No More Learning

The traveler perhaps felt as I did; for except that we lifted our
hands to our caps and waved our arms in courtesy, we passed
each other as if we had passed in Bond Street. Our attendants,
however, were not to be cheated of the delight that they felt in
speaking to new listeners and hearing fresh voices once more.
The masters, therefore, had no sooner passed each other than
their respective servants quietly stopped and entered into conver-
sation. As soon as my camel found that her companions were
not following her, she caught the social feeling and refused to
go on.
I felt the absurdity of the situation, and determined to
accost the stranger, if only to avoid the awkwardness of remain-
ing stuck fast in the desert whilst our servants were amusing
themselves. When with this intent I turned round my camel, I
found that the gallant officer, who had passed me by about thirty
or forty yards, was exactly in the same predicament as myself.
I put my now willing camel in motion and rode up towards the
stranger; who, seeing this, followed my example and came for.
ward to meet me. He was the first to speak. He was much
too courteous to address me as if he admitted of the possibility of
my wishing to accost him from any feeling of mere sociability
or civilian-like love of vain talk; on the contrary, he at once
attributed my advances to a laudable wish of acquiring statistical
information: and accordingly, when we got within speaking dis-
tance, he said, “I daresay you wish to know how the Plague is
going on at Cairo ? ” And then he went on to say he regretted
that his information did not enable him to give me in numbers
a perfectly accurate statement of the daily deaths. He after-
wards talked pleasantly enough upon other and less ghastly sub-
jects. I thought him manly and intelligent; a worthy one of
the few thousand strong Englishmen to whom the Empire of
India is committed.
1
1
ܨ


## p. 8605 (#213) ###########################################

ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE
8605
THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE
From "The Invasion of the Crimea)
A"
(
T FIRST, as was natural, the enemy's gunners and riflemen
were so far taken by surprise as to be hardly in readiness
to seize the opportunity which Lord Cardigan was present-
ing to them; and indeed for some time the very extravagance of
the operation masked its character from the intelligence of the
enemy, preventing him from seeing at once that it must result
from some stupendous mistake. But the Russians at length per-
ceived that the distance between our Heavy Brigade and Lord
Cardigan's squadrons was every moment increasing, and that,
whatever might be the true meaning of the enterprise in which
our Light Cavalry had engaged, the red squadrons were not
under orders to give it that kind of support which the English-
man calls thorough-going. ” This once understood, the enemy
had fair means of inferring that the phenomenon of ten beau-
tiful squadrons moving down the North Valley in well-ordered
lines, was not the commencement of anything like a general
advance on the part of the Allies, and might prove after all to
be hardly the result of design. Accordingly, with more or less
readiness, the forces on the Causeway Heights, the forces on the
Fedioukine Hills, and the twelve-gun battery which crossed the
lower end of the valley, became all prepared to inflict upon our
Light Cavalry the consequences of the fault which propelled it.
It is true that the main body of the Russian cavalry, drawn up
in rear of the confronting battery, had been cowed by the result
of its encounter with Scarlett's dragoons; but when that has
been acknowledged as a qualification of what is coming, it may
be said that the three sides of the quadrangle in which our cav-
alry moved were not only lined with Russians, but with Russians
standing firm to their duty.
Soon the fated advance of the Light Brigade had proceeded
so far as to begin to disclose its strange purpose: the purpose
of making straight for the far distant battery which crossed the
foot of the valley, by passing for a mile between two Russian
forces; and this at such ugly distance from each as to allow of
our squadrons going down under a doubly flanking fire of round
shot, grape, and rifle-balls, without the opportunity of yet doing
any manner of harm to their assailants. Then from the slopes


## p. 8606 (#214) ###########################################

1
ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE
8606
i
I
-
•
.
of the Causeway Heights on the one side and the Fedioukine
Hills on the other, the Russian artillery brought its power to
bear right and left, with an efficiency every moment increasing;
and large numbers of riflemen on the slopes of the Causeway
Heights, who had been placed where they were in order to cover
the retreat of the Russian battalions, found means to take their
part in the work of destroying our horsemen. Whilst Lord Car-
digan and his squadrons rode thus under heavy cross-fire, the
visible object they had straight before them was the white bank
of smoke, from time to time pierced by issues of flame, which
marks the site of a battery in action: for in truth the very goal
that had been chosen for our devoted squadrons— a goal rarely
before assigned to cavalry — was the front of a battery; the
front of that twelve-gun battery, with the main body of the
Russian cavalry in rear of it, which crossed the lower end of
the valley: and so faithful, so resolute, was Lord Cardigan in
executing this part of what he understood to be his appointed
task, that he chose out one of the guns which he judged to be
about the centre of the battery, rode straight at its fire, and
made this from first to last his sole guiding star.
Pressing always deeper and deeper into this pen of fire, the
devoted brigade, with Lord Cardigan still at its head, continued
to move down the valley. The fire the brigade was incurring
had not yet come to be of that crushing sort which mows down
half a troop in one instant, and for some time a steady pace
was maintained. As often as a horse was killed or disabled or
deprived of the rider, his fall or his plunge or his ungoverned
pressure had commonly the effect of enforcing upon the neigh-
boring chargers more or less of lateral movement, and in this way
there was occasioned a slight distension of the rank in which the
casualty had occurred; but in the next instant, when the troopers
had ridden clear of the disturbing cause, they closed up, and rode
on in a line as even as before, though reduced by the loss just
sustained. The movement occasioned by each casualty was so
constantly recurring, and so constantly followed by the same pro-
cess, - the process of re-closing the ranks,—that to distant ob-
servers the alternate distension and contraction of the line seemed
to have the precision and sameness which belong to mechanic
contrivance. Of these distant observers there was one - and that
too a soldier- who so felt to the heart the true import of what
he saw, that in a paroxysm of admiration and grief he burst into
!


## p. 8607 (#215) ###########################################

ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE
8607
(C
»
(
»
tears. In well-maintained order, but growing less every instant,
our squadrons still moved down the valley.
Their pace for some time was firmly governed. When horse-
men, too valorous to be thinking of flight, are brought into straits
of this kind, their tendency is to be galloping swiftly forward,
each man at the greatest pace he can exact from his own charger,
thus destroying of course the formation of the line: but Lord
Cardigan's love of strict uniform order was a propensity having
all the force of a passion; and as long as it seemed possible to
exert authority by voice or by gesture, the leader of this singu-
lar onset was firm in repressing the fault.
Thus when Captain White, of the 17th Lancers (who com-
manded the squadron of direction), became “anxious," as he
frankly expressed it, “to get out of such a murderous fire, and
into the guns," as being the best of the two evils,” and, endeav-
oring with that view to force the pace," pressed forward so much
as to be almost alongside of the chief's bridle-arm, Lord Cardigan
checked this impatience by laying his sword across the captain's
breast, telling him at the same time not to try to force the pace,
and not to be riding before the leader of the brigade. Otherwise
than for this, Lord Cardigan, from the first to the last of the onset,
did not speak nor make sign. Riding straight and erect, he never
once turned in his saddle with the object of getting a glance at
the state of the squadrons which followed him; and to this rigid
abstinence-giving proof as such abstinence did of an unbending
resolve- it was apparently owing that the brigade never fell into
doubt concerning its true path of duty, never wavered (as the
best squadrons will, if the leader, for even an instant, appears to
be uncertain of purpose), and was guiltless of even inclining to
any default except that of failing to keep down the pace.
So far as concerned the first line, this task was now becoming
more and more difficult. When the 13th Light Dragoons and the
17th Lancers had passed so far down the valley as to be under
effective fire from the guns in their front, as well as from the
flanks right and left, their lines were so torn, so cruelly reduced
in numbers, as to be hardly any longer capable of retaining the
corporate life or entity of the regiment, the squadron, the troop;
and these aggregates began to resolve themselves into their com-
ponent elements - that is, into brave, eager horsemen, growing
fiercely impatient of a trial which had thus long denied them
their vengeance, and longing to close with all speed upon the


