On a white marble cross in Eversley churchyard, England, under a spray of the passion-flower, are the Latin words, "Amavimus, Amamus, Amabimus" (we have loved, we love, we shall love); and above them, around the cross, "God is love." Those were the words chosen by the famous preacher and author; and they were the key-note of the life of one who lived for his people.

Charles Kingsley, the son of a minister, was born at Holne Vicarage, Devonshire, England, June 12, 1819. Of his father, he wrote in 1865, "He 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 (seventy-nine), my father's passion for knowledge, and the sentiment and fancy of a young girl."

From his father, Charles seems to have inherited his love of art, natural history, and athletic sports; from his mother, his love of poetry and romance, and the force and originality which made him a marked character in his town and nation.

When four years of age, he used to make a pulpit in his nursery, arrange the chairs for a congregation, and preach as follows, his mother taking down the words unobserved: "It is not right to fight. Honesty has no chance against stealing. 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." His poems at this time were remarkable for a child.

He studied and loved nature, and delighted in sunsets, rocks, flowers, and the wonders of the sea. At Clovelly, whither the rector had moved his family, Charles found great delight in the study of shells, and in the company of the warm-hearted fishermen. But for this early association, it is probable that the beautiful song of the "Three Fishers" would never have been written.

When the lad was twelve years old he was sent, with his brother Herbert, to a preparatory school at Clifton, under the Rev. John Knight. Here he showed an affectionate and gentle nature, only excited to anger when the servant swept away the precious shells and grasses collected in his walks on the Downs.

Afterwards he and Herbert were sent to the grammar school at Helston, which was in charge of the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Here he became the intimate friend of Richard Cowley Powles, afterwards fellow and tutor of Exeter College, Oxford.

Mr. Powles wrote of his friend later, "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 impatience of injustice, the quick and tender sympathy, that distinguished the man's entrance on public life, were all in the boy.... For botany and geology he had an absolute enthusiasm.... 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 geologist."

"In manner," says the Rev. Mr. Coleridge, "he was strikingly courteous, and thus, with his wide and ready sympathies and bright intelligence, was popular alike with tutor, schoolfellows, and servants."

Kingsley always regretted that he did not go to school at Rugby, as he thought nothing "but a public school education would have overcome his constitutional shyness."

The Kingsley family removed to Chelsea when Charles was seventeen, and he became a day student at King's College. Two years later, in 1838, he went to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he stood first in classics and mathematics at the examinations. For his prize he selected a fine edition of Plato in eleven volumes.

In the summer of 1839, July 6, when he was twenty, he met Fanny, daughter of Pascoe Grenfell, whom he afterwards married. "That was my real wedding-day," he said years later. At that time his mind was full of religious doubt, and he was far from happy. The young lady proved a most valuable intellectual and spiritual helper; and after two months of companionship, when he returned to Cambridge, she loaned him many books and wrote him letters which proved a life-long blessing. Carlyle's "French Revolution" had a great effect upon his mind, in establishing his belief in God's righteous government of the world; also Maurice's "Kingdom of Christ," to which he said he owed more than to any book he had ever read.

Young Kingsley was at this time robust in health, able to walk from Cambridge to London, fifty-two miles, starting early and reaching the latter city at nine P.M. For many years he delighted in a country walk of twenty or twenty-five miles.

In 1841, after the struggle through which most persons pass before deciding upon a life-work, he gave himself to the ministry, rather than to the law, for which his name had been entered at Lincoln's Inn. He wrote to Fanny, June 12,—

"My birth-night. I have been for the last hour on the seashore, not dreaming, but thinking deeply and strongly, and forming determinations 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."

After taking honors at Cambridge, and reading for Holy Orders, he began to write the life of his ideal saint, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, for his intended wife, if, indeed, he should ever win her.

The curacy of Eversley was offered him, and he accepted it at twenty-three. The fir-trees on the rectory lawn were a great comfort. He wrote to Fanny, "Those delicious self-sown firs! Every step I wander they whisper to me of you, the delicious past melting into the more delicious future."

