
 
In Devonshire 183 
 
 feet below us, through the purple veil of water. Then I 
 went back to the landing cove, where shoals of 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 the island, great flame-colored 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 5 
 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. We 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. The rocks seemed end- 
 less . . . but I did not tire myself too much to write a 
 line to you before I got to bed, and slept till 1 1 a.m. I 
 send you a little bit of dwarf centaury off the cliff above 
 the Seal Caves, as a token. What am I to do with eight 
 sketches of Hero and Leander, which I have been finish- 
 ing very carefully, and are the best things I ever did? 
 Shall I send them? This place is perfect — continued 
 gray 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 children for me. How I long after them and 
 their prattle. 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.” 
 
 Torridge Moors. — u I have been fishing the Torridge 
 
184 Charles Kingsley 
 
 to-day. Caught ij dozen — very bright sun, which was 
 against me. Tennyson was down here last year, and 
 walked in on Hawker, the West Country Poet, 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. When will men see 
 that God’s laws are their interest? Talk of mankind 
 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. ...” 
 
 Clovelly : August 16. — “ If I 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 per- 
 fect rest, and I am in perfect rest, and in a new-old 
 and lovely place, does not take off the edge of my soli- 
 tude. Already I feel it — how much more a month 
 hence ! . . . The weather 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, 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 ‘ devote 9 and a true Christian ; between grief and 
 religion she has learned a blessed lesson. Old Wim. 
 potters in, like an old gray-headed Newfoundland dog, 
 about three times a day to look after me. And I sit on 
 the window seat and watch the wonderful coloring 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 very much for hers. Say 
 I am so pleased to hear she is a good girl. . . . 
 
 f . . Saturday I start. I am quite in spirits at the 
 
In Devonshire 
 
 ^5 
 
 notion of the moor. It will give me continual excite- 
 ment; it is quite new to me — and I am well enough 
 now to walk in moderation. I am doing you a set more 
 drawings — still better I hope. ‘ The Artist’s Wife/ 
 seven or eight sketches of Claude Mellot and Sabina, two 
 of my most darling ideals, with a scrap of conversation 
 annexed to each, just embodying my dreams about mar- 
 ried love and its relation to art. ...” 
 
 Clovelly. — “This place/ 7 he writes to his mother, 
 “ seems more beautiful than of old. Contrary to one’s 
 usual experience in visiting old scenes, the hills are 
 higher, the vegetation more luxuriant, the coloring 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 ! . . . 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 entomologizing. So I do nothing but smell 
 the woods, and chat with W. Many thanks for frighten- 
 ing me away from America. This is the place. The 
 wounded bird goes to the nest. ... I felt a new life, a 
 renewing my youth like the eagle’s, the day after I got 
 here. The very smell of W.’s house is a fragrance 
 (spiritually not physically) from the fairy gardens of 
 childhood. 77 
 
 August 17. — “I am doing nothing/ 7 he writes to Mr. 
 Ludlow, “but fish, sail, chat with old sailor and Wesleyan 
 cronies, and read, by way of a nice mixture, Rabelais, 
 Pierre Leroux [on Christianity and Democracy], and 
 Ruskin. 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 por- 
 poise, and I lie in the window, and smoke and watch 
 the glorious cloud-phantasmagoria, infinite in color and 
 form, crawling across the vast bay and deep woods below, 
 
1 86 Charles Kingsley 
 
 and draw little sketches of figures, and do not even 
 dream, much Jess 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 
 
 “ Here I am at Chagford in a beautiful old mullioned 
 and gabled c perpendicular 7 inn — granite and syenite 
 everywhere — my windows looking out on the old church- 
 yard, and beyond, a wilderness of lovely hills and woods 
 — two miles from the moor — fresh air and health every- 
 where. I went up into the moor yesterday, and killed a 
 dish of fish. Stay here for three days, and then move to 
 Holne. Then home ! home ! home ! How I thirst 
 for it.’ 7 
 
 September 4. — “ Starting out to fish down to Drew’s 
 Teignton — the old Druids’ 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 : 
 
 “ I cannot tell what you say, green leaves, 
 
 I cannot tell what you say ; 
 
 But I know that there is a spirit in you, 
 
 And a word in you this day. 
 
 “ I cannot tell what ye say, rosy rocks, 
 
 I cannot tell what ye say; 
 
 But I know that there is a spirit in you, 
 
 And a word in you this day. 
 
 “ I cannot tell what ye say, brown streams, 
 
 I cannot tell what ye say ; 
 
 But I know in you too, a spirit doth live, 
 
 And a word in you this day. 77 
 
In Devonshire 187 
 
 The Word's Answer 
 
 u Oh, rose is the color of love and youth, 
 
 And green is the color of faith and truth, 
 
 And brown of the fruitful clay. 
 
 The earth is fruitful, and faithful, and young, 
 
 And her bridal morn shall rise ere long, 
 
 And you shall know what the rocks and the streams, 
 And the laughing green-woods say ! ” 
 
 Two Bridges. — 44 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, indicating 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 hillsides clothed 
 with birch, oak, and 4 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, having 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 4 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 piece of fossil birch bark for you. Then I climbed 
 a vast anticlinal ridge, and seeing 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 — - 
 
i 88 Charles Kingsley 
 
 far below ; and here and there through the rich country 
 some spur of granite hill peeped 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 gray wethers,’ as I afterwards found 
 out, five and thirty yards in diameter — stones about five 
 feet above the bog — perhaps more still below it — evi- 
 dently 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 loft- 
 iest woods in the moor. After that, ail 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 beau 
 tiful clear stream, with myriad fish among great granite 
 boulders. To-day I walked over, after breakfast, to 
 Cherry Brook, 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 
 (Wisemen’s) wood — the last remaining scrap 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 gray moss is from the ruins 
 of an old Cymry house near by — a Druid may have 
 lived 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 thou- 
 sand feet below — I could only pray. And I felt impelled 
 to kneel on the top of the rock — it seemed the only true 
 state to be in, in any place so primaeval — so awful — 
 which made one feel so indescribably little and puny. 
 
In Devonshire 
 
 1 89 
 
 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 ful- 
 filled. To-morrow I walk to Holne 1 by Cator’s Beam, 
 /.<?., over the highest mountain on the South Moor, from 
 which all the South Devon streams rise. Sunday I spend 
 at Holne, and Thursday home ! It seems — sometimes a 
 day, sometimes a year since I saw 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 HIS FATHER 
 
 Eversley : September, 1849. — “ I had purposed to 
 have written to you from Holne, but being panic-struck 
 at the increased ill-health 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 Plinlim- 
 mon to Presteign). Of Benjay Tor I did not see as 
 much as I wished. But of that kind of scenery I had 
 seen much on the High Teign the preceding week, at 
 Gidleigh, Drew’s Teign ton, which quite astonished me 
 by its mingled lusciousness and grandeur. The distinc- 
 tive 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, Peter in the 
 Mount, and 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. 
 
 1 Mrs. Kingsley, senior, left Holne when Charles was a baby 
 six weeks old, so that this visit was the son’s introduction to his 
 birthplace, except through sketches and descriptions. (M. K.) 
 
190 Charles Kingsley 
 
 I could only pray and thank God for showing me such 
 a thing. The people, all whom I saw, were full of you, 
 and welcomed me as your son. Two fellows in the 
 public-house were glorying in two books which you gave 
 them the day you left. ... I shall be in London shortly, 
 and shall ‘ tell ’ to you, usque ad nauseam . I am as well 
 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 indeed a point 
 of conscience with me. . . . ” 
 
 And now he returned to fresh labors in his 
 parish. He added a Sunday evening service in 
 a cottage at some distance from the church, which 
 was crowded. “ Alton Locke ” was gradually 
 getting into shape. His reviews in “ Fraser’s 
 Magazine,” principally on modern Poetry and 
 Novels, helped him to pay his curate. Cholera 
 was once more in England, and sanitary matters 
 absorbed him more and more. He preached three 
 striking sermons at Eversley, on Cholera, “Who 
 causes Pestilence?” (National Sermons.) He 
 worked in London and the country in the crusade 
 against dirt and bad drainage. The terrible reve- 
 lations of the state of the water supply in 
 London saddened and sickened him, and with 
 indefatigable industry he got up statistics from 
 Blue Books, Reports, and his own observations, 
 for an article in the “North British Review” 
 on the subject. An eminent London physician, 
 speaking of the opinion of the medical profession 
 regarding his work, says, “We all knew well your 
 noble husband’s labors in the cause of the public 
 health, when it was too little thought of by 
 statesmen. He led the way.” 
 
Sanitary Work 191 
 
 " It was this sense, ” said Dean Stanley, “ that he was a 
 thorough Englishman — one of yourselves, working, toil- 
 ing, 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 eleva- 
 tion of citizens, and of Englishmen ; and you may, therefore, 
 trust him the more when he told you from the pulpit, and 
 still tells you from the grave, that your homes and your 
 lives should be no less full of moral purity and light. . . . ” 
 
 TO HIS WIFE 
 
 Chelsea : October 24, 1849. — “I was yesterday with 
 George Walsh and Mansfield over the cholera districts 
 of Bermondsey ; and, oh, God ! what I saw ! people hav- 
 ing 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 drinking it ! ! Oh, entreat Mr. Warre ” (a 
 Member of Parliament) “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 artisans. 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. Oh, that 
 
192 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 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. 5 Oh, that one-tenth part of the money 
 which has been spent in increasing, by mistaken benevo- 
 lence, the cruelties of the slave-trade, had been spent in 
 buying up these nests of typhus, consumption, and chol- 
 era, 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. 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 — for 
 the people are still in these horrors, would pay itself. I 
 can find men who will work the thing. Ludlow, Mans- 
 field, the 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. Direct to me there. The 
 proper account of Bermondsey is in the ‘ Morning Chroni- 
 cle’ of September 24, published a month ago, and yet 
 nothing done, or likely to be ! ! ” 
 
 Oxford. — “ . . . I saw the Bishop of Oxford yester- 
 day. Most satisfactory interview. I am more struck with 
 him than with any man, except Bunsen, I have seen for a 
 long time. Also Arch-deacon M— disappointed, but 
 interested me. Had no notion that such specimens of 
 
Sanitary Work 193 
 
 humanity were still to be found walking about this nine- 
 teenth century England. But he looks a good man. 
 How I long for your dear face and voice. . . . ” 
 
 Eversley : November . — “ My friends,” he writes to 
 Mr. Ludlow, “ why tarry the wheels of your water carts, 
 why are your stand pipes 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 ? Will men repent for being told ? are men 
 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 the water company? You see they are trying to 
 restrict, not to extend. You must go to the higher pow- 
 ers. 1 st. To the Chairman of Bermondsey Improvement 
 
 Commission. Now, what is this Commission? By what 
 authority does it pretend to act? If it is one of the New 
 Local Commissions under the Health 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 will 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 in- 
 dicting the Commissioners 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. I write to Helps to-night. Lastly, have 
 the pamphlets been sent round? People write that they 
 will help when they know either what is the matter or 
 how to mend it, but that no pamphlets have come to 
 them. When 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, 
 
 vol . 1. — 13 
 
194 Charles Kingsley 
 
 dear boys. ... I like Mansfield’s notion of a Sanitary 
 League. It will act like a wedge. Papers and preach- 
 ments are ‘ as a man beholding his natural face in a glass/ 
 &c. Still, we ’ll try them ; tell me my work, and I will do 
 it with God’s help. ...” 
 
 December 30. — “I am shamed and sickened by the 
 revelations in your article in ( Fraser’s ’ ; they were new to 
 me except about the tailors. . . . Put by my pamphlet 
 and write one yourself ; you would do it seven times as 
 well. I 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 something . 
 What — God only knows. You say, 4 He that believeth 
 will not make haste ; 9 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 ! . . .” 
 
 “ . . . Such questions as these,” he says (in an article 
 on the water supply of London) “ involving not merely 
 profits, but health, sobriety, decency, life, are to be judged 
 of, not by the code, or in the language of the market, but 
 of the Bible. . . . Even the hard and soft water contro- 
 versy is not a mere matter of soap and tea expenditure, 
 but of humanity and morality. . . . 
 
 “ We may choose to look at the masses in the gross, as 
 subjects for statistics — and of course, where possible, of 
 profits. There is One above who knows every thirst and 
 ache, and sorrow, and temptation of each slattern, and 
 gin-drinker, and street boy. The day will come when 
 He will require an account of these neglects of ours not 
 in the gross. . . 
 
Development of “ Yeast ” 195 
 
 To Thomas Cooper.] — December 6. — . . 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 preju- 
 dice, 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 inten- 
 tion 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 40^. free- 
 holder 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 
 food/ 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 the prop- 
 erty, not of workmen, but small retail tradesmen — a 
 class which, as you and I know, are a curse to the 
 workmen. Pray enlighten me on these points. I am 
 quite open to conviction if my fears are unfounded. . . .” 
 
 To J. M. L. — “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, con- 
 
196 Charles Kingsley 
 
 nected 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 Manichsean, 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 democ- 
 racy which considers the beautiful the heritage of the 
 poor as well as of the rich ; and Tregarva in his turn 
 becomes the type of English art-hating Puritanism, grad- 
 ually convinced of the divine mission of art, and of its 
 being the rightful child, not of Popery, but of Protestan- 
 tism 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 wea- 
 pons, 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 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 
 
Development of “Yeast ” 197 
 
 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 complementum, 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 princi- 
 ples on which to base her labors, 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 <ttolx*l(l 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 designs 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, 4 it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall 
 speak ; 9 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 ' Fraser’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 ? . . .” 
 
 “ Yeast, ” which as yet had only appeared in 
 the pages of “ Fraser,” made a deep impression at 
 
198 Charles Kingsley 
 
 Oxford, and from this time young men gathered 
 more and more around him. Eversley Rectory 
 now became a centre to inquiring spirits, and re- 
 mained so to the end. 
 
 “ . . . His personal power of appeal to young men,” 
 said a young London artist, who saw much of him during 
 the last years of his life, “ was very great : though, as I 
 think, in a somewhat different direction to the one usually 
 imagined. It \yas of a far more tender, strict, and refin- 
 ing nature than I have found it was popularly supposed 
 to be. . . . In the first half-hour of my knowing him, 
 I found him listening to me with as much attention and 
 kindness as he would have given to one of his own age 
 and attainments. I felt that whilst and whenever I was 
 with him he gave me his best . If I asked him anything 
 he would tell me the best he thought, knew, or felt. 
 Young men know how rare this is with men of Mr. 
 Kingsley’s age and ability ; and none know better than 
 they how delightful also it is when it is met with. It 
 commanded my love and admiration more than I could 
 say. He always seemed content with the society he was 
 in ; because, I think, he loved and educated himself to 
 draw out the best of everyone, to touch on the stronger 
 and not on the weaker points ; and when I was with him 
 I always felt as much at home as if I were with one of 
 my own college friends. . . .” 
 
 Mr. C. Kegan Paul vividly recalls his first visit 
 to the Rectory in 1849: 
 
 “ . 0 . The day after my arrival we dined at the 
 Rectory. . . . 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 vivid- 
 ness. I had never then, I have seldom since, heard a 
 man talk so well. His conversational powers were very 
 remarkable. In the first place he had, as may be easily 
 
Influence on Young Men 199 
 
 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 everyone 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 
 by-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 gypsies 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 dis- 
 comfort to himself, was no drawback to the charm of his 
 conversation. Rather the hesitation before some bril- 
 liant 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. . . . When, however, 
 I use the word monologue, it must not be supposed that 
 he ever monopolized the talk. He had a courteous 
 deference for the opinions of the most insignificant 
 person in the circle, and was even too tolerant of a bore. 
 With all his vast powers of conversation, and ready to 
 talk on every or any subject, he was never superficial. 
 What he knew he knew well, and was always ready to 
 admit the fact when he did not know. . . . 
 
 “To those who, in the years of which we speak, were 
 constant guests at Eversley, that happy home can never 
 be forgotten. Kingsley was in the vigor of his manhood 
 and of his intellectual powers, was administering his parish 
 with enthusiasm, was writing, reading, fishing, walking, 
 preaching, talking, with a twenty-parson power, but was 
 at the same time wholly unlike the ordinary and conven- 
 tional parson. . . . His temperament was artistic and 
 
200 Charles Kingsley 
 
 impulsive. . . . His physical frame was powerful 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 anticipa- 
 tions. . . . The picturesque bow-windowed Rectory rises 
 to memory as it stood with all its doors and windows 
 open on certain hot summer days, the sloping bank with 
 its great fir-tree, the garden * — a gravel sweep before the 
 drawing-room and dining-rooms, a grass-plat before the 
 study, hedged off from the walk — and the tall, active 
 figure of the Rector 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 pupil, treated like his own son, was 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, or a romp with his 
 children. He would work himself into a sort of white 
 heat over his book, till, too excited to write more, he 
 would calm himself down by a pipe, pacing his grass-plat 
 in thought and with long strides. He was a great 
 smoker, and tobacco was to him a needful sedative. He 
 always used a long and clean clay pipe, which lurked 
 in all sorts of unexpected places. But none was ever 
 smoked which was in any degree foul, and when there 
 was a vast accumulation of old pipes, they were sent 
 back again to the kiln to be rebaked, and returned fresh 
 and new. This gave him a striking simile, which, in 
 ‘ Alton Ldcke,’ he puts into the mouth of James Cross- 
 thwaite. ‘ Katie here believes in purgatory, where souls 
 are burnt clean again, like ’bacca pipes.' When luncheon 
 was over, and any arrears of the morning’s work cleared 
 up, a walk with Kingsley was an occasion of constant 
 
201 
 
 Influence on Young Men 
 
 pleasure. ... 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, bring- 
 ing out a very peculiar mixture of red-brown colors. 
 What were the precise plants which composed that 
 patch? He hurriedly ran over the list of what he 
 thought they were, and then set off over hedge and ditch, 
 through bog and water- course, to verify the list he had 
 already made. During these afternoon walks he would 
 visit one or another of his very scattered hamlets or 
 single cottages on the heaths. . . . Nothing was ever 
 more real than Kingsley’s parish visiting. He be- 
 lieved 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 sani- 
 tary reformer, and cared for their bodies also. I was 
 with him once when he visited a sick man suffering from 
 fever. The atmosphere of the little ground-floor bed- 
 room was horrible, but before the Rector said a word he 
 ran upstairs, and, to the great astonishment of the inhabi- 
 tants 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 humor and fun. 
 What caused a hearty /laugh was a real refreshment to 
 him, and he had the strongest belief that laughter and 
 humor were elements in the nature of God Himself. 
 This abounding humor has with some its dangers. Not 
 
202 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 under- 
 lying what might be coarse in expression. While he 
 would laugh with the keenest sense of amusement at 
 what might be simply broad, he had the most utter scorn 
 and loathing for all that could debase and degrade. And 
 he was the most reverent of men, though he would say 
 things which seemed daring because people were 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 humorists. I quoted Heine one 
 day at his table. ‘ Who was Heine ? ’ asked his little 
 daughter. ‘ A wicked man, my dear,' was the only 
 answer given to her, and an implied rebuke to me. 
 
 “ A day rises vividly to memory, when Kingsley re- 
 mained 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. . . . 
 
 “ 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 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. . . .” 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 1850-1851 
 
 Aged 31-32 
 
 Resigns the Office of Clerk in Orders at Chelsea — 
 Pupil Life at Eversley — Publication of “Alton 
 Locke” — Letters from Mr. Carlyle — Writes for 
 “Christian Socialist” — Troubled State of the 
 Country — Burglaries — The Rectory Attacked — 
 Heavy Correspondence — Letters 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 great- 
 ness or real worth in human creatures, and properly the first (and 
 also the rarest) attribute of what we call genius among men.” 
 
 HE year 1850 was spent 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 pres- 
 sure. 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 car- 
 riage, held the office of Clerk in Orders in his 
 father’s parish of St. Luke’s, Chelsea, which 
 
 T. Carlyle, on Sir Charles Napier. 
 
204 Charles Kingsley- 
 
 added considerably to bis income, and m 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 had long regarded the post as a 
 sinecure, and decided to resign 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 ^150 per 
 annum, and the parish charities mainly dependent 
 on him; but he set to work with indomitable 
 industry, and by a gallant 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 was thoroughly to master his 
 subject, whether book or sermon, out in the open 
 air, either in his garden, on the moor, or by the 
 side of a lonely trout stream, and never to put pen 
 to paper till the ideas were clothed in words; 
 after which, except in the case of poetry, he sel- 
 dom altered a word. For many years he dictated 
 every composition to his wife, 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 m reputa- 
 tion for publishing “Yeast” in the pages of 
 
Publication of “ Alton Locke 99 205 
 
 “ Fraser, ” and “Politics for the People,” refused 
 the book; and Mr. Carlyle kindly gave him an 
 introduction to Messrs. Chapman & Hall, who, 
 on his recommendation, undertook to bring it 
 out. 
 
 “ I have written to Chapman, and you shall have his 
 answer on Sunday. . . . But without any answer, I be- 
 lieve 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. . . . 
 
 “ Yours always truly, 
 
 “T. Carlyle.” 
 
 The book came out in August, and was noticed 
 in the leading journals with scorn and severity. 
 The best artisans, however, hailed it as a true 
 picture of their class and circumstances, and 
 thoughtful men and women of the higher orders 
 appreciated its value. Mr. Martineau distin- 
 guishes it as his “noblest and most characteristic 
 book — at once his greatest poem, and his grand- 
 est sermon, though containing, as it may, more 
 faults, sweeping accusations, hasty conclusions, 
 than any of his writings.” 
 
 “ I am quite astonished,” he says himself, some months 
 later in writing to a friend, “ at the steady-going, respect- 
 able 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 Marshals have done the same — so has Lord 
 
206 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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, 4 The Powers ’ and 4 The Destinies ’ 
 have done with them. . . .” 
 
 The following is Mr. Carlyle's verdict on 
 “ Alton Locke ” : 
 
 Chelsea: October 31 st, 1850. — 44 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. 4 Alton 
 Locke ? arrived in Annandale, by post, from my wife, early 
 in September, 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 
 favor. Continual shifting and moving ever since, not 
 under the best omens, has hindered me from, writing 
 almost on any subject or to any person. 
 
 44 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 grateful for in the book : abundance, 
 nay exuberance of generous zeal ; headlong 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 qualities, 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 ; 
 
Letters from Carlyle 207 
 
 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 wonderfully 
 splendid and coherent piece of Scotch bravura. In both 
 of your women, too, I find some grand poetic features ; 
 but neither of them is worked out into the 6 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 whatever at present : any time within the next 
 two centuries, it is like, there will be enough to say about 
 them ! On the whole, you will have to persist ; like a 
 cannon-ball that is shot, you will have to go to your 
 mark, whatever that be. I stipulate farther that you 
 come and see me when you are at Chelsea ; and that you 
 pay no attention at all to the foolish clamor of reviewers, 
 whether laudatory or condemnatory. 
 
 “ Yours with true wishes, 
 
 “T, CARLYLE.” 
 
 The writers for “ Politics ” about this time 
 brought out a series of tracts, “On Christian 
 Socialism.” Among the most remarkable was 
 “Cheap Clothes, and Nasty, by Parson Lot ,” 1 ex- 
 posing the sweating and slop-selling system, 
 which was at the root of much of the distress in 
 London and the great towns. The Tailors’ Asso- 
 
 1 Republished in the later editions of “ Alton Locke *•* 
 
208 Charles Kingsley 
 
 ciation was already formed, and a shop opened in 
 Castle Street, to which the publication of “ Cheap 
 Clothes ” took many customers. The opening 
 sentences of this tract were : 
 
 “ King Ryence, says the legend of King Arthur, wore a 
 paletot trimmed with king’s beards. In the first French 
 Revolution (so Carlyle assures us) there were at Meudon 
 tanneries of human skins. Mammon, at once tyrant and 
 revolutionary, follows both these noble examples — in a more 
 respectable way, doubtless, for Mammon hates cruelty ; 
 bodily pain is his devil — the worst evil of which he, in 
 his effeminacy, can conceive. So he shrieks benevo- 
 lently when a drunken soldier is flogged ; but he trims his 
 paletots, and adorns his legs, with the flesh of men and 
 the skins of women, with degradation, pestilence, heathen- 
 dom, and despair ; and then chuckles, self-complacently, 
 over the smallness of his tailor’s bills. Hypocrite ! 
 straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel! What is 
 flogging or hanging, King Ryence’s paletot, or the tan- 
 neries of Meudon, to the slavery, starvation, waste of life, 
 year-long imprisonment in dungeons narrower and fouler 
 than those of the Inquisition, which goes on among 
 thousands of English clothes-makers at this day? . . . 
 ‘ The man is mad,’ says Mammon. . . . Yes, Mammon ; 
 mad as Paul before Festus ; and for much the same 
 reason too. Much learning has made us mad. From 
 two articles in the Morning Chronicle , on the Condition 
 of the Working Tailors, we learnt too much to leave us 
 altogether masters of ourselves. . . 
 
 In August the rectory party had an addition, 
 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 
 
A Troubled Country 209 
 
 the Church, he can look back upon it without 
 regret. With this pupil Mr. Kingsley read 
 Strauss’s “ Leben Jesu;” for he considered 
 Strauss then, as he did Comte eighteen years 
 later, the great false prophet of the day, who must 
 be faced and fought against by the clergy. The 
 circulation of Strauss’s “ Life of Christ,” which 
 had been recently translated into English, and the 
 spread of infidel opinions among the working 
 classes, gave him grave anxiety. A new penny 
 periodical was projected to stem the torrent, and 
 he writes to Mr. Ludlow : 
 
 “ 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. . . . 
 
 “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/ . . .” 
 
 “ . . . But there is something 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 
 niihi centum voces et ferrea lingua . Think about that — 
 talk to Maurice about that. To me it is awfully pressing. 
 If the priests of the Lord are wanting to the cause now ? 
 — woe to us ! . . . Don’t fire at me about smoking. I 
 vol . 1.— 14 
 
210 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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. ... As for the subjects (for the periodical). 
 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 idea 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 1 have been picking 
 up from Demosthenes, Plato, &c. . . . 
 
 “ . . . Boyne-water day to-day ! ! ! glorious day — and 
 what Psalms this morning (13th) ! Omen accipio lubens J” 
 
 “ . . . Your letter makes me very 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 4 Deus 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. 
 
21 I 
 
 Burglaries 
 
 "I shall write a Labor Conference Tract forthwith. 
 As for hot water with the tailors — tell Cooper, no hot 
 water, no tea. ... 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 would n’t be, or I must be an under-strapper, and 
 set the example of obedience.” 
 
