LIXNEAX SOClETr OF 1,0XDU>'. 



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prolific author. But the ouly oceafions on which he figured pro- 

 uiinently in his own personality before the public were those on 

 which he took part in some controversy, such as his encounter 

 with Dr. Newman, or at the time of the attack upon Governor 

 Eyre. For some time after he graduated at Cambridge Kiugsley 

 studied for the law in Loudon. The occupation, however, was 

 from the first essentially uncongenial, and in 1813 he took 

 Orders, and was appointed to the curacy of the living of which 

 he died the rector. While at Cambridge Kiugsley had power- 

 fully come under the influence of that intellectual school which 

 Tennyson, his senior by some ten years, had, with the Arthur 

 Hallam immortalized in 'In Memoriam' and others, helped 

 to found. From his experience of the labouring-classes in agri- 

 cultural districts gained in Devonshire and elsewhere, and from 

 the close observation that he had bestowed on the state of 

 the poor in great cities like London, Mr. Kiugsley had already 

 grown to sympathise with their wants and aspirations, and was 

 determined to do what be could to supply the one and to advance 

 the other. The " Condition of England " question was not then 

 settled ; the relations that existed between capital and labour, 

 employed and employer, rich and poor, were much those described 

 by Mr. Disraeli in ' Sibyl.' And the practical knowledge that the 

 young clergyman possessed was quickened and intensified by the 

 literary and imaginative training through which he had gone. 

 His first work was a poem published in his thirty-first year. 

 ' The Saint's Tragedy ' is the story of Elizabeth of Hungary, Land- 

 gravine of Thuringia and a saiut of the liomish Calendar. As a 

 whole, it has been said to be of unequal merit, but that some of 

 the lyrics which it contains are of rare sweetness and power. It 

 embodies an earnest protest against mediaeval superstitions and 

 the exaggerated miraculous powers and achievements ascribed 

 to Elizabeth of Hungary and her contemporaries, while it is 

 penetrated by a strong feeling of admiration for certain aspects 

 of the theological life of the period. 



'Alton Locke, Poet and Tailor, an Autobiography,' published 

 twenty-four years ago, is the first contribution made by Canon 

 Kingsley to the department of fiction. ' Teast ' followed in 1851, 

 and was immediately supplemented by a pamphlet, the republica- 

 tion of a lecture on the 'Application of Associative Principles and 

 Methods to Agriculture.' It has been said that each of these 

 works advocates a system of things which would result in a 



