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Charles Kingsley

Frances Eliza Grenfell Kingsley · 1877 · Scanned text · Free in the US

226,439 words · about 15 h 51 min to read

Period artwork: Interior of the Bodleian Library, 1845
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About this book

Author
Frances Eliza Grenfell Kingsley
Language
English
Published
1877
Length
226,439 words · about 15 h 51 min
Sections
34 reader sections
Text
Scanned text, read from page scans by OCR; may contain errors
Rights
Public domain in the United States

 

Contents (34)
  1. Front matter about 2 min
  2. Preface To The London Edition about 1 min
  3. Chapter I. Page about 20 min
  4. Chapter II. 1830-1838 about 18 min
  5. Chapter III. 1838—42 about 24 min
  6. Chapter IV about 26 min
  7. Chapter V about 15 min
  8. Chapter VI about 36 min
  9. CHAPTER VII. Aged 29 about 1 h 11 min
  10. Chapter IX about 14 min
  11. Chapter X about 1 h 21 min
  12. Chapter XII about 54 min
  13. Chapter XIII about 27 min
  14. Chapter XIV about 37 min
  15. Chapter XV about 42 min
  16. Preface to Taulers Sermons. 255 about 2 min
  17. Chapter XVI about 14 min
  18. Chapter XVII about 41 min
  19. CHAPTER XIX. 1859. Aged 40 about 35 min
  20. Chapter XX about 20 min
  21. Chapter XXI about 23 min
  22. Chapter XXII about 41 min
  23. Chapter XXIII about 34 min
  24. Chapter XXIV about 45 min
  25. CHAPTER XXV. Aged 49 about 24 min
  26. Chapter XXVI about 45 min
  27. Chapter XXVII about 25 min
  28. Chapter XXVIII about 10 min
  29. Chapter XXIX. 1873-4 about 1 h 4 min
  30. Chapter XXX about 28 min
  31. Appendix about 3 min
  32. Index about 1 min
  33. III. Avignon, 352 about 25 min
  34. Table Of Contents about 1 min

Continue:

Front matter

'1 '•'»'('

1^

Pass ffp0 p

Preface To The London Edition

In bringing out these Volumes, thanks are due and gratefully offered to all who have generously given their help to the work; — to the many known and unknown Correspondents who have treasured and lent the letters now first made public; — to the Publishers, who have allowed quotations to be made from Mr. Kingsley's pubhshed works ; — to the Artists, especially Sheldon WilHams, Esq., and Francis Goode, Esq., of Hartley Wintney, &c., whose sketches and photographs have been kindly given for the Illustrations of the book ; but above all to the friends who have so eloquently borne witness to his character and genius. These written testimonies to their father's worth are a rich inheritance to his children, and God only knows the countless unwritten ones, of souls rescued from doubt, darkness, error, and sin, of work done, the worth of which can never be calculated upon earth, of seed sown which has borne, and will still bear fruit for years, perhaps for generations to come, when the name of Charles Kingsley is forgotten, while his unconscious influence will endure treasured up in the eternal world, where nothing really good or great can be

X Preface.

lost or pass away, to be revealed at that Day when God's Book shall be opened and the thoughts of all hearts be made known.

For the feeble thread, imperfect and unworthy of its great subject, with which these precious records are tied together, the Editor can only ask a merciful judgment from the public.

F. E. K.

Byfleet, October, 1876.

Chapter I. Page

Birth and Parentage— Inherited Talents — Removal from Devonshire to Burton-on-Trent —Clifton — Barnack and its Traditions — First Sermon and Poems — Childish Character — Effect of Fen Scenery on his Mind 21

CHAPTER n.

Life at Clovelly — School Life at Clifton — Bristol Riots — Their Effect on his Mind — Helston — Early Friendships — Letters from Rev. Derwent Coleridge and Rev. R. C. Powles — Move to Chelsea — Enters King's College, London 30

Life at Cambridge — Visit to Oxfordshire — Undergraduate Days — Decides to take Orders — Takes his Degree — Correspondence — Letters from Cambridge Friends 41

Reads for Holy Orders — Correspondence — Ordained Deacon — Settles at Eversley — Parish Work — Letters 54

CHAPTER V.