## p. 8608 (#216) ###########################################

8608
ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE
i
guns which had shattered their ranks. The troopers here and
there could no longer be restrained from darting forward in front
of the officers; and the moment this license obtained, the cere-
monious advance of the line was soon changed to an ungoverned
onset. The racing spirit broke out; some striving to outride
their comrades, some determining not to be passed.
In the course of the advance, Lieutenant Maxse, Lord Cardi-
gan's second aide-de-camp, was wounded; and when the line had
come down to within about a hundred yards of the guns, Sir
George Wombwell, the extra aide-de-camp, had his horse killed
under him. We shall afterwards see that this last casualty did
not end the part which Wombwell was destined to take in the
battle; but for the moment of course it disabled him, and there
was no longer any staff officer in the immediate personal follow-
ing of the general who led the brigade.
But although he rode singly, and although as we have seen
he rigidly abstained from any retrograde glance, Lord Cardigan
of course might infer from the tramp of the regiments close fol-
lowing, and from what (without turning in his saddle) he could
easily see of their flanks, that the momentum now gathered and
gathering was too strong to be moderated by a commander; and
rightly perhaps avoiding the effort to govern it by voice or by
gesture, he either became impatient himself, and drew the troops
on more and more by first increasing his own speed, or else
yielded (under necessity) to the impatience of the now shattered
squadrons, and closely adjusted his pace to the flow of the tor-
rent behind him. In one way or in the other, a right distance
was always maintained between the leader and his first line. As
before when advancing at a trot, so now whilst Alinging them-
selves impetuously deep into the jaws of an army, these two
regiments of the first line still had in their front the same rigid
hussar for their guide, still kept their eyes fastened on
crimson-red overalls and the white near hind-leg of the chestnut
which showed them the straight, honest way — the way down to
the mouths of the guns.
Lord Cardigan and his first line had come down to within
about eighty yards of the mouths of the guns, when the battery
delivered a fire from so many of its pieces at once as to constitute
almost a salvo. Numbers and numbers of saddles were emptied:
and along its whole length the line of the 13th Light Dragoons
and 17th Lancers was subjected to the rending perturbance that
1
the


## p. 8609 (#217) ###########################################

ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE
8609
must needs be created in a body of cavalry by every man who
falls slain or wounded; by the sinking and the plunging of every
horse that is killed or disabled; and again by the wild, piteous
intrusion of the riderless charger, appalled by his sudden freedom
coming thus in the midst of a battle, and knowing not whither
to rush unless he can rejoin his old troop and wedge himself
into its ranks. It is believed by Lord Cardigan that this was
the time when, in the 13th Light Dragoons, Captain Oldham,
the commander of the regiment, and Captain Goad and Cornet
Montgomery, and in the 17th Lancers, Captain Winter and
Lieutenant Thompson, were killed; when Captain Robert White
and Captain Webb and Lieutenant Sir William Gordon were struck
down. The survivors of the first line who remained undisabled
were feeble by this time, in numbers scarce more than some
fifty or sixty; and the object they rode at was a line of twelve
guns close supported by the main body of the Russian cavalry,
whilst on their right flank as well as on their left there stood a
whole mile's length of hostile array, comprising horse, foot, and
artillery. But by virtue of innate warlike passion - the gift, it
would seem, of high Heaven to chosen races of men — the mere
half of a hundred, carried straight by a resolute leader, were
borne on against the strength of the thousands. The few in
their pride claimed dominion. Rushing clear of the havoc just
wrought, and with Cardigan still untouched at their head, they
drove thundering into the smoke which enfolded both the front
of the battery and the masses of horsemen behind it.
Lord Cardigan and his first line, still descending at speed
on their goal, had rived their way dimly through the outer folds
of the cloud which lay piled up in front of the battery; but then
there came the swift moment when, through what remained of
the dimness, men at last saw the brass cannons gleaming with
their muzzles toward the chests of our horses; and visibly the
Russian artillerymen - unappalled by the tramp and the aspect
of squadrons driving down through the smoke
— were as yet
standing fast to their guns.
By the material obstacle which they offer to the onset of
horsemen, field-pieces in action, with their attendant limber-
carriages and tumbrils behind them, add so sure a cause of frus-
tration to the peril that there is in riding at the mouths of the
guns, that upon the whole the expedient of attacking a battery
in front has been forbidden to cavalry leaders by a recognized
XV-539


## p. 8610 (#218) ###########################################

8610
ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE
come
maxim of war. But the huge misconception of orders which had
sent the brigade down this valley was yet to be fulfilled to its
utmost conclusion; and the condition of things had now
to be such that whatever might be the madness (in general) of
charging a battery in front, there by this time was no choice
of measures. By far the greater part of the harm which the
guns could inflict had already been suffered; and I believe that
the idea of stopping short on the verge of the battery did not
even present itself for a moment to the mind of the leader.
Lord Cardigan moved down at a pace which he has estimated
at seventeen miles an hour, and already he had come to within
some two or three horses’-lengths of the mouth of one of the
guns, - a gun believed to have been a twelve-pounder; but then
-
the piece was discharged, and its torrent of flame seemed to
gush in the direction of his chestnut's off fore-arm. The horse
was so governed by the impetus he had gathered, and by the
hand and the heel of his rider, as to be able to shy only a little
at the blaze and the roar of the gun; but Lord Cardigan being
presently enwrapped in the new column of smoke now all at
once piled up around him, some imagined him slain. He had
not been struck.
In the next moment, and being still some two
horses'-lengths in advance of his squadrons, he attained to the
long-sought battery, and shot in between two of its guns.
There was a portion of the 17th Lancers on our extreme left
which outflanked the line of the guns, but with this exception
the whole of Lord Cardigan's first line descended on the front of
the battery: and as their leader had just done before them, so
now our horsemen drove in between the guns; and some then
at the instant tore on to assail the gray squadrons drawn up
in rear of the tumbrils. Others stopped to fight in the battery,
and sought to make prize of the guns. After a long and disas-
trous advance against clouds and invisible foes, they grasped, as it
were, at reality. What before had been engines of havoc dimly
seen, or only inferred from the jets of their fire and their smoke,
were now burnished pieces of cannon with the brightness and
the hue of red gold, — cannon still in battery, still hot with the
slaughter of their comrades.
D