 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 pre- 
 vailed. Work was slack, and as winter ap- 
 proached gangs of housebreakers and men who 
 preferred begging and robbery to the workhouse, 
 wandered about Hampshire, Surrey, and Sussex. 
 No house was secure. Mr. Holiest, the rector of 
 Frimley, 1 was murdered in his own garden while 
 pursuing burglars; and the little rectory at 
 Eversley, which had never hitherto needed pro- 
 tection; and had scarcely a strong lock on its 
 doors, was armed with bolts and bars, fortunately 
 before it too was attempted by the same gang. 
 The Rector slept with loaded pistols by his bed- 
 side, and policemen from Winchester watched in 
 and about the quiet garden by night. The 
 future of England looked dark, and he writes to 
 Mr. Maurice: 
 
 “ 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, perplexities, hopes, and 
 
 1 About eight miles from Eversley. (M. K.) 
 
2 1 2 Charles Kingsley 
 
 fears to pour out to you than I could utter in a week, 
 and to the rest of our friends I cannot open. You com- 
 prehend 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 
 something wonderful and awful, but whether to a preci- 
 pice 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 Pro- 
 phets, and the Gospels, I should turn tail, and flee shame- 
 fully, giving up the whole question, and all others, as cegri 
 somnia .” - 
 
 “ Jeremiah is my favorite book now. It has taught me 
 more than tongue can tell. But I am much disheartened, 
 and am minded to speak no more words in this name 
 (Parson Lot). Yet all these bullyings teach one, correct 
 one, warn one, show one that God is not leaving one to 
 go one’s own way. ‘Christ reigns,’ quoth Luther.” 
 
 To J. Lees, Esq. : December 4. — “ . . . We have com- 
 menced night schools, and a weekly lecture 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 
 
Heavy Correspondence 2 1 3 
 
 continued so like beetles, human manure-carriers, and 
 hole-grubbers, much longer. The weather has been try- 
 ing 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 consequence. The 
 Doctor is, as you may suppose, Wiseman-foolish ; so, for 
 that matter, are his betters. The dear ‘ Times 9 is making 
 strong play on the papal aggressions ; and on the whole 
 the fool-crop seems as good this year as last. The 
 1 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. . . . 
 I wish I was in bed, which, after all, is the only place of 
 rest on earth for a parson. ...” 
 
 His correspondence increased year by year, as 
 each fresh book touched and stirred fresh hearts. 
 Officers, both in the army and navy — all stran- 
 gers — would write; 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 suitable 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 clergy- 
 man; and all to thank him for his books. The 
 sceptic 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 Arti- 
 cles, the Creeds, and, more than all, the question 
 of endless punishment, would pour out all their 
 difficulties to him; and many a noble spirit now 
 
214 Charles Kingsley 
 
 working in the Church of England would never 
 have taken orders but for Charles Kingsley. 
 
 To this, Mr. Boyle, Vicar of Kidderminster, 
 alludes, in speaking of “some inestimable letters, 
 on orders,” and the duties of clergymen, which 
 were lent and lost. 
 
 “ Some years later,” he adds, “ I ventured to recall 
 myself to him in a time of great perplexity, as to inspira- 
 tion and the work of the ministry, and no casuist could 
 ever have entered into the doubts and difficulties of one 
 anxious to work and yet shrinking from unfaith, more 
 lovingly than he did. It has always been to me a very 
 deep regret that we met so seldom, for I felt what J. C. 
 Hare says somewhere of Arnold, that to talk with him 
 was like stepping out of the odors of an Italian Church 
 to the air and breath of a heathery moor. One sentence 
 in one letter is graven on my mind. ‘You dislike the 
 tone of officiality of the clergy now. When you have 
 been eighteen years in orders you will detest it. But is 
 that a reason for skulking from the war which all men 
 should wage, but which Christ’s servants can do better 
 than others? It is a comfort often to feel there is one 
 little spot, the parish, to which one’s thoughts and 
 prayers are for ever turning. , ...” 
 
 In the religious world the Anglican question 
 occupied one large section of the Church, and the 
 tide set Romewards. Clergymen wrote to ask 
 him to advise them how to save members of their 
 flock from Popery; mothers to beg him to try 
 and rescue their daughters from the influence of 
 Protestant confessors; while women 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;” and he who 
 
The Romish Question 215 
 
 shrank on principle from the office of father- 
 confessor had the work thrust upon him by num- 
 bers whom he dared not refuse to help, but whom 
 he never met face to face in this world. 
 
 The labor was severe to one who felt the re- 
 sponsibility of giving counsel, as intensely as he 
 did ; and those only who saw the mass of letters 
 on his study table knew what the weight of such 
 a correspondence must be to a man of his powerful 
 sympathies, who had in addition sermons to pre- 
 pare, books to write, 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 together in that 
 dear churchyard. ” 
 
 The following extracts from some letters to a 
 country rector, personally unknown to him, who 
 wrote to consult him about social politics and the 
 Romish question, are placed together, though 
 written at intervals: 
 
 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. 1st. I do not think the cry ‘get on/ 
 to be anything but a devil’s cry. The moral of my 
 book [‘ Alton Locke ’] 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. 
 
 “ 2nd. I believe that a man might be, as a tailor or a 
 costermonger, every inch of him a saint and scholar, and 
 
2 1 6 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 footing, and them- 
 selves given by education, sanitary reforms, &c., the 
 means of developing their own latent capabilities. I 
 think the cry, 4 rise in life/ 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 for the last forty years increasing 
 faster than the remedy. And I believe, from experience, 
 that when you put workmen into human dwellings, and 
 give them a Christian education, so far from wishing dis- 
 contentedly to rise out of their class, or to level others to 
 it, exactly the opposite takes place. They become sen- 
 sible of the dignity of work, and they begin to see their 
 labor 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. 
 
 “ 3rd. From the advertisement of an ‘ English Repub- 
 lic ? you send, I can guess who will be the writers in it, 
 being behind the scenes. It will come to nought ; every- 
 thing of this kind is coming to nought now. The work- 
 men are tired of idols ; ready and yearning for the church 
 and gospel. . . . We live in a great crisis, and the Lord 
 requires great things of us. The fields are white to har- 
 vest. Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest to send 
 forth laborers. 
 
 “4th. As to the capacities of working men, I am 
 afraid that your excellent friend will find that he has only 
 the lefuse 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 beg- 
 gars, the cream and pith of working intellect is almost 
 exclusively self-educated, and therefore, alas ! infidel. If 
 
The Romish Question 217 
 
 he goes on as he is doing, lecturing on history, poetry, 
 science, and all things which the workmen crave for, and 
 can only get from such men as * * # and * * * 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 would 
 astonish him, as they have astonished me. 
 
 “ 5th. 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 lib- 
 erty, 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 per- 
 sons) 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 associations do 
 not quarrel at all. . . . 
 
 “ 6th. 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 my 
 cradle, as the son of an active clergyman, 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 fourteen years my father has been 
 the rector of a very large metropolitan 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, and I trust in Him to whom I prayed, that He has 
 not left me to my own prejudices or idols, on any im- 
 portant point relating to the state of the possibilities of 
 the poor for whom He died. ...” 
 
 January 26, 1851. — “ . . . In * * and in all that 
 school, there is an element of foppery — even in dress and 
 
2i 8 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 unhealthy phil- 
 osophy 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 the especial coronet of saints. I have 
 nothing especial to offer anyone, 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 realize and enjoy just as deeply as I can, 
 while they remain potboys 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. . . 
 
 “. . . 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 ? . . . ‘ I want proof whether you 
 really believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God 
 the Holy Spirit. If you do not — if you only believe in 
 believing 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 cere- 
 monies, or more private prayers, &c., &c., and religious 
 
The Romish Question 219 
 
 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. 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 proceeds 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 can- 
 not 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 
 
220 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 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 Eng- 
 land has been, and whether the one or the other are con- 
 sistent 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 de- 
 scendant of Odin now rules. And I say that the ele- 
 ment which you have partially introduced, and to drown 
 yourself in which you must go to Rome, is a foreign ele- 
 ment, 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 dema- 
 gogue, St. James, means when he speaks of “the perfect 
 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 anyone wishes to benefit the poor whom God 
 has committed to their charge, they must do anything 
 and everything rather than go to Rome — to a creed 
 
The Romish Question 221 
 
 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 nurse 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/ 
 
 “ This I would say ; and then I would say, 1 If you are 
 dissatisfied with the present state of the Church of Eng- 
 land, so am I. 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 Cath- 
 olic and Apostolic parts ; that you would give, without 
 intending it, exactly the same Sectarian and Manichsean 
 tone to its present true catholicity which 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. . . . 
 
 “ Make any use whatsoever which you chose of this 
 letter. Mind, my dear sir, that I have been here put- 
 ting 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 advan- 
 tages of the person herself.” 
 
 February 5. — “. . . 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 
 
222 Charles Kingsley 
 
 controversial books — they never go to the hearts of the 
 doctrines or those who hold them. ‘ Measure for Meas- 
 ure ’ 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 5 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 Malthu- 
 sian 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, practi- 
 cally, 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 rela- 
 tions 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 
 antitypes. They deny that these relations are carnal, i.e.. 
 
The Romish Question 223 
 
 animal, in essence. They say that they are peculiar 
 to the human race. That being human, they are spirit- 
 ual, because man qua 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 immortal, and therefore all which 
 pertains to his spirit (as these do) is immortal also. 
 How these relations are to be embodied practically in the 
 future state, they do not know : for they do not know 
 how they themselves 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 connected with their inmost spirits, and there- 
 fore 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 Testament 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 Manichaeism 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 sub- 
 stratum to all further teaching. 
 
 “ The second class, who have been found in large 
 numbers, principally 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 con- 
 nected 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 
 
224 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 meaning 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 Bridegroom of the Church. 
 
 “ That this is the case is evident from history ; and 
 history is a fair test. 4 By their fruits ye shall know 
 them.’ A fair test of doctrines, though not of individ- 
 uals. Every man is better and worse than his creed. 
 Even the most heretical are happily inconsistent (as I be- 
 lieve, 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 manifestations 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, Isi- 
 
The Romish Question 225 
 
 dore, Proclus, and others, and we know whither it led 
 them. To aristocratic exclusiveness ; to absolute hatred 
 of anything which looked like a gospel for the merely 
 human masses ; to the worship of the pure and absolute 
 intellect, 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 evi- 
 dence and teaching, any mere signs and wonders to assure 
 their exhausted faculties, tired of fluttering in the vacuum 
 of ‘ pure devotion/ that the whole was not a dream ; and 
 finally — utter skepticism. 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 
 formulized and organized skepticism of Jesuitry. 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 celi- 
 bacy his highest state. I only ask you to read carefully 
 the life of St. Francis of Assisi, in old Surius, 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 I have 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 either 
 conquer utterly or turn papist and monk. If I give you 
 
 VOL. I. — 15 
 
226 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 anthro- 
 pology, they must, at least the most 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 God 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 forgiveness, for- 
 bearance, tender patience and care on His part, and will 
 receive the spirit of bondage again unto fear. In pro- 
 portion as they think their relation to their own children 
 is not an absolute and eternal one, they will find a diffi- 
 culty in conceiving their relation to God to be so. They 
 will 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 own 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 pas- 
 sages of our Lord’s life, those features of His temporary 
 stay on earth, which seem most angelic , or non-human, 
 
The Romish Question 227 
 
 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 patri- 
 archs, with their rich animal life ; as the Lord of the 
 marrying, farming, fighting Jews, with their intense per- 
 ception 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 
 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 the 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, 
 4 The soul, her 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 analyze 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 therefore incomprehensible 
 humanity, and the poor, simple, struggling, earth-bound 
 
228 Charles Kingsley 
 
 soul of the worshipper, already painful enough, will widen 
 more and more, till He becomes the tremendous Judge 
 of Michael Angelo’s picture — not a God-man, but a 
 God-angel — terrible thought — ‘ Who shall propitiate 
 Him — the saintly, the spotless, the impassible? He 
 would feel for us if He could comprehend us, for He 
 loved us to the death ; but how can He comprehend us, 
 poor mean creatures ? How dare we tell Him the mean- 
 nesses 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 celi- 
 bacy ; for 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 ! 9 
 
 “ c Go to the blessed Virgin,’ said a Romish priest, to 
 a lady whom I love well. c 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 in- 
 dulgent virgin, but to the strong man, Christ Jesus — stern 
 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 party 
 must run — to Mariolatry ; and the noblest and tenderest 
 hearts of them will plunge most deeply, 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 some- 
 
The Romish Question 229 
 
 thing 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 handiwork, 
 in the universe.’ ‘ Oh ! for an ecstatica, a weeping 
 image, a bleeding picture ! ' . . . God help them — and 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 1851 
 
 Aged 32 
 
 Letters on University Reform — Beginnings of “ Hypatia ” 
 — Personal Tendencies — Work and Recreation — 
 Teetotalism — Opening of the Great Exhibition — 
 Influence of “Yeast” — Lecture on Agriculture — 
 Occurrence in a London Church — Visit to Germany 
 — Letter from Mr. John Martineau. 
 
 “ He has outsoared the shadow of our night, 
 
 Envy and calumny 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 gray in vain.” 
 
 “We should be wary what persecution we raise against the 
 living labors of public men ; how we spill the seasoned life of 
 man preserved and stored up in books ; since we see a kind of 
 homicide may be committed, sometimes a martyrdom.” 
 
 HE year of the Great Exhibition, which be- 
 
 gan with distress and discontent in Eng- 
 land, 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. He occasionally 
 attended the conferences of the promoters of 
 association. He crossed the Channel for the first 
 time. His friendship and correspondence with 
 
 Shelley. 
 
 Milton. 
 
On University Reform 231 
 
 Frederika Bremer, the Swedish novelist, and with 
 Miss Mitford, date from this year. “Yeast, a 
 Problem/’ was reprinted and came out in a volume 
 anonymously. “ Hypatia ” was begun as a serial 
 in “Fraser’s Magazine.” “Santa Maura” and 
 several shorter poems were written. He contrib- 
 uted 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 story of “The Nun’s Pool,” which had 
 been rejected in 1848 by the publishers of “Poli- 
 tics.” He preached two sermons in London, one 
 of which made him notorious. He carried on a 
 correspondence in the “Spectator,” on the state 
 of the Universities, urging the necessity of a 
 Commission, &c., &c., which made him many 
 enemies and plunged him into a fresh sea of pri- 
 vate letters. 
 
 “As to the temper and tone of what I wrote/* he 
 writes, to a fellow of Trinity, “ whereon folks are fierce, I 
 have nothing to say, but that, if half my theory was true, 
 it would excuse my writing passionately. ... I expected 
 to be reviled. . . . 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. ... I had 
 hoped that some here and there would listen to me. I 
 have 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 
 
 
232 Charles Kingsley 
 
 tried to pick 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 
 anyone who spoke out the truth yet on the earth, 
 who was not called a ‘ howling idiot 5 for his pains — at 
 first. . . . 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, [as to the influence of Strauss’s books at 
 Cambridge,] in order to cripple me, and that therefore I 
 must mind other work for the present ; whereof I have 
 plenty. . . 
 
 TO REV. F. D. MAURICE 
 
 Eversley : January 16, 1851. — “ A thousand thanks 
 for all your advice and information, which encourages me 
 to say more. I don’t know how far I shall be able to 
 write much for the 6 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 repairing and fur- 
 nishing ; but, with an income reduced this year by more 
 than ^200, having given up, thank God, that sinecure 
 clerkship, and having had to return ten per cent, of my 
 tithes, owing to the agricultural distress, I have also this 
 year, for the first time, the opportunity, and therefore 
 the necessity, of supporting a good school. My available 
 income, therefore, is less than ^400. I 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 ser- 
 vices on Sunday, will demand my whole time. What to 
 do unless I get pupils I know not. Martineau leaves me 
 
Beginnings of “ Hypatia ” 233 
 
 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. But how to 
 find time I know not. And if there is a storm brewing, 
 of course I shall have to help to fight the 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, 6 This people, which knoweth not 
 the law, is accursed ! * Of English subjects I can write 
 no more just now. I have exhausted both my stock and 
 my brain, and really require to rest it, by turning it to 
 some new field, in which there is richer and more 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 6 Gods of Greece 1 ex- 
 presses, I think, a tone of feeling very common, and 
 which finds its vent in modern Neo-Platonism — Any- 
 thingarianism. But if you think I ought not, I will not. 
 I will obey your order.” 
 
 The “ Christian Socialist ” movement had been 
 severely attacked in the “ Edinburgh ” and in the 
 “ Quarterly Reviews ; ” in both articles Commu- 
 nism and Socialism were spoken of as identical, 
 and the author of “ Alton Locke ” was pointed at 
 
234 Charles Kingsley 
 
 as the chief offender. He writes to Mr. Brimley, 
 of Trinity : 
 
 jplAiJs- ^ H 
 
 “ The article [in the ‘ Quarterly ’] 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 see the meaning of their own time (per- 
 haps, though, we don’t of ours), and so put down, not 
 what we should like to know, but what they liked to 
 remember. Nevertheless there are materials for a grand 
 book. And if 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 
 
 “ Though ” (says Mr. Hughes), “ Charles Kingsley 
 faced his adversaries bravely, it must not be inferred that 
 he did not feel the attacks and misrepresentations very 
 keenly . 1 In many respects, though housed in a strong 
 and vigorous body, his spirit was an exceedingly tender 
 and sensitive one. I have often thought that at this time 
 his very sensitiveness drove him to say things more 
 broadly and incisively, because he was speaking as it 
 were somewhat against the grain, and knew that the line 
 he was taking would be misunderstood, and would dis- 
 please and alarm those with whom he had most sympathy. 
 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 
 
 1 See Margaret to Dolcino and Dolcino to Margaret in 
 Poems. (M. K.) 
 
Personal Tendencies 235 
 
 own position firmly, but in sympathy with the people. 
 He liked their habits and ways, and keenly enjoyed their 
 society. Again, he was full 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 
 labor, 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 
 distasteful 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. . . . 
 ‘ 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 sen- 
 sitive men the effect of eccentricity upon him was almost 
 comic. Many of the workmen, who always rise to the 
 top at first, who were most prominent in the Associa- 
 tions were almost as little to his mind — windy inflated 
 kind of persons, with a lot of fine phrases in their mouths 
 which they did n’t know the meaning of. But in spite of 
 all that was distasteful to him in some of its surroundings, 
 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 loth Charles Kingsley was to take 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 prophet, neither was I 
 a prophet’s son ; but I was an herdsman, and a gatherer 
 of sycamore fruit : and the Lord took me as I followed 
 the flock, and said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people 
 Israel/ ” 
 
2 3 6 
 
 Charles Kingsley 
 
 TO T. HUGHES, ESQ. 
 
 “. . . And if I had ^100,000, I’d have, and should 
 have staked and lost it all in 1848-50. I should, Tom, 
 for my heart was and is in it, and you ’ll see it will beat 
 yet. Still, some somedever, it ’s in the fates, that associ- 
 ation is the pure caseine, and must be eaten by the 
 human race if it would save its soul alive. ... I ha /e 
 had a sorter kinder sample day. Up at five, to see a 
 dying man ; ought to have been up at two, but Ben King, 
 the rat-catcher, who came to call me, was taken ner- 
 vous ! ! ! and did n’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 commen- 
 datory prayers over him, and started for the river with W. 
 Fished all the morning in a roaring N.E. gale, with the 
 dreadful agonized face between me and the river, ponder- 
 ing on The mystery. Killed eight on ‘ March brown/ a 
 6 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 were n’t going to catch a cold 
 in their heads to please him or any man. Clouds burn 
 up at 1 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 4 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, considering I had passed many a 
 
Work and Recreation 237 
 
 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. One pounder I caught to-day on the ‘ March 
 brown,’ womited his wittles, which was rude, but instruct- 
 ive ; and among worms was a gudgeon three inches long 
 and more. Blow minnows — gudgeon is the thing. 
 Came off the water at three. Found my man alive, and, 
 thank God, quiet. Sat with him, and thought him going 
 once or twice. What a mystery that long, insensible 
 death struggle is ! . . . Then had to go to Hartley Row 
 for an Archdeacon’s Sunday-school meeting — three 
 hours speechifying. Got back at 10.30, and sit writing to 
 you. So goes one’s day. All manner of incongruous 
 things to do, and the very incongruity keeps one beany 
 and jolly. Your letter was delightful. I read part of it 
 to W., who says you are the best fellow on earth, to 
 which I agree. So no more from your sleepy and tired, 
 
 “ C. Kingsley.” 
 
 TO HIS WIFE 
 
 Eversley Rectory : Whit Monday . — “ A most suc- 
 
 cessful Club Day. Weather glorious — roasting hot. 
 Preached them a sermon on the 2nd Lesson (1 Cor. xii.), 
 the Church of the World. World as the selfish competi- 
 tive isolating form of society — Church as the uniting 
 one. . . . Spoke of the Millennium and the realization 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 noth- 
 ing which has pleased me so much for a long time. The 
 singing was excellent, and altogether all went charmingly. 
 We dine with them by request.” 
 
 Whit Tuesday . “ I have been planting vigorously. 
 
 This glorious heat makes me lively and happy in the 
 body in spite of myself ; but if a chill whiff of a cloud 
 
238 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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. We were up fishing 
 on the great lake at Bramshill : the morning soft, rich, 
 and lowering, with a low, falling glass. I have been pro- 
 phesying 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. 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 J. had hooked a huge jack, which 
 broke everything in a moment, and went off with all his 
 spinning tackle. 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. 
 . . . We walked home after an hour’s ducking. 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 fcJund a real wild duck’s nest on the island, full 
 of eggs, and have brought one home to hatch it under 
 a hen! We dined out last night, and after dinner went 
 
The Great Exhibition 239 
 
 bird's 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 B. and I 
 climbed to the top of the highest fir-tree there, to hang 
 our hats on the top.” 
 
 The opening of the Great Exhibition was a 
 matter of deep 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 
 gigantic shop, in which wares were displayed for 
 the sake of selfish 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 forecastings of a great but distant future, 
 saddened him as profoundly. Four days after the 
 opening, in preaching at St. Margaret’s, West- 
 minster, on Psalm lxviii. 1 8 : “ When He ascended 
 up on high , He led captivity captive , and received 
 gifts for men , j yea> even for His enemies , that the 
 Lord God might dwell among themf he startled 
 his hearers by contrasting the widespread unbe- 
 lief of the present day, in God as the Fount of 
 all science, all art, all the intelligence of the 
 nation, with the simple faith of our forefathers. 
 
 “ 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 mean* 
 
240 Charles Kingsley 
 
 in g to themselves, and in mentioning at once the innu- 
 merable 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 such 
 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 . 1 ... If these fore- 
 fathers 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, confirmation 
 of that old superstition of theirs, proofs of the kingdom of 
 God, realizations of the gifts which Christ received for 
 men, vaster 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 yourselves and not to Him/ . . . For do we give 
 the glory of our great scientific discoveries to God in any 
 real, honest, practical sense? . . . 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 con- 
 ceive, build, and arrange this great exhibition. 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 
 
 1 The sermon was for the Westminster Hospital. (National 
 Sermons.) 
 
Teetotalism 
 
 241 
 
 of this city, in which he spoke of this exhibition 4 as an 
 approach to a more complete fulfilment of the great and 
 sacred mission which man has to perform in the world/ 1 
 and that 4 man’s reason being created in the image of God, 
 he has to discover the laws by which Almighty God gov- 
 erns this creation ; and by making those laws the standard 
 of his action, to conquer nature to his use, himself a di- 
 vine instrument ; — ’ when he spoke of 4 thankfulness to 
 Almighty God for what He has already given ’ as the first 
 feeling which that Exhibition ought to excite in us ; and 
 as the second, 4 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, 4 in 
 proportion to the help which we are prepared to render 
 to each other ; and, therefore, by peace, love, and ready 
 assistance, not only between individuals, but between all 
 nations of the earth.’ . . 
 
 Among the topics discussed in the columns of 
 the “ Christian Socialist ” this year was teetotal- 
 ism ; and Mr. Kingsley wrote a remarkable letter, 
 which was not inserted, treating the movement on 
 its ascetic side. While “deeply sympathizing,” 
 he says, “ with the horror of our English drunk- 
 enness that produced it, and honoring every tee- 
 totaler, as I honor every man who proves by his 
 actions that he possesses high principle, and man- 
 ful self-restraint;” yet he confesses his anxiety 
 lest Teetotalism should grow into an eleventh 
 commandment, and become a root of bitterness 
 and dissociation between men who ought to love, 
 respect, and work with each other, ending some 
 fifty years hence, in a great socialist split be- 
 tween water-drinkers and beer-drinkers, each 
 
 1 Speech of H. R. H. The Prince Consort, at the opening of the 
 Great Exhibition. 
 
 VOL. I.— 16 
 
242 Charles Kingsley 
 
 party despising and reviling the other: and so 
 encouraging “ that subtlest of sins, spiritual pride 
 and Pharisaism.” 
 
 “The true remedies against drunkenness,” he adds, 
 “ 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 at- 
 mosphere of their dwellings, will take away the morbid 
 craving of their stomachs for stimulants, and render tem- 
 perance easy and pleasant ; and, secondly, the establish- 
 ment 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 in- 
 dicus of the scoundrel publicans, 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.” 
 
 But while arguing against teetotalism, and for 
 the right of the poor man to zvholesome beer, he 
 was for ever urging on landlords and magistrates 
 to refuse to grant fresh licenses, above all, to 
 withhold spirit licenses; and thus to make a stand 
 against the demoralizing drunkenness which 
 paralyzes the work of the clergy in town and 
 country. He saw no hope for the future 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. He 
 urged that these should be placed under the most 
 vigilant police superintendence; especially in 
 outlying districts, where they are nests of poach- 
 
Influence of “ Yeast ” 
 
 fW 
 
 243 
 
 ers and bad characters, and ruinous to the boys 
 and girls who frequent them, alas! from the 
 moment they leave school. 
 
 Early this year he republished “Yeast,” with 
 the addition of an Epilogue. It was a bold 
 stroke, but he had counted the cost. 
 
 IK* ' 
 
 “Whatever obloquy,” he said, “ it may bring upon me, ^ 
 
 I shall think that a light price to pay, if by it I shall have 
 helped, even in a single case, to turn the hearts of the V/ 
 parents to the children, and the hearts of the children to 
 the parents, before the great and terrible day of the Lord 
 come — as come it surely will, if we persist much longer 
 in substituting denunciation for sympathy, instruction for 
 education, and Pharisaism for the Good News of the 
 Kingdom of God.” 
 