PAGE

Curate Life — Letter from Colonel W. — Brighter Prospects — Correspondence

Renewed — Promise of Preferment — Leaves Eversley 67

Marriage — Curacy of Pimperne — Rectory of Eversley — Correspondence .... 74

CHAPTER VII.

Publication of " Saint's Tragedy" — Chartist Riots — Tenth of April — Politics for the People — Professorship at Queen's College — " Yeast " — Illness 93

CHAPTER VIII. 1849.

Aged 30.

Winter in Devonshire — Ilfracombe — Decides on taking Pupils — Correspondence — Visit to London — Social Questions — Fever at Eversley — Renewed Illness — Returns -to Devonshire — Cholera in England — Sanitary Work — Bermondsey— Letter from Mr. C. K. Paul ill

CHAPTER IX.

Resigns the Office of Clerk in Orders at Chelsea — Pupil Life at Eversley— Publication of "Alton Locke" — Letters from Mr. Carlyle — ^Writes for "Christian Socialist" — Troubled State of the Country — Burglaries — The Rectory Attacked 127

CHAPTER X.

PAGE

Opening of the Great Exhibition — Attack on " Yeast " in the " Guardian " and Reply — Occurrence in a London Church — Goes to Germany — Letter from Mr. John Martineau 135

CHAPTER Xr.

1852.

Aged zZ-

Strike in the Iron-Trade — Correspondence on Social and Metaphysical Questions — Mr. Erskine comes to Fir Grove — Parson Lot's last Words — Birth of his youngest Daughter — Letter from Frederika Bremer 160

CHAPTER XII.

The Rector in his Church — " Hypatia" Letters from Chevalier Bunsen— Mr.

Maurice's Theological Essays — Correspondence with Thomas Cooper... 174

CHAPTER XIII.

Aged 35,

Torquay — Seaside Studies— Lectures in Edinburgh — Deutsche Theologie-— Letter from Baron Bunsen — Crimean War — Settles in North Devon — Writes " Wonders of the Shore " and " Westward Ho." 201

CHAPTER XIV.

PAGE

Bideford — Crimean War — Death of his friend Charles Blachford Mansfield — "Westward Ho" — Letters from Mr. Henry Drummond and Rajah Brooke — Drawing Class for Mechanics at Bideford — Leaves Devonshire — Lectures to Ladies in London — Correspondence — Winter at Farley Court — The " Heroes " Written 215

CHAPTER XV.

Aged 37.

Winter at Farley Court — Letter from a Sailor at Hong Kong— Union Strikes — Fishing Poem and Fishing Flies — The Sabbath Question — Invitation to Snowdonia — Visit to North Wales — American Visitors — Preface to Tauler's Sermons 233

^ CHAPTER XVT

The Father in his Home — x'^.n Atmosphere of Joy — The Out-door Nursery — Life on the Mount — Fear and Falsehood — The Training of Love — Favorites and Friends in the House, in the Stable, and on the Lawn 257

CHAPTER XVII.

' Two Yeafs Ago "—The Crowded Church— Unquiet Sundays— Letters to Mr. Bullar— Dr. Rigg— Mr. Tom Hughes' Piecists and Su^uos- Letter from a Naval Chaplain— Indian Mutiny— The Romance of Real Life 265

CHAPTER XVIII.

Aged 39.

PAGE

Eversley Work — Diphtheria — Lectures and Sermons at Aldershot — Blessing the Colors of the 22nd Regiment— Staff College— Advanced Thinkers — Poems and Santa Maura — Letter from Dr. Monsell — Letters to Dr. Monsell, Dean Stanley, &c. — Letter from Captain Congreve — Birth of his Son Grenville — Second Visit to Yorkshire 278

CHAPTER XIX. 1859.

Aged 40.

