British Association 231 to me... . . wanting me to come and stay with him, &c.; he has told me much that is curious about De Quincey, Hogg, Wilson, &c. He and B. and T. have been trying hard to make me preach in Boyd's Church; but I talked it over with last night, and I was glad to find that he thought with me, that it is quite legal, but that there was no need for a sudden and uncalled-for row with the Puseyites. I am most careful about all that. Nothing can be more pleasant than my stay here has been. But the racket of the meeting is terrible; the talking continual, and running into Dundee, by two trains, with the steamer at Broughty Ferry, between, is too much; so I have taken up my hat, and am off to Tilliepronie to-morrow; with the Provost of Dundee, and worse, the dear Red Lion Club crying to me to stop and dine. These dear Scots folk — I should like to live always among them; they are so full of vigorous life and heart. I am very well, but longing for the heather. Tell Maurice golf is the queen of games, if cricket is the king and the golfing gentlemen as fine fellows as ever I saw. Kiss all the darlings for me, Grenville especially." : "Best of all," said Dean Stanley in a letter from Dundee, speaking of the banquet, "was Kingsley's speech, comparing the literature of science to camp followers 1 picking up scraps from the army, plundering, begging, borrowing, and stealing, and giving what they got to the bairns and children that ran after them, ending with a very delicate and well-timed serious turn of the voice of God revealed in facts.'" From Abergeldie Castle he writes to his wife, who was starting their youngest boy to his first school: 1 The term used by Mr. Kingsley was "The Jackals of Science." |