 In the month of May it was reviewed anony- 
 mously in the “ Guardian ” by a well-known Ox- 
 ford graduate, a strong partisan of the Anglican 
 party, who brought very grave charges against 
 the book and its writer — of “heresy,” — of “en- 
 couraging profligacy, of despising doctrines con- 
 secrated by the faith of ages ... if they tend 
 to check the wildest speculations of the intellect, 
 or restrain the most entire indulgence of the 
 passions,” &c. The review was so worded as to 
 leave a general impression on the reader’s mind 
 that the book inculcated the vilest principles, and 
 most pernicious doctrines. Mr. Kingsley had 
 hitherto made it a rule not to answer newspaper 
 attacks, especially those of the religious press, 
 but these charges were beyond all precedent, and 
 he repudiated them indignantly in the following 
 letter : 
 
244 Charles Kingsley 
 
 “ Sir, — Having lived for several years under the be- 
 lief that the Editor of the ‘ Guardian 9 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 an- 
 swer, 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 misunderstood me ; on the contrary, he sees most 
 clearly the gist of the book, ;,s is proved by his carefully 
 omitting any mention whatsoever of two questions con- 
 nected 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 somewhat difficult to answer, from their 
 very preposterousness, till, in Pascal's Fifteenth Provincial 
 Letter , I fell on an argument which a certain Capuchin 
 Father, Valerian, found successful against the Jesuits, and 
 which seems to suit the reviewer exactly. I shall there- 
 fore proceed to apply it to the two accusations which 
 concern me most nearly as a churchman, i. He asserts 
 that I say that e 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 inter- 
 rogation, occur in a scornful reductio ad absurdum of the 
 very doctrine which he wantonly imputes to me, an ap- 
 peal to common sense and logic against and not for the 
 lie of the Genevan School. I have a right to use the 
 word 4 wantonly/ for he cannot say that he has misunder- 
 stood me ; he has refused to allow me that plea, and I 
 refuse to allow it to him. Indeed, I cannot, for the pas- 
 
Influence of “ Yeast ” 
 
 245 
 
 sage is as plain as daylight, no schoolboy could misun- 
 derstand 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 dishonesty was that of 
 Father Valerian, ‘ Mentiris impudentissime .' 
 
 “2. So with the assertion, that the book e 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 strength- 
 ening it — for a useful and even a religious life ; and that 
 the existence of the passions is a proof that they are to 
 be gratified/ Sir, I shall not quote passages in disproof 
 of these calumnies, for if I did I should have to quote 
 half the book. I shall simply reply, with Father Valerian, 
 
 ‘ Mentiris impudentissime / 
 
 “ 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 hence- 
 forth, either explicitly or by insinuation, says that I do 
 not hold and believe ex a?iimo, and in the simple and 
 literal sense, all the doctrines of the Catholic and Apos- 
 tolic Church of England, as embodied in her Liturgy or 
 Articles, shall have no answer from me but Father 
 Valerian's Mentiris vnpudentissime. 
 
 “ I am, Sir, your obedient and faithful servant, 
 
 “The Author of ‘ Yeast.' ” 
 
 These misrepresentations, absurd as they may 
 seem now, as to the tendency of his teaching in 
 “Yeast,” and at a later period in “Hypatia,” 
 assuming as they did a want of moral principle 
 in himself, and his encouragement of immorality 
 in others, touched Mr, Kingsley on his tenderest 
 
246 Charles Kingsley 
 
 point. But when the first feeling and expression 
 of righteous indignation was over, he had a won- 
 derful power of putting his reviewers and their 
 hard words out of his mind, and going on his way- 
 bearing no malice. “ Life is too short and too 
 full of hard work,” he would say, “to give one 
 time to hate and suspect people.” The facts, 
 however, are recalled here to show those who 
 know what the results of his work have been, and 
 the different tone taken since towards him by the 
 religious press, what sore battles he had at one 
 time to fight, what bitter insults he had to stand, 
 while laboring day and night in the cause of purity 
 and godliness. The “Guardian” replied again, 
 reiterating its charges; the best answers to which 
 might be found in the many testimonies he re- 
 ceived to the moral influence of “Yeast ” on those 
 whose hearts could not be touched by teachers of 
 a narrower school : and in the fact that more than 
 one “ fast man ” came down from London to open 
 his heart to its author. “To him,” (to use his 
 own words of Mr. Maurice,) “as to David in the 
 wilderness, gathered those who were spiritually 
 discontented, and spiritually in debt; and he was 
 a captain over them, because, like David, he 
 talked to them, not of his own genius, or his own 
 doctrines, but of the Living God, who had helped 
 their forefathers, and would help them like- 
 wise. ...” 
 
 “ I have just finished ‘ Yeast/ ” writes a stranger, “ and, 
 fresh from the book, I cannot resist communicating to 
 you my heartfelt thanks for it. You will not care about 
 whether I thank you or not ; never mind, I shall relieve 
 myself by writing. ... I believe you have taken up the 
 right ground in standing firmly by the spirit of Christi- 
 
Influence of “Yeast” 247 
 
 anity, 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 
 intellectual misery, taken up with blank Atheism ; and 
 should have done so, had not my heart rebelled against 
 my head, and flooding in upon me reflections of earlier, 
 purer, brighter days of 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 argument, of persuasion, of narrative, 
 but I found they only increased my antagonism to Chris- 
 tianity. And I was very miserable — as I believe all 
 earnest men must be when they find themselves God- 
 abandoned in times like these — when, picking up your 
 ‘ Christian Socialist/ I read your ‘ God justified to the 
 People/ and felt that here now was a man, not a mere empty 
 evangelical tub-thumper (as we of the North call Ranters), 
 but a bo?ia 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 sym- 
 pathies with all the ferment of the age; be a Radical 
 Reformer without being a vague denier, a vaguer ‘ Spirit- 
 ualist/ or an utter Atheist. If this man, on further 
 acquaintance, prove what I 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 c Alton Locke/ I am now in the 
 middle of ; . . . and having, day and night, meditated 
 on what you have to say, I feel that the confirmation 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, I feel a mental serenity I 
 never before knew ; can see life and my role in life, clear 
 
248 Charles Kingsley 
 
 and definite for the first time, through all manner of inter- 
 vening entanglements. I know not by what right I make 
 you my father confessor, but I feel strangely drawn 
 towards you, and must send this to thank you and to 
 bless you for having helped in the light and the leaven to 
 a sad yeasty spirit hitherto.” 
 
 A Wesleyan minister thus also gives his 
 testimony : 
 
 “I have read your book ‘Yeast: a Problem ; ’ and 
 cannot refrain from thanking you on my own 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 your priceless 
 delineation of a skeptical 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. ... I 
 hope I shall be able to induce some of my well-meaning, 
 but injudicious, brethren (I am a Wesleyan Local Preacher) 
 to look more attentively, and with more humility, at the 
 wounds they strive to heal. . . . ” 
 
 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 
 The Application of Associative Principles and 
 Methods to Agriculture. He gave it, as he 
 said, with the greatest diffidence; and its effect 
 on those who heard it is described by a London 
 barrister : 
 
Lecture on Agriculture 249 
 
 “ 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 intended. 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 manliest thing I had ever heard. 
 Such a right bold honest way of turning from side to side, 
 looking everything straight in the face, and speaking out 
 all the good and all the ill that could be said of it, in the 
 plainest 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. ... I can call the 
 thing but by one name — a triumph.” 
 
 In the summer he was asked to help in a course 
 of sermons specially addressed to the working men 
 who came up to London to see the Great Exhibi- 
 tion. His subject was — The message of they 
 Church to laboring men. 
 
 “ Kingsley” (to quote Mr. T. Hughes) “took his 
 text from Luke iv. verses 18 to 21: ‘The Spirit of the 
 Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to 
 preach the gospel to the poor/ &c. What then was that 
 gospel? Kingsley starts at once with — ‘ I assert that the 
 business for which God sends a Christian priest in a 
 Christian nation is to preach freedom, equality, and 
 brotherhood, in the fullest, deepest, widest meaning of 
 those three great words ; that in as far as he so does, he 
 is a true priest, doing his Lord’s work with his Lord’s 
 blessing on him ; that in as far as he does not he is no 
 priest at all, but a traitor to God and man ;’ and again, ‘ I 
 say that these words 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 
 
250 Charles Kingsley 
 
 ever/ Then he goes on to warn his hearers how there is 
 always a counterfeit in this world of the noblest message 
 and teaching. Thus there are two freedoms — the false, 
 where a man is free to do what he likes ; the true, where 
 a man is free to do what he ought. Two equalities — the 
 false, which reduces all intellects and all characters to a 
 dead level, and gives the same power to the bad as to the 
 good, to the wise as to the foolish, ending thus in practice 
 in the grossest inequality; the true, wherein each man 
 has equal power, to educate and use whatever faculties or 
 talents God has given him, be they less or more. This 
 is the divine equality which the church proclaims, 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. But at its 
 close, just as the preacher was about to give the 
 blessing, the incumbent rose in the reading-desk 
 and declared, that while he agreed with much that 
 had been said, it was his painful duty to add that 
 he believed much to be dangerous and much 
 untrue. The excitement of the congregation was 
 intense: the working men could with difficulty be 
 kept quiet, and to a man of Mr. Kingsley’s vehe- 
 ment temperament it required a great effort to 
 make no reply. He only bowed his head, and 
 with deepened solemnity gave the blessing, came 
 down from the pulpit, and passing straight 
 
In a London Church 251 
 
 through the crowd that thronged him with out- 
 stretched hands, and an eager “ God bless you, 
 sir,” on their lips, went into the vestry, where 
 his friends gathered round him to express their 
 sympathy, and to take possession of the sermon 
 that it might be printed at once. 
 
 He returned to Eversley exhausted and de- 
 pressed, and in the meantime the storm burst. 
 A leading morning paper began the attack, with 
 an article, full of inaccuracies, which made the 
 intended impression on those who were already 
 strongly prejudiced against the “ Apostle of 
 Socialism.” This was followed by a letter from 
 Bishop Blomfield, who, hearing of the disturb- 
 ance, wrote to Mr. Kingsley to express his dis- 
 pleasure, and to forbid him to preach in London. 
 Mr. Kingsley in answer most respectfully re- 
 quested the Bishop to suspend his judgment till 
 he had read the sermon. Meanwhile letters of 
 sympathy poured in from all quarters, from a few 
 of the clergy, from many of the laity, and from 
 numbers of working men. There was a meeting 
 of working men on Kennington Common, who 
 sent him an expression of their warm allegiance 
 and sympathy. A proposal was also made before 
 the Bishop’s prohibition was withdrawn, to induce 
 Mr. Kingsley to start a free church independent 
 of episcopal rule, with the promise of a huge 
 following. It is needless to say he did not enter- 
 tain this proposal for a moment. Before the meet- 
 ing on Kennington Common, the'secretary of the 
 John Street Lecture Hall, where the audience 
 was mostly composed of Chartists, free-thinkers, 
 and followers of Strauss, some of whom had heard 
 his sermon, wrote to offer Mr. Kingsley and his 
 
252 Charles Kingsley 
 
 friends the use of their hall, which he declined 
 thus : 
 
 June 26, 1851. — “I have conferred with my friends 
 on their willingness to give lectures in John Street, and 
 find it to be their unanimous opinion, that to do so, 
 would be interpreted by the public into an approval, more 
 or less, of other doctrines which are taught there, from 
 which I, of all men in England, differ most strongly, and 
 from which I hold myself bound most strongly to protest. 
 As a churchman, such a suspicion would be intolerable to 
 me, as it would be gratuitously incurred. Those who 
 wish to know my opinions will have plenty of opportuni- 
 ties elsewhere ; and I must therefore, in common with my 
 friends, distinctly, but most courteously, decline your 
 kind offer of the John Street lecture rooms.” 
 
 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; and 
 after receiving him kindly, gave him full permis- 
 sion to preach in his diocese again. 
 
 He was now so much worn with the work and 
 the controversies of the last eight months, that 
 his parents, 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 he enjoyed it, as thoroughly as he 
 could enjoy anything 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 : August 1, 1851. — “ Actually at Ems at last. 
 As for what I have seen and felt I cannot tell you. My 
 
Visit to Germany 253 
 
 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 inwards, as painted 
 glass generally does. I cried like a child, at the head of 
 the Virgin in that great triptych of Koloffs, the Adora- 
 tion ; 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 
 feeling — and the Drachenfels, which is fine ; but I was 
 not overpowered as I was by Rolandseck and Nonnen- 
 werth, and that story ; — it seemed quite awful to find one- 
 self in presence of it. Ehrenbreitstein disappointed me. 
 . . . But it is all beautiful — beautiful. That vast rush- 
 ing silent river, those yellow vine slopes, and azure hills 
 behind, with the thunder clouds lowering over their heads 
 — beautiful ; and the air 1 I have felt new nerves, as 
 well as new eyes, ever since Cologne ; the wonderful 
 freshness and transparency of the coloring, and the 
 bracing balminess of the atmosphere, make me under- 
 stand 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 work. 
 . . . How strange that my favorite Psalm about 1 the hills 
 of the robbers’ should have come the very day I went up 
 the Rhine. . . . The other day we walked over the hills and 
 caught unspeakable butterflies, and found — conceive my 
 delight — some twenty-five species of plants, new to me ! 
 I cannot tell you the enjoyment of it. The scenery is cer- 
 tainly most lovely in every direction ; and it is so delight- 
 ful to think that you know it all ! That 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 
 
254 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 Needlewoman’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 have worlds to tell you. I have been to Bingen. 
 We walked down the right bank to St. Goar, and back 
 again. ... I scrambled up the face of the Lurlei to the 
 Nymph’s own seat, and picked you a little bouquet. . . . 
 You told me I should be disappointed. It is past all 
 telling — beautiful — wonderful. Three things above all 
 — Oberwesel — the Sonneck Schloss, worth (as a beau 
 ideal of the robber’s nest) all the other castles put to- 
 gether — and the opening out of the Rhine at Bingen 
 into infinite unknown 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 Monday 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. . . . 
 
 “. . . I take a knapsack and plaid, a change of gar- 
 ments, 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 fort- 
 night 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. Here is a sonnet for you : 
 
 “ The Baby sings not at its mother’s breast.” 
 
Visit to Germany 255 
 
 The other poems which he sent home to his 
 wife were: “The Ugly Princess “Oh thou 
 hadst been a wife for Shakespeare’s self; ” “Ask 
 if I love thee? oh, smiles cannot tell;” “The 
 world goes up and the world goes down ; ” and 
 “The Eagle.” 
 
 Menderscheid : August 7. — “ I write from the love- 
 liest place you can imagine, only how we got here I 
 know not ; having lost our way between some 4 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 cliff-face 
 we had to come in the dark, or sleep in the forest to be 
 eaten by wild boars and wolves, of which latter, one was 
 seen on our route yesterday ‘ as high as the table.’ 
 And down we came, knapsacks, fishing-rods, and all ; 
 which process must not be repeated often if we intend to 
 revisit our native shores. I have seen such wonders I 
 don’t know where to begin. Craters filled sometimes 
 with ghastly blue lakes, with shores of volcanic dust, and 
 sometimes, quaintly enough, by rye-fields and reapers. 
 The roads are mended with lava ; the whole country the 
 strangest jumble, alternations of Cambridgeshire ugliness 
 (only lifted up 1200 feet high) with all the beauties of 
 Devonshire. The bed of the Issbach, from the baths of 
 Bertrich, up which we came yesterday, was the most 
 ravishingly beautiful glen scenery I ever saw ; such rocks 
 — such baths — such mountains covered with huge 
 timber — not mere scrub, like the Rhine forests. Such 
 strips of lawn here and there between the stream and the 
 wood. All this, of course, you get on a grander scale on 
 the Moselle, which was perfectly exquisite ; yet there is a 
 monotony in its luscious richness and softness, and I was 
 right glad to find myself on my legs at Alf. Weather 
 glorious. I have just had my first sight of the basalt 
 opposite the Kurhaus of all Kurhauses — so lovely, one 
 
256 Charles Kingsley 
 
 
 longs to kiss it. At two or three points one felt only 
 inclined to worship. Bertrich is just as beautiful as every- 
 thing 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 
 gd. a bottle. My knapsack 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. . . 
 
 Gerolstein : August 10. — “ 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, meet- 
 ing 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 ridic- 
 ulously cheap, about 2 s. 6 d. or $s. a day for one person, 
 and we could not spend more if we would, for 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 — why, 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 
 
Visit to Germany 257 
 
 my back before she gets them. What fun we shall have 
 arranging and classifying them when I get home. God 
 be thanked that I ever came here to see so much.” 
 
 Birreborn : August 13. — “I write 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, speak- 
 ing of Kaulbach’s stained glass at Cologne, gives it as 
 his opinion (in these very words) , that 4 they say that 
 Art (die Kunst) is decayed, but my opinion is, that it 
 widens and deepens every day.’( ! ! !) Really this Ger- 
 many 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. Exceed- 
 ingly well and strong ; as lean as a lath, as any one 
 would be who carried two stone of baggage, daily in- 
 creasing in weight from the minerals and fossils I find, 
 on his back through broiling suns. We are both worse 
 than the 4 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 we found such 
 minerals — olivine, augite, and glassy feldspar. 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 fur 
 denkmaler.” 
 vol . 1. — 17 
 
258 Charles Kingsley 
 
 Treves : August 17. — “ Here we are at Treves, hav- 
 ing been brought there under arrest, with a gensdarme 
 from the Mayor of Bittsburg, and liberated next morning 
 with much laughter and many curses from the police here. 
 However, we had the pleasure of spending a night in 
 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 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 we were set free with 
 many apologies, and the gensdarme (who, after all, poor 
 fellow, was very civil) sent back to Bittsburg with a repri- 
 mand. We are the lions of Treves at present, for the 
 affair has made a considerable fuss. We leave this to- 
 morrow after having seen all the wonders — and what 
 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 ; ’ — 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 ! . . . ” 
 
 Before going abroad, he had parted with the 
 beloved pupil who was dear to him and his wife 
 as a son. Mr. John Martineau’s graphic words 
 
From John Martineau 259 
 
 and tender recollections give a true picture of 
 the home life at Eversley. 
 
 “I first knew him in January, 1850. I entered his 
 house as his pupil, and was for nearly a year and a half 
 his constant companion. He was then in his thirty-first 
 year, in the fulness of his strength ; I a raw receptive 
 school-boy of fifteen ; so that his mind and character left 
 their impression upon mine as a seal does upon wax. 
 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 Evers- 
 ley would never again be as it had been. He had now a 
 curate to help him, and give him the leisure which he 
 needed for writing. Still, even so, with a large and strag- 
 gling 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 inten- 
 sity and keen sense of responsibility. These were the 
 days when farm-laborers in Hampshire got from eight 
 to ten shillings a week, and bread was dear, or had not 
 long ceased to be so. The cholera of 1849 had J* ust 
 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 no man or woman 
 
260 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 consequence of indolence or 
 crime. At times, too, other poor besides those of his 
 parish, might be seen at his door. Gypsies were attracted 
 to him from all the country round. He married and christ- 
 ened 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. . . . 
 But there never was a man with whom life was less monot- 
 onous, with whom it was more full to overflowing, of vari- 
 ety, and freshness. Nothing could be so exquisitely 
 delightful as a walk with him about his parish. Earth, 
 air, and water, as well as farm-house and cottage, seemed 
 full of his familiar friends. By day and by night, in fair 
 weather and in storm, grateful for heat and cold, rain and 
 sunshine, light and soothing darkness, he drank in nature. 
 It seemed as if no bird, or beast, or insect, scarcely a 
 drifting cloud in the sky, passed by him unnoticed, un- 
 welcomed. He caught and noted every breath, every 
 sound, every sign. With every person he met he instinc- 
 tively struck some point of contact, found something to 
 appreciate — often, it might be, some information to ask 
 for — which left the other cheered, self-respecting, raised 
 for the moment above himself ; and whatever the passing 
 word might be, it was given to high or low, gentle or 
 simple, with an appropriateness, a force, and a genial 
 courtesy, in the case of all women a deferential courtesy, 
 which threw its spell over all alike, a spell which few 
 could resist. 
 
 “ So many-sided was he that he seemed to unite in 
 himself more types and varieties of mind and character, 
 types differing as widely as the poet from the man of 
 science, or the mystic from the soldier ; to be filled with 
 more thoughts, hopes, fears, interests, aspirations, tempta- 
 tions than could co-exist in any one man, all subdued or 
 clenched into union and harmony by the force of one 
 
26 I 
 
 From John Martineau 
 
 iron will, which had learnt to rule after many a fierce and 
 bitter struggle. His senses were acute to an almost 
 painful degree. The sight of suffering, the foul scent of 
 a sick-room — well used as he was to both — would 
 haunt him for hours. For with all his man’s strength 
 there was a deep vein of woman in him, a nervous sensi- 
 tiveness, an intensity of sympathy, which made him suffer 
 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 with all moods from deepest grief to lightest 
 humor — for no man had a keener, quicker perception 
 of the humorous side of anything — a love and ready 
 word of praise for whatever was good or beautiful, from the 
 greatest to the least, from the heroism of the martyr to 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 well, 
 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 well as the world of the 
 student or the theologian — was God’s world, and that 
 everything which He had made was good. 4 Hnmani 
 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 4 carnal/ 4 unconverted/ 4 worldly/ and 
 thereby embraced in his sympathy, and won to faith and 
 hope, many a struggling soul, many a bruised reed, whom 
 the narrow and exclusive ignorance of schools and 
 religionists had rejected. 
 
 “No human being but was sure of a patient, interested 
 hearer in him. I have seen him seat himself, hatless, 
 
262 Charles Kingsley 
 
 beside a tramp on the grass outside his gate in his eager- 
 ness 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 alms- 
 giving as any professed political economist, it was in 
 practice very hard to him to refuse anyone. The sight 
 of unmistakable misery, 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 woman outside, and I cannot forget, 
 though twenty-five years have passed since, the unutter- 
 able 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 scoun- 
 drel, 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 impetuous, 
 restless, nervous energy, which I have never seen equalled. 
 All his strength, physical, mental, and moral, seemed to 
 find expression in his keen gray 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 neighbor’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, keep- 
 
From John Martineau 263 
 
 ing his eye on the cowed animal, as it growled and 
 moved uneasily from side to side. He had done the 
 same thing often before, and 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 he. 
 
 “Though exercising intense self-control, he was very 
 restless and excitable. Constant movement was a relief 
 and almost a necessity to him. His study opened by a 
 door of its own upon the garden, and most of his sermons 
 and books were thought out and composed as he paced 
 up and down there, at all hours and in all weathers, his 
 hands behind his back, generally smoking a long clay 
 pipe ; for tobacco had, as he found by experience — 
 having once tried a year’s total abstinence from it — 
 an especially soothing beneficial effect upon him. He 
 ate hurriedly, and it was an effort to him to sit still 
 through a meal. His coat frequently had a white line 
 across the back, made by his habit of leaning against the 
 whitened chimney-piece of the dining-room during break- 
 fast and dinner. 
 
 “ 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 begun 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 
 
264 Charles Kingsley 
 
 friends, and now and then a stranger, seeking his advice 
 on some matter, would come for a night or a Sunday. 
 Amongst the former, and honored above all, was Mr. 
 Maurice. One of his visits happened at a time when we 
 had been startled by a burglary and murder at a parsonage 
 a few miles off, and had armed ourselves and barricaded 
 the rambling old Rectory in case of an attack. In the 
 middle of the night an attempt was made to force open 
 the back door, which roused us all, and we rushed down- 
 stairs with pistols, 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 fortunately came upon him and stopped him ; 
 and the two passed the rest of the night together talking 
 over the study fire till morning came. 
 
 “ Many a one has cause to remember that Study, its 
 lattice window (in later years altered to a bay), its great 
 heavy door, studded with large projecting nails, opening 
 upon the garden ; its brick floor covered with matting ; 
 its shelves of heavy old folios, with a fishing-rod, or land- 
 ing-net, or insect-net leaning against them : on the table, 
 books, writing-materials, sermons, manuscript, proofs, let- 
 ters, 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 Dandie 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, 
 
From John Martineau 265 
 
 whatever question he might ask, and pouring out from 
 the full stores of his knowledge, his quick, intuitive saga- 
 city, 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. 
 
 u He had to a wonderful degree the power of abstrac- 
 tion and concentration, which enabled him to arrange 
 and elaborate a whole sermon, or a chapter of a book, 
 while walking, riding, or even fly-fishing, without making 
 a note, so as to be able on his return to write or dictate 
 it in clear, terse language as fast as pen could move. He 
 would read a book and grasp its essential part thoroughly 
 in a time so short that it seemed impossible that his eyes 
 could have traversed its pages. Compared with other 
 men who have written or thought much, he worked for 
 few hours in the day, and without much system or regu- 
 larity ; but his application was so intense that the strain 
 upon his vital powers was very great. Nor when he 
 ceased could his brain rest. Except during sleep, — and 
 even that was characteristic, so profound was it, — repose 
 seemed impossible to him for body or mind. So that he 
 seemed to live three days, as it were, while other men 
 were living one, and already foresaw that there would be 
 for him no great length of years. 
 
 “ Connected with this rapid living was a certain impa- 
 tience of trifles, an inaccuracy about details, a haste in 
 drawing conclusions, a forgetfulness of times and seasons, 
 and of words lightly spoken or written, and withal an 
 impulsive and almost reckless generosity, and fear of 
 giving pain, which sometimes placed him at an unfair 
 disadvantage, and put him formally in the wrong when 
 substantially he was in the right. It led him, too, to take 
 too hastily a favorable estimate of almost every one with 
 whom he came personally into contact, so that he was 
 
266 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 assist- 
 ance that was ever at his side would almost have over- 
 whelmed 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 con- 
 viction, 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, 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 successful effort 
 to overcome this difficulty increased instead of diminish- 
 
From John Martineau 267 
 
 ing 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, the 
 repose and isolation of a country parish afforded him the 
 best and healthiest opportunities of development, and full 
 liberty of thought and speech, with sufficient leisure for 
 reading and study. 
 
 s “ 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. I In June, 1851, he preached 
 a powerful sermon to working men in a London church, 
 which was denounced by the incumbent. It was a pain- 
 ful scene, which narrowly escaped ending in a riot, and 
 he felt keenly — not the insult to himself — but the dis- 
 credit and scandal to the Church, the estrangement that 
 it would be likely to increase between the clergy and the 
 working men. He came home the day after, wearied 
 and worn out, obliged to stop to rest and refresh him- 
 self at a house in his parish during his afternoon’s walk. 
 