Sanitary Work — First Sermon at Buckingham Palace — Queen's Chaplaincy — First Visit to Windsor — Letter to an Atheist — Correspondence with Artists — Charles Bennett — Ladies' Sanitary Association — Letter from John Stuart Mill 286

CHAPTER XX,

Professorship of Modern History — Death of his Father and of Mrs. Anthony Froude — Planting the Churchyard — -Visit to Ireland — First Salmon killed — Wet Summer — Sermon on Weather — Letter from Sir Charles Lyell — Correspondence — Residence in Cambridge — Inaugural Lecture in the Senate House — Visits to Barton Hall — Letter from Sir Charles Bunbury. 303

CHAPTER XXL

Cambridge — Lectures to the Prince of Wales — Essays and Reviews — Letters to Dr. Stanley — Bishop of Winchester-^Tracts for Priests and People — Death of the Prince Consort — Letter to Sir C. Bunbury — The Waterbabies — Installation Ode at Cambridge — Visit to Scotland — British Association — Lord Dundreary 314

CHAPTER XXII.

PAGE

Fellow of the Geological Society — Work at Cambridge — Prince of Wales's Wedding — Wellington College Chapel and Museum — Letter from Dr. Benson — Lecture at Wellington — Letters to Sir Charles Lyell, Prof. Huxley, Charles Darwin, James A. Froude, &c. — Whitchurch Still-life — Toads in Holes — D.C.L. Degree at Oxford— Bishop Colenso — Sermons on the Pentateuch — The Water-babies — Failing Health 326

CHAPTER XXIII.

Illness — Controversy with Dr. Newman — Apologia— Journey to the South of France — Biarritz — Pau — An Earthquake — Narbonne — Sermons in London and at Windsor — Enclosure of Eversley Common — University Sermons at Cambridge — Mr. John Stuart Mill's London Committee — Letter on ■ the Trinity— Letter on Subscription — Luther and Demonology — Visit of Queen Emma of the Sandwich Islands to Eversley Rectory and Wellington College — The Mammoth on Ivory — Death of King Leopold — Lines written at Windsor Castle 346

CHAPTER XXIV.

Cambridge— Death of Dr. Whewell— The American Professorship — Monotonous Life of the Country Laboring Class — Penny Readings — Strange Correspondents — Life of Bewick— Letters to Max Miiller— The Jews in Cornwall — The Meteor Shower — Letter to Professor Adams — The House of Lords — A Father's Education of his Son — " Eraser's Magazine" — Bird Life, Wood Wrens — Names and Places — Darwinism— Beauty of Color, its Influence and Attractions— Flat-Fish — Ice Problems — St. Andrews and British Association — Abergeldie Castle — Rules for Stammerers 363

Co7ttents. 1 7

CHAPTER XXV.

Aged 49.

PAGE

Attacks of the Press — Lectures on Sixteenth Century — Mr. Longfellow — Sir Henry Taylor on Crime and its Punishment — Letter from Mr. Dunn — Letter from Rev. William Harrison 386

CHAPTER XXVI.

Resignation of Professorship — Women's Suffrage Question — Letters to Mr. Maurice, John Stuart Mill — Canonry of Chester — Social Science Meeting at Bristol — Letter from Dr. E. Blackwell — Medical Education for Women — West Indian Voyage — Letters from Trinidad — Return Home — Eversley a Changed Place — Flying Columns — Heath Fires — First Residence at Chester — Botanical Class — Field Lectures — Women's Suffrage — Franco- Prussian War — Wallace on Natural Selection — Matthew Arnold and Hellenism 398

CHAPTER XXVII.

Lecture on " The Theology of the Future " at Sion College — Expeditions of the Chester Natural Scie.nce Society — Lectures on Town Geology — Race Week at Chester — Letters on Betting — Camp at Bramshill — The Prince of Wales in Eversley — Prince of Wales's Illness — Lecture to Royal Artil lery Officers at Woolwich 421

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Aged 53.

Opening of Chester Cathedral Nave — Deaths of Mr. Maurice and Norman McLeod— Letters to Max Muller — Mrs. Luard — Lecture at Birmingham and its Results— Lecture on Heroism at Chester — A Poem — The Athana-

sian Creed 434

CHAPTER XXIX.

