Wesley and Oxford.

TO THE REV. J. MONTAGU.

221

November 30, 1865.

but I fear I am a very

"I shall be delighted to do all I can for Esau now with the Press, going my own way, and joining no literary clique, without which one must submit to hatred and abuse. . . . If will

send her books to 'Fraser's Magazine,' I will do what I can to get them fair play and a bit of courtesy into the bargain. But really, I have no influence in the 'literary world;' and as for living in it, it is just what I don't and won't. Not the writing merely, but what a man writes, makes him an object of interest to me . . . . So you are leading a hum-drum life-happy man! Free from ambition, disappointment, fears, shame, foolish exaltation, vanity and vexation of spirit. Had I not a boy going to Cambridge, I would never write another word, but live between my microscope, and my roses. God bless you

TO DR. RIGG.

EVERSLEY, December 16, 1865.

"I shall be very glad to see Wesley's Journals or any thing which explains him to me. He has long seemed to me a true son of Oxford; possibly the precursor of the late great Oxford movement. Had he been born fifty years ago, and under the influences which he himself originated (qu. e. imposs) he would have been a great high churchman, the fellow but the superior of Newman and Pusey, and then you would have been just where many an honest, humorous high churchman is now. Possibly you would have been a rival of Dr. Hook, of whom you often remind me. It is these thoughts which make a man liberal—when one considers how man is the creature of circumstances, and we have nought but what we have received. Only to escape atheism and despair, let us remember that the Creator and Ordainer of the circumstances is not chance or nature, but the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and of us. I shall be always glad to hear from you."

"In reference to the drawing of a mammoth on ivory, reported by Mr. Milne Edwards from La Madelaine, let me call your attention to the fact, that a proboscidean, or elephantine animal appears again and again on the sculptured standing stones' of Scotland. A glance at any good work on them will show the beast, deformed in its lower extremities, as if the sculptor had forgotten the tradition of their form, but always with a trunk. The occurrence of this form on stones which

(whatever be their age) are probably prior to that of the introduction of Christianity into Scotland, has long demanded, in my mind, an explanation. From whence did these Celts hear of the elephant, and why should they associate it with the mysterious symbols of their cultus which appear on these stones? I have for some years past believed the explanation to be, that any elephantine animal had become extinct a few generations before, and had by that time become mythic, magical, and sacred."

TO MR. T. DIXON.
(Cork-cutter of Sunderland.)

EVERSLEY, December 28, 1865.

"You and your friends in free kindness could not have devised a present more to my taste than 'Bewick's Autobiography,' I have read it through, and am equally delighted and astonished at it. Brought up as I was on 'Bewick's Birds,' and owing much of my early inspirations, such as they were, to his love of natural scenery as well as his love of ornithology, I always held him to be a great genius in his own line, but I was not prepared to find him so remarkable a man in other respects— his temperance and thrift, his simple virtue, his sound and wide views on all matters political and social, astonish me as do the prophecies, if I can so call them, and none more than those on social and economic reform which has since been carried out-salmon preservation amongst the rest. Delightful are the sketches of simple, sturdy, north country life in the last century. A noble breed of men they must have been, and we will hope that the race is not worn out; they cannot be, and need not be, just what their fathers were.

The old order changeth yielding place to new,

And God fulfils himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.'

So says Tennyson-and so you may find it come true; the times in which we live after all, are better and not worse than Bewick's, and you may find it easier, not more difficult, to live a life like Bewick's now than one hundred years ago. As for regretting the good old-fashioned life, we must recollect that it too had its bad side. For one thing it would be impossible now for the country to be plunged into such a war as Pitt's, or preyed upon by such a swarm of placemen as it was in Bewick's time, simply because whatever the hand-workers have lost they have gained in intelligence, in weight, in power of expression, and of action; for want of which in Bewick's days they became mere food for powder at the beck of an aristocracy. The aristocracy too have

Leopold King of the Belgians.

223

learned by the awful lesson of the French Revolution to comport themselves differently from the eighteenth century, and if they are induced to forget themselves again there are plenty to give them a stern but friendly jog and say 'work or perish,' as all classes must do now, high and low, rich and poor. All Christmas blessings to you and your friends. I heartily thank you for your unexpected remembrance of me."

On the 9th of November, he went, by royal command, to stay at Windsor Castle, and on the following day, while he was preaching before the Court, a telegram came to the Queen to announce the death of Leopold, King of the Belgians. Mr. Kingsley had been asked to write a few lines in the album of the Crown Princess of Prussia, and with his mind full of this great European event, wrote the following Impromptu, which is inserted here by her kind permission.

November 10, 1865.

"A king is dead! Another master mind
Is summoned from the world-wide council-hall.
Ah for some seer, to say what lurks behind-
To read the mystic writing on the wall!

"Be still, fond man: nor ask thy fate to know.
Face bravely what each God-sent moment brings.
Above thee rules in love, through weal and woe,
Guiding thy kings and thee, the King of kings.

"C. KINGSLEY."

CHAPTER XXIV.

1866-1867.

AGED 47-48.

CAMBRIDGE-DEATH OF DR. WHEWELL-THE AMERICAN PROFESSORSHIP_ MONOTONOUS LIFE OF THE COUNTRY LABOURING CLASS-PENNY READINGS -STRANGE CORRESPONDENTS-LIFE OF BEWICK-LETTERS TO MAX MÜLLER -THE JEWS IN CORNWALL-THE METEOR SHOWER-LETTER to Professor ADAMS AND SERMON IN THE CHAPEL ROYAL-THE HOUSE OF LORDS-A FATHER'S EDUCATION OF HIS SON "FRASER'S MAGAZINE "-BIRD LIFE, WOOD WRENS-NAMES AND PLACES-DARWINISM-BEAUTY OF COLOUR, its INFLUENCE AND ATTRACTIONS-FLAT-FISH-ICE PROBLEMS-BAGSHOT SANDS -ST. ANDREWS AND BRITISH ASSOCIATION-ABERGEldie Castle-SCOTTISH ANTIQUITIES-HORACE FIELD'S HEROISM-RULES FOR STAMMERERS.

VOL II.

Q