268 Charles Kingsley 
 
 That same evening he brought in a song that he had 
 written, the ‘ Three Fishers/ as though it were the out- 
 come of it all; and then he seemed able to put the mat- 
 ter 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. 
 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 tellingly 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, industry he 
 had, even logical and inductive power of a certain in- 
 tuitive, intermittent kind, not sustained, indeed, or always 
 reliable, for his was not a logical mind, and surface incon- 
 sistencies are not hard to find in his writings ; but as a 
 poet, even if he saw all sides, he could not express them 
 all at once. The very keenness of his sympathy, the 
 intensity with which he realized all that was passing 
 around him, made it impossible for him to maintain the 
 calm unruffled judgment of men of a less fiery tempera- 
 ment, or to abstract and devote himself to the pursuit of 
 any one branch of study without being constantly dis- 
 tracted from it, and urged in some new direction by the 
 joys and sorrows of the surging world around, to seek if 
 by any means he might find a medicine to heal its sick- 
 ness. Hence it may, perhaps, be that another genera- 
 tion will not fully realize the wide-spread influence, the 
 
From John Martineau 269 
 
 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 not live, except 
 as the seed lives in the corn which grows, or water in the 
 plant which it has revived. For their power often lay 
 mainly in the direction of their aim at the special need of 
 the hour, the memory of which has passed, or will pass, 
 away. As his ‘ Master,’ as he affectionately and humbly 
 called Mr. Maurice, was a theologian, and, in its original 
 sense, a ‘ Prophet,’ so Mr. Kingsley, as Priest and Poet, 
 gloried in interpreting, expanding, applying him. 4 1 
 think this will explain a good deal of Maurice,’ was the 
 single remark I heard him make when he had completed 
 4 Yeast.’ 
 
 “In later years, as his experience widened, his judg- 
 ment 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 affec- 
 tions are most passionately intense. . . . With the great 
 outside world, with the world of politicians and the press, 
 and still more with the religious world, so called, as rep- 
 resented 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 news- 
 papers, 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 unprin- 
 cipled did he — not without reason — consider most of 
 it, Whig, Tory, Radical, and religious. At that time he 
 did not take in any daily paper. 
 
 “ It was then about two years after the events of 1848, 
 and for him the one all-important and absorbing ques- 
 tion 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 
 
270 Charles Kingsley 
 
 parties of the legislature had alike shown themselves in- 
 different and incapable. This conviction, and a deep 
 sympathy with the suffering poor, had made him a 
 Radical. Nay, on at least one occasion, he publicly and 
 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. . . . 
 
 “ Looking back upon his daily life and conversation 
 at that time, I believe he was democratic in his opinions 
 rather than in his instincts, more by force of conviction 
 than by natural 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 inter- 
 course respected with more scrupulous courtesy the 
 rights, the dignity of the humblest. But he instinctively 
 disliked a ‘ beggar on horseback.’ Noblesse oblige , the 
 true principle of feudalism, is a precept which shines out 
 conspicuously in all his books, in all his teaching, at this 
 period of his life as at all others. 
 
 “ In later years his convictions became more in accord 
 with this natural tendency of his mind, and he gradually 
 modified or 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 development of his mind and 
 character under more or less altered circumstances, partly 
 because he saw the world about him really improving, 
 partly because by experience he found society and other 
 existing institutions more full of healthy life, more avail- 
 able as instruments of good, more willing to be taught, 
 than he had formerly thought. But, at that time, in his 
 
From John Martineau 271 
 
 books and pamphlets, and often in his daily familiar 
 speech, he was pouring out the whole force of his eager, 
 passionate heart, in wrath and indignation, against star- 
 vation wages, stifling workshops, reeking alleys, careless 
 landlords, roofless and crowded cottages, hard and cant- 
 ing religion. His 4 Poacher’s Widow ’ is a piercing, 
 heart-rending cry to heaven for vengeance against the 
 oppressor. 4 There is a righteous God,’ is its burthen, 
 4 and such things cannot, and shall not, remain to deface 
 the world which He has made. Laws, constitutions, 
 churches, are none of His if they tolerate such ; they are 
 accursed, and they must perish — destroy what they 
 may in their fall. Nay, they will perish in their own 
 corruption.’ 
 
 “ One day, as he was reading with me, something led 
 him to tell me of the Bristol Riots of 1832. He was in 
 that year a schoolboy of thirteen, at Bristol, and had 
 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 
 though the sight were still before his eyes — the brave, 
 patient soldiers sitting hour after hour motionless on their 
 horses, the blood streaming from wounds on their heads 
 and faces, waiting for the order which the miserable, 
 terrified mayor had not courage to give ; the savage, 
 brutal, hideous mob of inhuman wretches plundering, 
 destroying, burning ; casks of spirits broken open and 
 set flowing in the streets, the wretched creatures drinking 
 it on their knees from the gutter, till the flame from a 
 burning house caught the stream, ran down it with a hor- 
 rible rushing sound, and, in one dreadful moment, the 
 prostrate drunkards had become a row of blackened 
 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, 4 made me a Radical.’ 4 Whose fault is it,’ I ven- 
 tured to ask, 4 that such things can be ? ’ 4 Mine,’ he 
 
272 Charles Kingsley 
 
 said, ‘ and yours.* I understood partly then, I have 
 understood better since, what his Radicalism was. 
 
 “ From his home life I scarcely dare, even for a mo- 
 ment, 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 marriage — so he never shrunk 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, preg- 
 nant words, as a last offering to her, the whole story of 
 his life, of the Faith he preached and lived in, of his 
 marriage, blessed, and yet to be blessed. He was spa; ed 
 that agony. Over his grave first are written his words : 
 
 ‘ Amavimus , amamus , amabimus ” 1 
 1 We have loved — we love — we shall love. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 1852 
 
 Aged 33 
 
 Correspondence — Strike in the Iron Trade — Letters 
 on Political Parties, on Prayer, on Metaphysical 
 Questions — Parson Lot’s Last Words — Letters to 
 Mr. Ludlow — Hexameters — Poetry — Frederika 
 Bremer — Sunday Amusements — To a Jew. 
 
 “ I do not like to decline bearing my share of the odium, think- 
 ing 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 dread- 
 ing it; and the love of ease ... is likely to be a more growing 
 temptation than the love of notoriety or the pleasure of 
 argument.” 
 
 HE short holiday of the past year had so far 
 
 invigorated him that he worked without a 
 curate for a time. The literary work was ham- 
 pered by the heavy correspondence, principally 
 with strangers, who little knew what labor each 
 letter cost him, but to whom he said: “ Never 
 apologize for writing. 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 ? ” One 
 very valuable series of letters to the son of a 
 vol. 1. — 18 
 
 Dr. Arnold. 
 
274 Charles Kingsley 
 
 clergyman, a young man of atheistical opinions, 
 who died a professed Christian, was by the wish 
 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. Extracts will be made from 
 another series, to Thomas Cooper the Chartist, 
 which spread over this and several years. His 
 literary work consisted of “Hypatia,” “Phaeton,” 
 and several magazine articles. In the summer 
 he amused himself by trying his hand at hexame- 
 ters, and began “Andromeda.” His parish work 
 prevented his helping personally in the Co- 
 operative Movement in London ; but he was con- 
 sulted from time to time by the Council of 
 Promoters, and in the great lock-out of the Iron 
 Trade in January he wrote a letter which “will 
 show,” as Mr. Hughes truly says, “how far 
 Kingsley was an encourager of violent measures 
 or views.” 
 
 Eversley: January 28, 1852. — “You may have 
 been surprised, dear Tom, 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. I do think that we, the 
 Council of Promoters, shall not be wise in interfering be- 
 tween masters and men ; because — 1. I question whether 
 the points at issue between them can be fairly understood 
 by any persons 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 them- 
 selves have invented many, or most, of the improvements 
 in their tools and machinery, they have an argument in 
 favor of keeping out unskilled laborers, which is unan- 
 swerable, and yet what they have never used — viz. : 
 
Strike in the Iron Trade 275 
 
 4 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 labor more easy 0 
 Therefore the only way in which we can get anything like 
 a payment for this inventive faculty of which we make 
 you a present over and above our skilled labor, for which 
 you bargained, is to demand that we, who invent the ma- 
 chines, 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. 
 
 44 3. I think whatever battle is fought, must be fought 
 by the men themselves. The present dodge of the Man- 
 chester School is to cry out against us, as Greg did, 4 These 
 Christian Socialists are a set of mediaeval parsons, who 
 want to hinder the independence and self-help of the 
 men, and bring them back to absolute feudal maxims ; * 
 and then, with the most absurd inconsistency, when we 
 get up a Co-operative workshop, to let the men work on 
 the very independence and self-help of which they talk so 
 fine, they turn round and raise just the opposite yell, and 
 cry, 4 The men can’t be independent of capitalists ; these 
 associations will fail because the men are helping them- 
 selves ’ — showing that what they mean is, that the men 
 shall be independent of every one but themselves — inde- 
 pendent of legislators, parsons, advisers, gentlemen, noble- 
 men, 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 anyone saying, 4 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, 4 This is a Socialist 
 
276 Charles Kingsley 
 
 movement destructive of rights of property, Communism, 
 Louis Blanc, and the devil, etc.’ You know the infernal 
 stuff which the devil gets up on such occasions, — having 
 no scruples about calling himself hard names when it 
 suits his purpose, to blind and frighten respectable old 
 women. Moreover, these men are not poor distressed 
 needlewomen or slop-workers. They are the most intel- 
 ligent and best-educated workmen, 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 as- 
 sociation, and we must hark back into the competitive 
 rot heap again. All, then, that we can do is, to give ad- 
 vice when asked, — to see that they have, as far as we can 
 get at them, a clear stage and no favor, 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 ques- 
 tion 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 
 
On Political Parties 
 
 2 77 
 
 proportion 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 association was about to 
 be introduced into the House of Commons, and 
 that a cabinet minister might 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. The 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 hereafter become great and powerful. 
 Old Whiggery is dead, old true blue Toryism of the Rob- 
 ert 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 themselves all the remains of Whiggery, and a very 
 large proportion of the Conservative party. In an effete 
 unbelieving age, like this, the Sadducee and the Herodian 
 will be the most captivating philosopher. A scientific lazi- 
 ness, lukewarmness, and compromise is a cheery theory 
 for the young men of the day, and they will take to it con 
 amore . I don’t complain of Peel himself. He was a 
 great man, but his method of compromise, though useful 
 enough in particular cases when employed by a great man, 
 becomes a most dastardly ‘ schema mundi ’ 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 pump 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. 
 
278 Charles Kingsley 
 
 “ 2. — Next you have the Manchester School, from 
 whom Heaven defend us. . . . 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 mean time to widen the gulf 
 between the working man and all that is time-honored, 
 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 Manchester School. 
 
 “ . . . I 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 and unbelief, and utter exhaus- 
 tion caused by the competitive enslavement 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 shop-keepers and the Manches- 
 ter 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 Manchester cotton- 
 spinners were all Tories, and the shop-keepers were a 
 distinct class interest from theirs. But now these two 
 latter have united, and the sublime incarnation of shop- 
 keeping and labor-buying in the cheapest market shines 
 forth in the person 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 work- 
 ing men will know them also. But if the present Minis- 
 try 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 competi- 
 tive 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 with- 
 out a Church and a Queen, and, as I believe, without a 
 
On Prayer 279 
 
 gentry. On the conduct of statesmen it will depend 
 whether we are gradually and harmoniously to develop 
 England on her ancient foundations, 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 betake themselves to Canada, to escape, 
 not the Amalgamated Engineers, but their ‘ masters/ and 
 the slop-working savages whom their masters’ system has 
 created, and will by that time have multiplied tenfold.” 
 
 TO LORD 
 
 April 25, 1852. — “I am answering your letter, only 
 just received, I fear at a disadvantage ; for first, you seem 
 to fancy me an older man than I am. I am only two-and- 
 thirty; and shall not be surprised if you or any other 
 person consider 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 different 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 differ- 
 ent from his neighbors. Now God does not make evil 
 things, therefore He has not made self evil or wrong ; 
 but you, or self, are only wrong 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 honored me, is the old fault of Luci- 
 
28 o Charles Kingsley 
 
 fer. The planet is not contented 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, 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 necessarily, 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. ... 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 ; be- 
 cause 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 Unitari- 
 ans and Rationalists. Indeed, some folks tell us that the 
 great use of prayer is 4 its reflex 9 action on ourselves, and 
 inform us that we can thus by taking thought add certain 
 cubits to our stature. God knows the temptation to be- 
 lieve it is great. I feel it deeply. Nevertheless I am not 
 of that belief ; nor, I think, are you. But if there were 
 
28 i 
 
 On Prayer 
 
 a third kind of prayer, — the kind which is set forth to us 
 in the Lords Prayer as the only one worth anything, — a 
 prayer, not that God’s will concerning us or any one 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 aprov 
 iiTLova-Lov given to us in body, soul, spirit, and circum- 
 stance, 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 ac- 
 cordingly. 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 grow- 
 ing 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 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 that 
 work, — does it not seem to you, I say, granting the hy- 
 pothesis, 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, an- 
 swered, 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 hav- 
 
282 Charles Kingsley 
 
 ing stolen God's tools, to use for his own aggrandizement 
 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 oppor- 
 tunity 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 nobil- 
 ity, or his learning, 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 con- 
 sider 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 reprobating, 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 work- 
 ing, 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 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 
 
On Metaphysical Questions 283 
 
 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. • . 
 
 TO THE SAME 
 
 June 15. — u . . . 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 attribution of it 
 to God would involve analogical ahsurdities. 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 ques- 
 tion : 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, 
 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 circumstances, 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 downstairs. I liked to hear that you 
 were teaching a carpenter boat-building. Men ought to 
 know how to do such things ; and gentlemen and noble- 
 men ought to find an honor in teaching them. ... I 
 confess myself a Platonist ; and my aim is to draw men, 
 by showing them that the absolute ‘ God the Father/ 
 whom no man hath seen, is beyond all possible intellec- 
 tual notions of ours — to feel the necessity of believing in 
 a 4 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 
 
284 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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- 
 Eclectism 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 I say must lead, I mean 
 logically. Every one, thank God, is better than his creed 
 — I mean his real heart’s belief. Humanity and common 
 sense are too mighty even for H. Martineau and Atkin- 
 son ; but they will not be so for their disciples. Their 
 disciples will formulize, systematize, carry out — perse- 
 cute ; 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 believ- 
 ing 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 chil- 
 dren and grandchildren may have some fixed ideas concern- 
 ing 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 posi- 
 tion writes to me about such matters, I feel no labor 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. . . . 
 Read those confessions of St. Augustine, aud see if they 
 do not help you. . . . Pray read Maurice’s ‘ History of 
 
On Metaphysical Questions 285 
 
 Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy ; ’ a little golden 
 book. It is a new world of thought and revelation in 
 the true sense. . . 
 
 TO , ESQ . 1 
 
 “ 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 our- 
 selves, 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 faculties ; that neither in- 
 tellect nor strength of will can save us from degradation ; 
 that they may be just as powerful for evil as for good ; 
 and that what we want to make us true men, over and 
 above that which we bring into the world with us, is 
 some sort of God-given instinct, motive, and new prin- 
 ciple 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 own weakness a strength, in the subjection of our 
 
 1 A young man of nineteen, brought up as a Unitarian, 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. 
 
286 Charles Kingsley 
 
 own will a freedom, in the utter carelessness about self a 
 self-respect, such as we have never known before. Do 
 not — do not fancy that any confession of yours to me 
 can lower you in my eyes. My dear young man, I went 
 through the same devil’s sewer, with a thousand times the 
 teaching and advantages which you have had. Who am 
 I, of all men, to throw stones at you ? But take your 
 sorrows, not to me, but to your Father in heaven. If 
 that name, Father, mean anything, it must mean that He 
 will not turn away from His wandering child, in a way in 
 which you would be ashamed to turn away from yours. 
 If there be pity, lasting 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 conquered, 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 anybody, Unitarian or Trinitarian, may say they 
 mean. Read them as you would a Greek play — taking 
 for granted that they mean the simplest and most obvious 
 sense which can be put upon them. Let me hear more 
 — I long for another letter. I need not say that I con- 
 sider your confidence an honor, and shall keep it 
 sacred.” 
 
 “The Christian Socialist ” came to an end this 
 year, and “Parson Lot” spoke his “last words”: 
 
 “ . . . Let us say little and work the more. We 
 shall be the more respected, and the more feared too 
 for it. People will begin to believe that we really know 
 what we want, and really do intend to get it, and really 
 believe in its righteousness. And the spectacle of silent 
 
Parson Lot’s Last Words 287 
 
 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.” 
 
 “If you want an Epicedium, ,, he writes to the 
 editor, “ I send one. It is written in a hurry. 
 
 “ So die, thou child of stormy dawn, 
 
 Thou winter flower, forlorn of nurse ; 
 
 Chilled early by the bigot’s curse, 
 
 The pedant’s frown, the worldling’s yawn. 
 
 Fair death, to fall in teeming June, 
 
 When every seed which drops to earth 
 Takes root, and wins a second birth 
 From steaming shower and gleaming moon; 
 
 Fall warm, fall fast, thou mellow rain; 
 
 Thou rain of God, make fat the land : 
 
 That roots, which parch in burning sand, 
 
 May bud to flower and fruit again, 
 
 To grace, perchance, a fairer morn 
 In mighty lands beyond the sea, 
 
 While honor falls to such as we 
 From hearts of heroes yet unborn, 
 
288 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 ? 
 
 “ Charles Kingsley. 
 
 “June 9, 1852.” 
 
 In the summer of 1852, Judge Erskine, with 
 his family, settled in Eversley to be a blessing 
 to the parish for fifteen years. He was friend 
 and counsellor to the rector in all matters, be- 
 sides relieving him of a heavy load of expense and 
 anxiety in the matter of the local charities. With 
 this fresh help he worked on cheerfully, and had 
 the heart to turn his thoughts to poetry once 
 more. 
 
 His youngest daughter was born in June, and 
 the day following he resumes his letters to Mr. 
 Ludlow, from which the following extracts are 
 made : 
 
 “ Too tired, confused, and happy to work, I sit down 
 for a chat with you. 1. 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 9 : I sent it to Max Muller, 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 in re ), 
 it was too rational and moral and rounded, he said, and 
 
Letters to Mr. Ludlow 289 
 
 not irrational and vast, and dreamy, and hyperbolic — 
 like a true saga. 
 
 “ As for the monks : ’pon honor they are slow 
 
 fellows — but then they were so horribly slow in reality. 
 And I can’t see but that Pambo’s palaver in my tale is 
 just what I find in Rosweyde’s ‘ Vitae Patrum,’ and 
 Athanases’ 4 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, but 
 a finished gentleman and court intriguer — taken ill with 
 superstition. ... As for the Sermons, 1 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 arbi- 
 trary 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 dare n’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 afflic- 
 tion is of no use, but the very reverse. . . . 
 
 “ 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 Pie 
 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 
 
 1 National Sermons, First Series. 
 
 VOL. I.— 19 
 
290 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 compelled 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 children, that bitter agony? In the 
 face of such real thoughts, school terms vanish, and one 
 has to rest on realities ; on the belief in a human-hearted, 
 loving, sorrowing Lord, and of a Father whose image 
 
 He, in some inexplicable way, is or one would go 
 
 mad. And 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 can 
 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 
 can make them believe that God is not pleased, but 
 displeased 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 them- 
 selves 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 ****... 
 
 “ I have been trying to tell him, as I do every one — ‘If 
 God be for you, what matter who is against you ? ’ . . . 
 If I can make him feel that first, then, and then only, I 
 
Letters to Mr. Ludlow 291 
 
 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 very lesson which I preached 
 in the three sermons on the cholera — that God is the 
 foe of all misery and affliction ; that He yearns to raise 
 us out of it, and to show us that in His presence is 
 the fulness of life and joy, and that nothing but our 
 own wilfulness and 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 any- 
 thing else, I say it is the whole truth, the root truth, 
 which must limit all theories about the benefit of suf- 
 fering, or any other theories, and must be preached 
 absolutely, nakedly, unreservedly first, as the Lord Jesus 
 preached it, to be of any real benefit to men. I know 
 all this is incoherent ; but I don’t pretend to have solved 
 
292 Charles Kingsley 
 
 this or any other problem. If you prove to me seven 
 large self-contradictions 1 * * * * 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.” 
 
 • . . “ Thank God that there is one more man in the 
 world who has found out the great metaphysicotheologic 
 law, that if a man sees me, he sees me, whether he 
 happens to know my name or not ! ! ! How has the 
 6 religious world 9 fallen into the notion that no one 
 believes in Christ, who does not call Him by the same 
 appellation as themselves? 1. From the dogma-olatry 
 of the last two centuries (Popish and Protestant), Christ 
 has not seemed to them a Living Man, or God either, 
 but a black formula on white paper. 2. Because, as 
 old Fox and Naylor told them all, they had been be- 
 lieving in a dead Christ, not in the live one of the 
 ‘Revelations 9 — 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 nowadays 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 
 
 1 “ I remember,” said a friend, who complained of there being 
 
 a certain inconsistency about his theology, and asked him how 
 
 this was to go with that , “ C. K/s answering — ‘You logical 
 
 Scotchmen must construct consistent theories : I have intuitions 
 
 of individual truths : how they are to be reconciled I know not/ ” 
 
Letters to Mr. Ludlow 293 
 
 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 stated to me by Maurice in Peterborough 
 Cathedral, which I want to talk over with you.” 
 
 “ In fhree weeks’ time, 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 spring. My 
 old hunter [a horse which a friend had lately lent him] 
 will be up from grass, and proud to carry you and me 
 — per gig — to see the best of men, John Paine, saint 
 and hop-grower, of Farnham, Surrey. Also we will talk 
 of all matters in heaven and earth. That is, unless I 
 am so deeply unthankful, as indeed I am, for all my 
 blessings that the Giver finds it necessary, against His 
 will, to send some bitter among my paradise of sweets. 
 . . . What you say about my ‘ ergon ’ being poetry is 
 quite true. I could not write ‘ Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ 
 and I can write poetry . . . there is no denying it : I 
 do feel a different being when I get into metre — I 
 feel like an otter in the water, instead of an otter ashore. 
 He can run fast enough ashore, and keep the hounds 
 at a tearing gallop, as my legs found this spring in 
 Snowdonia, but when he takes water, then indeed he 
 becomes beautiful, full of divine grace and freedom, 
 and exuberance of power. Go and look at him in the 
 Zoological Gardens, 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 
 
 V 
 
 1 
 
 
294 Charles Kingsley 
 
 something that will live. I feel my strong faculty is that 
 sense of form , which, till I took to poetry, always came 
 out in drawing, but poetry is the true sphere, combining 
 painting and music and history all in one.” 
 
 “ . . . I wonder what makes me so chatty this morn- 
 ing — 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 6 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. 
 
 ‘ Therefore we took him by the 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. re- 
 mains very, very well, and so does the infant.” 
 
 “ 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 readers feel it such. Then when I get into real 
 human Greek life, I can burst out and rollick along in 
 the joy of existence. . . . 
 
 “ You know that Andromeda myth is a very deep one. 
 It happened at Joppa, and she must have been a 
 
Letters to Mr. Ludlow 295 
 
 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 
 thus bring out, or bring in, enough to make it felt with- 
 out 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 color and chiaroscuro . 1 . . . 
 
 “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. Perseus 
 rushing on the Ore — 
 
 ‘ As when an osprey, aloft, dark eyebrowed, royally crested . . . 
 
 Stunning with terrible heel the life of the brain in the hind 
 head.’ 
 
 Mind the ‘ terrible heel" 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 im- 
 
 1 The first edition of “ The Heroes 99 — a Christian book of Greek 
 fairy tales for his children, published in 1855, was illustrated by 
 himself, and contains an exquisite sketch of Perseus and Androm: 
 eda. (M. K.) 
 
296 Charles Kingsley 
 
 >/ 
 
 mense speed from behind, he could n’t drive his front 
 claws in. The dark eyebrowed is Homer’s ‘ melano- 
 phrus,’ and is the thing which struck me as most magnifi- 
 cent in a large osprey which I came upon ten yards 
 from me in the Issthal. For the same reason, doubt 
 not, c the wind rattling 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 preternatural flaps, 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 atop 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 history 
 for the nonce. There ’s a hawk ‘ stooping ’ (sketch 
 enclosed). . . . 
 
 “ I don’t agree with you about not polishing too 
 much . 1 If you are a verse maker, you will, of course, 
 
 1 Speaking once of the finish and perfection of Tennyson’s 
 poetry, he says : “ And how are such effects produced but by 
 labor? Labor severe, self-restraining, patient; labor without 
 which the diamond itself is dark. The Venus or the Apollo 
 might possess the most exact proportion of limb, the most perfect 
 grace of attitude, yet who would have called them beautiful while 
 the surface of the marble was still rough and knotty? It is not 
 the size, but the finish of the picture which proves the painter’s 
 art, — proves that he has worked, to use Mr. Ruskin’s phrase, by 
 the light of ‘ The Lamps of Sacrifice and of Obedience.’ ... If 
 metre and melody be worth anything at all, let them be polished 
 to perfection : let an author ‘ keep his piece nine years,’ or ninety 
 and nine, till he has made it as musical as he can. . . . The 
 thought must be struck off in the passion of the moment ; the 
 sword-blade must go red-hot to the anvil, and be forged in a few 
 seconds ; true : but after the forging, long and weary polishing 
 and grinding must follow, before your sword-blade will cut- And 
 melody is what makes poetry cut, what gives it its life, its power, 
 its magic influence, on the hearts of men. It must ring in their 
 ears ; it must have music in itself ; it must appeal to the senses, 
 
Hexameters 
 
 297 
 
 mb 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 bringing 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 drives me mad. 
 If I have 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 Piccadilly. . . . Dear man, did you ever 
 ride a lame horse, and wish that the earth would open, 
 and swallow you, though there was n’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 hav- 
 ing 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 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 
 (Edipus Coloneus, and the Antigone, before I do them, 
 to catch the sententiosity. But I never had dreamed 
 of daring to write hexameters . 1 I should write them 
 merely by ear, as I firmly believe Homer wrote his, and 
 
 as well as to the feelings, the imagination, the intellect : then, when 
 it seizes at once on the whole man, on body, soul, and spirit, will 
 it * swell in the heart, and kindle in the eyes, and constrain him, 
 he knows not why, to believe and to obey.’ ” 
 
 1 In “Westward Ho!” is introduced a supposed conversa- 
 tion between Sir Walter Raleigh and the poet Edmund Spenser, 
 on the subject of Hexameter verse. (M. K.) 
 