But from the opposition of friends the correspondence was broken, and for a year the hard parish work was carried on alone. In his parting letter to her he says, urging her to practise music, "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....

"I have since nine this morning cut wood for an hour; spent an hour and more in prayer and humiliation ... 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." ...

The young curate lived in a thatched cottage, and found a remedy for his loneliness in hard work. The church services had been neglected, and the ale-houses were preferred on Sunday to the house of worship. There were no schools for the children worthy of the name, and the minister had to be teacher as well as preacher.

Finally the long silence was broken, and Kingsley wrote again to his Fanny, "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 inexpressively mournful. It seems just like one's own feelings,—exultation and action, with the remembrance of past sorrow wailing up.... Let us never despise the wandering minstrel!... And who knows what tender thoughts his own sweet music stirs within him, though he eat in pot-houses and sleep in barns!"

Again he wrote, looking forward to the home they would some time have together, "We will hunt out all the texts in the Bible about masters and servants, to form rules upon them.... Our work must be done by praying for our people, by preaching to them, ... 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."

He carried out his Christian principles in his relations with his employees. At his death all the servants in his house had lived with him from seventeen to twenty-six years.

Early in 1844 Kingsley, then twenty-five, was married to the woman he loved, and the curate became the rector at Eversley. The house was damp, from the rain flooding the rooms on the ground floor, and the land required much drainage. But the happy husband was full of energy, and set to work to make the place habitable and attractive.

At once the young preacher established among the laborers a shoe-club, coal-club, loan-fund, and lending-library. A school for adults was held at the rectory three nights a week all through the winter; a class in music; a Sunday-school met there every Sunday morning and afternoon; and in the outlying districts weekly lectures were held at the cottages for the aged and feeble. None of the grown-up men and women among the laborers could read or write, and the minister became their devoted teacher. He taught them to love the nature he loved,—the flowers, trees, birds, and ever-changing sky. He visited the poor, the sick, and the dying, and soon became the idol of his people. He fed their minds as well as their souls; he knew, as so few really know, the all-important work which the pastor has committed to his hands. No wonder that London and England, and America finally, heard of this model preacher, and came to love him.

The year after his marriage, 1845, was saddened by the death of his brother, Lieut. Gerald Kingsley, in Torres Straits, on board Her Majesty's ship Royalist. All the officers and half the crew died of fever. His brother Herbert had died of heart-disease in 1834, when they were boys together at school.

The drama of "St. Elizabeth" was now finished; and in 1847 the young preacher started for London, on a serious mission,—to find a publisher. He read the poem to his noble friend, Mr. Maurice, who wrote a preface for it; and to Coleridge, who gave him a commendatory letter to a publisher. The poem met the usual fate,—declined with thanks.

He wrote his wife, "I am now going to Parker's in the Strand. I am at once very happy, very lonely, and very anxious. How absence increases 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." ...

Later he wrote to Mr. Powles, "'St. Elizabeth' is in the press, 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."

Having earned a little money by extra Sunday services at Pennington, he took his wife and his two small children, Rose and Maurice, for a six weeks' holiday to the seaside, near the edge of the New Forest. Here, revelling in the scenery, he wrote several ballads.

When the drama "The Saints' Tragedy" was published, it was fiercely attacked by the High Church party at Oxford. In Germany it was read and liked, and Chevalier Bunsen wrote heartily in praise of it.

When Kingsley, now twenty-nine, went for a few weeks to Oxford, to visit his friend, Mr. Powles, Fellow of Exeter, he received much attention on account of his book. He wrote to his wife, "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.... Froude gets more and more interesting. We had such a conversation this morning!—the crust is breaking, and the man coming through that cold, polished shell. My darling babies! kiss them very much for me."

