No More Learning

He took a look through the telescope, and immediately exclaimed,
“They are gone! ” When asked the reason for his belief, he
pointed to a crow Aying very near one of the sentinels.
While a reconnoitring party was being formed, a flag of
truce approached. It brought a courteous letter from General
Lambert, announcing the departure of the British army, and
soliciting the kind attentions of General Jackson to the sick and
wounded, whom he was compelled to leave behind. The circum-
stances of these wounded men being made known in the city, a
number of ladies drove immediately down the coast in their car-
riages with articles for their comfort.
The British Aleet left the Gulf shores on the 17th of March.
When it reached England, it received the news that Napoleon
had escaped and that Europe was up again in arms. Most of
the troops were at once re-embarked for Belgium, to join Well-
ington's army. General Lambert, knighted for gallantry at New
Orleans, distinguished himself at Waterloo.
A handsome tablet in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, commem-
orates Pakenham's gallant life and heroic death.
Walker relates that the Duke of Wellington, after the battle
of New Orleans, always cherished a great admiration for General
Jackson, and when introduced to American visitors never failed
to inquire after his health.


## p. 8599 (#207) ###########################################

8599
ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE
(1809-1891)
K
INGLAKE the historian did not turn literary man of set pur-
pose. After a trip in the Orient he jotted down his remi-
niscences; talking, as he himself says, to a certain friend,
rather than writing for the public. The resulting book, Eothen,' was
a brilliant success: the author became famous at a bound. In after
years his solid literary performance as historian of the Crimean war
confirmed the position so easily won.
Alexander William Kinglake was the eldest son of a banker of
Taunton, England, where Alexander was born August 5th, 1809. He
was reared in a home of refinement, and as
a lad was a notable horseman and had a
taste for Homer. He went to Eton in due
course, and thence in 1828 to Trinity Col-
lege, Cambridge, where he was the friend
of Thackeray and Tennyson. He got his
B. A. in 1832, entered Lincoln's Inn, and
was called to the bar in 1837. But before
beginning his legal career he took the East-
ern tour, from which he made literary capi-
tal by writing (Eothen. ' The book, which
did not appear till 1844, is one of the most
enjoyable chronicles of travel in English;
full of picturesque description, quiet humor, A. W. KINGLAKE
and suggestive thought, — the whole seem-
ing freshly, spontaneously thrown off, though in reality the work was
several times rewritten. "Eothen) is as far as possible removed from
the conventional account of tourist doings. It gives in a charming
way the personal and independent impressions of an Englishman of
brains, culture, and literary gift. The style is at once easy and ele-
gant. The success of the volume, coming in a day when travel-books
were not so numerous as they now are, is not hard to understand.
Kinglake practiced law with only a desultory attention. The suc-
cess of 'Eothen' made him think of further literary work; and a nat-
ural disposition towards travel and an interest in affairs military drew
him in the direction of his master work, the Crimean history. In 1845
he went to Algiers, and accompanied the French general St. Arnaud