298 Charles Kingsley 
 
 make a word scan two different ways, as he does, when- 
 ever I chose, minding always to make accent and metre 
 coincide. As for hexameters being foreign to our lan- 
 guage, 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. ... I enclose my last : — 
 
 44 I and my gardener George, and my little whelp Maurice 
 and Dandy, 
 
 Went out this afternoon fishing ; abetter 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-flies just 
 rising — 
 
 Well, I fished 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. 
 
 4 I ’ll tell you what, G.,’ said 1, 4 some rascal ’s been “ stud- 
 dling ” the water ; 
 
 Look at the tail of that weed there, all turned up and tangled 
 — Tim Goddard ’s 
 
 Been up the stream before us, or else Bonny Over, and sold us !’ 
 4 Well, sir,’ says he, 4 1 ’ll be sworn, some chap ’s 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.” 
 
 44 ... 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. 
 
 4 Linger no more, my beloved, by abbey and cell and 
 cathedral ; 
 
 Mourn not for holy ones mourning of old — them who knew 
 not the F ather. 
 
roetry 299 
 
 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 
 pleasure, 
 
 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.’ 
 
 “ P. S. — What I have said of ballads is this : that 
 they must be objective, dealing with facts and not feel- 
 ings — or with feelings as manifested in actions. The 
 union of the objective ballad or epic (for they only 
 differ 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 Patrick Spens : ’ Lady Maistry, perfectly awful — 
 
 ‘ She carried the peats in her apron lap 
 To burn herself withal.’ 
 
 One or two Danish ballads : Tennyson’s ‘ Sir Galahad ; 9 
 ‘Wee Croodledoo ; ’ ‘ Auld Robin Gray;’ Lord Wil- 
 
300 Charles Kingsley 
 
 loughby in Percy’s ‘ Reliques ; ’ * Hosier’s Ghost ; ’ 
 ‘When in Porto-bello lying/ a noble speech; ‘Would 
 you hear a Spanish Lady? ’ Campbell’s ‘ Hohenlinden ; ’ 
 Uhland’s ‘ Drei Burschen;’ Goethe’s ‘ Beggarman and 
 Erl-King.’ But the Germans have hundreds.” 
 
 To T. Hughes, Esq. — “. . . I had just done my 
 work, 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 was n’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 honor 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. . . . 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, when Mr. Woodburne’s hounds 
 found at Blackholme, at the bottom of Windermere, and 
 ended beyond Helvellyn, more than fifty miles of moun- 
 tain. 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 Batterdale, Brother Water, top of Fairfield 
 
Frederika Bremer 301 
 
 ( 2 ooo) Dunnaird Gap; and then over the top of Hel- 
 vellyn (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. (J , 
 that I could write a ballad thereanent. The thing has 
 taken possession of me ; but I can’t find words, lhere 
 was never such a run since we were born^; and thin o 
 hounds doing the last thirty miles alone ! ” 
 
 One of his many correspondents at this time 
 was Frederika Bremer, the Swedish novelist, 
 who, in the previous autumn, had 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 a copy of Esaia Tegner’s Fnthiof 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 Vik- 
 ings, his friend and admirer, Frederika Bremer; 
 and writes : 
 
 
 Ot 
 
 “ 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 un- 
 derstand it. I have received your books. They shall 
 go with me over the sea to my fatherland, and there in 
 my silent home, I shall read them, live in them, enjoy 
 them deeply, intensely. I know it, know it all the better 
 
302 Charles Kingsley 
 
 since I have been with you. I have had a dream some- 
 times of a young brother like that one that was snatched 
 away from me in his youth ; like him, but more ardent, 
 a young mind that I could like, love, sympathize with, 
 quarrel with, live with, influence, be influenced by, fol- 
 low, through the thorny path, through tropical islands, 
 through storm and sunshine, higher and higher ascend- 
 ing in the metamorphosis of existence. I had that 
 dream, that vision again, when I saw you, that made 
 me so sad at parting. But let that pass. With much 
 we must part. Much must pass. More will remain. The 
 communion of related souls will remain to be revived 
 again and again. I shall hear from you, and I will write 
 to you. Meantime my soul will hover about you with the 
 wings of blessing thoughts. 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 Swe- 
 den in the introduction may interest you ; this much be- 
 longs to the natural history of a country. The voyage 
 up to the mountains of the midnight sun, the scenery 
 there is perfectly true to nature ; I have seen and lived 
 it through myself. Frithiof ’s Saga I take peculiar pleas- 
 ure in asking you to accept, as a true follower of Scan- 
 dinavian 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.” 
 
 A proposal was made this year to open the 
 Crystal Palace on Sundays — a step towards stem- 
 
Sunday Amusements 303 
 
 ming the tide of Sunday drunkenness, and he 
 wrote to Mr. George Grove, who had asked him 
 to help: — 
 
 October 28. — “ 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. ... I use freely a pamphlet, by the Rev. 
 Baldwin Brown, 1 which I think the wisest speech, save 
 Maurice’s, which I have seen on the matter. . . . 
 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 de- 
 nounced again and again as contrary to, and destructive 
 of, the very idea and meaning of the Sabbath. The 
 Church of England calls Sunday a feast-day, and not a 
 fast ; and it is neither contrary to her ritual letter, nor 
 to her spirit, to invite on that day every Englishman to 
 refresh himself with the sight of the wonders of God’s 
 earth, or with the wonders of men’s art, which she con- 
 siders as the results of God’s teaching and inspiration. 
 
 “ The letter, moreover, as well as the spirit of the 
 Bible, is directly in favor of the arguments brought 
 forward by the Crystal Palace Company’s advocates. 
 The Sabbath, it declares, was made for man. And 
 man, it declares to be, not a mere ‘ soul to be saved ’ 
 (an expression nowhere used in Scripture, in its mod- 
 em 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 feel- 
 ings. And therefore any institution, which, like the 
 Crystal Palace, tends to give healthy and innocent rest 
 
 1 Author of “ The Higher Life,” “ The Home Life,” and “ The 
 Doctrine of Annihilation in the Light of the Gospel of Love.” 
 
304 Charles Kingsley 
 
 and refreshment to body, mind, and tastes, is in accord- 
 ance, — a lower sphere certainly, but still directly in ac- 
 cordance with the letter of the Sabbatical institution, as 
 a day of rest made for man as man. . . .” 
 
 In 1856 he writes on this topic to Mr. 
 Maurice : 
 
 “ I have read through your pamphlet forthwith, and 
 with very great delight. I agree with every word. I 
 feel with you that the only ground on which Sunday 
 amusements can be really defended , is as a carrying out 
 of the divineness of the Sabbath , and not as a relaxation 
 of it. ... I do not see how to lay down the ground 
 of the Sabbath better than you have done, so I do not 
 see how to dogmatize about practical applications any far- 
 ther than the hints you have given. I have often fancied 
 I should like to see the great useless naves and aisles of 
 our cathedrals turned into museums and winter gardens, 
 where people might take their Sunday walks, and yet at- 
 tend service ; but such a plan could only grow up of 
 itself, round a different service than ours, or at least 
 round a service interpreted and commented on by 
 very different preaching ; and till the Tartarus and 
 Elysium superstition, which lies as really at the bot- 
 tom of this question as at the bottom of all, is settled, 
 I see no hope for that. . . . You have made me 
 see more than I ever did, the dignity of work and rest, 
 and their analogy with God's — so justifying all that 
 Parker, Emerson, or Carlyle have said about it, by put- 
 ting it on a ground which they deny. Yet if the prob- 
 lem of human existence be to escape the impending 
 torture — cui bono ? Who need care for rest, or work 
 either, save to keep the body alive till the soul is 
 saved ? Till that doctrine vanishes, no one will feel any 
 real analogy between his life and God’s life, and will be 
 as selfish and covetous in his work, and as epicurean in 
 his rest, as men are now. It was their ignorance of this 
 
Sunday Amusements 305 
 
 superstition, I suppose, which enabled the old Jews to 
 keep their Sabbath (as they seem to have done from 
 the few hints we have) as a day of 4 rejoicing before the 
 Lord/ in attempts more or less successful to consecrate 
 to Him the simple enjoyments of life — in feasting, sing- 
 ing, and dancing. 4 In the midst go the damsels playing 
 with the timbrels. 7 But this would be absurd here , and 
 therefore I suppose it is, that the all-wise Book keeps 
 the practical details so in the background, leaving each 
 future nation to actualize the Sabbath according to its 
 own genius. I think what you have said on that quite 
 admirable. Nevertheless, we (after we are dead and 
 alive for evermore) shall see that conception carried 
 out on earth. 
 
 44 4 In mighty lands beyond the sea, 
 
 While honor falls to such as thee, 
 
 From hearts of heroes yet unborn. 7 
 
 “ Men drink, and women too, remember/’ he says 
 elsewhere, 44 not merely to supply exhaustion ; not 
 merely to drive away care ; but often simply to drive 
 away dulness. . . . The publican knows too well where 
 thousands of the lower classes, simply for want of any 
 other place to be in, save their own sordid dwellings, 
 spend as much as they are permitted of the Sabbath 
 day. . . . Let us put down 4 Sunday drinking, by all 
 means. And let us see — in the name of Him who 
 said He had made the Sabbath for man, and not man 
 for the Sabbath — if we cannot do something to pre- 
 vent the townsman’s Sabbath being, not a day of rest, 
 but a day of mere idleness ; the day of most temptation, 
 because of most dulness in the whole seven.” — 
 (“ Health and Education,” p. 64.) 
 
 , “ Have you any objection ” (he asks the Dean of 
 
 Westminster, before preaching in the Abbey for the 
 vol. 1. — 20 
 
306 Charles Kingsley 
 
 Temperance Society in 1873) “ to my speaking in 
 favor of opening the British Museum and National 
 Gallery to the public on Sunday afternoons? . . . I 
 have held very strong and deliberate opinions on this 
 matter for many years ; and think that the opening of 
 these institutions would stop not only a good deal of 
 Sunday and therefore of Monday drunkenness — but 
 would, if advocated by the clergy, enable the Church 
 to take the wind out of the sails of the well-meaning but 
 ignorant Sunday league, and prove herself — what she 
 can prove herself in other matters if she has courage, 
 — the most liberal religious body in these isles. . . . ” 
 
 TO ADOLPH SAPHIR, ESQ. 
 
 (Then a student in Edinburgh) 
 
 November .1, 1852. — “ If I am surprised at your 
 writing 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 connection — are Jews, and next, 
 because I believe as firmly as any modern interpreter 
 of prophecy, that you are still ‘ 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 1 
 as well as ‘ religious/ to the study of the 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 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 person- 
 ality of the inspired writer, and makes him a mere 
 
To a Jew 307 
 
 puppet and mouthpiece ; and therefore I love your 
 David, and Jeremiah, and Isaiah, as men of like pas- 
 sions 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 minis- 
 ter. 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 
 labored — 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 Testament, our faith in the New will soon 
 dwindle to the impersonal ‘ spiritualism 7 of Frank 
 Newman, and the German philosophasters. Now the 
 founder of German unbelief in the Old Testament was 
 a Jew. Benedict Spinoza wrote a little book which con- 
 vulsed 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 in- 
 terpretation — the whole theory of rabbinical inspira- 
 tion ; 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 his- 
 tory 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 
 

 308 ' Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 con- 
 verted Jew, not to sink your nationality, because you 
 have become a member of the Universal 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 Ger- 
 manize or Scotticize, but try to see all heaven and earth 
 with the eyes of Abraham, David, and St. Paul. ,, 
 
 
 Jj.aJas 
 
 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 1853 
 
 Aged 34 
 
 The Rector in his Church — “ Hypatia ” Letters from 
 Chevalier Bunsen — Mr. Maurice’s Theological Es- 
 says — Correspondence with 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 feet; 
 
 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 energy, 
 
 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). 
 
 T HE books which entailed so many letters, 
 now also attracted strangers to Eversley 
 Church on Sunday. Officers from Sandhurst 
 would constantly walk over, and occasionally a 
 stray clergyman would be seen in the free sit- 
 tings. “ Twenty-five Village Sermons ” had been 
 published in 1849, and had been reviewed in the 
 “Times/’ and “Sermons on National Subjects,” 
 perhaps the most remarkable of all his volumes of 
 sermons, had just been brought out. His preach- 
 
310 Charles Kingsley 
 
 ing 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, 
 4 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, sorrow- 
 ing, 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. . . 
 
 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 
 keep still and calm, and free from all gesticula- 
 tion; 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 unconscious; his eyes 
 seemed on fire, his whole frame worked and 
 vibrated. It was riveting to see as well as hear 
 him, as his eagle glance penetrated every 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 responsi- 
 bility as well as high privilege, to deliver a mes- 
 sage to each and all. The great festivals of the 
 
The Rector in his Church 3 1 1 
 
 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 triumph; 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 al- 
 most agonized tone, which hushed his congrega- 
 tion into a silence that might be felt. These 
 Passion services were given at an hour to suit the 
 laboring men on their way home from work, when 
 a few would drop into church, to whom he 
 preached a fifteen minutes’ sermon, which a Lon- 
 don congregation would have gone miles to hear. 
 His hearers, sometimes only fifteen to twenty 
 besides his own family, will never forget the 
 dimly-lighted church in the spring evening’s 
 twilight, with its little sprinkling of worshippers, 
 and the silence as of death and the grave, when 
 with a look which he never seemed to have at any 
 other season, he followed Christ through the 
 events of the Holy Week, from the First Com- 
 munion 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 words about that Intermediate 
 state, in which he so deeply believed, he would 
 lead our thoughts from the peaceful sepulchre in 
 the garden to the mysterious gate of Paradise. 
 
 His Good Friday sermons were flashes of inspi- 
 ration. He thus closes one, perhaps the finest 
 he ever preached [National Sermons, 1st Series], 
 in 1848, when his heart was full of the People’s 
 cause : 
 
3 1 2 Charles Kingsley 
 
 “ Oh ! sad hearts and suffering ! Anxious and weary 
 ones ! Look to the Cross this day 1 There hung your 
 King. The King of sorrowing souls, and more the King 
 of Sorrow. 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 con- 
 quered 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 honored 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, and 
 theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are the hun- 
 gry, 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 themselves 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 bit- 
 terer your loneliness, the more you are like Him who 
 cried upon the cross, ‘ My God, my God, why hast 
 Thou forsaken me?’ ... All things are 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. 
 
The Rector in his Church 3 1 3 
 
 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 sorrow 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, per- 
 haps, the day of the Lord. The deeper the sorrow, the 
 nearer the salvation. 
 
 The night is darkest before the dawn ; 
 
 When the pain is sorest, the child is born, 
 
 And the day of the Lord at hand ! ” 
 
 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 old churchyard spoke 
 of hope and joy and a living God. And the 
 
314 Charles Kingsley 
 
 flowers in the church, and the graves decked 
 with bright wreaths would add to his gladness, 
 as he paced up and down the narrow gravel path 
 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 drown- 
 ing man kept me from sinking in the ‘ blackness 
 of darkness 9 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.” 
 In a preface written for the Village Sermons in 
 1849, but subsequently suppressed for fear of mis- 
 conception, he explained why he had adopted the 
 peculiar method of preaching, both in matter and 
 style, which offended some, while it arrested 
 many: 
 
 “ At the solicitation of several friends,” he says, “ I put 
 these sermons into print, with extreme diffidence as to 
 their value — a diffidence much increased by the high 
 standard which I have most unsuccessfully proposed to 
 myself. These sermons refer chiefly to those subjects 
 which are less commonly than others expounded in the 
 pulpit, and must therefore be in no wise taken as a com- 
 plete confession of faith. The great doctrines of the 
 Gospel will be found rather implicit and diffused through 
 them, and underlying them everywhere as their primary 
 ground, than formally and articulately stated in them. 
 
 “ (1) To such a method of teaching I have been 
 more or less compelled by circumstances. I have found 
 that, in my own parish at least, the minds of working 
 men have been inundated by a dogmatic technology 
 which is, by their own confession, utterly beyond the 
 comprehension of the great majority, while repeated use 
 
The Rector in his Church 3 1 5 
 
 has made the ears of too many of the rest callous to the 
 thread of vague meaning which they may have once 
 attached to it. The same objections I found to hold 
 good also against a peculiar phraseology, which, though 
 it calls itself scriptural, is yet utterly deficient in the 
 lively and dramatic terseness of the Bible, being for the 
 most part a mere patchwork — I had almost said parody 
 — of the archaisms, not of the Scriptures themselves, 
 but of our English translation of them. I have therefore 
 boldly thrown off as much as possible conventional forms 
 and technicalities of speech, and I believe that all who 
 do the same will be rewarded by the delight with which 
 youths and men of the laboring classes will welcome 
 the Gospel in the intelligible form of their own mother- 
 tongue. 
 
 “ ( 2 ) I must also say that I cannot see without 
 astonishment men who profess unbounded reverence 
 for Scripture, utterly and intentionally avoiding every 
 method of teaching which Scripture employs. In the 
 sermons of the Prophets, of our Lord, of the Apostles, 
 all is indicative, personal, pointed, concrete ; with most 
 sermon writers of this day, all is studiously hypothetic, 
 impersonal, rounded, and abstract. Scripture deals in 
 dialogue and apostrophe ; in allusions to time and place 
 and detail, and almost invariably makes passing events 
 the ground from which to evolve eternal and spiritual 
 lessons ; most modern sermons, on the contrary, avoid 
 carefully all which can connect their subject with the 
 events of the day, with the peculiar circumstances or 
 actual every-day life and business of their hearers. The 
 honest old ‘ You ’ and ‘ 1/ for instance, are ousted by a 
 certain dreamy book-compiled abstraction ‘The Chris- 
 tian,’ or else for € My brethren,’ a phrase whose anti- 
 quated form alone, if we will consider, proves the 
 unreality of our own use of it. If we believe that our 
 hearers are our brothers , let us call them so. It is a 
 
316 Charles Kingsley 
 
 poor trick to soften down the rebuke which that word con- 
 veys to ourselves, by watering it down into a vapid ‘ breth- 
 ren These sermons have been written in the belief, 
 that true reverence for Scripture will copy its manner, as 
 well as its matter, and that as every teacher in Scripture 
 expresses God’s truth in the language and style peculiar 
 to his own time, we shall best follow the leading of God’s 
 Spirit, by expressing His truth in the style and language 
 peculiar neither to the first, nor to the sixteenth, but to 
 the nineteenth century. 
 
 “ (3) We have, I think, again much injured the use- 
 fulness of our preaching, by a squeamish regard for that 
 miserable fiction, ‘ the dignity of the pulpit,’ by a horror 
 of our words and thoughts which are homely and ‘ collo- 
 quial/ and anything less than sesquipedalian. How 
 much of this may have proceeded from honest bad taste, 
 how much from a subtle temptation to excuse ourselves 
 for our ignorance of the speech and thought of the very 
 peasants to whom we are commissioned to minister, God 
 alone can judge ; but this pedantry must be thoroughly 
 and at once amended, if we do not wish to be called, as 
 I believe, to most fearful and speedy account for our 
 remiss use of that tremendous power — the undisturbed 
 possession of the pulpits of England. 
 
 “ (4) I must now, even at the risk of being misunder- 
 stood, say boldly that I believe our preaching has been 
 of late years sadly chilled and tongue-tied by a certain 
 rigid idolatry of formulae, and a consequent scrupulous 
 terror of mere verbal and accidental heterodoxy : while 
 most seem quite unconscious that it is easy to preach 
 sermons, in whose words the most scrupulous theologian 
 could detect no flaw, the total outcome of which may 
 nevertheless be utterly heretical — Manichaean, for in- 
 stance, or Apollinarian — errors which are at this very 
 day fearfully rife, among nominally orthodox preachers 
 of every shade of opinion. 
 
The Rector in his Church 3 1 7 
 
 “ I may have erred in the opposite direction ; but I 
 have been less solicitous about the outward and treach- 
 erous orthodoxy of the understanding than about the far 
 deeper orthodoxy of the spirit ; not so much to prove 
 my correctness to my hearers as to excite correct 
 notions in them. My hearers were ploughmen, not 
 schoolmen — my grammar is that of the farm, not of 
 the university. If therefore any expressions be discov- 
 ered in my sermons, which, when separated from their 
 context, and from the gist of the whole discourse (as is 
 the manner of critics), do not exactly fit into any of the 
 current systems of doctrine, I answer with all humility 
 that — I do not care. I am perfectly assured of the 
 orthodox result of the whole , and equally perfectly 
 assured that any one who wishes really to touch the 
 souls of men, must apply to oratory Augustine’s glorious 
 maxim, * Ama — et fac quicquid vis ' and say boldly, 
 
 “ ‘ Crede — et die quicquid vis l ” 
 
 His sermons owed much to the time he gave 
 himself for preparation. 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 even- 
 ing he would talk over with his wife the subject 
 and text for the next week. He seldom put off 
 his sermon till Saturday. On Monday, he would, 
 if possible, take a rest, but on Tuesday it was 
 sketched, and the first half carefully thought out 
 before it was dictated or written : then put by for 
 a day or two, that it might simmer in his brain, 
 and be finished on Friday. But none who read 
 them now can tell what it was to hear them, and 
 to see him, and the look of inspiration on his 
 face, as he preached. While to those his nearest 
 
3 1 8 Charles Kingsley 
 
 and dearest, who looked forward with an ever-fresh 
 intensity of interest to the Eversley Church ser- 
 vices week after week, year after year, each ser- 
 mon came with double emphasis from the fact 
 that his week-day life was no contradiction, but 
 a noble carrying out of his Sunday teaching. 
 
 “The Eversley Sunday,” said his friend and curate, 
 Mr. Harrison, “ was very characteristic of Mr. Kingsley. 
 It was not to him far above the level of every other day, 
 but then his every other day was far above the ordinarily 
 accepted level. One thing was specially observable 
 about it, the absence of all artificial solemnity of man- 
 ner, and exceptional restraints of speech and conduct. 
 Whatever the day might be he was emphatically always 
 the same. He would chat with his people in the church- 
 yard before service as freely and as humorously as he 
 would have done in field or cottage. The same vivid 
 untiring interest in nature which has made his rambles 
 by the chalk streams of England, and through the high 
 woods of Trinidad, a source of perpetual enjoyment to 
 his readers, would flash out from him the very moment 
 he left church, if anything unusual or beautiful attracted 
 his attention. Yet during service his manner was always 
 impressive ; and at times, as during the celebration of 
 the Holy Communion — until the recent judgment he 
 always consecrated in the eastward position — it rose 
 into a reverence that was most striking and remarkable. 
 It was not the reverence of a school. It was evidently 
 the impulse of the moment, and being so, was not pre- 
 cise and systematic. Indeed, his individuality came out 
 involuntarily at unexpected moments, in a way that 
 occasionally was startling to those who did not know 
 him, and amusing to those who did. One Sunday 
 morning, for instance, in passing from the altar to the 
 pulpit he disappeared, and we discovered that he was 
 
The Rector in his Church 319 
 
 searching for something on the ground, which when 
 found was carried to the vestry. Subsequently it came 
 out that he was assisting a lame butterfly, which by its 
 beauty had attracted his attention, and which was in 
 great danger of being trodden on. There was nothing 
 incongruous, nothing of the nature of an effort to him, 
 in turning from the gravest thoughts and duties to the 
 simplest acts of kindness, and observation of everything 
 around him. * He prayeth best who loveth best all 
 creatures great and small. 7 
 
 “ Many a heart will cherish through life dear mem- 
 ories of the Eversley sermons. It was well that Chester 
 and Westminster should grow familiar with the tones of 
 his voice before they were silenced forever. It was well 
 that men and women, among whom his name had been 
 a household word, should be able, Sunday after Sunday, 
 to come in crowds to listen to his burning words, in a 
 place befitting his genius, and his message to them. But 
 to my mind he was never heard to greater advantage 
 than in his own village pulpit. I have sometimes been 
 so moved by what he then said, that I could scarcely 
 restrain myself from calling out, as he poured forth words 
 now exquisitely sad and tender, now grand and heroic ; 
 with an insight into character, a knowledge of the world, 
 and a sustained eloquence which, each in its own way, 
 was matchless.” 
 
 “ I never did,” said the Bishop of Truro, “and I be- 
 lieve I never shall, see anything that spoke so loud for 
 the Church of England as never to be put away, as did 
 the morning service in Eversley Church, whether he read 
 or whether he preached. . . .” 
 
 This year, begun at Eversley and ended at Tor- 
 quay, was one of much anxiety and incessant 
 labor. Unable to get a pupil, he was therefore 
 unable to keep a curate. The Sunday services, 
 
320 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 up to Town, to lecture ,for the 
 Needlewomen’s Association. Constant sickness 
 in the parish and serious illness in his own house- 
 hold gave him great anxiety; while the proceed- 
 ings of the King’s College Council against Mr. 
 Maurice, on the ground of his views on eternal 
 punishment, depressed him deeply. But the 
 year had its lights as well as shadows; he had the 
 comfort of seeing the first good national school 
 built and opened in his parish; friends, new and 
 old, came and went — Mr. Maurice frequently — 
 Bishop McDougall of Labuan, and Mr. Alfred 
 Tennyson. His intimacy with Bishop Wilber- 
 force, Chevalier Bunsen, and Miss Mitford deep- 
 ened ; he made the personal acquaintance of Mr. 
 Robert Browning and his wife, and of several of 
 his hitherto unknown correspondents. 
 
 “ Hypatia,” perhaps his highest work of art, 
 this year came out as a whole. It cost him more 
 labor than any of his books, and a friend, who 
 was with him during the summer in which part of 
 it was written, says : 
 
 “ I was 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 an- 
 swer to some who thought him superficial.” 
 
Chevalier Bunsen 321 
 
 “ Hypatia ” has been translated into German, 
 into Dutch, and into Modern Greek. In one sec- 
 tion of the English Church it made him bitter 
 enemies, more bitter, perhaps, than were stirred 
 up by either “ Yeast ” or the “ Saint’s Tragedy.” 
 It certainly lost him his D.C. L. degree at Ox- 
 ford in 1863. And why? but because, as Dean 
 Stanley remarked, of 
 
 " . . . 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 hol- 
 low Christianity and a spurious orthodoxy. Read,” the 
 Dean adds, “ if you would learn some of the most im- 
 pressive lessons of Ecclesiastical history, — read and 
 inwardly digest those pages, perhaps the most powerful 
 he ever wrote which close that wonderful story discrim- 
 inating the destinies which awaited each of its characters 
 as they passed, one after another, < each to his own 
 place.’ ” 
 
 “ I want,” wrote Chevalier Bunsen, “ 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 protagonists. . . . 
 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 resuscitate the real history of the 
 time and its leading characters so poetically that we 
 forget that instruction is conferred upon us in every 
 page. . . . 
 