The parish work at Eversley increased month by month. A writing-class for girls was held in the empty coach-house, and a cottage school for infants was begun. He wrote his first article for Fraser's Magazine on Popery. He preached to his congregation on the topics of the day,—emigration, and the political and social disturbances of the time. He was, in fact, what a preacher should be,—a leader of the people.

He accepted the professorship of English literature and composition at Queen's College, Harley Street, of which Mr. Maurice was president, and went up to London once a week to lecture. He became the devoted friend of Thomas Hughes, author of "School Days at Rugby;" of Bishop Stanley of Norwich and his distinguished son, Dean Stanley, and of many others.

During this year, 1847-48, on account of great distress among the people, there were riots in London and in other large cities. The troops were called out under Wellington to disperse the Chartists, who demanded a "People's Charter" from Parliament, with more rights for the laborers.

Kingsley threw himself heartily into the conflict. He wrote a conciliatory letter to the "Workmen of England," which was posted up in London.

"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 in which you are forced to live crowded together; they see your children growing up in ignorance and temptation, for want of fit education; they see intelligent and well-read men among you, shut out from a freeman'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."

And then he urges them "to turn back from the precipice of riot, which ends in the gulf of universal distrust, stagnation, starvation.... Workers of England, be wise, and then you must be free; for you will be fit to be free."

For four years, 1848-52, he wrote for three periodicals, Politics for the People, The Christian Socialist, and the Journal of Association.

Many friends and relations begged him to desist from fighting the battles of the people, as such sympathy "was likely to spoil his prospects in life." But he wrote his wife in reference to this matter, "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.... 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?"

He always felt "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."

In the autumn of 1848, while writing "Yeast," a novel which was first published in Fraser's Magazine, doing the work at night, when his other duties were finished and the house was still, he broke down, and for months was unable to do more than walk along the seashore and gather shells, even conversation being too exhausting for him.

Friends came to show their sympathy and fondness for the great-hearted man—among them Mr. Froude, who met Charlotte, the sister of Mrs. Kingsley, and married her.

Returning to the work at Eversley, where a low fever had broken out among the people, and where it was almost impossible to obtain nurses, Kingsley cared for the sick, watching all night with a laborer's wife, the mother of a large family, that she might receive nourishment every half-hour, and soon broke down again, and was obliged to go to Devonshire.

On his return to Eversley, cholera had once more appeared in England, and early and late he carried on a crusade against dirt and bad drainage.

As his means were limited, he usually took two or more pupils to fit them for the ministry; and now began his "Alton Locke," the autobiography of a tailor and a poet, in the interest of workingmen. "God grant," he says in the preface, "that the workmen of the South of England may bestir themselves ere it be too late, and discover that the only defence against want is self-restraint." He urges that they "organize among themselves associations for buying and selling the necessaries of life, which may enable them to weather the dark season of high prices and stagnation, which is certain, sooner or later, to follow in the footsteps of war."

To write this book, he got up at five every morning and worked till breakfast, devoting the rest of the day to his sermons, his pupils, and the various schools and societies of his parish. "His habit," says his wife, in her life of Kingsley, "was thoroughly to master his subject, whether book or sermon, always out in the open air,—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.... For many years his writing was all done by his wife, from his dictation, while he paced up and down the room."

When "Alton Locke" was finished, the old difficulty of finding a publisher began. Messrs. Parker, who had brought out "Yeast," which had caused much theological discussion, refused to take another book. Finally, through the influence of Carlyle, Messrs. Chapman & Hall were induced to bring it out.

The press, as in the case of "Yeast," was severe on "Alton Locke;" but brave Thomas Carlyle wrote Kingsley to "pay no attention at all to the foolish clamor of reviewers, whether laudatory or condemnatory."

Kingsley's correspondence increased day by day. One person wrote about going over to the Romish Church; another about his atheistic doubts; another desired to reform his life; and others asked advice on almost numberless matters.

To an atheist, who was later converted under Kingsley, he wrote, "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, in 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 a sense of forgiveness."