## p. 8611 (#219) ###########################################

8611
CHARLES KINGSLEY
(1819-1875)
a
N THE autumn of 1849, in the midst of the famous Chartist
movement in England, there appeared a book, a romance,
which excited the enthusiasm of all “Young England and
kindled afresh the spirit of revolt against class oppression. It was
called Alton Locke'; and was the story of a young London tailor,
who, filled with yearnings, poetical and political, which his situation
rendered hopeless, joined the Chartists, shared their failure, and in
despair quitted England for the New World, only to die on reaching
the promised land.
All his misery and failure are ascribed
to the brutal indifference of the rich and
well-taught to the needs and aspirations of
the workingman. When it became known
that the author, Charles Kingsley, was
clergyman of the established church, a man
of ancient family; that he had been forbid-
den by the Bishop of London to preach in
that city on account of a sermon embody-
ing radical sentiments; and that he was
suffering social ostracism and newspaper
attack for the stand he had taken, party
enthusiasm burned still higher. He became
the knight-errant, the chosen hero, of the
CHARLES KINGSLEY
movement known as “Christian Socialism. ”
Charles Kingsley was born in Dartmoor, Devon, England, the 13th
of June, 1819. He took honors at Cambridge, was ordained, and in
1841 became in turn curate and rector of the church at Eversley,
Hampshire, where he lived and died; varying his duty only when
in residence as canon at Chester and Westminster, or at Cambridge
where he was a professor of modern history in 1861-9. With the
exception of two short holidays in the West Indies and America, and
two trips on the Continent, his external life saw few changes. But
the peace was outward only.
As long as there was evil in the world he stood up to fight it;
head downwards he charged at every red rag of doctrine, either
defense or offense. He attacked political economy, competition,
the laws of gravitation, the Manchester school, the cholera, Bishop
Colenso, and Cardinal Newman. On the other hand, he pleaded the

in


## p. 8612 (#220) ###########################################

8612
CHARLES KINGSLEY
cause of the undefended, from the oppression of Indian widows or
the preservation of village greens to the struggles of the Australian
canned-meat industry, the success of which, he maintained, would
settle the food question forever.
The key to Kingsley's mental development must be sought in his
emotional history. His youth was passed in a Devon parish, of which
his father, an old-fashioned parson and keen sportsman, was rector.
The boy rode to hounds as soon as he could sit a horse, and was
a devoted naturalist before he was old enough to know the scientific
name of a single specimen of his collection. His love of nature, so
rare a quality in children, “had the intensity,” said Mr. Stephen, “and
the absorbing power of a sensual appetite. He gave himself up to
the pure emotion as a luxuriant nature abandons itself to physical
gratification. ”
On reaching manhood, the strength of his sympathies and the
vigor of his perceptions threw him headlong into the revolt of the
time against oppression and wrong. But Kingsley was as far as Dis-
raeli from being a democrat, and as sincere in defending a social
and religious hierarchy. His politics were in fact those of the great
statesman's Coningsby,-a «Young England » Tory who denounces
social wrongs and provides the workingman with good clothes, good
food, and amusements, but will listen to no revolutionary remedy to
destroy the evil.
His fighting propensity left a mark on the time and its literature.
It formulated the creed that pluck and Bible texts would regenerate
the world; and it created the muscular Christian » who strutted
through the pages of most of the novels of the day, from Bulwer
with his Kenelm Chillingly) to the waxwork Sir Galahads of the
Misses Wetherell. Kingsley disliked the cult, and denied that he was
responsible for it; but it became to him a sort of Frankenstein's
monster, growing till it assumed the proportions of strength-worship
and the elevation of physical over moral force.
A passionate Protestant, he was deeply affected by the agitation in
the English Church known as the “Oxford Movement, and the spirit
of what was called “Manichæism,” or the principle which placed the
monkish over the domestic virtues. He had a theory that the love
of woman is the guide of the intellect, and that the love of nature
teaches the theory of the universe. Elizabeth in the "Saint's Tra-
gedy,' the heroines in Westward Ho! ” Hypatia, Grace in “Two Years
Ago,' are the saving influences of the men of these books.
in «Yeast' designs a great allegorical drawing, which sets forth the
influence of the feminine charm on every variety of human being.
« The picture,” says a reviewer in Cornhill, «could hardly be put on
canvas; but it would be a perfect frontispiece to Kingsley's works. ”
>
1
G
Lancelot


## p. 8613 (#221) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8613
(c
besar
1
>
The stories (Yeast' and Alton Locke,' written on the same
theme and in the same year, are both clumsily constructed and un-
even; and fifty years later, lack the interest they excited when their
topics were new and
immediate. Kingsley has the tendency to
preach, common to all novelists with a purpose. The power of these
books is in their intense feeling and sincerity, and the genuine force
of their attack upon injustice. And there are scenes in (Yeast,' such
as the village feast, and the death of old Harry Verney the game-
keeper; and in Alton Locke,' such as the Chartist rising in the
country, - as bold as anything in English fiction. (Alton Locke) is
the more sustained effort, the more ambitious conception; but Car-
lyle describes it as a “vivid creation, still left half chaotic. ” But of
Kingsley's masterpiece in the way of character, the old Scotchman
Mackaye, he says, “My invaluable countryman in this book is nearly
perfect. ”
Kingsley's historical novels are in a different strain. The further
he removes his story from his own time, the more pictorial the pres-
entation. His freshness and vigor seize upon the reader; the roots
of feeling strike down into the heart of life. The desert scenes in
Hypatia,' the thrilling tragedy of the death of the martyr, which if
bad history is admirable fiction, the sea-fight in Westward Ho! ' an
epic «not of dull prose but of the thunder roll of Homer's verse,
stir the blood and mock criticism. Concerning the history and the
theology the general reader does not concern himself. The genius
of the author has already possessed him. Raphael, Wulf, and Amal —
beings begot of fancy, dwelling in an unreal time—are more alive
than modern photographic realism makes the latest realistic hero.
No writer in the language has shown a greater power of descrip-
tion than Kingsley. Landscape, beast, and bird are invested with
poetic charm. He is as close an observer as John Burroughs, and as
great an artist as Turner in painting grand effects of sea and sky.
There is no elaboration of detail, no exaggeration, in his glimpses of
the fens of Devon and the cliffs of Lundy. The writing is alive; the
man tells what he has seen; we have the atmospheric effect and the
dramatic character. «In one of his pictures of Cornwall,” says Mr.
Leslie Stephen,
we can tell the time of day and the state of the
weather, as if he were a meteorologist. ”
The verdict of time has placed Kingsley among the minor poets.
Great things were expected of the author of "The Saint's Tragedy. '
Andromeda' – the most successful attempt in the language in the
use of hexameter verse - fulfilled these expectations in a measure.
But his genius was not equal to a sustained flight. He will be best
remembered by those short dramatic lyrics which he sang in meas-
ures approaching perfection.


## p. 8614 (#222) ###########################################

8614
CHARLES KINGSLEY
Kingsley's is a character easy to criticize. He had a feminine
side, which in a truly feminine fashion admired force, however
exerted; a side which is responsible for that muscular Christianity”
whose paternity he denied. In his rôle of reformer his vehemence
and impetuosity stood him in good stead; but impatience like his is
the enemy of the grave and noble style. Though not profoundly
learned, he had wide and varied information. He came near being a
great preacher, for he chose living topics; and he had the gift of
clothing in picturesque imagery an abstract truth, first perceived per-
haps by a more original mind. He wrote one really great story,
(Hypatia'; and five brilliant ones: Yeast, (Alton Locke, Hereward
the Wake,' Westward Ho! ' and (Two Years Ago. His Water-
Babies) is one of the few perfect fairy stories in the language. Even
its moralities cannot wither it, nor its educational intention stale its
infinite variety. He had the lyric quality and the poet's heart. Had
he devoted himself to his favorite pursuit, he would have been a
famous naturalist. And from his first published work to his prema-
ture death he was a distinct moral force in England.
>
1
THE MERRY LARK WAS UP AND SINGING
T"
He merry, merry lark was up and singing,
And the hare was out and feeding on the lea,
And the merry, merry bells below were ringing,
When my child's laugh rang through me.
Now the hare is snatched and dead beside the snow-yard,
And the lark beside the dreary winter sea;
And my baby in his cradle in the church-yard
Waiteth there until the bells bring me.
1
1
THE DEAD CHURCH
W"
YILD, wild wind, wilt thou never cease thy sighing?
Dark, dark night, wilt thou never wear away?
Cold, cold church, in thy death-sleep lying,
Thy Lent is past, thy Passion here, but not thine Easter Day.
Peace, faint heart, though the night be dark and sighing:
Rest, fair corpse, where thy Lord himself hath lain.
Weep, dear Lord, where thy bride is lying:
Thy tears shall wake her frozen limbs to life and health
again.