 “ You have performed a great and lasting work, but it 
 is a bold undertaking. You fire over the heads of the 
 public, olol vvv fiporoL eiVi, as Nestor says, the pygmies of 
 the circulating library. Besides you have (pardon me) 
 
 VOL. I. — 21 
 
322 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 ? 1 My daughters ex- 
 claimed 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 Shakespeare 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 modi- 
 fied expression. Impure must be the minds who can 
 be offended or hurt by your picture ! What offends and 
 hurts is the modern Lilsternheit , that veiling over inde- 
 cency, exciting imagination to draw off the veil in order 
 to see not God’s naked nature, but corrupted man’s in- 
 decency. 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. . . . 
 
 1 The passage referred to is the opening paragraph of the 
 preface where the author says, “ A picture of life in the fifth cen- 
 tury must needs contain much which will be painful to any reader, 
 and which the young and innocent will do well to leave altogether 
 unread. It has to represent a very hideous, 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 
 startling openness and power. One who writes of such an era 
 labors under a troublesome disadvantage. He dare not tell how 
 evil people were ; he will not be believed if he tell how good they 
 were. In the present case that disadvantage is doubled ; for 
 while the sins of the Church, however heinous, were still such as 
 admit of being expressed in words, the sins of the heathen world 
 against which she fought, were utterly indescribable ; 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." 
 
Theological Essays 323 
 
 " The times before us are brimful of destruction, — 
 therefore of regeneration. The Nemesis is coming, as 
 Ate. Ever yours faithfully, 
 
 “ Bunsen.” 
 
 TO MRS. GASKELL 
 
 July 25, 1853. — “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 indignation 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 can- 
 not 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 largo 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.” 
 
 Mr. Maurice’s volume of “Theological Essays” 
 appeared this year containing one on Eternal Life 
 
324 Charles Kingsley 
 
 and Death, which was the cause of his dismissal 
 from King’s College. The subject had occupied 
 Mr. Kingsley’s own mind for years; and the per- 
 secution of his friend and teacher roused all his 
 chivalry. “The book seemed to him,” he said, 
 “to mark a new era in English Ecclesiastical 
 History.” He at once took counsel with friends 
 at Oxford and Cambridge, before getting up a 
 protest against the proceedings of the council of 
 King’s College. 
 
 “ ‘ The Time and Eternity Question/ ” he says, in 
 writing to a friend, “ is coming before the public just 
 now in a way which may seriously affect our friend 
 Maurice, unless all who love him make good fight. 
 Maurice’s essays, as you say, will constitute an epoch. 
 If the Church of England rejects them, her doom is 
 fixed. She will rot and die, as the Alexandrian did 
 before her. If she accepts them — not as ‘a code com- 
 plete/ but as hints towards a new method of thought, 
 she may save herself still. . . .” 
 
 “ . . . Well, dearest master/’ he writes to Mr. 
 Maurice, “ I shall not condole with you. You are 
 above that : but only remind you of this day’s Psalms, 
 30th, which have been to me, strangely enough, the 
 Psalms for the day in all great crises of my life. . . . 
 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 out- side the net when 
 she gnawed it, while I am inside . For if you are con- 
 demned for these ‘ opinions ’ I shall and must therefo 7 'e 
 avow them. ... 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. How- 
 ever, you have said them now ; and I, gaining courage, 
 
Thomas Cooper 325 
 
 have begun to speak more and more boldly, thanks to 
 your blessed example, in a set of sermons on the 
 Catechism, accompanying your angel’s trump on my 
 private penny-whistle. ... I was struck the other day 
 by the pleasure which a sermon of mine gave not only 
 to my clods, but to the best of my high church gentry, 
 in which sermon I had just copied word for word your 
 Essay on Eternal Life and Death — of course stating the 
 thing more coarsely, and therefore more dangerously than 
 your wisdom would have let you do. ... I am too un- 
 happy about you to say much. 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.” 
 
 The following are extracts given without regard 
 to dates, from letters to Mr. Thomas Cooper, 
 Chartist, author of the “ Purgatory of Suicides. ” 
 When Mr. Kingsley first knew Thomas Cooper, 
 he was lecturing on Strauss, to working men ; but 
 after a long struggle his doubts were solved. He 
 is now, at the age of 70, a preacher of Christianity. 1 
 
 February 15, 1850. — “ Many thanks for your paper. 
 On Theological points I will say nothing. VVe 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 seem to me the 
 highest realizations of those very laws. How ? you 
 will ask — to which I answer, you must let me tell 
 
 1 Thomas Cooper’s autobiography, published by Hodder and 
 >&toughton in 1872, is a book well worth reading for its own sake 
 'and for the pictures of working-class life and thought, which it 
 reveals. 
 
326 Charles Kingsley 
 
 you by and by. Your thinkings from Carlyle are well 
 chosen. There is much in Carlyle’s ‘ Chartism ’ and 
 the ‘ French Revolution/ and also in a paper called 
 c Characteristics/ among the miscellanies, which is 1 good 
 doctrine and profitable for this age.’ I cannot say what 
 / personally owe to that man’s writings. 
 
 “ But you are right, a thousand times right, in saying 
 that the [co-operative] movement 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 Eterni- 
 ties, 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 : November 2, 1853. — “. . . Your friend 
 is a very noble fellow . 1 As for converting either you or 
 
 1 This refers to a letter in which Thomas Cooper says, “ My 
 friend, a noble young fellow, says, you are trying to convert him 
 to orthodoxy, and expresses great admiration for you. I wish 
 you success with him, and I had almost said I wish you could 
 next succeed with me ; but I think I am likely to stick where I 
 have stuck for some yagrs — - never lessening, but I think increas- 
 ing, in my love for the truly divine Jesus — but retaining the 
 Strauss view of the Gospel.” “ Ah ! that grim Strauss,” he says 
 in a later letter, “ how he makes the iron agony go through my 
 bones and marrow, when I am yearning to get hold of Christ ! 
 But you understand me ? Can you help me ? I wish I could be 
 near you, so as to have a long talk with you often. I wish you 
 could show me that Strauss's preface is illogical, and that it is 
 grounded on a petitio principii. I wish you could bring me into 
 a full and hearty reception of this doctrine of the Incarnation. I 
 wish you could lift off the dead weight from my head and heart, 
 that blasting, brutifying thought, that the grave must be my 
 ‘ end all.'” 
 
Thomas Cooper 327 
 
 him, — what I want to do, is to make people believe in 
 the Incarnation, as the one solution of all one’s doubts 
 and fears for all heaven and earth ; wherefore I should 
 say boldly, that, even if Strauss were right, the thing 
 must either have happened somewhere else, or will 
 happen somewhere some day, so utterly does both my 
 reason and conscience, and, as I think, judging from 
 history, the reason and conscience of the many in all 
 ages and climes, demand an Incarnation. As for 
 Strauss, I have read a great deal of him, and his pref- 
 ace carefully. Of the latter, I must say that it is 
 utterly illogical, founded on a gross petitio principii ; as 
 for the mass of the book, I would undertake, by the 
 same 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 (/. e . against Him 
 as the perfect man) it should be forgiven him ; but the 
 man who could not be forgiven either in this world or 
 that to come, was the man who spoke against the Holy 
 Spirit, i. e . who had lost his moral sense and did not 
 know what was righteous when he saw it — a sin into 
 which we parsons are as likely to fall as any men, much 
 more likely than the publicans and sinners. As long 
 as your friend or any other man loves the good and 
 does it, and hates the evil and flees from it, my Catholic 
 creeds tell me that the Spirit of Jesus, ‘the Word/ is 
 teaching that man ; and gives me hope that either here 
 or hereafter, if he be faithful over a few things, he shall 
 
328 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 honor, and whom they 
 will find one day, in spite of many errors and supersti- 
 tions, to be far more liberal, humane, and philosophical 
 than our modern religionists. * . .” 
 
 Torquay: 1854. — “I am now very busy at two 
 things. Working at the sea-animals of Torbay for Mr. 
 Gosse, the naturalist, and thundering in behalf of sani- 
 tary reform. Those who fancy me a ‘ sentimentalist * 
 and a t fanatic 1 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 prob- 
 lem of strata, or any other bit of hard Baconian induc- 
 tion, than in writing all the novels in the world ; or how, 
 again, my theological creed has grown slowly and natu- 
 rally out of my physical one, till I have seen, and do 
 believe more and more utterly, that the peculiar doc- 
 trines of Christianity (as they are in the Bible, not as 
 some preachers represent them from the pulpit) coin- 
 cide with the loftiest and severest science. This blessed 
 belief did not come to me at once, and therefore I com- 
 plain 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 by that you have 
 given out two ‘ Orations against taking away human life/ 
 I should be curious to hear what a man like you says on 
 the point, for I am sure you are free from any effemi- 
 nate sentimentalism, and by your countenance, 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 
 
Thomas Cooper 329 
 
 human 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. . . . 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 ; 1 and the taking 
 away life in wars the strongest assertion of the dignity 
 and divineness of national life.” 
 
 1855. — “ * * * * sent me some time ago a letter of 
 yours, in which you express dissatisfaction with the ‘ soft 
 indulgence ’ which I and Maurice attribute to God. . . . 
 
 “ My belief is, that God will punish (and has punished 
 already somewhat) every wrong thing I ever did, unless 
 I repent — that is, change my behavior therein ; and 
 that His lightest blow is hard enough to break bone and 
 marrow. But as for saying of any human being whom I 
 ever saw on earth that there is no hope for them ; that 
 even if, under the bitter smart of just punishment, they 
 opened their eyes to their folly, and altered their minds, 
 even then God would not forgive them ; as for saying 
 that, I will not for all the world, and the rulers thereof. 
 I never saw a man in whom there was not some good, 
 and I believe that God sees that good far more clearly, 
 and loves it far more deeply, than I can, because He 
 Himself put it there, and, therefore, it is reasonable to 
 believe that He will educate and strengthen that good, 
 and 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, 
 
 1 See Sermon on Capital Punishment, preached in 1870, by 
 Rev. C. Kingsley. (All Saints’ Day and other Sermons.) 
 
330 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 any man to be 
 infinitely rewarded without doing anything worth re- 
 warding — anything, oh! God of mercy as well as jus- 
 tice, than a creed which strengthens the heart of the 
 wicked, by promising him life, and makes * * * * * * * 
 believe (as I doubt not he does believe) that though 
 a man is damned here his soul is saved hereafter. 
 Write to me. Your letters do me good.” 
 
 1856. — “You have an awful and glorious work 
 before you, 1 and you do seem to be going about it in 
 the right spirit — namely, in a spirit of self-humiliation. 
 Don’t be downhearted if outward humiliation, failure, 
 insult, apparent 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. . . . 
 
 “ . . . Your letter this morning delighted me, for I 
 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 alb 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 
 
 1 Thomas Cooper had now re-commenced lecturing at the Hall 
 of Science on Sunday evenings, simply teaching theism, for he 
 had not advanced farther yet in positive conviction. 
 
Thomas Cooper 331 
 
 his so-called pupils the academics mere destroying 
 skeptics, priding themselves on picking holes in every- 
 thing positive, is this — to use it without Socrates’ great 
 Idea , which he expressed by ' all knowledge being 
 memory,’ which the later Platonists, both Greek and 
 Jew, e . g., Philo and St. John, and after them the good 
 among the Roman Stoics and our early Quakers, and 
 German mystics, expressed by saying that God, or 
 Christ, or the Word, was more or less in every man, 
 the Light which lightened him. 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 ‘ organization ’ 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 your- 
 self 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 ‘ or- 
 ganization,’ cast my body to the crows or the devil, 
 logically or physically, strip me of all which makes me 
 
332 Charles Kingsley 
 
 palpable to you and to the universe, still I have the 
 unconquerable knowledge that ‘ I am 1/ 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 it is a revelation 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 is 
 yours, and yours, and yours. In saying that, I go on 
 
 ‘ Analogy/ which 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. . . . This is all I seem to know about it 
 
 as yet. 
 
 “ 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 
 ‘ organization,’ paltry word as it is, and make them 
 analyze 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 organizing 
 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 sci- 
 ence has triumphed. ... 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 
 
Thomas Cooper 333 
 
 < 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.’ ...” 
 
 . . 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 morning’ s walk on our 
 heather moors, would bring our hearts miles nearer each 
 other, and our heads too. As for the political move, 
 I can give you no advice save, say little, and do less. I 
 am ready for all extensions of the franchise, if we have 
 a gove 7 'nment system of education therewith : till then I 
 am merely stupidly acquiescent. More poor and igno- 
 rant voters? Very well — more bribees ; more bribers; 
 more pettifogging attorneys in parliament ; more local 
 interests preferred to national ones ; more substitution 
 of the delegate system for the representative one. . . .” 
 
 June 14, 1856. — “ 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, 1 
 to give you what I should think you never had, — what it 
 cost me bitter sorrow to learn, — the power of working in 
 harness, and so actually drawing something, and being 
 
 1 Thomas Cooper had been given copying work at the Board of 
 Health ; and his hearers at the Hall of Science, already made bit- 
 ter 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. 
 
334 Charles Kingsley 
 
 of real use. Be sure, if you can once learn that 
 lesson, in addition to the rest you have learnt, you 
 will rise to something worthy of you yet. ... 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 alive 
 now. But it did seem to me, that what you wanted was the 
 quiet, stern cheerfulness, which sees that things are wrong, 
 and sets to to right them, but does it trying to make the 
 best of them all the while, and to see the bright side ; and 
 even if, as often 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 say, 
 ‘ You, sir, who never knew what it was to want a meal in 
 your life, who belong to the successful class who have , — 
 what do you mean by preaching these cold platitudes to 
 me ? ’ For, Thomas Cooper, I have known what it was 
 to want things more precious to you, as well as to me, 
 than a full stomach ; and I learnt — or rather 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 circumstantia, yea, your- 
 self, as it is now, for my circumstantia, and myself, as 
 they were then. And yet I had the best of parents and 
 a home, if not luxurious, still as good as any man’s need 
 be. You are a far happier man, now, I firmly believe, 
 than I was for years of my life. The dark cloud has passed 
 with me now. Be but brave and patient, and (I ivill 
 swear now), by God, sir ! it will pass with you.” 
 
Thomas Cooper 335 
 
 June, 1856. — “ You are in the right way yet. I can 
 put you in no more right way. Your sense of sin is not 
 fanaticism ; it is, I suppose, simple consciousness of fact. 
 As for helping you to Christ, I do not believe I can one 
 inch. I see no hope but in prayer, in going to Him 
 yourself, and 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 forgive- 
 ness, and the feeling that, bad as I may be, Thou lovest 
 me still, seeing all, understanding all, and therefore 
 making allowances for all ! 7 I have had to do that in 
 past days ; to challenge Him through outer darkness 
 and the silence of night, till I almost expected that He 
 would vindicate His own honor by appearing visibly as 
 He did to St. Paul and St. John ; but He answered in the 
 still small voice only ; yet that was enough. 
 
 “ Read the book by all means ; but the book will not 
 reveal Him. He is not in the book ; He is in the Heaven 
 which is as near you and me as the air we breathe, and 
 out of that He must reveal Himself ; — neither priests 
 nor books can conjure Him up, Cooper. Your Wesleyan 
 teachers taught you, perhaps, to look for Him in the 
 book, as Papists would have in the bread ; and when you 
 found He was not in the book, you thought Him no- 
 where ; but He is bringing you out of your first mistaken 
 idolatry, ay, through it, and through all wild wanderings 
 since, to know Him Himself, and speak face to face 
 with Him as a man speaks with his friend. Have 
 patience with Him. Has He not had patience with 
 you? And therefore have patience with all men and 
 things; and then you will rise again in His good time the 
 stouter for your long battle. . . . 
 
 . . 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 
 
336 Charles Kingsley 
 
 reauirest truth in the inward parts. Thou wilt make 
 me to understand wisdom secretly.’ What more rational 
 belief? 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 ? 
 
 “ 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.” 
 
 April 3, 1857. — “ Go on and prosper. 1 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 men- 
 tioned. Christ’s Kingship is his theme ; the Resurrec- 
 tion, 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 Incarna- 
 tion of Him who had been in the world all along. . . . 
 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. On the question of future 
 punishment, I should have a good deal to say to you. I 
 believe that it is the crux to most hearts.” 
 
 May 9, 1857. — “ About endless torment . . . . You 
 may say, — 1. Historically, that, a . The doctrine occurs 
 nowhere in the Old Testament, or any hint of it. 
 
 1 T. Cooper had written to say that he had now begun 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.” 
 
Thomas Cooper 337 
 
 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 Jerusa- 
 lem 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 primary doctrine of the Magi, an appendage 
 of their fire-kingdom of Ahriman, and may be found in 
 the old Zends, long prior to Christianity. — c. St. Paul 
 accepts nothing of it as far as we can tell, never making 
 the least allusion to the doctrine. — d. The Apocalypse 
 simply repeats the imagery of Isaiah, and of our Lord ; 
 but asserts, distinctly, the non-endlessness of torture, 
 declaring that in the consummation, not only death, 
 but Hell, shall be cast into the Lake of Fire. — e . The 
 Christian Church has never really held it exclusively, 
 till now. It remained quite an open question till the 
 age of Justinian, 530, and significantly enough, as soon , 
 as 200 years before that, endless torment for the heathen 
 became a popular theory, purgatory sprang up synchro- 
 nously by the side of it, as a relief for the conscience 
 and reason of the Church. — f Since the Reformation, 
 it has been an open question in the English Church, and 
 the philosophical Platonists, of the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries, always considered it as such. — g. The 
 Church of England, by the deliberate expunging of the 
 42nd Article which affirmed endless punishment, has 
 declared it authoritatively to be open. — h . It is so, 
 in fact. Neither Mr. Maurice, I, or any others, who 
 have denied it, can be dispossessed or proceeded against 
 legally in any way whatsoever. Exegetically, you may 
 say, I think, That the meanings of the word alwv and 
 cucmos have little or nothing to do with it, even if alwv 
 
 VOL. I. —22 
 
338 Charles Kingsley 
 
 be derived from det always, which I greatly doubt. The 
 word never is used in Scripture anywhere else, in the 
 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 aeons, and aeons of aeons, as the Scripture 
 does? Nay, more, how talk of oSros 6 auov, which the 
 translators, with laudable inconsistency, have translated 
 ‘ this world/ i. e ., this present state of things, ‘ Age/ 
 
 ‘ dispensation/ or epoch — cdomos, therefore, means, and 
 must mean, belonging to an epoch, or the epoch, cuwj/ios 
 KoXacrts is the punishment allotted to that epoch. Always 
 bear in mind, what Maurice insists on, — and what is so 
 plain to honest readers, — that our Lord and the Apostles 
 always speak of being in the end of an age or aeon, not 
 as ushering in a new one. Come to judge and punish 
 the old world, and to create a new one out of its 
 ruins, or rather as the S. S. better expresses it, to burn up 
 the chaff and keep the wheat, i. e ., all the elements of 
 food as seed for the new world. 
 
 “ I think you may say, that our Lord took the popu- 
 lar doctrine because He found it, and tried to correct and 
 purify it, and put it on areally moral ground. You may 
 quote the parable of Dives and Lazarus (which was the 
 emancipation from the Tartarus theory) as the one 
 instance in which our Lord professedly opens the 
 secrets of the next world, that He there represents 
 Dives as still Abraham’s child, under no despair, not cut 
 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 versa , expresses plainly the great truth, that each 
 being where he ought to be at that time, interchange of 
 
Thomas Cooper 339 
 
 place (/. 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 Kara/cpio-is, 
 is perhaps /cpio-is simple, simply means condemnation, 
 and is (thank God) retained in that sense in various of 
 our formularies, where I always read it, e. g., ‘ eateth to 
 himself damnation/ with sincere pleasure, as protests 
 in favor of the true and rational meaning of the word, 
 against the modern and narrower meaning. 
 
 “ You may say that Fire and Worms, whether physi- 
 cal 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 suffering (like all which He inflicts) is 
 intended to teach man something which he cannot learn 
 elsewhere. 
 
 “ You may say that the catch, ‘ All sin deserves infi- 
 nite 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 
 
34° Charles Kingsley 
 
 out till he has paid the uttermost farthing/ evidently 
 imply (unless spoken in cruel mockery) that he may go 
 out then. . . . 
 
 “ 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 doc- 
 trines, yea, and the men who love them too well to give 
 them up, that the smoke of their Bacrcmoyxo? (/. e ., the 
 torture which makes men confess the truth, for that is 
 the real meaning of it; Ba^aiw/xos means the touch - 
 stone by which gold was tested) may ascend perpetu- 
 ally, for a warning and a beacon to all nations, as the 
 smoke of the torment of French aristocracies, and Bour- 
 bon dynasties, is ascending up to Heaven and has been 
 ever since 1793. Oh, Cooper — Is it not good news 
 that that fire is unquenchable ; that that worm will not 
 die. . . . The parti pretre tried to kill the worm which 
 was gnawing at their hearts, making them dimly aware 
 that they were wrong, and liars, and that God and His 
 universe were against them, and that they and their 
 system were rotting and must die. 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. 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 
 
Thomas Cooper 341 
 
 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 cannot do it. Purge us, therefore, O 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 which I feel ashamed daily — and if 
 there be any grains of wheat in me, any word or thought 
 or power of action which may be of use as seed for my 
 nation after me, gather it, O Lord, into Thy garner. 
 
 “ Yes, Thomas Cooper. Because I believe in a God 
 of Absolute and Unbounded Love, therefore I believe in 
 a Loving Anger of His, which will and must devour and 
 destroy all which is decayed, monstrous, abortive in His 
 universe, till all enemies shall be put under His feet, to 
 be pardoned surely, if they confess 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 physi- 
 ologists, like Huxley, are compelled to talk of these 
 
342 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 conceived and made all other beings, it is absurd to 
 suppose in Him some law of multiplicity in unity, anal- 
 ogous to that on which He has constructed so many 
 millions of His creatures. . . . 
 
 “ I have said my say on the Trinity in the end of 
 ‘ Yeast/ and in the end of ‘ Hypatia. 7 . . .” 
 
 “ But my heart 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 has 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 honor 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. Have you read Maurice’s essay on the Trinity in 
 his theological essays ? addressed to Unitarians ? If not, 
 you must read it. About the word Trinity, I feel much 
 as you do. It seems unfortunate 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 
 
Thomas Cooper 343 
 
 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.” 
 
/ 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 1854 
 
 Aged 35 
 
 Torquay — Seaside Studies — Sanitary Work — Lectures 
 in Edinburgh — Deutsche Theologie — About Sister- 
 hoods — Crimean War — Settles in North Devon — 
 Writes “ Westward Ho ! ” 
 
 “ Beyond the shadow of the ship, 
 
 I watched the water snakes ; 
 
 They moved in tracks of shining white, 
 And when they rear’d the elfish light 
 Fell off in hoary flakes. 
 
 Oh happy living things ! no tongue 
 Their beauty might declare : 
 
 A spring of love gushed from my heart, 
 And I bless’d them unaware.’’ 
 
 “ Happy truly is the naturalist. He has no time for melancholy 
 dreams. The earth becomes to him transparent; everywhere he 
 sees significance, harmonies, laws, chains of cause and effect end- 
 lessly interlinked, which draw him out of the narrow sphere of 
 self . . . into a pure and wholesome region of joy and wonder.” 
 
 HE winter and spring of 1854 were passed 
 
 at Torquay, his Bishop having given him 
 leave of absence on account of his wife’s health. 
 The place had its own peculiar charm for him, 
 not only from its rich fauna and flora, but from 
 its historical associations. Torbay gave him his 
 first inspiration for “ Westward Ho ! ” 
 
 Coleridge’s “ Ancient Mariner.” 
 
 C. K. 
 
Torquay 345 
 
 “ We cannot gaze on its blue ring of water/* he said, 
 “ and the great limestone bluffs which bound it to the 
 north and south without a glow passing through our 
 hearts, as we remember the terrible and glorious pageant 
 which passed by it in the bright days of July, 1588, 
 when the Spanish Armada ventured slowly past Berry 
 Head, with Elizabeth’s gallant pack of Devon captains 
 (for the London fleet had not yet joined), following 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, specta- 
 tors 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 New- 
 foundland, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Raleigh’s half-brother, 
 most learned of all Elizabeth’s admirals in life, most 
 pious and heroic in death. . . . ” 
 
 This was the first rest he had enjoyed for many 
 years, and the temporary cessation from sermon 
 writing and parish work, and the quiet peaceful 
 Sundays with his wife and children were most 
 welcome. For 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; and 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.” Once only he was 
 asked to preach in the parish church for a charity, 
 and once at St. John’s, in a Lenten week-day 
 service, when he surprised the congregation, a 
 
346 Charles Kingsley 
 
 High Church one, by his reverent and orthodox 
 views on the Holy Eucharist. Settled at Liver- 
 mead, the father and children spent bright hours 
 together daily on the shore, of which he speaks: 
 
 “ Wanderings among rock and pool, mixed up with 
 holiest passages of friendship and of love, and the inter- 
 communion 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 fathers 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 labors of the happy busy day.” 
 