PACE

Harrow-on-the-Hill — Canonry of Westminster — His Son's Return — His Mother's Death — Parting from Chester — Congratulations — Sermon and Letters on Temperance — Preaching in Westminster Abbey — Voyage to America — Eastern Cities and Western Plains — Canada— Niagara — The Prairie — Salt Lake City — Yo Semite Valley and Big Trees — San Francisco — Illness — Rocky iVEountains and Colorado Springs — Last Poem — Return Home — Letter from John G. Whittier 441

CHAPTER XXX.

RetiTrn from America — Work at Eversley — Illness at Westminster— New Anxiety— Last Sermons in the Abbey — Leaves the Cloisters for ever — ■ Last Return to Eversley — The Valley of the Shadow of Death — Last Illness and Departure — The Victory of Life over Death and Time 474

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Portrait of Charles Kingsley Frontispiece.

Fac-similb of the Original Manuscript of the Three Fishers... 156

EvERSLEY Church i7i>

The Great Fir-Trees on the Rectory Lawn at Eversley 256

The Rectory at Eversley 263

The Study Window, Eversley Rectory 39^

Charles Kingsley's Grave, Eversley Churchyard 488

HIS LETTERS AND MEMORIES OF HIS LIFE.

CHAPTER I.

Birth and Parentage— Inherited Talents — Removal from Devonshire to Burton-on-Trent — Clifton — Barnack and its Traditions — First Sermon and Poems — Childish Character — Effect of Fen Scenery on his Mind.

Charles Ktngsley, son of Charles Kingsley, of Battramsley in the New Forest, was born on the 12th of June, 1819, at Hohie Vicarage, under the brow of Dartmoor, Devonshire. His familyclaimed descent from the Kingsleys of Kingsley or Vale Royal, in Delamere Forest, and from Rannulph de Kingsley, whose name in an old family pedigree stands as " Grantee of the Forest of Mara and Mondrem from Randall Meschines, ante 1128." Charles's father was a man of cultivation and refinement, a good linguist, an artist, a keen sportsman and natural historian. He was educated at Harrow and Oxford, and brought up with good expectations as a country gentleman, but having been early in life left an orphan, and his fortune squandered for him during his minority, he soon spent what was left, and at the age of thirty found himself almost penniless, and obliged; for the first time, to think of a profession. Being too old for the army, and having many friends who were owners of Church property, he decided on the Church, sold his hunters and land, and with a young wife, went for a second time to college, entering his name at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to read for Holy Orders. While there he became acquainted with Dr. Herbert Marsh, then Margaret Professor of Divinity, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough, a fine classic and first-rate German scholar. This last taste, combined with their mutual love of literature, attracted the two men to each other, and when Dr. Marsh was raised to a bishopric he took an early opportunity of getting Mr. Kingsley into his diocese, and making him his Examining Chaplain. His first cure was in the Fens, from which he removed to Holne, in Devonshire.

Charles's mother, a remarkable woman, full of poetry and enthusiasm, was born in the West Indies, being the daughter of Nathan Lucas, of Farley Hall, Barbadoes, and Rushford Lodge, Norfolk. Keenly alive to the charms of scenery, and highly imaginative in her younger days, as she was eminently practical in maturer life, she believed that impressions made on her own mind^ before the birth of this child for whose coming she longed, by the romantic surroundings of her Devonshire home, would be mysteriously transmitted to him ; and in this faith, and for his sake as well as for her own, she luxuriated in the exquisite scenery of Holne and Dartmoor, the Chase, the hills, and the lovely Dart, which flowed below the grounds of the little parsonage, and gave herself up to the enjoyment of every sight and sound which she hoped would be dear to her child in after life. These hopes were realized, and though her little son left Holne when he was six weeks old, and never saw his birthplace till he was a man of thirty, it and every Devonshire scene and association had a mysterious charm for him through life. " I am," he was proud to say, " a West Country man born and bred."