Kingsley would say to his wife, as a letter was answered, or another chapter of a book finished, "Thank God, one more thing done!—and oh, how blessed it will be when it is all over, to lie down in that dear churchyard!" The work of the great world, with all its sorrows, had tired Kingsley at thirty-two.

"Hypatia," one of the novels which will last for centuries, was begun in 1851. He writes to the Rev. Mr. Maurice in January, "If I do not use my pen to the uttermost in earning my daily bread, I shall not get through this year.... My available income 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 services on Sunday, will demand my whole time."

As to "Hypatia," he writes, "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."

In October he writes to a friend, "'Hypatia' grows, little darling, and I am getting very fond of her."

When the book was published in 1853, two years after it was begun, it aroused most bitter criticism from a portion of the English Church. But no adverse criticism could prevent its being read and loved by the people of two continents. Thirty years later it had gone through thirteen editions.

Our own Whittier wrote Mrs. Kingsley, after her husband's death, "My copy of his 'Hypatia' is worn by frequent perusal, and the echoes of his rare and beautiful lyrics never die out of my memory. But since I have seen him, the man seems greater than the author.... His heart seemed overcharged with interest in the welfare, physical, moral, and spiritual, of his race. I was conscious in his presence of the bracing atmosphere of a noble nature. He seemed to me one of the manliest of men."

No man could have drawn that masterful picture of the beautiful maid of Alexandria, philosopher, mathematician, teacher, and leader of her time, who had not the greatest reverence for woman, and a belief in her marvellous power. Such a man could never limit the sphere of woman by any human barriers. He said to a friend that his aim was, in every book he wrote, to set forth "woman as the teacher, the natural, and therefore divine, guide, purifier, inspirer of the man."

One learns to love the brilliant Hypatia, as did the monk, Philammon, and the Jew, Raphael Aben-Ezra, and shudders when she is torn in pieces about the age of forty by the mob.

The book holds one spell-bound from beginning to end, and many another copy besides that of Whittier "is worn by frequent perusal."

Mr. C. Kegan Paul, the London publisher, was staying at the home of the Kingsleys when much of "Hypatia" was written. "I was struck," he says, speaking of the author, "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." "When I have done 'Hypatia,'" he writes Mr. Ludlow, "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 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, drawing; but poetry is the true sphere, combining painting and music and history all in one."

"At that time," says a friend, "in his 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 starvation wages, stifling workshops, reeking alleys, careless landlords, roofless and crowded cottages.... No human being but was sure of a patient, interested hearer in him. I have seen him seat himself, hatless, beside a tramp on the grass outside of his gate in his eagerness to catch exactly what he had to say, searching him, as they sat, in his keen, kindly way with question and look."

About the time of the opening of the Great Exhibition, so dear to the heart of the noble Prince Albert, Kingsley was asked to preach a sermon to workingmen in a London church near by, which he did with great sympathy and tenderness. Just as the blessing was to be pronounced, the clergyman who had invited Kingsley rose and remarked that it was his painful duty to say that he believed much of what Mr. Kingsley had said "was dangerous and untrue."

Kingsley, wounded beyond expression, quietly left the church, and a riot of the workmen was with difficulty prevented. That night in his sadness and exhaustion he wrote that immortal song of the "Three Fishers," which seemed to soothe and rest him.

The winter and spring of 1854 were spent at Torquay, Mrs. Kingsley having become ill from the damp rectory at Eversley. Mr. Kingsley also had become worn in mind and body from the constant attacks of the religious press against his supposed liberal views. He and his children passed happy days along the seashore, gathering specimens to send to the scientist, Mr. H. P. Gosse, in London, and collecting materials for his articles in the North British Review on "The Wonders of the Shore." Before leaving Torquay he made a list of about sixty species of Mollusks, Annelides, Crustacea, and Polypes found on the shore, nearly all new to him.

