CHAPTER XVII.

1857.

AGED 38.

"TWO YEARS AGO"-THE Crowded CHURCH-UNQuiet Sundays-Letters TO MR. BULLAR-REV. PETER WOOD-DR. RIGG-MR. TOM HUGHES' PIETISTS AND Ovμôs-LETTER FROM A NAVAL CHAPLAIN-LECTURE AT BRISTOL-MARK IX. 44-INDIAN MUTINY-TEMPORARY FAILURE OF ASSOCIATIONS-THE ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE.

C. K.

"THERE is a mean curiosity, as of a child opening a forbidden door, or a servant prying into his master's business ;—and a noble curiosity, questioning in the front of danger, the source of the great river beyond the sand, -the place of the great continents beyond the sea; a nobler curiosity still, which questions of the source of the River of Life, and of the space of the Continent of Heaven, things which the Angels desire to look into."-RUSKIN.

"I HAVE boundless faith in 'time and light.' I shall see what is the truth some day, and if I do not some one else will, which is far more important. . .

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CHAPTER XVII.

THE year 1857 opened brightly on Charles Kingsley, for it found him, for the first time for three years, in his own home for the winter at Eversley, with his wife and his three children.

"I am writing nothing now; but taking breath, and working in the parish-never better than I am at present; with many blessings, and, awful confession for mortal man, no sorrows! I sometimes think there must be terrible arrears of sorrow to be paid off by me-that I may be as other men are ! God help me in that day!"

He writes in January to his friend Mr. Hughes:—

"The book is done ('Two Years Ago'); the last proof going through the press now, and I know you will like it. I am better off now than I have been for years! God be thanked, and God grant, too, that I may not require to be taken down by some terrible trouble. I often fancy I shall be. If I am, I shall deserve it, as much as any man who ever lived. I say so now-justifying God beforehand, lest I should not have faith and patience enough to justify Him when the punishment comes. . . . Many thanks for your wholesome letter-the rightest letter I have had for many a day. It has taught me a great deal, dear old man; and you are nearer to God than I am, I see well. . . .”

The "terrible trouble" came,-but not in the shape of personal grief or domestic affliction; and, till the awful news from India burst upon England, all went well. He was made this year a Fellow of the Linnean Society, which had been one of the ambitions of his life. Two visits from his dear friend Max Müller (soon to be more nearly related to him), refreshed his spirit. Mr. Chadwick, with whose kind assistance he was hard at work on sanitary and educational subjects, came to discuss these questions with him, and a strange medley of visitors pro

posed themselves, and were made welcome, at the Rectory. One day, a Unitarian minister,-clergymen of the Church of England, Dissenters, Americans-all came on missions of their own, and opened their hearts to him as they could to no other man. And on the lawn, under the old fir trees on long summer days, he and his guests discussed all things in heaven and earth.

Sunday after Sunday he had the keen delight of seeing Crimean officers from Aldershot and Sandhurst in his congregation. Among others one who had been dangerously wounded in the Redan, at Sevastopol, and who, when lying between life and death at Scutari had read "Yeast," and determined, if he ever came back alive, "to go and hear the clergyman preach who could give such a picture of a hunting scene as the one in the opening chapter." One Sunday he came-while still on crutches-a stranger to Mr. Kingsley, but soon to become a friend, a constant attendant at church, and always a welcome guest at the Rectory early Sunday dinner.

Each day the post brought some letter either of thanks for his books or asking counsel. He preached a series of sermons on the Creed, and one, by request of a member of the congregation who wrote anonymously, on the Intermediate and Future State, when he ventured to speak more plainly than he had yet done in the pulpit on the subject so near his heart. The little church was often full of strangers, and one Sunday, when twelve carriages were standing in and outside the stable-yard, the sexton was heard to say, he could not think why there was "such flitting to and fro to our church on Sundays." Having heard the same preaching for fifteen years himself, he could not tell what the wonder of it was. To the rector this notoriety was simply painful: "I cannot bear having my place turned into a fair on Sundays, and all this talking after church." So to avoid the greetings of acquaintances and the observation of strangers in the churchyard, he had a little back gate made into his garden, and escaped after service through the vestry door. His whole soul and energy were thrown so intensely into the services of his church, that when they were over he found quiet essential to help him to calm down from the excitement of his own

earnestness.

In the summer the news of the Indian mutiny came, which absorbed and depressed him; and some friends, knowing how hard-worked and sad he was, invited him to go with them to the Manchester Exhibition, then open, with all its glorious pictures: but when the day came he could not make up his mind to leave a poor sick man, who he felt would miss his daily visits. With his keen love of art, it cost him a pang to give up the sight of such a collection of pictures as might never again come together in England during his lifetime; but he said he could not have enjoyed them while a parishioner was counting on seeing him. This trifling incident is mentioned to show how thorough and unselfish he was in his parish work, which in this case could so easily have been passed over for three days to any neighbouring clergyman.

He seldom went to London; and to a friend who pressed him to come up and hear one of his own songs finely sung there, he refused. "I love home and green fields more and more, and never lust either after Babylon or the Continent . . .'

TO JOHN BULLAR, Esq.

...

EVERSLEY, Jan. 23, 1857.

"Of such atoms is life made up! and so cautious ought one to be, lest one wrong at once one's neighbour and one's self. The thing you speak of is clean gone from my mind, and sounds like a fiction out of a book. All I do recollect is, that when I saw you first I was afraid of you. For you must know that I am-for reasons which I can't explain to myself afraid of men whom I suspect to be experienced, sober, self-possessed people; above all, afraid of lawyers; (Mr. Bullar was a lawyer in London); and there was a reverend look about you which made me shy. You must know, too, that the fearful curse of stammering, now, thank God, all but gone, which has been my misery from childhood, has always made me avoid an introduction to men, to whom (I could see by one mesmeric glance) I should inevitably stammer. suppose that I saw that in your case, and was afraid of venturing near you. However, that is a sorrow of the past, thank God! and I entreat you, forgive and forget any rudeness of mine. Little did I know then and there (wherever it was, for I forget) what manner of man you were, and how strangely your inner heart and mine answered each other. I suppose there was some divine good reason why I should not then.

VOL. II.

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