 This seaside life led to a voluminous corre- 
 spondence, each letter illustrated by his own 
 beautiful sketches, and to an article in the 
 “ North British Review,” on “The Wonders of 
 the Shore,” which was afterwards developed into 
 “Glaucus,” and contained not only studies in 
 natural history, but some of his deepest thoughts 
 on theology as connected with the transmutation 
 theory, and the lately published “Vestiges of 
 Creation.” A daily journal of natural history 
 was kept, and hampers of sea beasts, live shells, 
 and growing seaweed sent off to Mr. Gosse, in 
 London. After each low tide, some fresh treas- 
 ure was discovered, and drawings and a minute 
 description made. In a cave, near Goodrington, 
 he found washed ashore, after a succession of 
 southeasterly gales, a rare zoophyte, Montagu’s 
 Chirodata ( Synapta digitata ), which had not been 
 seen for years; Cardium Tuberculatum, the red- 
 legged cockle, a shell quite new to him, lay on the 
 
Seaside Studies 347 
 
 sands in countless numbers. In the well-stocked 
 vivarium at home he could study the ways of the 
 lovely little Eolis papillosa, the bright lemon- 
 colored Doris, the Cucumaria Hyndmanii, with 
 their wondrous gills and feathers — to common 
 eyes mere sea-slugs, — and varieties of Serpulae, 
 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, the various Sertularii, and that “pale 
 pink flower of stone,” the Carophyllia Smithii, 
 with numberless others, were examined under the 
 microscope. The manners and customs too of 
 the soldier crab were not only a source of inex- 
 haustible merriment, but led him to some of the 
 deep strange speculations so reverently hinted at 
 in the pages of “Glaucus;” while the habits of 
 the spider crab suggested lessons of sanitary 
 science. At Torquay, he fulfilled before his 
 children’s eyes his own ideal of the 
 
 “ . . . perfect naturalist, — 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 enterpris- 
 ing 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 long, does the Great Mother open the 
 doors of her sanctuary, . . . always reverent, yet never 
 superstitious, wondering at the commonest, yet not sur- 
 prised by the most strange ; free from the idols of size 
 and sensuous loveliness, . . . holding every phenome- 
 non worth the noting down ; believing that every pebble 
 
348 Charles Kingsley 
 
 holds a treasure, every bud a revelation ; making it a 
 point of 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. . . . ” 
 
 Before leaving Torquay he made a rough list of 
 about sixty species of Mollusks, Annelids, Crus- 
 tacea, and Polypes found on the shore, nearly all 
 new to him, and revealing a new world of won- 
 ders to his wife and children. The attitude of 
 his mind during those rare hours of rest and lib- 
 erty at Torquay, is well described by Dean 
 Stanley : 
 
 “ Such was the wakefulness, such the devouring curi- 
 osity, 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 what 
 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 be- 
 tween him and common men. That eagle eye seemed 
 to discern every shade and form of animal and vegetable 
 life. That listening ear, like that of the hero in the 
 fairy tale, seemed almost to catch the growing of the 
 grass and the opening of the 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 
 
Sanitary Matters 349 
 
 given by its patient students and explorers.” (Funeral 
 Sermon, 1875.) 
 
 But these pursuits, however enchanting, did 
 not engross him to the forgetfulness of the great 
 social questions of the day. Early in the year 
 we find him busy about sanitary matters, and, in 
 a preface to his Three Cholera Sermons, which 
 he now republished as a tract, entitled, “Who 
 Causes Pestilence?” urging the clergy to turn 
 their minds to the subject. 
 
 “ These sermons,” he says, “ were preached during 
 the last appearance of the cholera in Great Britain. 
 Since then, both Scripture, reason, and medical experi- 
 ence 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 sel- 
 fishness, laziness, and ignorance which produce pesti- 
 lence, fresh turning men’s minds away from the real 
 causes of this present judgment, to fanciful and super- 
 stitious ones. It was to be hoped, that after the late 
 discoveries of sanitary science, the clergy of all denom- 
 inations 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. . . . 
 
 “ Some fancy that the business of clergymen is exclu- 
 sively what they choose to call ‘ spiritual,’ and that 
 sanitary reform, being what they choose to call a ‘ secu- 
 lar ’ question, is beyond their province. This unscrip- 
 tural distinction still lingers in the minds of a few, both 
 lay and clerical, especially of those who attach a super- 
 stitious importance to the mere act of almsgiving as 
 
350 Charles Kingsley 
 
 something which will increase their chance of future 
 happiness, while they seem, in many cases, to make 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.’ . . . 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. . . . 
 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 doc- 
 trines. . . . But 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. 
 
 “ 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 in- 
 fluential members of their congregations , . . and put 
 aside sanitary reform, 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 . . . and see 
 the actual practical results which have been obtained by 
 
Sanitary Matters 351 
 
 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 the 
 enormous power which they can still employ — each 
 man in his pulpit, his congregation, his parish — to de- 
 liver those from death whom the covetousness and neg- 
 lect 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. ... 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 
 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, — ‘ When ye come to appear before 
 Me, who hath required this at your hands, to tread My 
 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 My 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 are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean ; 
 put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes ; 
 cease to do evil ; learn to do well ; seek justice, relieve 
 the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the 
 widow.’ ” 
 
 In February he went to Edinburgh to deliver 
 four lectures on the “ Schools of Alexandria/’ at 
 
35 2 Charles Kingsley 
 
 the Philosophical Institute. It was his first visit 
 to Scotland, where he was warmly welcomed. On 
 his return he remained alone at Eversley during 
 a change of curates, working the parish, getting 
 up an anti-cholera fund, writing a sanitary pam- 
 phlet, and preparing statistics for a sanitary de- 
 putation, of which he was a member, to Lord 
 Palmerston. 
 
 In the spring he went up again to London to 
 give evidence before the House of Commons on 
 sanitary matters, and on the insufficient pay 
 of parish medical officers. The experience of 
 eleven years had convinced him that the pay of 
 the parish doctor was insufficient; and he was 
 glad to give evidence on the subject, and to point 
 out the fact that under the present salaries no 
 medical man could afford, or be expected, to give 
 two of the most important but most expensive 
 medicines — quinine and cod-liver oil — to their 
 poor patients. The following are extracts from 
 his daily letters to his wife: 
 
 Edinburgh : February . — “ . . . Edinburgh itself de- 
 serves 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 gray stone. The 
 Castle in the center of the city, and Arthur’s Seat, with 
 its basalt crags, 800 feet high, ready to topple into the 
 town. 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. 
 Russell put me in rather better heart about my lectures, 
 
Lectures in Edinburgh 353 
 
 over which I have felt more nervous than I have ever 
 done in my life, and would give anything to run right 
 away home. . . . ” 
 
 “ . . . Lecture went off well. I was dreadfully ner- 
 vous, and actually cried with fear up in my own room 
 beforehand ; but after praying I recovered myself, and 
 got through it very well, being much cheered and 
 clapped. ... All the notabilities came, and were intro- 
 duced to me ; and I had some pleasant talk with Sir 
 John Maxwell. Mr. Erskine, of Linlathen, is a charm- 
 ing 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 cordiality of people. ... I 
 drove with Mrs. B. 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. ...” 
 
 Linlathen: Feb . 20. — “This place is very pleasant, 
 and Mr. Erkskine delightful. He gave us a long exposi- 
 tion last night, about the indwelling Word, and I am 
 delighted to find that his views and mine seem to agree 
 thoroughly ; but I long so painfully for you and the chil- 
 dren 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.” 
 
 Warriston : Feb. 22. — “ 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 dread- 
 fully trashy. God knows. Erskine and others think they 
 will do much good, but will infuriate the Free Kirk.” 
 
 February 26. — “It is at last over, and I start for 
 England to-morrow. The last lecture was more crowded 
 
 . VOL. I. — 23 
 
354 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 been heaped with kindness. I have got my say 
 said without giving offence, and made friendships which 
 I hope will last for life. I cannot be thankful enough 
 to God for having sent me here, and carried me through. 
 Sir John Maxwell, a perfect fine gentleman of the old 
 school, who was twenty- five years in Parliament, approves 
 highly of ‘ Alton Locke ’ and ‘ Yeast’; as also does his 
 wife, Lady Matilda, who told me I had a glorious career 
 before me, and bade God speed me in it. . . . ” 
 
 February 27. — “ The Guards march to-morrow! 
 How it makes one’s blood boil ! We send 10,000 
 picked men to Malta, en route for Constantinople, and 
 the French 60,000. ...” 
 
 Eversley. — “ The working men in London, includ- 
 ing many of the old Chartists of 1848, are going to pre- 
 sent a grand address to Maurice in St. Martin’s Hall, at 
 which, I believe, I am to be a chairman. Kiss the babes 
 for me, and tell them I long to be with them on Tor 
 sands. ...” 
 
 “ Did I ever tell you of my delightful chat with Bunsen ? 
 I have promised him to write a couple of pages preface 
 to Miss Winkworth’s translation of the ‘ Deutsche Theo- 
 logia.’ Oh ! how you will revel in that book ! . . . ” 
 
 “ . . . 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 ! . . . 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 you and for those 
 dear dear children. . . . To-day has been lovely — 
 bright sun — crocuses in full bloom. The dear old 
 treacherous place looking as if it were really healthy. 
 
Lectures in Edinburgh 3 55 
 
 Nothing sanitary done in the parish. ... 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. ‘ Deutsche Theologia ’ 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. 
 . . . God knows best whether or not I ought to be here 
 just now. Still I can’t help beating against the wires a 
 little. ...” 
 
 “ I had an opportunity of telling Lord Palmerston a 
 great deal which I trust may save many lives. Remem- 
 ber, 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 neighboring parish, 
 made me consider what I have done as a parochial 
 duty. ...” 
 
 “ . . . 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 Com- 
 mission, awoke in the morning, and behold they were all 
 dead men ! Lord Palmerston having abolished them 
 by one sentence the night before, and I have not heard 
 that anyone has 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 brings in three 
 clauses, which will re-form the whole poor-law, and strike 
 at the root of cottage destruction. God knows it is base 
 of one to sit here fretting about little private evils, while 
 the country is doing so well and the ministers so nobly. 
 The ‘ Times * has taken up the cause of soldiers’ 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 
 
356 Charles Kingsley 
 
 to be there. ... 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 Officers.’ ” 
 
 While at Torquay he wrote at Baron Bunsen's 
 request an invaluable preface to the translation 
 of the “ Deutsche Theologia,” in which he plainly 
 states where he does and does not agree with its 
 theology, and says that, in order to see its clear 
 meaning, the reader 
 
 “ . . . must forget all popular modern dogmas and 
 systems, all popular philosophies, and be true to the 
 letter of his Bible, and to the instincts which the indwel- 
 ling 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 contemplative 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. ...” 
 
 “ To those who really hunger and thirst after right- 
 eousness, and who therefore long to know what righteous- 
 ness 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 
 avoid it : To those who wish to be really justified by 
 faith, 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 Truth 
 
“ Deutsche Theologia ” 357 
 
 will stoop to fictions (mis-called forensic) which would 
 be considered false and unjust in any human court of 
 law : To those who cannot help trusting that union with 
 Christ must be something real and substantial, and not 
 merely a metaphor and a flower of 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 everyone 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 che 
 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,” he says, 
 “ with all its contents. It is for its noble views of right- 
 eousness and of sin that I honor it. . . . ” 
 
 In June, on his wife’s account, he took a house 
 at Bideford for a year, where he wrote “ West- 
 ward Ho ! ” 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 
 her who grieved over the labor they entailed on 
 him, and the absence from Eversley. 
 
 “ I cannot help looking forward,” he writes, “ to our 
 twelve months at Northdown (Bideford) as a blessed 
 time. . . . We never have really wanted yet; all we 
 have had to do has been — best of all trainings — to 
 live by faith, and to exert ourselves. Oh ! let us be 
 content. We do not know what is good for us, and 
 God does. . . .” 
 
 “ And — these very money difficulties against which 
 you rebel. Has it not been fulfilled in them, ‘ As thy 
 day so shall thy strength be ? * Have we ever been in 
 
358 Charles Kingsley 
 
 any debt by our own sin ? Have we ever really wanted 
 anything we needed? Have we not had friends, credit, 
 windfalls — in all things, with the temptation, a way to 
 escape? Have they not been God’s sending? God’s 
 way of preventing the cup of bliss being over-sweet (and 
 I thank Him heartily it has not been) ; and, consider, 
 have they not been blessed lessons? But do not think 
 that I am content to endure them any more than the 
 race horse, because he loves running, is content to stop 
 in the middle of the course. To pay them, I have 
 thought, I have written, I have won for us a name which, 
 please God, may last among the names of English 
 writers. Would you give up the books I have written 
 that we might never have been in difficulties ? So out 
 of evil God brings good ; or rather, out of necessity 
 He brings strength — and, believe me, the highest 
 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 sleep- 
 ing embryo of the very noblest faculties. This is a 
 great mystery : but we are animals, in time and space ; 
 and by time and space and our animal natures are we 
 educated. Therefore let us be only patient, patient ; 
 and let God our Father teach His own lesson, His own 
 way. Let us try to learn it well, and learn it quickly ; 
 but do not let us fancy that He will ring the school-bell, 
 and send us to play before our lesson is learnt. 
 
 “ 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, we shall never 
 be happy though we lived a thousand years. Let us lay this 
 solemnly to heart, and take no thought for the morrow.” 
 
 To a lady who consulted him about Sisterhoods : 
 
About Sisterhoods 359 
 
 Bideford : July 24, 1854. — “ Madam, — Though I 
 make a rule of never answering any letter from a lady 
 whom I have not the honor of knowing, yet I dare not 
 refuse to answer yours. First, because you, as it were, 
 challenge me on the ground of my books : and next, 
 because you tell me that if I cannot satisfy you, you will 
 do that, to prevent which, above all things, my books 
 are written, namely, flee from the world, instead of 
 staying in it and trying to mend it. 
 
 “ Be sure that I can sympathize with you most deeply 
 in your dissatisfaction with all things as they are. That 
 feeling grows on me, as I trust in God (strange to say) 
 it may grow on you, day by day. I, too, have had my 
 dreams of New Societies, brotherhoods, and so forth, 
 which were to regenerate the world. I, too, have had 
 my admirations for Old Societies and brotherhoods like 
 those of Loyola and Wesley, which intended to do the 
 same thing. 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 discovered also, that the world 
 is already regenerated by the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
 that all efforts of our own to regenerate it are denials of 
 Him and of the perfect regeneration which He ac- 
 complished 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 righteousness for 
 ever. And I have discovered also, that all societies and 
 brotherhoods which may form, and which ever have been 
 formed, are denials of the One Catholic Church of faith- 
 ful 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 
 
360 Charles Kingsley 
 
 have been total failures, just because, with the purest 
 and best intentions, they were doing this, and thereby 
 interfering with the Lord Jesus Christ’s way of govern- 
 ing the world, and trying to introduce some new nostrum 
 and panacea of their own, narrow and paltry, compared 
 with His great ways in the deep. 
 
 “ Therefore, though Fox (to take your own example) 
 was a most holy man, Quakerism in general, as a means 
 of regenerating the world, has been a disastrous failure. 
 And so (I speak from years of intimate experience) has 
 good John Wesley’s Methodist attempt. Both were 
 trying to lay a new foundation for human society, and 
 forgetting that one which was already laid, which is Christ, 
 who surely has not been managing the earth altogether 
 wrongly, Madam, for 1800 years, or even before that? 
 
 “ So, again, with that truly holy and angelic man, 
 St. Vincent de Paul — has he succeeded? What has 
 become of education, and of the poor, in the very land 
 where he labored? . . . The moment the personal 
 influence of his virtue was withdrawn, down tumbled all 
 ^hat 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 a father — how could he teach men to be 
 good husbands and fathers? You point to what he and 
 his did. I know what they did in South America, and 
 beautiful it was ; but, alas ! I know, too, that they could 
 give no life to their converts ; they could not regenerate 
 society among the savages of Paraguay ; and the moment 
 the Jesuit’s gentle despotism was withdrawn, down fell 
 the reductions again into savagery, having lost even the 
 one savage virtue of courage. The Jesuits were shut 
 out, by their vows, from political and family life. How 
 could they teach their pupils the virtues which belong 
 to those states ? But all Europe knows what the Jesuits 
 did in a country where they had every chance ; where 
 for a century they were the real rulers, in court and 
 
About Sisterhoods 
 
 3 61 
 
 camp, as well as in schools and cloisters, I mean in 
 France. They tried their very best (and tried, I am 
 bound to believe, earnestly and with good intent) to 
 regenerate France. And they caused the Revolution. 
 Madam, the horrors of 1793 were the natural fruit of 
 the teaching of the very men who not only would have 
 died sooner than bring about these horrors, but died too 
 many of them, alas! by them. And how was this? 
 By trying to set up a system of society and morals of 
 their own, they 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. 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 brother- 
 hoods, ‘ 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 written He shall 
 give His angels charge over Thee/ &c. Madam, when- 
 ever we leave the station where God has placed us, be 
 it for never so seemingly self-sacrificing and chivalrous 
 and saintly an end, we are tempting the Lord our God ; 
 we are yielding most utterly to that very self-will which 
 we are pretending to abjure. As long as you have a 
 parent, a sister, a servant, to whom you can do good in 
 those simple every-day relations and duties of life, 
 
362 Charles Kingsley 
 
 which are most divine, because they are most human, 
 so long will the entering a cloister be tempting the 
 Lord your God. And so long, Madam, will it be the 
 doing all in your power to counteract every word which 
 I have ever written. My object has been and is, and 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 regenerate the 
 world is to do the duty which lies nearest us, and not to 
 hunt after grand, far-fetched ones for ourselves. If each 
 drop of rain chose where it should fall, God’s showers 
 would not fall, as they do now, on the evil and on the 
 good alike. I know 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, Madam, be 
 sure that he who is not faithful in a little will never be 
 fit to be ruler over much. He who cannot rule his own 
 household will never (as St. Paul says) rule the Church 
 of God ; and he who cannot keep his temper, or be self- 
 sacrificing, cheerful, tender, attentive at home, will never 
 be of any real and 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 labor among 
 the poor ; because He has not yet finished educating 
 you for that good work, and therefore will not let you 
 
Crimean War 363 
 
 handle tools before you know how to use them. Begin 
 with small things, Madam — you cannot enter the pres- 
 ence of another human being without finding there more 
 to do than you or I, or any soul, will ever learn to do 
 perfectly before we die. Let us be content to do little, 
 if God sets us at little tasks. It is but pride and self- 
 will which says, ‘ give me something huge to fight, — 
 and I should enjoy that — but why make me sweep the 
 dust ? ’ Finally, Madam, be sure of one thing, that the 
 Lord Jesus Christ is King of this earth, and all therein ; 
 and that if you will do faithfully what He has set you to 
 already, and thereby using the order of a Deaconess 
 well, gain to yourself a good foundation in your soul’s 
 training, he will give you more to do in His good time, 
 and of His good kind. 
 
 “ If you are inclined to answer this letter, let me ask 
 you not to answer it for at least three months to come. 
 It may be good for you to have read it over a second time. 
 
 “ I am, Madam, your obedient servant, 
 
 “C. Kingsley.” 
 
 To Rev. F. Maurice: Oct. 19. — “We think of noth- 
 ing but the war. ... 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 ; but I am shut 
 up like any Jeremiah here, living on the newspapers 
 and my own Elizabethan books. The novel is more 
 than half done, and a most ruthless, bloodthirsty book 
 it is (just what the times want, I think). I am afraid 
 I have a little of the wolf-vein in me, in spite of fifteen 
 centuries of civilization ; 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 some' 
 
364 Charles Kingsley 
 
 times very sad; always very puzzled. . . . 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 Desmoulins, ‘ une pauvre creature , 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 . . . but in 
 writing books which will make others fight). This one 
 is to be called ‘ Westward Ho ! * . . . The writing of it 
 has done me much good. I have been living in those 
 Elizabethan books, among such grand, beautiful, silent 
 men, that I am learning to be sure of what I all along 
 suspected, that I am a poor, queasy, hysterical, half- 
 baked sort of a fellow, and so am inclined to sing small, 
 and am by no means hopeful about my book, which 
 seems to me only half as good as I could have written, 
 and only one-hundredth as good as ought to be written 
 on the matter; but at least God bless you.” 
 
 Dec . 31. — u I see my way through politics, as through 
 everything else, less and less, and believe more and 
 more that the present ministry see as far as anyone else, 
 and are doing their best. Who ever saw far in a storm ? 
 which, by the very nature of it, clouds and narrows the 
 whole horizon with boundless ugly possibilities.” 
 
 To T. Hughes, Esq. Bideford: December 18, 
 1854. — “. . . As to the war, I am getting more of 
 a Government man every day. As for a ballad — oh ! 
 my dear lad, there is no use fiddling while Rome is 
 burning. I have nothing to sing about those glorious 
 fellows, except ‘ God save the Queen and them.’ I 
 tell you the whole thing stuns me, so I cannot sit down to 
 make fiddle rhyme with diddle about it — or blundered 
 with hundred, like Alfred Tennyson. . . . Every man has 
 his calling, and my novel is mine, because I am fit for noth- 
 
“ Westward Ho ! ” 
 
 3 6 5 
 
 ing better. The book Westward Ho ! ’) will be out 
 the middle or end of January. It is a sanguinary book, 
 but perhaps containing doctrine profitable for these times. 
 
 “ Tummas ! Have you read the story of Abou Zennab, 
 his horse, in Stanley's ‘ Sinai,' p. 6 7? What a myth! 
 What a poem old Wordsworth would have writ thereon ! 
 If I did n’t cry like a baby over it. What a brick of a 
 horse he must have been, and what a brick of an old 
 head-splitter Abou Zennab must have been, to have his 
 commandments keeped unto this day concerning of his 
 horse ; and no one to know who he was, nor when, nor 
 how, nor nothing. I wonder if anybody ’ll keep our 
 commandments after we be gone, much less say, ‘ Eat, 
 eat, oh horse of Abou Kingsley ! ' " 
 
 To J. Simon, Esq., M.D. December 28. — “I have 
 just read, with intense pleasure, your City Cholera Re- 
 port, in the columns of the ‘ Times.’ 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 physi- 
 cal employment of vast numbers. And if we are to fur- 
 nish many more levies of men who will 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 monkeys : and your labors 
 are helping towards this good end. It is a sad thing 
 that ‘ food for powder ’ requires to be of the best qual- 
 ity; 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.” 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 ^55 
 
 Aged 36 
 
 Bideford — Crimean War — Death of his Friend Charles 
 Blachford Mansfield — “ Westward Ho ! ” — Letters 
 from Mr. Henry Drummond and Rajah Brooke — 
 On Bigots — Drawing Class for Mechanics at Bide- 
 ford — Leaves Devonshire — Lecture to Ladies in 
 London — On Being an Artist — The “Heroes” — 
 Letter on Fame. 
 
 “ Then in such hour of need 
 Of your fainting, dispirited race, 
 
 Ye, like angels, appear. 
 
 Radiant with ardor divine. 
 
 Beacons of hope, ye appear ! 
 
 Languor is not in your heart, 
 
 Weakness is not in your word, 
 
 Weariness not on your brow. 
 
 Ye alight in our van; at your voice, 
 
 Panic, despair, flee away. 
 
 Ye move through the ranks, recall 
 The stragglers, refresh the out-worn, 
 
 Praise, re-inspire the brave. 
 
 Order, courage, return. 
 
 Eyes re-kindling and prayers 
 Follow your steps as ye go. 
 
 Ye fill up the gaps in our files, 
 
 Strengthen the wavering line, 
 
 Stablish, continue our march 
 On to the bound of the waste, 
 
 On to the city of God.” 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 T HE Crimean winter, bitter alike to the brave 
 men before Sebastopol and to the hearts 
 of all Englishmen and women at home, weighed 
 heavily on Charles Kingsley, to whom the war 
 
Crimean War 
 
 3 6 7 
 
 was like a dreadful nightmare, which haunted him 
 day and night. “I can think of nothing but the 
 war, ” he said; and on the receipt of a letter from 
 a friend telling him of the numbers of tracts sent 
 out to the soldiers which they never read, but 
 looked upon as so much waste paper, and urging 
 him to write something which would go home to 
 them in their misery, he sat down, wrote off, and 
 despatched the same day to London a tract known 
 probably to few in England — “ Brave Words to 
 Brave Soldiers and Sailors .” 1 Several thousand 
 copies were sent out and distributed in the 
 Crimea, and the stirring words touched many a 
 noble soul. It was published anonymously to 
 avoid the prejudice which was attached to the 
 name of its author in all sections of the religious 
 world and press at that period. 
 
 To T. Hughes, Esq. Bideford : 1855. — “ You may 
 have fancied me a bit of a renegade and a hanger-back 
 of late. 
 
 4 Still in our ashes live their wonted fires.’ 
 
 And if I have held back from the Social Movement, it 
 has been because I have seen that the world was not 
 going to be set right in any such rose-pink way, excel- 
 lent as it is, and that there are heavy arrears of destruc- 
 tion to be made up, before construction can even begin ; 
 and I wanted to see what those arrears were. And I do 
 see a little. At least I see that the old phoenix must 
 burn , before the new one can rise out of its ashes. 
 Next, as to our army. I quite agree with you about that 
 — if it existed to agree about. But the remnant that 
 comes home, like gold tried in the fire, may be the seed 
 
 1 Now reprinted in “True Words,” a volume for Soldiers' and 
 Sailors' Libraries. 
 
368 Charles Kingsley 
 
 of such an army as the world never saw. Perhaps we 
 may help it to germinate. But please don’t compare the 
 dear fellows to Cromwell’s Ironsides. There is a great 
 deal of ‘ personal ’ religion in the army, no doubt : and 
 personal religion may help men to endure, and complete 
 the bull-dog form of courage : but the soldier wants 
 more. He wants a faith that he is fighting on God’s 
 side ; he wants military and corporate and national re- 
 ligion, and that is what I fear he has yet to get, and 
 what I tried to give in my tract. That is what Crom- 
 well’s Ironsides had, and by it they conquered. That is 
 what the Elizabethans had up to the Armada, and by it 
 they conquered.” 
 
 On the death of Captain Hedley Vicars, who 
 was killed in a sortie, he writes to Miss Marsh : 
 
 Bideford: May 9, 1855. — “• • • These things are 
 most bitter, and the only comfort which I can see in 
 them is, that they are bringing us all face to face with 
 the realities of human life, as it has been in all ages, and 
 giving us sterner and yet more loving, more human, and 
 more divine thoughts about ourselves, and our business 
 here, and the fate of those who are gone, and awakening 
 us out of the luxurious, frivolous, unreal dream (full 
 nevertheless of harsh judgments, and dealings forth of 
 damnation), in which we have been living so long — to 
 trust in a Living Father who is really and practically 
 governing this world and all worlds, and who willeth that 
 none should perish — and therefore has not forgotten, or 
 suddenly begun to hate or torment, one single poor soul 
 which is past out of this life into some other, on that 
 accursed Crimean soil. All are in our Father’s hands ; 
 and as David says, Though they go down into hell, He 
 is there. Oh ! blessed thought — more blessed to me at 
 this moment (who think more of the many than of the 
 few) than the other thought, that though they ascend 
 
Charles Blachford Mansfield 369 
 
 into heaven with your poor lost hero, He is there 
 also. . . ” 
 
 During this winter a personal sorrow came, and 
 God took from him, for a time, one who had been 
 his beloved friend for seventeen years, Charles 
 Blachford Mansfield 1 — the Will Willow-wren of 
 “ Politics for the People,” and one of the Council 
 of Promoters of Association. No record of 
 Charles Kingsley would be complete unless it in- 
 cluded a sketch of one who was so entwined with 
 the memory of his Cambridge days, with the rec- 
 tory life at Eversley, and with the winter of 
 1848-9 in Devonshire. He died, at Middlesex 
 Hospital, a martyr to Science. 
 
