Isaac Taylor, an excellent man, but troubled with crude and hasty theories on these points of Pantheism. Be warned in time, and study these subjects, whatever be your conclusions, more rigidly and scientifically, that you may be no longer misled yourself or mislead others by catchwords and epithets. For he who vents against any man such words as Rationalism, Pantheism, and Neo-Platonism, to which the public attaches a vague horror, not caring to understand in what the imputation consists, is doing the work of the devil, who is a liar and a slanderer, and a sower of division between man and man, and God will require an account of all idle words in the day of judgment. . . . I have spoken my mind very solemnly, and neither, as you fancy, in heat or haste; and you have spoken yours calmly and courteously in return. I fear that we shall not alter each other's opinions much, so leave the matter in God's hands. I shall be quite silent on any charges which you may bring against me. My business is attack, and not defence. If I cannot make myself understood the first time of speaking, I am not likely to do it by any subsequent word-splitting explanations. "God be with you, whatsoever you write or think."

This correspondence led to a personal acquaintance and warm friendship between Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Rigg, now the respected head of the Wesleyan Training College, Horseferry Road, London.

In February Mr. Evan Franks, of Norwood, who was engaged in a good work among an unfortunate class, wrote to ask him to publish his sermons as tracts for distribution. In his answer,

Mr. Kingsley, speaking of Mr. Franks' work of mercy, says :

EVERSLEY, Feb. 8, 1857. "One thing in your letter strikes me. You say how, fresh from that noble sermon of Maurice's (in Lincoln's Inn ?) you went to the destitute women, and were, as it were, forced to believe in the gospel of the sermon, by the very horror of the fact you saw. I can understand that. In the novel I have just written,* I bring in two good people, forced, by the horrors of a cholera, to believe that God is love. I merely put my own experience into their mouths; it seems I have put yours also. So much the better. I wish much to know more of you. Such scenes as you describe I have seen-and too many-in past years; for my acquaintance with the horrors of London' is considerable: but it will do my soul good-living here in pleasant country, among hearty

*"Two Years Ago."

country folk-to renew my acquaintance with our national shame. As for speaking to them, poor dear creatures, I would do it gladly, only I fear no one of the good folks engaged in the work would like what I should say must say—or hold my peace.

"As to the sermons, I must wait, I fear, till I can afford to publish at a loss, or till the popular taste (quickened, perhaps, by some religious crisis, such as seems to me not far off) creates a demand. Meanwhile, I look upon my thoughts as most crude, merely tentative, and at best such as any man can draw from the Bible, if he will sit down to read it simply and honestly as it stands. I am no prophet-no man less; what few leading ideas I have, I owe to the way in which Mr. Maurice has taught me to read my Bible as it stands. I am delighted to hear about your work among the Crystal Palace men; and I think that, with them, things read vivâ voce, will have more effect than any tracts. The human voice and eye give a reality to the thought, provided the voice and eye be real and earnest also. I saw this much in the noble work which Miss Marsh, a friend of mine, did among the navvies at the Crystal Palace, when they were starting for the Crimea. So work on, 'getrost und wohlgemuth,' as the Germans say, and cast thy bread on the waters, for thou wilt find it after many days.

Feb. 17, 1857.

". . . As to your being an Independent, sir; what's that to me? provided you-as I see well you do-do justly and love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. I don't think you will ever find the freedom in your communion which you would in ours-the freest, thank God, in the world: but I should be a second Ham if I had no respect for the Independents. For why? My forefathers were Independents, and fought by Cromwell's side at Naseby and Marston Moor; and what is more, lost broad acres for their Puritanism. The younger brother of an ancestor of mine was one of the original Pilgrim Fathers, so I am full of old Puritan blood, though I have utterly-indeed, our family have for generations thrown off their Calvinism: yet I glory in the morale, the God-fearing valour and earnestness of the old heroes, and trust I should have believed with them had I lived in their day, for want of any better belief. But it will not do now, as you have found already. The bed is too short and the cloak too narrow."

TO MRS. GASKELL.

ST. LEONARD's, May 14, 1857.

"Let me renew our long-interrupted acquaintance by complimenting you on poor Miss Bronte's Life. You have had a delicate and a great

work to do, and you have done it admirably. Be sure that the book will do good. It will shame literary people into some stronger belief that a simple, virtuous, practical home life is consistent with high imaginative genius; and it will shame, too, the prudery of a not over cleanly, though carefully white-washed age, into believing that purity is now (as in all ages till now) quite compatible with the knowledge of evil. confess that the book has made me ashamed of myself. Jane Eyre' I hardly looked into, very seldom reading a work of fiction-yours, indeed, and Thackeray's * are the only ones I care to open. Shirley' disgusted me at the opening: and I gave up the writer and her books with the notion that she was a person who liked coarseness. How I misjudged her! and how thankful I am that I never put a word of my misconceptions into print, or recorded my misjudgments of one who is a whole heaven above me.

"Well have you done your work, and given us the picture of a valiant woman made perfect by sufferings. I shall now read carefully and lovingly every word she has written, especially those poems, which ought not to have fallen dead as they did, and which seem to be (from a review in the current Fraser), of remarkable strength and purity. I must add that Mrs. Kingsley agrees fully with all I have said, and bids me tell you that she is more intensely interested in the book than in almost any which she has ever read."

TO TOM HUGHES, ESQ.

EVERSLEY, June 12, 1857.