In February he made his first visit to Scotland, to deliver before the Philosophical Institute at Edinburgh four lectures on the "Schools of Alexandria." He writes to his wife, "The lecture went off well. I was dreadfully nervous, and actually cried with fear up in my room beforehand; but after praying I recovered myself, and got through it very well, being much cheered and clapped."

When his wife was saddened on account of debts incurred through illness, Mr. Kingsley cheered her with his brave heart. "To pay them," he said, "I have thought, I have written, I have won for us a name which, please God, may last among the names of English writers.... So out of evil God brings good; or, rather, out of necessity He brings strength ... and the meanest actual want may be the means of calling into actual life the possible but sleeping embryo of the very noblest faculties."

In the winter of 1851 Kingsley wrote "Brave Words to Brave Soldiers," several thousand copies of which were distributed among the suffering soldiers before Sebastopol in the Crimea; also his novel, "Westward Ho!"

Many letters of appreciation came after the publication of this book. A naval officer wrote from Hong Kong, "Among the many blessings for which I have had to thank God this night, the most special has been for the impressions produced by your noble sermon of 'Westward Ho!' Some months ago I read it for the first time, then sailed on a long cruise; and now on returning have read it again with prayer that has been answered, for God's blessing has gone with it."

Kingsley gave lectures in London before the Working Men's College, and a series to women interested in laborers. To the latter he said, "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!"

As to teaching boys, he said, "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.... There is a latent chivalry, doubt it not, in the heart of every untutored clod."

In the summer of 1856, when he was thirty-seven, Kingsley spent a happy vacation with Mr. Thomas Hughes and Mr. Tom Taylor at Snowdon, Wales, which resulted in the writing of "Two Years Ago."

In June, 1857, Kingsley writes to his friend Thomas Hughes, "Eight and thirty years old am I this day, Thomas, whereof twenty-two were spent in pain, in woe, and vanities, and sixteen in very great happiness, such as few men deserve, and I don't deserve at all.... Well, Tom, God has been very good to me.... The best work ever I've done has been my plain parish work."

Diphtheria, then a new disease in England, appeared at Eversley. "Some might have smiled," says Mrs. Kingsley, at seeing her husband "going in and out of the cottages with great bottles of gargle under his arm."

The earnest preaching, the lectures, the books and correspondence, continued. Many guests came now to Eversley,—Harriet Beecher Stowe and others from America, where his literary work seemed at first more appreciated than at home; Miss Bremer, the Swedish novelist, who after she went home sent him TegnÈr's "Frithiof'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 Vikings, his friend and admirer, Fredrika Bremer."

Dean Stanley came; Max MÜller also, and spent the first week of his married life at the rectory—he had married a beloved niece of Kingsley's, the G. to whom he wrote the poem,—

When Kingsley was forty, he preached for the first time before the Queen and Prince Albert at Buckingham Palace, and was soon made one of Her Majesty's chaplains. He preached at the Chapel Royal, St. James's, and before the Court in the private chapel at Windsor Castle. From this time onward he received the utmost consideration and appreciation from the royal household. Having been made Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, which position he filled admirably for nine years, he was requested by the Prince Consort to give private lectures to the Prince of Wales, who had just left Oxford. The Prince came to Mr. Kingsley's house three times a week, twice with the class, and every Saturday to go over the week's work alone.

Every now and then Mr. Kingsley, from his ardent nature, broke down from overwork. Then he would go with his wife to the Isle of Wight to see Tennyson and his wife, or with James Anthony Froude to Ireland.

Death was beginning to enter the family circle. His father died in the winter of 1860. He wrote Mr. Maurice, "How every wrong word and deed toward that good old man, and every sorrow I caused him, rise up in judgment against one; and how one feels that right-doing does not atone for wrong-doing."

In the spring Charlotte, Mrs. Kingsley's sister, the wife of Froude, was laid under the fir-trees in Eversley churchyard. "Her grave," says Mrs. Kingsley, "was to him during the remainder of his own life a sacred spot, where he would go almost daily to commune in spirit with the dead, where flowers were always kept blooming, and where on the Sunday morning he would himself superintend the decorations,—the cross and wreaths of choice flowers placed by loving hands upon it." Prince Albert died in 1861, a great personal loss to Kingsley, as to all England.