## p. 8600 (#208) ###########################################

8600
ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE
on his expedition in Algeria. In 1854 he joined the campaign in the
Crimea, was present at a battle, and remained with the English army
until the opening of the siege. This practical experience paved the
way for his acceptance of Lady Raglan's proposal that he should
write the history of the campaign, which her husband Lord Raglan
conducted. He agreed to do so, and all papers were turned over to
his care. Kinglake displayed the most painstaking care and diligence
in working up his material, and was also conscientious in polishing
his writing. The result is a work that is an authority in its field
and an attractive piece of literature. There can be but one opinion
with regard to the honesty, care of workmanship, and literary brill-
iancy which it shows. The historian at times enters too minutely
into details, and he is frankly prejudiced; his disapproval of Napoleon
III. coloring his view, while his belief in his friend Lord Raglan
gives his account something of party bias. But with Kinglake the
judgment is always based on moral principle. And he possessed
some of the finest qualities of the history-writer. He could make
historic scenes vivid and vital; he had sympathy, imagination, knowl-
edge of his subject. His marshaling of events has coherence and
unity. The human interest is strong in his pages. In fine, he is
among the most readable of modern writers of history.
Kinglake served in Parliament as a Liberal from Bridgewater from
1857 to 1868: his influence was felt in worthy reforms. The prepara-
tion of his eight-volume history occupied him for thirty-four years,
and it will remain his monument. (The Invasion of the Crimea, its
Origin, and an Account of its Progress down to the Death of Lord
Raglan,' the first volume of which appeared in 1863 and the last in
1888, represents the life work of a writer of force and originality.
Kinglake was a man of charming personality. His final illness, a
cancer of the tongue, was borne with great courage; his death occur-
ring on January 2d, 1891. His dislike of the parading of one's pri-
vate life is shown in his instructions to his literary executor that
none of the manuscripts he left should be published.
THE DESERT
From (Eothen)
A
S LONG as you are journeying in the interior of the desert, you
have no particular point to make for as your resting-place.
The endless sands yield nothing but small stunted shrubs:
even these fail after the first two or three days; and from that
time you pass over broad plains - you pass over newly reared


## p. 8601 (#209) ###########################################

ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE
8601
hills-you pass through valleys that the storm of the last week
has dug, and the hills and the valleys are sand, sand, sand, still
sand, and only sand, and sand, and sand again. The earth is so
samely that your eyes turn towards heaven-towards heaven, I
mean, in the sense of sky. You look to the Sun, for he is your
taskmaster, and by him you know the measure of the work that
you have done and the measure of the work that remains for you
to do; he comes when you strike your tent in the early morning,
and then for the first hour of the day, as you move forward on
your camel, he stands at your near side, and makes you know that
the whole day's toil is before you;- then for a while and a long
while you see him no more, for you are veiled and shrouded,
and dare not look upon the greatness of his glory; but you know
where he strides overhead, by the touch of his flaming sword. No
words are spoken; but your Arabs moan, your camels sigh, your
skin glows, your shoulders ache, and for sights you see the pattern
and the web of the silk that veils your eyes, and the glare of the
outer light. Time labors on: your skin glows, and your shoul-
ders ache, your Arabs moan, your camels sigh, and you see the
same pattern in the silk and the same glare of light beyond; but
conquering Time marches on, and by-and-by the descending Sun
has compassed the heaven, and now softly touches your right
arm, and throws your lank shadow over the sand, right along on
the way for Persia: then again you look upon his face, for his
power is all veiled in his beauty, and the redness of flames has
become the redness of roses; the fair, wavy cloud that fled in
the morning now comes to his sight once more— comes blushing,
yet still comes on - - comes burning with blushes, yet hastens, and
clings to his side.
Then arrives your time for resting. The world about you is
all your own; and there where you will, you pitch your solitary
tent: there is no living thing to dispute your choice. When at
last the spot had been fixed upon, and we came to a halt, one of
the Arabs would touch the chest of my camel, and utter at the
same time a peculiar gurgling sound: the beast instantly under-
stood, and obeyed the sign, and slowly sunk under me till she
brought her body to a level with the ground; then gladly enough
I alighted; the rest of the camels were unloaded, and turned loose
to browse upon the shrubs of the desert, where shrubs there
were, or where these failed, to wait for the small quantity of
food which was allowed them out of our stores.