" We know, through the admirable labors of Mr. Galton," says Mr. Darwin in his " Descent of Man," " that genius which implies a wonderfully complex combination of high faculties tends to be inherited," and to prove this in the case of Charles Kingsley may not be altogether unimportant. " We are," he said himself, in 1865, when writing to Mr. Galton on his book on Hereditary Talent, where the Kingsley family are referred to,

"We are but the disjecta membra of a most remarkable pair of parents. Our talent, such as it is, is altogether hereditary. My father was a magnificent man in body and mind, and was said to possess every talent except that of using his talents. My mother, on the contrary, had a quite extraordinary practical and administrative power ; and she combines with it, even at her advanced age (79), my father's passion for knowledge, and the sentiment and fancy of a young girl." ....

Inherited Tastes. 23

From his father's side he inherited his love of art, his sporting tastes, his fighting blood — the men of his family having been soldiers for generations, some of them having led troops to battle at Naseby, Minden, and elsewhere. And from the mother's side came, not only his love of travel, science and iitei^ature, and the romance of his nature, but his keen sense of humor, and a force and originality which characterized the women of her family of a still older generation.

His maternal grandfather, sometime a Judge in Barbadoes, was a man of books and science, the intimate frieiid of Sir Joseph Banks and the distinguished John Hunter. He was also a great traveller, and had often crossed the Atlantic, in those days a more difficult work than it is now. He knew the West Indies intimately, and Demerara, where also he had estates, and had been with his friend Lord Rodney, on board H.M.S. " Formidable," in his great naval engagement off St. Lucia in 1782, "on the glorious 12th of April, when he broke Count de Grasse's line, destroying seven French ships of war and taking their commander prisoner." — ("At Last," Vol. I. p, 69). In 1812, at the great eruption of the Souffriere of St. Vincent, when resident on his estate in Barbadoes, eighty miles distant. Judge Lucas gave proof of his powers of observation and of scientific induction, by at once detecting the cause of the great earthquake wave which struck the island, and of the sudden darkness which spread terror among its inhabitants. " I have a letter," says his grandson, " written by one long since dead, who had powers of description of no common order," detailing the events of that awful day and night, and who, while the negroes were shrieking in the streets, and even the white folks caught the panic, and were praying at home and in the churches as they had never prayed before, thinking the last day had come, was above the dismay and superstitious panic which prevailed ; " he opened his window, found it stick, and felt upon the sill a coat of soft powder. 'The volcano at St, Vincent has broken out at last,' said the wise man, ' and this is the dust of it.' So he quieted his household and his negroes, lighted his candles, and went to his scientific books in that delight, mingled with awe not the less deep because it is rational and self-possessed, with which he, like other men of science, looked at the wonders of this wondrous world. "^ — ("At Last," Vol. I. p. 89).

His grandfather's reminiscences of the old war times, and stories of tropical scenes, were the delight of Charles's boyhood, and gave a coloring to his hfe. They woke up in him that longing to see the West Indies, which was at last accomplished ; and as he sailed the same seas under more peaceful circumstances, his enjoyment was enhanced by family associations and memories of the Past.

But to return, Mr. Kingsley's next curacy on leaving Holne was at Burton-on-Trent, from whence he moved to Clifton, in Nottinghamshire, where he and his wife formed the acquaintance of the Penrose family. To this fact Miss Martineau alludes in her correspondence with his son 35 years later.

" This evening I have heard of you in your infancy ! Is that not odd? The Arnolds have just returned after a two months' absence, and I went to Fox How to welcome them home. They have been into Lincolnshire, at the Penroses'. They say your parents were friends of the last generation of the Penroses, and they have been looking over some old letters, in one of which there is an account of a stormy passage of a river (the Trent in flood), when your mother's chief anxiety was about her ' little delicate Charles,' whom she wrapped in her shawl, going without it herself. So now, perhaps we know something about you that you did not know yourself."