In the spring of 1862 "The Water-babies" was written, and dedicated to his youngest son, Grenville Arthur, then four years old, named after his godfather, Dean Stanley, and Sir Richard Grenvil, one of the heroes of "Westward Ho!" from whom Mrs. Kingsley's family claimed descent.

The strange experiences of poor little Tom, the chimney-sweep, after he left the hard work in the chimneys, under his brutal master, Grimes, to enjoy the wonders of the sea, as a water-baby, are most amusing and graphic. The book has always had a great circulation.

Three years after this, Queen Emma of the Hawaiian Islands spent two days at the Eversley Rectory. She said to Mrs. Kingsley, "It is so strange to me to be staying with you and to see Mr. Kingsley. My husband read your husband's 'Water-babies' to our little prince." On her return she sent to Mr. Kingsley the Prayer Book in Hawaiian, translated by her husband, King Kamehameha IV.

Kingsley did not forget how hard it had been for an unknown author to find a publisher. Mr. Charles Henry Bennett, a man of genius, but struggling with poverty, had illustrated "Pilgrim's Progress," but could get no one to take it. Kingsley wrote a preface, and Messrs. Longman at once undertook to bring it out. Thus did the noble man help artist and author, tramp and sick laborer, seeker after knowledge or after the comfort of the gospel.

In 1863 Kingsley was made a Fellow of the Geological Society, proposed by his friend Sir Charles Bunbury, and seconded by Sir Charles Lyell. He was already a Fellow of the Linnean Society. His name was proposed for the degree of D.C.L. at Oxford by the Prince of Wales, but was withdrawn on account of opposition from the extreme High Church party.

He now gave lectures to the boys at Wellington College, to which his son Maurice had gone, and assisted them in forming a museum; he brought out a volume of poems and one or two volumes of sermons. No wonder he failed in health, and was obliged to go to France with Froude, the latter going on into Spain for historical work.

The labors of the devoted preacher and author increased year after year. Impressed more than ever with the monotonous life of the English laborer and his hard-worked wife, Kingsley started Penny Readings for the people, and village concerts, in which friends from London helped.

He attended the national science meetings; he preached in Westminster Abbey; he brought out a series of papers for children on natural science, called "Madam How and Lady Why;" he read sixteen volumes of Comte's works in preparation for his Cambridge lectures—he had already given a course on the History of America.

In 1869 he was appointed Canon of Chester. Here he started a class in botany,—a walk and a field lecture were enjoyed once a week by a hundred or more persons,—which has resulted in the Chester Natural History Society, with about six hundred members. He also gave many geological lectures. "The Soil of the Field," "The Pebbles in the Street," "The Stones in the Wall," "The Coal in the Fire," "The Lime in the Mortar," "The Slates on the Roof," were published in a book called "Town Geology." How broadened would be the minds of many in our congregations, especially the minds of our young men and women, if more of our ministers would teach the wonders of the world in which we live!

Kingsley was made President of the Education Section of the Social Science Congress at Bristol, and one hundred thousand copies of his valuable inaugural address were distributed. At this Congress he met Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell from America, and she became a welcome guest at Eversley. He was an ardent advocate of medical education for women.

He wrote to John Stuart Mill that his "Subjection of Woman" seemed to him "unanswerable and exhaustive, and certain, from its moderation as well as from its boldness, to do good service in this good cause." ...

After a journey with his daughter to the West Indies, from which came his book, "At Last," he returned to his multifarious duties. As President of the Midland Institute at Birmingham, he spoke on the Science of Health. As a result, a manufacturer gave £2,500 to found classes and lectures on Human Physiology and the Science of Health, believing that physical improvement would be followed by mental and moral improvement.