 “ I knew Charles Mansfield first when he was at Clare 
 Hall in 1838-9, sometime in my freshman’s winter. He 
 was born in the year 1819, at a Hampshire parsonage, 
 and in due time went to school at Winchester, in the 
 old days of that iron rule among masters, and that brutal 
 tyranny among the boys themselves, which are now fast 
 disappearing before the example and influence of the 
 great Arnold. Crushed at the outset, he gave little evi- 
 dence of talent beyond his extraordinary fondness for 
 mechanical science. But the regime of Winchester told 
 on his mind in after life for good and for evil ; first, by 
 arousing in him a stern horror of injustice (and in that 
 alone he was stern), and next, by arousing in him a 
 doubt of all precedents, a chafing against all constituted 
 authority, of which he was not cured till after long and 
 sad experience. What first drew me to him was the 
 combination of body and mind. He was so wonderfully 
 graceful, active, and daring. He was more like an ante- 
 
 1 Author of a “Treatise on Benzole,” a “Theory of Salts,” 
 “ Aerial Navigation,” and “ Letters from Paraguay.” 
 
 VOL. I. — 24 
 
370 Charles Kingsley 
 
 lope than a man. ... I believe him to have been physi- 
 cally incapable of fear. . . . The next thing which drew 
 me to him was his intellect, not merely that he talked of 
 the highest things, but he did it in such a wonderful 
 way. He cared for nothing but truth. He would 
 argue by the hour, but never for arguing’s sake. None 
 can forget the brilliance of his conversation, the elo- 
 quence with which he could assert, the fancy with which 
 he could illustrate, the earnestness with which he could 
 enforce, the sweetness with which he could differ, the 
 generosity with which he could yield. Perhaps the 
 secret of that fascination, which he quite unconsciously 
 exercised over all who really knew him, was the virtue 
 of earnestness. . . . He was just waiting for the king- 
 dom of God. . . . When the truth was shown to him, 
 he leapt up and embraced it. There was the most in- 
 tense faith in him from the first that Right was right, 
 and Wrong wrong ; that Right must conquer ; that there 
 was a kingdom of God Eternal in the heavens, an ideal 
 righteous polity, to which the world ought to be, and 
 some day would be, conformed. That was his central 
 idea. . . . Added to this unconquerable faith in good, 
 was an unconquerable faith in truth. He first taught me 
 not to be afraid of truth. ‘ If a thing is so, you can’t be 
 the worse for knowing it is so,’ was his motto, and well 
 he carried it out. This was connected, it seems to me, 
 with his intense conscientiousness. Of his conscientious- 
 ness I could write pages. ... All knight- errant honor 
 which I ever heard of, that man might have, perhaps 
 has, actually outdone. From the time of his leaving 
 Cambridge he devoted himself to science. . . . The 
 history of his next ten years is fantastic enough, were it 
 written, to form material for any romance. Long periods 
 of voluntary penury, when (though a man of fair worldly 
 fortune) he would subsist on the scantiest fare — a few 
 dates and some brown bread, or a few lentils — at the 
 
Charles Blachford Mansfield 371 
 
 cost of a few pence a day, bestowing his savings on the 
 poor ; bitter private sorrows, which were schooling his 
 heart and temper into a tone more purely angelic than I 
 have ever seen in man ; magnificent projects, worked 
 out as far as they would go, not wildly and superficially, 
 but on the most deliberate and accurate grounds of 
 science, then thrown away in disappointment, for some 
 fresh noble dream ; an intense interest in the social and 
 political condition of the poor, which sprang up in him, 
 to his great moral benefit, during the last five years of his 
 life. . . . He left a trail of light wherever he went. . . . 
 
 “ He would flash down over the glebe at Eversley, 
 with his knapsack at his back, like a shining star ap- 
 pearing with peace on earth and good-will to men, and 
 bringing an involuntary smile into the faces of everyone 
 who met him — the compelled reflection of his own 
 smile. His voice was like the singing of a bird in its 
 wonderful cheerfulness, tenderness, and gaiety. 
 
 “ At last, when he was six- and- thirty years of age, his 
 victory in the battle of life seemed complete. His 
 enormous and increasing labor seemed rather to have 
 quickened and steadied than tired his brain. The 
 clouds which had beset his path had all but cleared, 
 and left sunshine and hope for the future. . . . He was 
 already recognized as one of the most promising young 
 chemists in England, for whose future fame 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 
 
37 2 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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 ex- 
 tinguished the flame. Fearfully burnt and bruised, he 
 was taken to Middlesex Hospital, where, after nine days 
 of agony, he died like a Christian man. 
 
 “ Oh, fairest of souls ! Happy are those who knew 
 thee in this life ! Happier those who will know thee in 
 the life to come ! C. K.” 
 
 They are together now ! Two true and perfect 
 knights of God, perchance on some fresh noble 
 quest ! 
 
 “ Westward Ho ! ” came out this winter. It 
 was dedicated to Rajah Brooke and Bishop Sel- 
 wyn, two of his heroes, and, in course of time, 
 produced the following letters from Mr. Henry 
 Drummond, of Albury, and from the Rajah. 
 
 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 shameful trial to 
 which he has been subjected to be sent you, as I am 
 sure it will gratify you. I heard from him last week : he 
 is quite well, and all his work prospering. A remark- 
 able thing is about to take place in Sarawak. The 
 people finding themselves dealt with in a manner so 
 superior to that in which they are dealt with by their 
 own rulers, have considered that the religion of their 
 present governor must be the true religion, and accord- 
 ingly 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 manifesta- 
 tion of mercy, justice, and truth. The poor bishop’s 
 trouble will begin after he has got his converts. 
 
Rajah Brooke 373 
 
 “ Begging pardon for this intrusion from a stranger, 
 
 “ I am, Sir, with great admiration of your writings, 
 “ Your obedient Servant, 
 
 “ Henry Drummond.” 
 
 “ My dear Sir, — I have long delayed 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 ad- 
 vance 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 pur- 
 sued by the Government. It is a sad but true expe- 
 rience, 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 know- 
 ing you before I leave this country. . . . 
 
 “ Believe me, my dear Sir, 
 
 “ Yours very sincerely, 
 
 “J. Brooke.’' 
 
 For years past Mr. Kingsley had bitterly re- 
 sented the attacks made upon Rajah Brooke by 
 the press during his government of Borneo, and 
 
374 Charles Kingsley 
 
 had expressed his own views on the subject to Mr. 
 Ludlow. 
 
 “ I have an old * crow to pick with you 9 about my 
 hero, Rajah Brooke ; 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 hic 7 nan life. It is beast-life. These Dyaks 
 have put on the image of the beast, and they must take 
 the consequence. ‘ 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 those terrible right- 
 eous judgments? Do you believe in the Old Testa- 
 ment? Surely, then, say, what does that destruction of 
 
Rajah Brooke 375 
 
 the Canaanites mean? If it was right, Rajah Brooke 
 was right. If he be wrong, then Moses, Joshua, David, 
 were wrong. No ! I say. Because Christ’s kingdom is 
 a kingdom of peace ; because the meek alone shall inherit 
 the earth, therefore, you 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, the 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, honor 
 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 right, as Rajah Brooke is doing. 
 Oh, Ludlow, Ludlow, recollect how before the ’89 men 
 were maundering about universal peace and philan- 
 thropy, 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 
 punishment of death ! Just read, read the last three 
 chapters of the Revelations, and then say, whether these 
 same organs of destructiveness and combativeness, which 
 we now-a-days, in our Manichseism, 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 
 
376 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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. . . . 
 
 “ I have been seeing lately an intimate friend of 
 Rajah Brooke, and hearing things which make me love 
 the man more and more. I think the preserving 
 that great line of coast from horrible outrage, by 
 destroying the pirate fleet, was loving his neighbor 
 as himself. . . .” 
 
 TO A WESLEYAN MINISTER 
 
 April \ 1855. — “ Most truly pleasant it is to me to 
 find that my words 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 ‘ deliver- 
 ance 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 acceptable, 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 ex- 
 tends. 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 compli- 
 ments, 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?” 
 
377 
 
 On Bigots 
 
 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 uncon- 
 scious ; but who is mad enough to say that therefore 
 they are without forgiveness? But the passage which 
 seems to torment you, and has tormented 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 — blas- 
 pheming (i.e. speaking evil of) the Holy Spirit ; that 
 is, they were attributing good and god-like deeds, be- 
 cause merciful and beneficent deeds, to an evil princi- 
 ple, 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 your 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. Be- 
 cause 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 
 
378 Charles Kingsley 
 
 repent, simply because he thinks himself right, even 
 though he make out God wrong ; himself true, though 
 God be a liar ; and his insane self-satisfaction forms an 
 eternal bar to any metanoia , or change of mind. More- 
 over, 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 de- 
 velopment of their national covenant and life, into their 
 old Jewish 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 hope- 
 less. As the event proved, the city and religion being 
 destroyed by Titus, and the Jews remaining spiritually 
 dead to this day. 
 
 “ Remark, too, that Esau, the very 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 
 
Drawing Class for Mechanics 379 
 
 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 
 might shoot him 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 dur- 
 ing an outburst of cholera, when he took a district 
 for house-to-house visitation ; and occasional duty 
 at Northam, Hartland, and Abbotsham; he lec- 
 tured on the Fine Arts, and got up a drawing- 
 class for young men, which one of the members, 
 Mr. Plucknett, of Warwick, thus recalls: 
 
 “ I was a youth in Bideford at the time Mr. Kingsley 
 came to reside there, when seeing the young men of 
 the town hanging about wasting their leisure hours in 
 worse than wasting, his heart yearned to do them good. 
 He at first endeavored to establish a Government School 
 of Art — this, however, failed. He then offered to teach 
 
380 Charles Kingsley 
 
 a class drawing — gratuitously. A few of us held a 
 meeting, and hired a room in the house of the Poet 
 Postman, Edward Capern, who, although a married man, 
 much older than the rest of us, was a most hard-working 
 pupil. I look back upon those 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, persever- 
 ance, and kindness won all our hearts, and not one of 
 his class but would have given his life for the master. 
 He used 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, illus- 
 trating 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 admi- 
 ration 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. . . . 
 
 “ Though dead, he yet influences for good thousands 
 of hearts and minds, and he is now reaping the reward 
 of his noble efforts while on earth to add to the sum of 
 human happiness, and thus leave the world better than 
 he found it. . . .” 
 
 The mention of the “ blackboard ” will remind 
 many of his masterly sketches, in public lectures 
 and at his own school, where he liked always to 
 have a blackboard, with a piece of chalk, to illus- 
 
“Rufus bucking, April iS, 1855'’ 
 
 Reproduced from the original sketch by Charles Kingsley. 
 

 Charles Kingsley 
 
 a das d ^ : :g-'gr : rui....«:v. A few of .• held a 
 mt.-.-.-ig, ,,i red a r \) m in the house of th Poet 
 
 " - ■’!!>.<, -iJi a m2>r>\.d 
 
 * 
 
 notes' pa : of my life, and, with God • , j n * 
 
 1 lbute “y s,: * e - s m life to the valuable instruct m 
 
 f? «***>» " :ld have given his life for the- master. 
 
 ■ 
 
 K ' v;J heoarae « -iently advanced to do so 
 ■niigtirA Ahwfp V'i riotejia Inei-ii, s dt rnor bssiihoit^JI 
 
 he name of Mr. Kingsley; as long as I live fo- 
 " leu home With tittle more than the knowledge of mv 
 
 j 
 
 lead of a good msiness, which a n proud to say is 
 • own u r f. j production of k, furniture, Mb. 
 
 . 
 
 : cl he no v r ;«-k : 
 
 
 O'C ei; 
 
 hum i n ha ? • 
 
 id ll t leave the 
 
 * of 
 1 h&n 
 
 The men? i n 
 mam: of h ■ a: . * 
 k- : ’ is . 
 have % Ida : , 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ remind 
 lectures 
 1 always to 
 to illus* 
 

UR 
 
 OF 
 
 UNIVERSITY of ILLINOIS 
 
 / 
 
Leaves Devonshire 381 
 
 trate his teaching by figures, which spoke some- 
 times as eloquently as his words. His sense of 
 form was marvellous, and, when at home, he was 
 never so thoroughly at ease as with a pen or pen- 
 cil in his hand. In conversation with his chil- 
 dren or guests his pencil was out in a moment to 
 illustrate every subject, whether it was natural 
 history, geological strata, geography, maps, or the 
 varieties of race. And even when writing his 
 sermons his mind seemed to find relief in sketch- 
 ing on the blotting paper before him, or on the 
 blank spaces in the sermon book, characteristic 
 heads, and types of face, among the different 
 schools of thought from the mediaeval monk to the 
 modern fanatic. He was always “thinking in 
 figures, ,, to use his own words. “A single pro- 
 file, even a mere mathematical figure, would in 
 his hands become the illustration of a spiritual 
 truth ” (“ Yeast ”). At Bristol, when he was presi- 
 dent of the educational section at the Social 
 Science congress, as he sat listening to the 
 various speakers, pen in hand, apparently making 
 notes, he covered the paper with sketches sug- 
 gested by the audience before him or by his 
 own fancy; 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 at the Working Men’s Col- 
 lege, and one of a series to ladies interested in the 
 cause of the laboring classes on “The work of 
 ladies in the country parish,” from which a few 
 extracts are given : 
 
382 Charles Kingsley 
 
 “ . . . I keep to my own key-note, — I say, Visit 
 whom, when, and where you will ; but let your visits be 
 those of women to women . Consider to whbm 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, with 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 you could not travel a step forward ; 
 and she knows what she is about perhaps better than 
 you do, and what she has to endure, and what God 
 thinks of her life-journey. The heart knoweth its own 
 bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its joy. 
 But do not you be a stranger to her. Be a sister to her. 
 
 I do not ask you to take her up in your carriage. You 
 cannot ; perhaps it is good for her that you cannot, . . . 
 All I ask is, do to the poor soul as you would have her do 
 to you in her place. Do not interrupt and vex her (for she 
 is busy enough already) with remedies which she does 
 not understand, for troubles which you do not under- 
 stand. But speak comfortably to her, and say, ‘ I can- 
 not feel with you, but I do feel for you : I should enjoy 
 
Lecture to Ladies 383 
 
 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, paradoxi- 
 cal as it may seem, I am convinced that the only way to 
 help these poor women humanely 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 neigh- 
 bors, instead of coming proudly to them, with nostrums, 
 ready compounded, as if a doctor should be so confi- 
 dent in his own knowledge 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 particulars, 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 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 anyone — no, not an angel 
 from heaven, to come into our houses without knocking 
 
384 Charles Kingsley 
 
 at the door, to say, 1 1 hear you are very ill off — I will 
 lend you a hundred pounds. I think you are very care- 
 less 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 men- 
 tioned ; I intend to take him out of your hands and 
 reform him myself/ . . . 
 
 “ Approach, then, these poor women as sisters — learn 
 lovingly and patiently (aye, and reverently, for there is 
 that in every human being which deserves reverence, 
 and must be reverenced if we wish to understand it) ; 
 learn, I say, to understand their troubles, and by that 
 time they will have learnt to understand your remedies. 
 For you have remedies. I do not undervalue your posi- 
 tion. No man on earth is less inclined to undervalue 
 the real power of wealth, rank, accomplishments, 
 manners — even physical beauty. All are talents from 
 God, and I give God thanks when I see them possessed 
 by any human being ; for I know that they too can be 
 used in His service, and brought to bear on the true 
 emancipation of woman — her emancipation not from 
 man (as some foolish persons fancy), but from the devil, 
 ‘ the slanderer and divider/ who divides her from man, 
 and makes her life a life-long tragedy, — a vie a part , a 
 vie incomprise — a life made up half of ill-usage, half of 
 unnecessary self-willed martyrdom, instead of being, as 
 God intended half of the human universe, a helpmeet 
 for man, and the one bright spot which makes this 
 world endurable. Towards making her that, and so 
 realizing the primeval mission by every cottage hearth, 
 each of you can do something ; for each of you have 
 some talent, power, knowledge, attraction between soul 
 and soul, which the cottage/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 
 
Lecture to Ladies 
 
 3 8 5 
 
 alone, or your work is nothing, and though you give the 
 treasures of Ind, 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 labor may be ! ” 
 
 “ Again, 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 intreat 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 gentleness, and 
 it is one which only a lady can bestow. Only by being 
 accustomed in youth to converse with ladies will the boy 
 learn to treat hereafter his 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. . . (Practical 
 Lectures to Ladies.) 
 
 “Tell these lads and men,” he wrote to one who con- 
 sulted him about ragged-school work, “ that they have a 
 Father in heaven — show that you believe it, by your 
 
 VOL. I. — 25 
 
386 Charles Kingsley 
 
 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.” 
 
 To his Wife: July 16. — “ . . . After all, the prob- 
 lem 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 know . 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 pun- 
 ishment, which is to me the most comforting of thoughts. 
 . . . Yes : 
 
 4 ’T is 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 fair either to St. 
 Paul or to God — to quote the one text about the crea- 
 tion 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 
 
On Being an Artist 387 
 
 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 perfection, 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.” 
 
 To Rev. F. D. Maurice. Eversley: August 6 . — 
 
 “ Many, many thanks, my dear Master, for your letter. 
 You need never fear lecturing me, as long as I want it 
 as much as I do now. Your fears for me are most just, 
 and if you knew half as much of me as I do of myself, 
 you would have hundreds of fears more. ... A period 
 of collapse has come to me. . . . Only do not fear that V 
 ultimately I shall be content with being ‘ an artist.’ I 
 despise and loathe the notion from the bottom of my 
 heart. I have felt its temptation ; but I will, by God’s 
 help, fight against that. Indeed, if I write another 
 novel, one of my principal characters is to be a man 
 who wants to be an ‘ artist,’ like old Goethe (of whom I 
 think less, if not worse, the longer I live), and finds that 
 he becomes, ‘ artist ’ or none, a very confused fellow, 
 going rapidly to hell. No. I am going to settle quietly 
 here again, and write my sermons, and books for my 
 children, and leave fame to take care of itself, and thank 
 God every day of my life for this paralytic os hyoides 
 of mine, which has kept me low, and makes me refrain 
 my tongue and my soul too, whenever I try to be witty 
 or eloquent, under the penalty of stuttering dumbness. 
 The mere fact of my stammering (if you knew behind 
 the scenes of my character and life) would be proof 
 enough that I have a Father in Heaven. 
 
 “No; my [temptation] lies in a somewhat different 
 direction from what you fancy. ... Of course I am 
 
388 Charles Kingsley 
 
 ready to worship Nature all day long, and in the merest 
 anacreontic Tommy-Moore style too, to lie among the 
 roses and sing . . . that is more to my taste than any 
 gnostic or Vestiges-of-Creation nature-worship, or even 
 than the scientific bug-hunting which I recommend to 
 idlers who can’t or won’t go and die like men or dogs 
 before Sebastopol. I am losing a zest for work. Every- 
 thing seems to me not worth working at, except the 
 simple business of telling poor people, ‘ Don’t fret, God 
 cares for you, and Christ understands you.’ ... I can- 
 not escape that wretched fear of a national catastrophe. 
 ... I live in dark, nameless dissatisfaction and dread, 
 which has certainly not diminished during the last few 
 months. ... My dear Master, terrible and sad thoughts 
 haunt me — thoughts which I long to put away, which I 
 do and will put away in simple silent home-work. Per- 
 haps I may so concentrate my power as to be able to do 
 the Lord’s work thoroughly when the Day comes ; and if 
 
 not why it will be done upon me, if not by me ; for 
 
 done it will be. But, meanwhile, comfort yourself on one 
 point — that I am humbled; . . . and have had a 
 peep or two down through the sea of glass (thanks for 
 ever for that most true interpretation), and seen the 
 nether fire within half an inch of my feet. . . . Tell me 
 what is wrong in that Raleigh Article , 1 and I will correct 
 it. I tried to be honest, and read up all the authorities : 
 but my failure is a fresh proof that I am even as an ass 
 that eateth thistles. Yet the four-legged ass digests his 
 thistles ; which is more, I am sure, than I do. ^ 
 
 “ Yours ever loving, C. K.” 
 
 They were now at Eversley ; but as winter ap- 
 proached, the damp obliged him to leave the 
 rectory again; though not his people, to his and 
 their great joy; and settle at Farley Court, Swal- 
 
 1 Life and Times of Raleigh, Miscellanies. 
 
“ The Heroes ” 
 
 3 8 9 
 
 iowfield, a high and dry spot adjoining his parish. 
 In the intervals of parish work and lectures at 
 many diocesan institutes, he brought out a volume 
 of “Sermons for the Times ,” 1 and wrote “The 
 Heroes,” a Christmas book of Greek fairy tales, 
 dedicated to his children, Rose, Maurice, and 
 Mary, to whom he says : 
 
 “ I love these old Hellenes heartily, and should be 
 very ungrateful if I did not, considering all they have 
 taught me. 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 : Dec . — “ 
 
 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't 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 as metrical as possible. . . . 
 
 1 Of these sermons a stranger wrote to him from Cambridge to 
 tell him the blessing they had been to many, and how the sermon 
 on “ Salvation ” had saved one man from suicide. 
 
39° Charles Kingsley 
 
 You must remember as to modernisms, that we Cam- 
 bridge men are taught to translate Greek by its modern 
 equivalent even to slang . My own belief is, that by tak- 
 ing the form I have, I shall best do what I want, trans- 
 late 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 — musement, 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." 
 
 To J. M. L., Esq. — “ 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 nick- 
 names it the sixth sense. Who made it? God or the 
 devil? Is it flesh or spirit? A difficult question; be- 
 cause tamed animals grow to possess it in a high degree ; 
 and our metaphysic does not yet allow them spirit. 
 But, whichever it be, it cannot be for bad : only bad 
 when 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 affections, as the earliest 
 mainspring of good actions? Has God appointed that 
 every child shall be fed first with a necessary lie, and 
 afterwards come to the knowledge of your supposed 
 truth, that the praise of God alone is to be sought ? Or 
 are we to believe that the child is intended to be taught 
 
On Fame 391 
 
 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 
 honor which comes from men, but the honor which 
 comes from God only ! * True, they do stand, and our 
 Lord’s fact stands also, the fact that He has created 
 every child to be educated by an honor which comes 
 from his parents and elders. Both are true. Here, as in 
 most spiritual things, you have an antinomia, an appar- 
 ent contradiction, which nothing but the Gospel solves. 
 And it does solve it ; and your one-sided view of the 
 text resolves itself into just the same fallacy as the old 
 ascetic one — ‘We must love God alone, therefore we 
 must love no created thing.’ To which St. John 
 answers pertinently, 1 He who loveth not his brother 
 whom he hath seen how can he love God whom he hath 
 not seen?’ If you love your brethren, you love Christ 
 in them. If you love their praise, you love the praise 
 of Christ in them. For consider this, you cannot deny 
 that if one loves any person, one desires that person’s 
 esteem. But we are bound to love all men, and that is 
 our highest state. Therefore, in our highest state, we 
 shall desire all men’s esteem. Paradoxical, but true. 
 If we believe in Christmas-day, if we believe in Whit- 
 sunday, 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, 
 
392 Charles Kingsley 
 
 on the other hand, the esteem of men, and renown 
 among men for doing good deeds, will be inexpressibly 
 precious to us. They will be signs and warrants to us 
 that God is pleased with us, that we are sharing in that 
 ‘ honor and glory ’ which Paul promises again and 
 again, to those who lead heroic lives. We shall not 
 neglect the voice of God within us ; but we shall remem- 
 ber 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 discriminate^ listened to, is sure 
 to be found not far off from the vox Dei . Of course, 
 in listening to the voice of the many 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 de- 
 grade it to carnal and selfish ones ; so you may degrade 
 the love of praise into vanity, into longing for the 
 honor which comes from men, by pandering to their 
 passions and opinions, by using your powers as they 
 would too often like to use theirs, for mere self-aggran- 
 dizement, by saying in your heart — quant pulchrum digito 
 monstrari et dicere 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 honorable and true renown for having 
 done good in my generation, has nothing to do with 
 that; and the more I fear and struggle against the 
 former, the more I see the exceeding beauty and divine- 
 ness, and everlasting glory of the latter as an entrance 
 into the communion of saints. 
 
 “ Of course, all this depends on whether we do believe 
 
On Fame 
 
 393 
 
 that Christ is in every man, and that God’s spirit is 
 abroad in the earth. Of course, again, it will be very 
 difficult to know who speaks by God’s spirit, and who 
 sees by Christ’s light in him ; but surely the wiser, the 
 humbler path, is to give men credit for as much wisdom 
 and rightness as possible, and to believe that when one 
 is found fault with, one is probably in the wrong. For 
 myself, on looking back, I see clearly with shame and 
 sorrow, that the obloquy which I have brought often on 
 myself and on the good cause, has been almost all of it 
 my own fault. . . . 
 
 “ There has been gradually revealed to me (what my 
 many readings in the lives of fanatics and ascetics ought 
 to have taught me long before), that there is a terrible 
 gulf ahead of that not caring what men say. Of course 
 it is a feeling 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, 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 for- 
 gets 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 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 im- 
 pression of the voice of God within, by the testimony of 
 the voice of God without; and so he begins to mistake 
 
394 Charles Kingsley 
 
 more and more the voice of that very flesh of his, which 
 he fancies he has conquered, for the voice of God, and 
 to become, without knowing it, an autotheist. And out 
 of that springs eclecticism, absence of tenderness for 
 men, for want of sympathy with men ; as he makes his 
 own conscience his standard for God, so he makes his 
 own character the standard for men; and so he be- 
 comes 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 ; Non- 
 jurors 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 per- 
 secutors, who, though neither hypocrites nor black- 
 guards 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 discon- 
 tented with the present generation, cannot but express 
 that discontent at times. To make my children bonau - 
 soi insolent and scoffing radicals believing in nobody 
 and nothing but themselves, would be perfectly easy in 
 me if I were to make the watchword 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 under- 
 current of the water of life, below all its froth and gar- 
 bage, 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 
 
On Fame 
 
 395 
 
 grow older, that ere they feel called on to become mar- 
 tyrs, 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 ? . . 
 
 END OF VOL. I 
 

Y 
 
 "“tViRSlIy 
 
 uf ILLINOIS