## p. 8615 (#223) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8615
THE SANDS OF DEE
“Ό
Mary, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
Across the sands of Dee :)
The western wind was wild and dank wi' foam,
And all alone went she.
The western tide crept up along the sand,
And o'er and o'er the sand,
And round and round the sand,
As far as eye could see:
The rolling mist came down and hid the land,
And never home came she.
“Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair-
A tress o' golden hair,
A drowned maiden's hair,
Above the nets at sea ? »
Was ne'er a salmon yet that shone so fair
Among the stakes on Dee.
They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
The cruel crawling foam,
The cruel hungry foam,
To her grave beside the sea:
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home,
Across the sands of Dee!
YOUTH AND AGE
WHEN
-
HEN all the world is young, lad, and everything is green,
And every goose a swan, lad, and every lass a queen,
Then boot, lad, and horse, lad, and round the world away,
And go it while you're young, lad;— each dog must have his day.
When all the world gets old, lad, and all the trees turn brown,
And all the jests get stale, lad, and all the wheels run down,
Then hie back to thy hame, lad, -the maimed and sick among:
Thank God! if then you find one face you loved when you were
young.


## p. 8616 (#224) ###########################################

8616
CHARLES KINGSLEY
A MYTH
-
FLOATING, a-floating
Across the sleeping sea,
All night I heard a singing bird
Upon the topmost tree.
A
“Oh, came you from the isles of Greece
Or from the banks of Seine;
Or off some tree in forests free,
Which fringe the western main ? »
"I came not off the Old World,
Nor yet from off the New;
But I am one of the birds of God
Which sing the whole night through. ”
“Oh, sing and wake the dawning -
Oh, whistle for the wind :
The night is long, the current strong,
My boat it lags behind. ”
“The current sweeps the Old World,
The current sweeps the New:
The wind will blow, the dawn will glow,
Ere thou hast sailed them through. ”
LONGINGS
From "The Saint's Tragedy)
>
0"
H! THAT we two were Maying
Down the stream of the soft spring breeze;
Like children with violets playing
In the shade of the whispering trees.
Oh! that we two sat dreaming
On the sward of some sheep-trimmed down,
Watching the white mist steaming
Over river and mead and town.
Oh! that we two lay sleeping
In our nest in the church-yard sod;
With our limbs at rest on the quiet earth’s breast,
And our souls at home with God.


## p. 8617 (#225) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8617
ANDROMEDA AND THE SEA-NYMPHS
From Andromeda)
A"*
18.
1
1
WED by her own rash words she was still, and her eyes to the
seaward
Looked for an answer of wrath: far off in the heart of the dark-
ness,
Bright white mists rose slowly; beneath them the wandering ocean
Glimmered and flowed to the deepest abyss; and the knees of the
maiden
Trembled and sank in her fear, as afar, like a dawn in the midnight,
Rose from their seaweed chamber the choir of the mystical sea-
maids.
Onward toward her they came, and her heart beat loud at their
coming,
Watching the bliss of the gods, as wakened the cliffs with their
laughter.
Onward they came in their joy, and before them the roll of the
surges
Sank, as the breeze sank dead, into smooth green foam-flecked mar-
ble,
Awed; and the crags of the cliff and the pines of the mountain were
silent.
Onward they came in their joy, and around them the lamps of the
sea-nymphs,
Myriad fiery globes, swam panting and heaving; and rainbows,
Crimson and azure and emerald, were broken in star-showers, light-
ing
Far through the wine-dark depths of the crystal, the gardens of Ne-
reus,
Coral and sea-fan and tangle, the blooms and the palms of the ocean.
Onward they came in their joy, more white than the foam which
they scattered,
Laughing and singing, and tossing and twining, while eager, the Tri-
tons
Blinded with kisses their eyes, unreproved, and above them in wor-
ship
Hovered the terns, and the sea-gulls swept past them on silvery
pinions
Echoing softly their laughter; around them the wantoning dolphins
Sighed as they plunged, full of love; and the great sea-horses which
bore them
Curved up their crests in their pride to the delicate arms of the
maiden,


## p. 8618 (#226) ###########################################

8618
CHARLES KINGSLEY
Pawing the spray into gems, till the fiery rainfall, unharming,
Sparkled and gleamed on the limbs of the nymphs, and the coils of
the mermen.
Onward they went in their joy, bathed round with the fiery coolness,
Needing nor sun nor moon, self-lighted, immortal: but others,
Pitiful, floated in silence apart; in their bosoms the sea-boys,
Slain by the wrath of the seas, swept down by the anger of Nereus:
Hapless, whom never again on strand or on quay shall their mothers
Welcome with garlands and vows to the temple, but wearily pining
Gaze over island and bay for the sails of the sunken; they heedless
Sleep in soft bosoms forever, and dream of the surge and the sea-
maids.
Onward they passed in their joy; on their brows neither sorrow nor
anger;
Self-sufficing as gods, never heeding the woe of the maiden.
A FAREWELL
M
Y FAIREST child, I have no song to give you,-
No lark could pipe to skies so dull and gray;
Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you
For every day:
3
者
​Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make life, death, and that vast forever
One grand, sweet song.
34 3
WAITING FOR THE ARMADA
1
From (Westward Ho! )
EE those five talking earnestly, in the centre of a ring, which
S** longs to overhear and yet is too respectful to approach close
.
Those soft long eyes and pointed chin you recognize already:
they are Walter Raleigh's
. The fair young man in the flame-
colored doublet, whose arm is round Raleigh's neck, is Lord
Sheffield; opposite them stands, by the side of Sir Richard Gren-
ville, a man as stately even as he,– Lord Sheffield's uncle, the
-
Lord Charles Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral of Eng-
land; next to him is his son-in-law, Sir Robert Southwell, captain
of the Elizabeth Jonas: but who is that short, sturdy, plainly