In the spring of 1873 Mr. Gladstone, with the sanction of the Queen, asked Kingsley to become Canon of Westminster. His aged mother, now eighty-six, who had made her home at Eversley since the death of her husband, lived long enough to rejoice in his appointment to the Abbey, and died April 16.

The Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed him heartily. "It is a great sphere," he wrote, "for a man who, like you, knows how to use it."

But those who knew him best had grave fears that he would not long fill the place. He was urged to make a sea voyage, and with his daughter Rose started for America in January, 1874, taking with him a few lectures, to meet his expenses.

They landed Feb. 11, in New York. His daughter wrote home to the anxious mother, "Before my father set foot on American soil, he had a foretaste of the cordial welcome and generous hospitality which he experienced everywhere, without a single exception, throughout the six months he spent in the United States and Canada. The moment the ship warped into her dock, a deputation from a literary club came on board, took possession of us and our baggage."

Mr. Kingsley wrote home Feb. 12, "As for health, this air, as poor Thackeray said of it, is like champagne. Sea air and mountain air combined; days already an hour longer than in England, and a blazing hot sun and blue sky. It is a glorious country, and I don't wonder at the people being proud of it.... I dine with the Lotus Club on Saturday night, and then start for Boston with R., to stay with Fields next week."

He took great interest in Salem and Cambridge. He dined with Longfellow, whom he greatly admired. "Dear old Whittier called on me, and we had a most loving and like-minded talk about the other world," he writes home. "He is an old saint. This morning I have spent chiefly with Asa Gray and his plants, so that we are in good company."

In New York he met William Cullen Bryant; was entertained by that considerate and lovely friend to everybody, the late Mrs. Botta; spoke in the Opera House at Philadelphia to nearly four thousand persons, the aisles crowded; received cordial welcome from President Grant, and from the scientific men at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington; talked with Charles Sumner an hour before he was seized with his fatal illness; visited Mark Twain at Hartford, Conn.; preached in Baltimore to a large congregation; stopped on his way West at Niagara, where he longed for his wife "to sit with him, and simply look on in silence whole days at the exquisite beauty of form and color."

Then with a party of several English and Americans, in a Pullman car, Kingsley and his daughter journeyed to California. He preached at Salt Lake City to a crowded congregation. The scenery everywhere delighted him. "The flowers," he wrote, "are exquisite, yellow ribs over all the cliffs, etc., and make one long to jump off the train every five minutes, while the geology makes one stand aghast; geologizing in England is child's play to this."

Again he preached in the Yosemite. The Dean of Westminster in the old Abbey said that Kingsley, "who is able to combine the religious and scientific aspects of nature better than any man living, is on this very day, and perhaps at this very hour, preaching in the most beautiful spot on the face of the earth, where the glories of nature are revealed on the most gigantic scale,—in that wonderful Californian Valley, to whose trees the cedars of Lebanon are but as the hyssop that groweth out of the wall,—where water and forest and sky conjoin to make up, if anywhere on the globe, an earthly paradise."

Mr. Kingsley was ill of pleurisy for some time in California. He began to long for home. "I am very homesick," he writes to his wife, "and counting the days till I can get back to you."

He returned to Eversley in August, and, as there was much sickness, began at once his self-sacrificing ministrations. He preached his last sermon in the Abbey Nov. 29, with great fervor. Dec. 3 he and his wife went to Eversley, where she was taken very ill. When told that there was no hope for her, he said, "My own death-warrant was signed with those words."

He cared for her tenderly, and on Dec. 28 was stricken with pneumonia. He had been warned that he must not leave his room, as a change of temperature would prove fatal; but one day he sprang out of bed, came to his wife's room for a few moments, and, taking her hand in his, said, "This is heaven, don't speak;" but soon a severe fit of coughing came on: he went back to his bed, and they never met again.

A correspondence was kept up for a few days in pencil, but this became too painful. Towards the last he said, "No more fighting—no more fighting," and then he prayed earnestly. Again he murmured, "How beautiful God is!"

