Favorites and Friends 45 tirely new and true light. All his deepest teaching, his strongest influence was, in a way, of the negative kind inasmuch as there were no long lectures, no pithy arguments; but in his own life he showed, spoke, and lived his doctrines, so that his utter unselfishness, his genial tenderness towards their mother and themselves, gave the children an example that could not be passed by unnoticed, however unworthily followed. The only thing that he really required of us was reverence and respect for people older than ourselves, which was also one of the most strongly marked traits in his own character, and one which made him entirely ignore himself and his own superiority, in most cases, in speaking to men older than he was. This required reverence, however, on our part, never created any feeling of restraint when with him; too true friendship existed between us. Perhaps the brightest picture of the past that I look back to now that we can all look back to — is, not the eager look of delight with which he used to hail any of our little successes - not any special case of approval, but it is the drawing-room at Eversley in the evenings when we were all at home and by ourselves. There he sat, with one hand in mother's, forgetting his own hard work and worry in leading our fun and frolic, with a kindly smile on his lips, and a loving light in that bright gray eye which made us feel that, in the broadest sense of the word, he was our father." But to speak of his home without mentioning his love of animals would be to leave the picture incomplete. His dog and his horse were his friends, and they knew it, and understood his voice and eye. He was a perfect horseman, and never lost his temper with his horse, talking to and reasoning with it if it shied or bolted, as if it had been a rational being, knowing that, from the fine organization of the animal, a horse, like a child, will get confused by panic fear, which is only increased by punishment. His dog Dandy, a fine Scotch terrier, was his companion in all his parish walks, attended at the cottage lectures and school lessons, and was his and the children's friend for thirteen years. He lies buried under the great fir-trees on the Rectory lawn, with this inscription on his gravestone, "Fideli Fideles, and close by "Sweep," a magnificent black retriever, and "Victor," given to him by the Queen, a favorite Teckel, with which he sat up during the two last suffering nights of the little creature's life. Cats, too, were a continual delight to him; the stable had always its white cat, and the house its black or tabby, whose graceful movements he never tired of watching. His love of animals was deepened by his belief in their future state-a belief which he held in common with John Wesley, Agassiz, Bishop Butler, and many other remarkable men. On the lawn dwelt a family of natter jacks (running toads), who lived on from year to year in the same hole in the green bank, which the scythe was never allowed to approach. He had two little friends in a pair of sand wasps, who lived in a crack of the window in his dressing-room, one of which he had saved from drowning in a hand-basin, taking it tenderly out into the sunshine to dry; and every spring he would look out eagerly for them or their children who came out of, or returned to the same crack. The little fly-catcher, who built its nest every year under his bedroom window, was a constant joy to him. He had also a favorite slow-worm in the churchyard which his parishioners were Favorites and Friends 47 warned not to kill, from the mistaken idea prevalent in Eversley that slow-worms were poisonous. All these tastes he encouraged in his children, teaching them to love and handle gently, without disgust, all living things, toads, frogs, beetles, as works and wonders from the hand of a Living God. His guests were surprised one morning at breakfast when his little girl ran up to the open window of the dining-room holding a long repulsive-looking worm in her hand. "Oh! daddy, look at this delightful worm." He had but one aversion which he could never conquer and it was of himself he spoke in 'Glaucus,' after saying, that every one seems to have his antipathic animal: "I know one bred from his childhood to zoology by land and sea, and bold in asserting, and honest in feeling that all without exception is beautiful, who yet cannot, after handling, and petting, and examining all day long every uncouth and venomous beast, avoid a paroxysm of horror at the sight of the common housespider." 1 But, of all God's creations, birds were to him the most wonderful, he would say. He knew their every note, and was never tired of watching their character and habits. He looked for the arrival of the birds of passage every spring with a strange longing, and seemed less restless after the swallow had appeared at Eversley. His eyes would fill with tears at each fresh arrival, and again each autumn as he grieved over their departure. 1 This horror, curiously enough, became hereditary in one of his sons, who, however, never knew of the father's dislike to this class of spider till he was a grown man. (M. K.) "Your bird-books are delightful," he writes, while Professor of Modern History, to a friend; "gladly would I throw up history, to think of nothing but dicky-birds- but it must not be yet. Some day, ere I grow too old to think, I trust to be able to throw away all pursuits save natural history, and die with my mind full of God's facts, instead of men's lies. Many, now scattered far and wide," says one who knew and loved the Rector in his home, and has an especial right to speak, "must remember how picturesque the Rectory itself was. Even a stranger passing by would have stopped to look at the pleasant ivy-grown house, with its long, sloping, dark roofs, its gables, its bow-windows open to sun and air, and its quaint mixture of buildings, old and new. And who among his friends will ever cease to remember the lawn, and glebeland sweeping upward toward the half-cultivated, halfwild copse; through which the hidden path, henceforth sacred ground to those who loved him, leads up and out to Hartford Bridge Flats? Marked features in the scene to them, and now widely known, were the grand Scotch firs on the lawn, under which on summer evenings I have seen many sweet pictures, and heard many noble words, and the branches of which now wave solemnly above his last resting-place. -- "Here in this beautiful home-scene, and truly ideal English Rectory was the fountain-head as I certainly think, and as he often said of all his strength and greatness. Indeed, great as I knew him to be in his books, I found him greater at his own fireside. Home was to him the sweetest, the fairest, the most romantic thing in life; and there all that was best and brightest in him shone with steady and purest lustre. "I should not venture to speak of this, unless permis Favorites and Friends 49 sion had been granted me to do so, feeling that it is the most difficult of tasks, to lift the veil from any family life without lowering its sacredness; and that it is wholly beyond my power to preserve in words the living 'sweetness and light' which pervaded his household. That household was indeed a revelation to me, as I know it was to others; so nobly planned and ordered, so earnest in its central depths, so bright upon its surface. "Of the wonderful love of his home-life I must not, cannot speak. Such things are not for the world. And yet, for all who wish to know what Mr. Kingsley really was, what the fashion of his life, and the aims for which he worked, not to know that love for those nearest and dearest to him was the very lever of his life, the very soul of all his joy, would be to know him all amiss, and lose the very key-note of his being. He has told it all himself to those who have ears to hear in every book he wrote, and to those who knew him well, his every look and every action told the fact yet more emphatically. Some men take pains to conceal their love. It seemed his pride to declare it. How often has he said to me and I venture to record it, because I know he would wish it to be recorded. that whatever he had done or achieved was due to the love that had come to him at a great crisis to guide and to strengthen and to glorify his life." VOL. II.-4 |