## p. 8619 (#227) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8619
166
17
»
dressed man, who stands with legs a little apart and hands
behind his back, looking up, with keen gray eyes, into the face of
each speaker ? His cap is in his hands, so you can see the bul-
let head of crisp brown hair and the wrinkled forehead, as well
as the high cheek-bones, the short square face, the broad temples,
the thick lips which are yet firm as granite. A coarse plebeian
stamp of man: yet the whole figure and attitude are that of
boundless determination, self-possession, energy; and when at
last he speaks a few blunt words, all eyes are turned respectfully
upon him, — for his name is Francis Drake.
A burly, grizzled elder, in greasy sea-stained garments con-
trasting oddly with the huge gold chain about his neck, waddles
up, as if he had been born and had lived ever since in a gale of
wind at sea. The upper half of his sharp dogged visage seems
of brick-red leather, the lower of badger's fur; and as he claps
Drake on the back, and with broad Devon twang shouts, «Be
you a-coming to drink your wine, Francis Drake, or be you not ?
- saving your presence, my Lord;” the Lord High Admiral only
laughs, and bids Drake go and drink his wine: for John Haw-
kins, Admiral of the Port, is the Patriarch of Plymouth seamen,
if Drake be their hero, and says and does pretty much what
he likes in any company on earth; not to mention that to-day's
prospect of an Armageddon fight has shaken him altogether out
of his usual crabbed reserve, and made him overflow with loqua-
cious good-humor, even to his rival Drake.
So they push through the crowd, wherein is many another
man whom one would gladly have spoken with, face to face on
earth. Martin Frobisher and John Davis are sitting on that
bench, smoking tobacco from long silver pipes; and by them are
Fenton and Withrington, who have both tried to follow Drake's
path round the world, and failed, though by no fault of their
The man who pledges them better luck next time is
George Fenner, known to “the seven Portugals”; Leicester's pet,
and captain of the galleon which Elizabeth bought of him. That
short prim man in the huge yellow ruff, with sharp chin, minute
imperial, and self-satisfied smile, is Richard Hawkins, the Com-
plete Seaman, Admiral John's hereafter famous and hapless son.
The elder who is talking with him is his good uncle William,
whose monument still stands, or should stand, in Deptford
Church; for Admiral John set it up there but one year after this
time, and on it recorded how he was “A worshiper of the true
.
.
1
1
1
own.


## p. 8620 (#228) ###########################################

8620
CHARLES KINGSLEY
religion, an especial benefactor of poor sailors, a most just arbiter
in most difficult causes, and of a singular faith, piety, and pru.
dence. ” That, and the fact that he got creditably through some
sharp work at Porto Rico, is all I know of William Hawkins;
but if you or I, reader, can have as much or half as much said
of us when we have to follow him, we shall have no reason to
complain.
There is John Drake, Sir Francis's brother, ancestor of the
present stock of Drakes; and there is George, his nephew, a man
not over-wise, who has been round the world with Amyas; and
there is Amyas himself, talking to one who answers him with
fierce curt sentences, - Captain Barker of Bristol, brother of the
hapless Andrew Barker who found John Oxenham's guns, and
owing to a mutiny among his men perished by the Spaniards in
Honduras twelve years ago. Barker is now captain of the Vic-
tory, one of the Queen's best ships; and he has his accounts to
settle with the Dons, as Amyas has: so they are both growling
together in a corner, while all the rest are as merry as the flies
upon the vine above their heads.
But who is the aged man who sits upon a bench, against
the sunny south wall of the tavern, his long white beard flow-
ing almost to his waist, his hands upon his knees, his palsied
head moving slowly from side to side, to catch the scraps of dis-
course of the passing captains ?
It is old Martin Cockrem,
father of the ancient host, aged himself beyond the years of
men, who can recollect the bells of Plymouth ringing for the
coronation of Henry the Eighth, and who was the first English-
man, perhaps, who ever set foot on the soil of the New World.
There he sits, like an old Druid Tor of primeval granite amid
the tall wheat and rich clover crops of a modern farm.
seen the death of old Europe and the birth-throes of the new.
Go to him, and question him; for his senses are quick
and just now the old man seems uneasy.
rheumy eyes through the groups, and seems listening for a well-
known voice.
“Long life? Iss, fegs, I reckon, long enough already! Why,
I mind the beginning of it all, I do. I mind when there wasn't
a master mariner to Plymouth that thought there was aught
west of the Land's End except herrings. Why, they held then,
pure wratches, that if you sailed right west away far enough,
you'd surely come to the edge, and fall over cleve.
He has
as ever,
He is peering with
((
Iss —'twas


## p. 8621 (#229) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8621
dark parts round here, till Captain Will arose; and the first of it
I mind was inside the bar of San ucar, and he and I were boys
about a ten year old, aboord of a Dartmouth ship, and went for
wine; and there come in over the bar he that was the beginning
of it all. ”
“Columbus? "
“Iss, fegs, he did, not a pistol-shot from us; and I saw mun
stand on the poop, so plain as I see you: no great shakes of a
man to look to neither; there's a sight better here, to plase me:
and we was disappointed, we lads, for we surely expected to see
mun with a goolden crown on, and a sceptre to a's hand, we did,
and the ship o' mun all over like Solomon's temple for gloory.
And I mind that same year, too, seeing Vasco da Gama, as was
going out over the bar, when he found the Bona Speranza, and
sailed round it to the Indies. Ah, that was the making of they
rascally Portingals, it was! . . . And our crew told what they
seen and heerd; but nobody minded sich things. 'Twas dark
parts and Popish, then; and nobody knowed nothing, nor got no
schooling, nor cared for nothing, but scrattling up and down
alongshore like to prawns in a pule. Iss, sitting in darkness, we
was, and the shadow of death, till the day-spring from on high
arose, and shined upon us poor out-o'-the-way folk - the Lord
be praised! And now, look to mun! ” and he waved his hand
all round — "look to mun! Look to the works of the Lord!
Look to the captains! Oh blessed sight! And one's been to
the Brazils, and one to the Indies, and the Spanish Main, and
the Northwest, and the Rooshias, and the Chinas, and up the
Straits, and round the Cape, and round the world of God too,
bless his holy name; and I seed the beginning of it; and I'll see
the end of it too, I will! I was born into the old times, but I'll
see the wondrous works of the new yet, I will! I'll see they
bloody Spaniards swept off the seas before I die, if my old eyes
can reach so far as outside the Sound. I shall, I knows it. I
says my prayers for it every night: don't I, Mary? You'll bate
mun, sure as Judgment, you'll bate mun! The Lord'll fight for
ye. Nothing'll stand against ye.
.
I've seed it all along — ever
since I was with young master to the Honduras. They can't
bide the push of us!
You'll bate mun off the face of the seas,
and be masters of the round world, and all that therein is.
then I'll just turn my old face to the wall, and depart in peace,
according to His word. ”
-
-


## p. 8622 (#230) ###########################################

86 2 2
CHARLES KINGSLEY
A PURITAN CRUSADER
From Plays and Puritans)
Spicturesque enough.
URELY these Puritans were dramatic enough, poetic enough,
We do not speak of such fanatics as
Balfour of Burley, or any other extravagant person whom it
may have suited Walter Scott to take as a typical personage.
We speak of the average Puritan nobleman, gentleman, merchant,
or farmer: and hold him to have been a picturesque and poetical
man,-a man of higher imagination and deeper feeling than the
average of court poets; and a man of sound taste also. What
is to be said about his opinions about the stage has been seen
already; but it seems to have escaped most persons' notice, that
either all England is grown very foolish, or the Puritan opinions
on several matters have been justified by time.
On the matter of the stage, the world has certainly come over
to their way of thinking. Few highly educated men now think it
worth while to go to see any play, and that exactly for the same
reasons as the Puritans put forward; and still fewer highly edu-
cated men think it worth while to write plays, finding that since
the grosser excitements of the imagination have become forbidden
themes there is really very little to write about.
But in the matter of dress and of manners, the Puritan tri-
umph has been complete. Even their worst enemies have come
over to their side, and « the whirligig of time has brought its
revenges. ”
Most of their canons of taste have become those of all
England. High-Churchmen, who still call them Roundheads and
Cropped-ears, go about rounder-headed and closer cropt than they
ever went. They held it more rational to cut the hair to a com-
fortable length than to wear effeminate curls down the back:
we cut ours much shorter than they ever did. They held (with
the Spaniards, then the finest gentlemen in the world) that sad
(that is, dark) colors — above all, black
were the fittest for all
stately and earnest gentlemen: we all, from the Tractarian to the
Anythingarian, are exactly of the same opinion. They held that
lace, perfumes, and jewelry on a man were marks of unmanly fop-
pishness and vanity: so hold the finest gentlemen in England
They thought it equally absurd and sinful for a man to
carry his income on his back, and bedizen himself out in reds,
blues, and greens, ribbons, knots, slashes, and « treble, quadruple,
1
1
1
1
now.