For two days he sent no messages to his wife, thinking that she had gone before him. He said to the nurse who cared for them both, "I, too, am come to an end; it is all right—all as it should be."

His last words were the Burial Service, "Shut not Thy merciful ears to our prayers ... suffer us not, at our last hour, from any pains of death, to fall from Thee." On Jan. 23, 1875, without a struggle, his life went out.

Dean Stanley telegraphed, "The Abbey is open to the Canon and the Poet;" but Kingsley had said, "Go where I will in this hard-working world, I shall take care to get my last sleep in Eversley churchyard;" and under the fir-trees he was buried.

A great crowd of all classes stood around that open grave, and later, little children who had loved the "Water-babies" came often and laid flowers upon the mound.

"Few eyes were dry," says Max MÜller, "when he was laid in his own gravel bed, the old trees which he had planted and cared for waving their branches to him for the last time.... He will be mourned for, yearned for, in every place in which he passed some days of his busy life."

A Memorial Fund was at once raised by friends in England and America. Eversley church was enlarged and improved; at Chester a prize was founded in connection with the Natural History Society; a marble bust of him placed in the Cathedral Chapter-house, and a stall restored in the Cathedral, which bears his name. In Westminster Abbey a marble bust of Kingsley, by Mr. Woolner, was unveiled Sept. 23, 1875, with appropriate services.

Mrs. Kingsley survived her husband sixteen years, dying at Leamington, Dec. 12, 1891, at the age of seventy-seven.

His daughter Rose, and Mary who married the Rev. William Harrison, are both authors, the latter using the name "Lucas Malet." Kingsley, himself, wrote thirty-five volumes.

Charles Kingsley was as lovable in his home-life as he was brilliant and noble in his public career. Said an intimate friend of him, "To his wife—so he never shrank 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."

His son-in-law, the Rev. Mr. Harrison, says, "Home was to him the sweetest, the fairest, the most romantic thing in life; and there all that was best and brightest in him shone with steady and purest lustre."

With his children he was like an elder brother. He built them a little house, where they kept books and toys and tea-things, and where he often joined them, bringing some rare flower or insect to show them. He was always cheerful with them and his aged mother. He used to say, "I wonder if there is so much laughing in any other home in England as in ours."

Corporal punishment was never allowed in his home. "More than half the lying of children," he said, "is, I believe, the result of fear, and the fear of punishment."

He was especially tender to animals. "His dog Dandy," says his wife, "a fine Scotch terrier, was his companion in all his parish walks, attended at the cottage lectures and school lessons, and was his and the children's friend for thirteen years. He lies buried under the great fir-trees on the rectory lawn, with this inscription on his gravestone, 'Fideli Fideles;' and close by, 'Sweep,' a magnificent black retriever, and 'Victor,' a favorite Teckel given to him by the Queen, with which he sat up during the two last suffering nights of the little creature's life."

Cats, too, were his especial delight, a white one and a black. "His love of animals," says Mrs. Kingsley, "was strengthened by his belief in their future state—a belief which he held in common with John Wesley and many other remarkable men. On the lawn dwelt a family of natter-jacks (running toads) who lived on from year to year in the same hole in the green bank, which the scythe was never allowed to approach. He had two little friends in a pair of sand-wasps, who lived in a crack of the window in his dressing-room, one of which he had saved from drowning in a hand-basin, taking it tenderly out into the sunshine to dry; and every spring he would look out eagerly for them or their children, who came out of, or returned to, the same crack."

His guests were one day amused when his little girl opened her hand and begged him to "look at this delightful worm."

Mr. Harrison tells this characteristic incident. One Sunday morning, in passing from the altar to the pulpit, he disappeared, and was searching for something on the ground, which he carried into the vestry. It was found later that he had discovered a beautiful butterfly, which, being lame, he feared would be trodden upon. Thus great in all little humanities was the great preacher of Eversley and Westminster Abbey.

His life was like his own poem,—