While curate of Clifton, the Bishop of Peterborough offered his friend the living of Barnack, one of the best in the diocese, to hold for his own son Herbert, then only 17. Such transactions were common in the church in those days, and Mr. Kingsley, thankfully, accepted the offer, and held the living for 6 years. Barnack Rectory was a fine old house, built in the fourteenth century, and thither the family removed. It contained a celebrated haunted room called Button Cap's, into which little Charles on one occasion was moved when ill of brain fever, which he had more than once, as a child. This naturally excited his imagination, which was haunted years afterwards with the weird sights and sounds connected with that time in his memory. To this he traced his own strong disbelief in the existence of ghosts. For, as he used to say to his children in later years, he had heard too many ghosts in old Button Cap's room at Barnack, to have much respect for them, when he had once satisfied himself as to what they really were. On being questioned about having been born there by

Barnack ajzd its Ghost Chamber. 25

Mrs. Francis Pelham, he gave her his matured opinion of Button Cap in the following letter :

EvERSLEY Rectory, " Mv DEAR Alice, — y««^ 2, 1864.

" Of Button Cap — he lived in the Great North Room at Barnack (where I was not born). I knew him well. He used to walk across the room in flopping slippers, and turn over the leaves of books to find the missing deed, whereof he had defrauded the orphan and the widow. He was an old Rector of Barnack. Everybody heard him who chose. Nobody ever saw him ; but in spite of that, he wore a flowered dressing-gown, and a cap with a button on it. I never heard of any skeleton being found ; and Button Cap's history had nothing to do with murder, only with avarice and chea.tmg.

" Sometimes he turned cross and played Polter-geist, as the Germans say, rolling the barrels in the cellar about with surprising noise, which was undigniired. So he was always ashamed of himself, and put them all back in their places before morning.

"I suppose he is gone now. Ghosts hate mortally a certificated National Schoolmaster, and (being a vain and peevish generation) as soon as people give up believing in them, go away in a huff — or perhaps some one had been laying phosphoric paste about, and he ate thereof and ran down to the pond ; and drank till he burst. He was rats. " Your affect. Uncle,

"C. KiNGSLEY."

Charles was a precocious child, and his poems and sermons date from four years old. His delight was to make a little pulpit in his nursery, arranging the chairs for an imaginary congregation, and putting on his pinafore as a surplice, gave little addresses of a rather severe tone of theology. His mother, unknown to him, took them down at the time, and showed them to the Bishop of Peterborough, who thought them so remarkable for such a young child, that he begged they might be preserved : predicting that the boy would grow up to be no common man. I'hese are among the specimens his mother kept.

FIRST SERMON.

[Four years old.]

" It is not right to fight. Honesty has no chance against 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 example how we should overcome the Devil. It is written in the Bible that we should love our neighbor, and not covet his house, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor his wife, nor anything that is his. It is to a certainty that we cannot describe how thousands and ten thousands have been wicked ; and nobody can tell how the Devil can be chained in Hell. Nor can we describe how many men and women and children have been good. And if we go to Heaven we shall find them all singing to God in the highest. And if we go to hell, we shall find all the wicked ones gnashing and wailing their teeth, as God describes in the Bible. If humanity, honesty, and good religion fade, we can to a certainty get them back, by being good again. Religion is reading good books, doing good actions, and not teUing lies and speaking evil, and not calling their brother Fool and Raca. And if we rebel against God, He will to a certainty cast us into hell. And one day, when a great generation of people came to Christ in the Wilderness, he said, Yea ye generation of vipers ! "

FIRST POEMS. [Four years and eight months old.]

MORNING.

When morning's beam first lights us, And the cock's shrill voice is undone.

The owl flies from her retreat, And the bat does fly away, And morning's beam lightens every spray, The sun shows forth his splendid train.

Evei"ybody is rising ; Boys and girls go to school ; Everybody is at work ; Everybody is busy.

- The bee wakes from her sleep to gather honey. But the drone and the queen bee lie still In the hive, And a bee guards them.

Be busy when thou canst !

NIGHT.