## p. 8623 (#231) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8623
:
-
»
-
dædalian ruffs, built up on iron and timber, which have more
arches in them for pride than London Bridge for use": we, if we
met such a ruffed and ruffled worthy as used to swagger by doz-
ens up and down Paul's Walk, not knowing how to get a dinner,
much less to pay his tailor, should look on him as firstly a fool,
and secondly a swindler; while if we met an old Puritan, we
should consider him a man gracefully and picturesquely dressed,
but withal in the most perfect sobriety of good taste: and when
we discovered (as we probably should), over and above, that the
harlequin cavalier had a box of salve and a pair of dice in one
pocket, a pack of cards and a few pawnbrokers' duplicates in the
other; that his thoughts were altogether of citizens' wives and
their too easy virtue; and that he could not open his mouth
without a dozen oaths,- then we should consider the Puritan
(even though he did quote Scripture somewhat through his nose)
as the gentleman; and the courtier as a most offensive specimen
of the “snob triumphant,” glorying in his shame. The picture
is not ours, nor even the Puritan’s. It is Bishop Hall's, Bishop
Earle's; it is Beaumont's, Fletcher's, Jonson's, Shakespeare's, - the
picture which every dramatist, as well as satirist, has drawn of
the "gallant” of the seventeenth century. No one can read those
writers honestly without seeing that the Puritan and not the
Cavalier conception of what a British gentleman should be, is
the one accepted by the whole nation at this day.
In applying the same canon to the dress of women, they were
wrong. As in other matters, they had hold of one pole of a
double truth, and erred in applying it exclusively to all cases,
But there are two things to be said for them: first, that the
dress of that day was palpably an incentive to the profligacy of
that day, and therefore had to be protested against; while in
these more moral times, ornaments and fashions may be harm-
lessly used which then could not be used without harm. Next,
it is undeniable that sober dressing is more and more becoming
the fashion among well-bred women; and that among them too
the Puritan canons are gaining ground.
We have just said that the Puritans held too exclusively to
one pole of a double truth. They did so, no doubt, in their
Hatred of the drama. Their belief that human relations were,
if not exactly sinful, at least altogether carnal and unspiritual,
Prevented their conceiving the possibility of any truly Christian
drama; and led them at times into strange and sad errors, like
ul


## p. 8624 (#232) ###########################################

8624
CHARLES KINGSLEY
}
ET
.
-
that New England ukase of Cotton Mather's, who is said to have
punished the woman who should kiss her infant on the Sabbath
day. * Yet their extravagances on this point were but the honest
revulsion from other extravagances on the opposite side. If the
undistinguishing and immoral Autotheism of the playwrights, and
the luxury and heathendom of the higher classes, first in Italy
and then in England, were the natural revolt of the human mind
against the Manichæism of monkery, then the severity and exclus-
iveness of Puritanism was a natural and necessary revolt against
that luxury and immorality; a protest for man's God-given superi-
ority over nature, against that Naturalism which threatened to
end in sheer animalism. While Italian prelates have found an
apologist in Mr. Roscoe, and English playwrights in Mr. Gifford,
the old Puritans- who felt and asserted, however extravagantly,
that there was an eternal law which was above all Borgias and
Machiavels, Stuarts and Fletchers — have surely a right to a fair
trial. If they went too far in their contempt for humanity,
certainly no one interfered to set them right. The Anglicans of
that time, who held intrinsically the same anthropologic notions,
and yet wanted the courage and sincerity to carry them out as
honestly, neither could nor would throw any light upon the con-
troversy.
But as for these Puritans having been merely the sour, nar-
row, inhuman persons they are vulgarly supposed to have been,
credat Judæus. There were sour and narrow men among them;
so there were in the opposite party. No Puritan could have had
less poetry in him, less taste, less feeling, than Laud himself.
But is there no poetry save words ? no drama save that which
is presented on the stage ? Is this glorious earth, and the souls
of living men, mere prose as long as
"carent vate sacro,” who
will forsooth do them the honor to make poetry out of a little of
them (and of how little ! ) by translating them into words, which
he himself, just in proportion as he is a good poet, will confess
to be clumsy, tawdry, ineffectual? Was there no poetry in these
Puritans because they wrote no poetry? We do not mean now
the unwritten tragedy of the battle psalm and the charge; but
simple idyllic poetry and quiet home drama,- love poetry of
the heart and the hearth, and the beauties of every-day human
life. Take the most commonplace of them: was Zeal-for-Truth
.
* Of course neither this supposed enactment nor the other “Blue Laws »
ever existed, being pure inventions of a revengeful Loyalist. — Ev.
1
11
+
1
U


## p. 8625 (#233) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8625
Thoresby of Thoresby Rise in Deeping Fen, because his father
had thought fit to give him an ugly and silly name, the less of a
noble lad ? Did his name prevent his being six feet high ? Were
his shoulders the less broad for it, his cheeks the less ruddy for
it ? He wore his flaxen hair of the same length that every one
now wears his, instead of letting it hang half-way to his waist in
essenced curls; but was he therefore the less of a true Viking's
son, bold-hearted as his sea-roving ancestors who won the Dane.
lagh by Canute's side, and settled there on Thoresby Rise, to grow
wheat and breed horses, generation succeeding generation, in the
old moated grange? He carried a Bible in his jack-boot; but did
that prevent him, as Oliver rode past him with an approving
smile on Naseby field, thinking himself a very handsome fellow,
with his mustache and imperial, and bright-red coat, and cuirass
well polished, in spite of many a dint, as he sate his father's
great black horse as gracefully and firmly as any long-locked and
essenced cavalier in front of him ? Or did it prevent him think-
ing too, for a moment, with a throb of the heart, that sweet
Cousin Patience far away at home, could she but see him, might
have the same opinion of him as he had of himself? Was he
the worse for the thought? He was certainly not the worse for
checking it the next instant, with manly shame for letting such
< carnal vanities” rise in his heart while he was doing the Lord's
work” in the teeth of death and hell; but was there no poetry in
him then ? No poetry in him, five minutes after, as the long
Tapier swung round his head, redder and redder at every sweep?
We are befooled by names. Call him Crusader instead of Round-
head, and he seems at once (granting him only sincerity, which
he had, and that of a right awful kind) as complete a knight-
errant as ever watched and prayed, ere putting on his spurs, in
fantastic Gothic chapel, beneath “storied windows richly dight. ”
Was there no poetry in him, either, half an hour afterwards, as he
lay bleeding across the corpse of the gallant horse, waiting for
his turn with the surgeon, and fumbled for the Bible in his boot,
and tried to hum a psalm, and thought of Cousin Patience, and
his father, and his mother, and how they would hear at least
that he had played the man in Israel that day, and resisted unto
blood, striving against sin and the Man of Sin ?
And was there no poetry in him too, as he came wearied
a long Thoresby dike, in the quiet autumn eve, home to the house
of his forefathers; and saw afar off the knot of tall poplars rising
1
务
​1
»
XV-540