## p. 8602 (#210) ###########################################

8602
ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE
-
At the beginning of my journey, the night breeze blew coldly;
when that happened, the dry sand was heaped up outside round
the skirts of the tent, and so the wind that everywhere else could
sweep as he listed along those dreary plains was forced to turn
aside in his course, and make way, as he ought, for the English-
man. Then within my tent there were heaps of luxuries, –
dining-rooms, dressing-rooms, libraries, bedrooms, drawing-rooms,
oratories,—all crowded into the space of a hearth-rug. The first
night, I remember, with my books and maps about me, I wanted
light; they brought me a taper, and immediately from out of the
silent desert there rushed in a flood of life, unseen before. Mon-
sters of moths of all shapes and hues, that never before perhaps
had looked upon the shining of a flame, now madly thronged into
my tent, and dashed through the fire of the candle till they fairly
extinguished it with their burning limbs. Those who had failed
in attaining this martyrdom suddenly became serious, and clung
despondingly to the canvas.
By-and-by there was brought to me the fragrant tea, and big
masses of scorched and scorching toast, that minded me of old
Eton days, and the butter that had come all the way to me in
this desert of Asia, from out of that poor, dear, starving Ireland.
I feasted like a king,— like four kings, like a boy in the fourth
form.
When the cold, sullen morning dawned, and my people began
to load the camels, I always felt loath to give back to the waste
this little spot of ground that had glowed for a while with the
cheerfulness of a human dwelling. One by one the cloaks, the
saddles, the baggage, the hundred things that strewed the ground
and made it look so familiar - all these were taken away and
laid upon the camels. A speck in the broad tracts of Asia re-
mained still impressed with the mark of patent portmanteaus and
the heels of London boots; the embers of the fire lay black and
cold upon the sand, and these were the signs we left.
My tent was spared to the last; but when all else was ready
for the start, then came its fall: the pegs were drawn, the can-
vas shivered, and in less than a minute there was nothing that
remained of my genial home but only a pole and a bundle.
The
encroaching Englishman was off; and instant, upon the fall of the
canvas, like an owner who had waited and watched, the Genius
of the Desert stalked in.
-
24
1


## p. 8603 (#211) ###########################################

ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE
8603
I can understand the sort of amazement of the Orientals at
the scantiness of the retinue with which an Englishman passes
the desert; for I was somewhat struck myself when I saw one
of my countrymen making his way across the wilderness in this
simple style. At first there was a mere moving speck in the
horizon; my party, of course, became all alive with excitement,
and there were many surmises: soon it appeared that three laden
camels were approaching, and that two of them carried riders;
in a little while we saw that one of the riders wore the Euro-
pean dress, and at last the travelers were pronounced to be an
English gentleman and his servant; by their side there were a
couple, I think, of Arabs on foot: and this was the whole party.
You,- you love sailing: in returning from a cruise to the
English coast, you see often enough a fisherman's humble boat
far away from all shores, with an ugly black sky above and an
angry sea beneath; you watch the grisly old man at the helm,
carrying his craft with strange skill through the turmoil of
waters, and the boy, supple-limbed, yet weather-worn already,
and with steady eyes that look through the blast, - you see him
understanding commandments from the jerk of his father's white
eyebrow, now belaying and now letting go, now scrunching him-
self down into mere ballast, or bailing out Death with a pip-
kin. Stale enough is the sight; and yet when I see it I always
stare anew, and with a kind of Titanic exultation, because that
a poor boat, with the brain of a man and the hands of a boy on
board, can match herself so bravely against black Heaven and
Ocean: well, so when you have traveled for days and days, over
an Eastern desert, without meeting the likeness of a human
being, and then at last see an English shooting-jacket and his
servant come listlessly slouching along from out the forward
horizon, you stare at the wide unproportion between this slender
company and the boundless plains of sand through which they
are keeping their way.
This Englishman, as I afterwards found, was a military man
returning to his country from India, and crossing the desert at
this part in order to go through Palestine. As for me, I had come
pretty straight from England; and so here we met in the wil-
derness at about half-way from our respective starting-points. As
we approached each other, it became with me a question whether
we should speak. I thought it likely that the stranger would
accost me; and in the event of his doing so, I was quite ready to


## p. 8604 (#212) ###########################################

8604
ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE
be as sociable and as chatty as I could be, according to my
nature, but still I could not think of anything in particular that
I had to say to him. Of course among civilized people the not
having anything to say is no excuse at all for not speaking,
but I was shy and indolent; and I felt no great wish to stop and
talk like a morning visitor, in the midst of those broad solitudes.
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
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8624
CHARLES KINGSLEY
}
ET
.
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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.
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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
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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.