When the dark forest glides along, When midnight's gloom makes everybody still, The owl flies out, And the bat stretches his wjng ;

The lion roars ; The wolf and the tiger prowl about.

And the hyena cries.

Early Letters. 27

Little can be gleaned of the nursery life at Barnack, except from an old nurse who lived in his father's family, and who remembers Charles as a very delicate child between six and seven years old, subject to dangerous attacks of croup, and remarkable for his thirst for knowledge and conscientiousness of feeling.

" I have never forgotten one day," she says, " when he and his little brothers were playing together, and had a difference, which seldom happened. His mother, coming into the room, took the brothers' part, which he resented, and he said he wished she was not his mother. His grief afterwards was great, and he came crying bitterly to the kitchen door to ask me to take him up to his room. The housemaid enquired what was the matter, and said his mamma would be sure to forgive him. ' She has forgiven me, but don't cant, Elizabeth (I saw you blush). It isn't mamma's forgiveness I want, but God's.' Poor little fellow, he was soon upon his knees when he got into his mother's room where he slept."

a

A boy friend, now a clergyman in Essex, recalls him about this time, repeating his Eatin lesson to his father in the study at Barnack, with his eyes fixed all the time on th- fl'-^ in the grate. 'At last he could stand it no longer ; there was ^ _ . jc in the Latin, and Charles cried out, "I do declare, papa, there is pyrites in the coal."

Among the few rehcs of the Barnack days is a little love letter written when he was five or six years old, which has lately come to light, having been carefully treasured for fifty years by a lady who was often staying with his parents at that time, and who captivated the child by her kindness and great beauty.

Barnack.

" My dear Miss Dade, —

" I hope you are well is fanny well ? The house is completly changed since you went. I think it is nearly 3 months since you went. Mamma sends her love to you and sally browne Herbert and geraled (his brothers) but I must stop here, because I have more letters of consequence to write & here I must pause.

" Believe me always,

" Your sincere friend, To Miss Dade. "Charles Kingsley."

The subject of his childish affection recalled herself to him thirty years later, and the answer contains the only other mention of Barnack in his own hand.

2 8 Charles Kiiigsley.

Farley Court,

" My dear Madam, —

" Many thanks for your most kind letter, which awoke in my mind a hundred sleeping recollections. Those old Barnack years seem now like a dream — perhaps because having lost the two brothers who were there with me, anecdotes of the place have not been kept up. Yet I remember every stone and brick of it, and you, too, as one of the first persons of whom I have a clear remembrance, though your face has faded, I am ashamed to say, from mv memory.

" But I am delighted to hear that my books have pleased, and still more that they have comforted you. They have been written from my heart in the hope of doing good ; and now and then I have (as I have now from you) testimony that my life as yet has not been altogether useless

" I am just bringing out a Christmas book for my children with illustrations of my own. Will you a'ccept a cop)^, and allow me to renew our old friendship ? . . . . You speak of sorrows, and I have heard you have past through many. God grant that a quiet evening may succeed, for you, a stormy day. I am shocked at the amount of misery in a world which has, as yet, treated me so kindly. Yet it is but a sign that others are nearer to God than I, and therefore more chastened.

"Yours ever truly,

" C. KiNGSLEY."

In 1830, when Charles was eleven years old, his father had to give up Barnack to his successor, Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley's parish work is still remembered there with aflfectionate respect, and they and their parishioners parted with mutual regret. In after years Professor Hall speaks of "Charles's excellent father as a type of the old English clergyman where the country gentleman forms the basis of the character which the minister of the gospel completes. Of such a class," he says, " were the Bishop (Otter) of Chichester, Mr. Penrose, and Mr. Kingsley." Having caught ague in the Fens, Mr. Kingsley was advised to try the climate of Devonshire, and moved his family to Ilfracombe. But the Fen scenery \yas never obliterated from Charles's mind. It was connected, too, with his earliest sporting recollections, for his father, while an excellent parish priest, was a keen sportsman, and as soon as the boy was old enough, he was mounted on his father's horse in front of the keeper on shooting days to bring back the game bag.

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