## p. 8626 (#234) ###########################################

8626
CHARLES KINGSLEY
D
over the broad misty flat, and the one great abele tossing its
sheets of silver in the dying gusts, and knew that they stood
before his father's door ? Who can tell all the pretty child
memories which fitted across his brain at that sight, and made
him forget that he was a wounded cripple? There is the dike
where he and his brothers snared the great pike which stole the
ducklings — how many years ago ? — while pretty little Patience
stood by trembling, and shrieked at each snap of the brute's wide
jaws; and there, down that long dark lode, ruffling with crimson
in the sunset breeze, he and his brothers skated home in triumph
with Patience when his uncle died. What a day that was! when
in the clear bright winter noon they laid the gate upon the ice,
and tied the beef-bones under the four corners, and packed little
Patience on it! -How pretty she looked, though her eyes were
red with weeping, as she peeped out from among the heap of
blankets and horse-hides; and how merrily their long fen-runners
whistled along the ice-lane, between the high bank of sighing
reed, at a pace like the race-horse's, to the dear old home among
the poplar-trees. And now he was going home to meet her after
a mighty victory, a deliverance from heaven; second only in his
eyes to that Red Sea one. Was there no poetry in his heart at
that thought ? Did not the glowing sunset, and the reed-beds
which it transfigured before him into sheets of golden flame, seem
tokens that the glory of God was going before him in his path ?
Did not the sweet clamor of the wild-fowl, gathering for one rich
pæan ere ey sank into rest, seem to him as God's bells chiming
him home in triumph, with peals sweeter and bolder than those
of Lincoln or Peterborough steeple-house? Did not the very
lapwing, as she tumbled softly wailing before him, as she did
years ago, seem to welcome the wanderer home in the name of
heaven?
Fair Patience, too — though she was a Puritan, yet did not
her cheek flush, her eyes grow dim, like any other girl's, as she
saw far off the red coat, like a sliding spark of fire, coming slowly
along the strait fen-bank, and fled up-stairs into her chamber to
pray, half that it might be, half that it might not be he? Was
there no happy storm of human tears and human laughter when
he entered the court-yard gate ? Did not the old dog lick his
Puritan hand as lovingly as if it had been a Cavalier's ? Did not
lads and lasses run out shouting ? Did not the old yeoman
father
hug him, weep over him, hold him at arm's-length, and hug him
1
1
1


## p. 8627 (#235) ###########################################

CHARLES KINGSLEY
8627
one
more
again, as heartily as any other John Bull; even though the next
moment he called all to kneel down and thank Him who had
sent his boy home again, after bestowing on him the grace to
bind kings in chains and nobles with links of iron, and contend
to death for the faith delivered to the saints? And did not Zeal-
for-Truth look about as wistfully for Patience as any other man
would have done; longing to see her, yet not daring even to ask
for her ? And when she came down at last, was she the less
lovely in his eyes because she came, not flaunting with bare
bosom, in tawdry finery and paint, but shrouded close in coif and
pinner, hiding from all the world beauty which was there still,
but was meant for one alone, and that only if God willed, in
God's good time? And was there no faltering of their voices, no
light in their eyes, no trembling pressure of their hands, which
said more, and was -ay, and more beautiful in the sight
of Him who made them — than all Herrick's Dianemes, Waller's
Saccharissas, flames, darts, posies, love-knots, anagrams, and the
rest of the insincere cant of the court ? What if Zeal-for-Truth
had never strung two rhymes together in his life? Did not his
heart go for inspiration to a loftier Helicon, when it whispered to
itself, “My love, my dove, my undefiled, is but one,” than if he
had filled pages with sonnets about Venuses and Cupids, love-
sick shepherds and cruel nymphs ?
And was there no poetry - true idyllic poetry, as of Longfel-
low's Evangeline' itself — in that trip round the old farm next
morning; when Zeal-for-Truth, after looking over every heifer
and
peeping into every sty, would needs canter down by his
father's side to the horse-fen, with his arm in a sling; while the
partridges whirreď up before them, and the lurchers flashed like
gray snakes after the hare, and the colts came whinnying round,
with staring eyes and streaming manes; and the two chatted'
on in the same sober business-like English tone, alternately of
the Lord's great dealings” by General Cromwell, the pride of
all honest fen-men, and the price of troop-horses at the next
Horncastle fair ?
Poetry in those old Puritans? Why not? They were men
of like passions with ourselves. They loved, they married, they
brought up children; they feared, they sinned, they sorrowed,
they fought — they conquered. There was poetry enough in
them, be sure, though they acted it like men instead of singing
it like birds.
»
}
»


## p. 8628 (#236) ###########################################

8628
CHARLES KINGSLEY
THE SALMON RIVER
From the "Water-Babies)
>
A
ND then, on the evening of a very hot day, he saw a sight.
He had been very stupid all day, and so had the trout;
for they would not move an inch to take a fly, though there
were thousands on the water, but lay dozing at the bottom under
the shade of the stones; and Tom lay dozing too, and was glad
to cuddle their smooth, cool sides, for the water was quite warm
and unpleasant.
But toward evening it grew suddenly dark; and Tom looked
up and saw a blanket of black clouds lying right across the
valley above his head, resting on the crags right and left. He
felt not quite frightened, but very still; for everything was still.
There was not a whisper of wind nor a chirp of a bird to be
heard; and next a few great drops of rain fell plop into the
water, and one hit Tom on the nose, and made him pop his head
down quickly enough.
And then the thunder roared, and the lightning flashed, and
leaped across Vendale and back again, from cloud to cloud and
cliff to cliff, till the very rocks in the stream seemed to shake;
and Tom looked up at it through the water, and thought it the
finest thing he ever saw in his life.
But out of the water he dared not put his head; for the rain
came down by bucketfuls, and the hail hammered like shot on
the stream, and churned it into foam; and soon the stream rose
and rushed down, higher and higher and fouler and fouler, full
of beetles, and sticks and straws, and worms and addle-eggs, and
wood-lice and leeches, and odds and ends, and omnium-gatherums,
and this, that, and the other, enough to fill nine museums.
Tom could hardly stand against the stream, and hid behind a
rock. But the trout did not; for out they rushed from among
the stones, and began gobbling the beetles and leeches in the
most greedy and quarrelsome way; and swimming about with
great worms hanging out of their mouths, tugging and kicking
to get them away from each other.
And now, by the flashes of the lightning, Tom saw a new
sight,- all the bottom of the stream alive with great eels, turn-
ing and twisting along, all down-stream and away. They had
been hiding for weeks past in the cracks of the rocks, and in
burrows in the mud; and Tom had hardly ever seen them, except