"Eight and thirty years old am I this day, Tummas; whereof twentytwo were spent in pain, in woe, and vanitie; and sixteen in very great happiness, such as few men deserve, and I don't deserve at all. And now I feel like old Jacob, 'with my staff I passed over Jordan, and now I am become two bands'-for why? I actually couldn't get home from Hastings except in two relays, what with servants, tutor, and governess. Well, Tom, God has been very good to me; and I can't help feeding a hope that I may fight a good fight yet before I die, and get something done. I've done little enough yet. The best work ever I've done has been my plain parish work, and that I've done miserably ill, cowardly and idly of late, and bullying and second-hand

Of Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" his estimate was very high. In a letter to his wife in 1850 he says, "I can read nothing but 'Vanity Fair,' over and over again, which fills me with delight, wonder, and humility. I would sooner have drawn Rawdon Crawley than all the folks I ever drew.”

dogmatic of old; but perhaps I shall get training enough to go into the fight well before I die; and if not, I trust one's not going to be idle up there, Tom. Surely as long as there's a devil or devils, even an ass or asses, in the universe, one will have to turn out to the reveille now and then, wherever one is, and satisfy one's Ovμós 'rage' or 'pluck,' which Plato averreth (for why, he'd have been a wraxling man, and therefore was a philosopher, and the king of 'em) to be the root of all virtue. Why not, Tom? Mayn't we?

"Now to business, Tommy, which is fish. O that I could go to Lambourne Monday! But I preach in town Sunday, and have three good fellows a dying in my parish, so that I must be at home Monday afternoon. But oh if you take Donnington Priory, won't I immortalise you in verse and prose? Oh the bliss! I think the boys will catch o. The fish will be glutted with the fly, and attendant Naiads pitying, holding basins under their noses: mortal aldermanic they were Wednesday here. I caught a fairish lot on the Caperer, which they took as a relish to the heavy fly; but the moment they were ashore the Mayflies came up. Oh a Dover steamer in a chopping sea was cleanly to it. Poor carnal parties! Why shouldn't they tuck while they can? Mayflies come to them at Whitsuntide, as club-feasts do to the clods, to give them one jolly blow out in the year, and it's a pleasure to look at them. That's why good fishing days always fall on Sundays, Tom, to give the poor fish a good day's appetite (dinner always ready), and nobody to catch them while they're enjoying it.

"Also make a note of this. A party with doubtful h's, and commercial demeanour, appears on Wednesday on our little stream, and kills awfully. Throws a beautiful line, and catches more than I have in a day for this two years here; fly, a little green drake, with a ridiculous tufted bright yellow wing, like nothing as ever was. Stood aghast; went home and dreamed all the spiders' webs by the stream were full of thousands of them, the most beautiful yellow ephemera with green peacock-tail heads. Oh the beauty of them; and wasn't I riled when I found it was all for fancy? But won't I 'realoirioize,' as the Scots parsons say, those little fellows next year, and apply them to the part affected ?"

EVERSLEY, 1857.

"I have often been minded to write to you about 'Tom Brown,' so here goes. I have puffed it everywhere I went, but I soon found how true the adage is that good wine needs no bush, for every one had read it already, and from every one, from the fine lady on her throne, to the red-coat on his cock-horse, and the school-boy on his forrum (as our

Tom Brown and θυμός.

27

Irish brethren call it), I have heard but one word, and that is, that it is the jolliest book they ever read. Among a knot of red-coats at the cover-side, some very fast fellow said, 'If I had had such a book in my boyhood, I should have been a better man now!' and more than one capped his sentiment frankly. Now isn't it a comfort to your old bones to have written such a book, and a comfort to see that fellows are in a humour to take it in? So far from finding men of our rank in a bad vein, or sighing over the times and prospects of the rising generation, I can't help thinking they are very teachable, humble, honest fellows, who want to know what's right, and if they don't go and do it, still think the worse of themselves therefore. I remark now, that with hounds, and in fast company, I never hear an oath, and that, too, is a sign of self-restraint. Moreover, drinking is gone out, and, good God, what a blessing! I have good hopes, and better of our class, than of the class below. They are effeminate, and that makes them sensual. Pietists of all ages (George Fox, my dear friend, among the worst), never made a greater mistake (and they have made many), than in fancying that by keeping down manly Ouós, which Plato saith is the root of all virtue, they could keep down sensuality. They were dear good old fools. However, the day of Pietism' is gone, and 'Tom Brown' is a heavy stone in its grave. 'Him no get up again after that,' as the niggers say of a buried obi-man. I am trying to polish the poems: but Maurice's holidays make me idle. Powles' school has been most successful for him; he has come home healthier and jollier than ever he was in his life, and is truly a noble boy.

"Sell your last coat and buy a spoon. I have a spoon of huge size (Farlow his make). I killed forty pounds weight of pike, &c., on it the other day, at Strathfieldsaye, to the astonishment and delight of who cut small jokes on ‘a spoon at each end,' &c., but altered his note when he saw the melancholies coming ashore, one every ten minutes, and would try his own hand. I have killed heaps of big pike round with it. I tried it in Lord Eversley's lakes on Monday, when the fish wouldn't have even his fly. Capricious party is Jaques. Next day killed a seven pounder at Hurst. I am going again to the Speaker's, for he wants his jack killed down, and has hurt his leg so that he can't do it, wherefore he has sent for me. Ain't I a slaved party; ill-used by aristocrats, and compelled to fish in waters where his last was eleven pounds, and where he has had them out of twenty-four and eighteen?

"We had a pretty thing on Friday with Garth's, the first run I've seen this year. Out of the Clay Vale below Tilney Hall, pace as good as could be, fields three acres each, fences awful, then over Hazeley Heath to Bramshill, shoved him through after a false cast, and a streamer over