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CHARLES KINGSLEY
8629
(C
now and then at night; but now they were all out, and went
hurrying past him so fiercely and wildly that he was quite fright-
ened. And as they hurried past he could hear them say to each
other, “We must run, we must run. What a jolly thunder-storm!
Down to the sea, down to the sea! ”
And then the otter came by with all her brood, twining and
sweeping along as fast as the eels themselves; and she spied Tom
as she came by, and said:
Now is your time, eft, if you want to see the world. Come
along, children, never mind those nasty eels: we shall breakfast
on salmon to-morrow. Down to the sea, down to the sea! »
Then came a flash brighter than all the rest; and by the light
of it - in the thousandth part of a second they were gone again,
but he had seen them, he was certain of it — three beautiful
Little white girls, with their arms twined round each other's
necks, floating down the torrent as they sang, "Down to the sea,
down to the sea ! »
“Oh, stay! Wait for me! ” cried Tom; but they were gone;
yet he could hear their voices clear and sweet through the roar
of thunder and water and wind, singing as they died away,
“Down to the sea! ”
«Down to the sea ? ” said Tom: "everything is going to the
sea, and I will go too. Good-by, trout. ” But the trout were so
busy gobbling worms that they never turned to answer him; so
that Tom was spared the pain of bidding them farewell.
And now, down the rushing stream, guided by the bright
flashes of the storm; past tall birch-fringed rocks, which shone
out one moment as clear as day, and the next were dark as
night; past dark hovers under swirling banks, from which great
trout rushed out on Tom, thinking him to be good to eat, and
turned back sulkily, for the fairies sent them home again with a
tremendous scolding for daring to meddle with a water-baby; on
through narrow strids and roaring cataracts, where Tom was
deafened and blinded for a moment by the rushing waters; along
deep reaches, where the white water-lilies tossed and flapped
beneath the wind and hail; past sleeping villages, under dark
bridge arches, and away and away to the sea. And Tom could
not stop, and did not care to stop: he would see the great world
below, and the salmon and the breakers and the wide, wide sea.
And when the daylight came, Tom found himself out in the
salmon river,
*
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8630
CHARLES KINGSLEY
!
1
1
1
And what sort of a river was it? Was it like an Irish stream
winding through the brown bogs, where the wild ducks squatter
up from among the white water-lilies, and the curlews flit to and
fro, crying, “Tullie-wheep, mind your sheep," and Dennis tells
you strange stories of the Peishtamore, the great bogy-snake
which lies in the black peat pools, among the old pine stems, and
puts his head out at night to snap at the cattle as they come
down to drink ? But you must not believe all that Dennis tells
you, mind; for if you ask him —
Is there a salmon here, do you think, Dennis ? »
“Is it salmon, thin, your Honor manes ? Salmon ? Cart-loads
it is of thim, thin, an' ridgmens, shouldthering ache ither out of
water, av ye'd but the luck to see thim. ”
Then you fish the pool all over, and never get a rise.
But there can't be a salmon here, Dennis! and if you'll but
think, if one had come up last tide, he'd be gone to the higher
pools by now. ”
« Sure, thin, and your Honor's the thrue fisherman, and un-
derstands it all like a book. Why, ye spake as if ye'd known the
wather a thousand years! As I said, how could there be a fish
here at all, just now? »
“But you said just now they were shouldering each other out
of water. "
And then Dennis will look up at you with his handsome,
sly, soft, sleepy, good-natured, untrustable, Irish gray eye, and
answer with the prettiest smile:-
"Sure, and didn't I think your Honor would like a pleasant
answer ? »
So you must not trust Dennis, because he is in the habit of
giving pleasant answers; but instead of being angry with him,
you must remember that he is a poor Paddy, and knows no bet-
ter: so you must just burst out laughing; and then he will burst
out laughing too, and slave for you, and trot about after you,
and show you good sport if he can,- for he is an affectionate fel-
low, and as fond of sport as you are,- and if he can't, tell you
fibs instead, a hundred an hour; and wonder all the while why
poor ould Ireland does not prosper like England and Scotland
and some other places, where folk have taken up a ridiculous
fancy that honesty is the best policy.
Or was it like a Welsh salmon river, which is remarkable
chiefly (at least, till this last year) for containing no salmon, as
2
!
1
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CHARLES KINGSLEY
8631
they have been all poached out by the enlighted peasantry, to
prevent the Cythrawl Sassenach (which means you, my little dear,
your kith and kin, and signifies much the same as the Chinese
Fan Quei) from coming bothering into Wales, with good tackle
and ready money, and civilization and common honesty, and other
like things of which the Cymry stand in no need whatsoever ?
Or was it such a salmon stream as I trust you will see among
the Hampshire water-meadows before your hairs are gray, under
the wise new fishing-laws — when Winchester apprentices shall
covenant, as they did three hundred years ago, not to be made
to eat salmon more than three days a week, and fresh-run fish
shall be as plentiful under Salisbury spire as they are in Holly-
h ole at Christchurch; in the good time coming, when folks shall
see that of all Heaven's gifts of food, the one to be protected
most carefully is that worthy gentleman salmon, who is generous
e nough to go down to the sea weighing five ounces, and to come
back next year weighing five pounds, without having cost the
soil or the State one farthing?
Or was it like a Scotch stream such as Arthur Clough drew
in his Bothie?
«Where over a ledge of granite
Into a granite basin the amber torrent descended.
Beautiful there for the color derived from green rocks under;
Beautiful most of all, where beads of foam uprising
Mingle their clouds of white with the delicate hue of the still-
(
ness.
Cliff
over cliff for its sides, with rowan
boughs. ”
and pendent birch
.
Ah, my little man, when you are a big man, and fish such
a stream as that, you will hardly care, I think, whether she be
roaring down in full spate, like coffee covered with scald cream,
while the fish are swirling at your fly as an oar-blade swirls in
a boat-race, or flashing up the cataract like silver arrows, out
of the fiercest of the foam; or whether the fall be dwindled to
a single thread, and the shingle below be as white and dusty as a
turnpike road, while the salmon huddle together in one dark
cloud in the clear amber pool, sleeping away their time till the
ra in creeps back again off the sea You will not care much, if
you have eyes and brains; for you will lay down your rod con-
te ntedly, and drink in at your eyes the beauty of that glorious
place, and listen to the water-ouzel piping on the stones, and
9


## p. 8632 (#240) ###########################################

8632
CHARLES KINGSLEY
« You
-
watch the yellow roes come down to drink and look up at you
with their great soft, trustful eyes, as much as to say,
could not have the heart to shoot at us. " And then, if you have
,
sense, you will turn and talk to the great giant of a gilly who
lies basking on the stone beside you. He will tell you no fibs,
my little man, for he is a Scotchman, and fears God; and as you
talk with him you will be surprised more and more at his knowl-
edge, his sense, his humor, his courtesy; and you will find out -
unless you have found it out before — that a man may learn
from his Bible to be a more thorough gentleman than if he had
been brought up in all the drawing-rooms in London.
No. It was none of these, the salmon stream at Harthover.
It was such a stream as you see in dear old Bewick — Bewick,
who was born and bred upon them. A full hundred yards broad
it was, sliding on from broad pool to broad shallow, and broad
shallow to broad pool, over great fields of shingle, under oak and
ash coverts, past low cliffs of sandstone, past green meadows and
fair parks, and a great house of gray stone, and brown moors
above, and here and there against the sky the smoking chimney
of a colliery. You must look at Bewick to see just what it was
like, for he has drawn it a hundred times with the care and the
love of a true north-countryman; and even if you do not care
about the salmon river, you ought like all good boys to know
your Bewick.
At least, so old Sir John used to say; and very sensibly he
put it too, as he was wont to do:-
" If they want to describe a finished young gentleman in
France, I hear, they say of him, Il sait son Rabelais. ' But if I
want to describe one in England, I say, 'He knows his Bewick. '
And I think that is the higher compliment. ”


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