I Concerning Four Brothers of that Ilk 3 



dwell on our future nor our remote past, but turn 

 to our intellectual outbreak in the last generation 

 but one. 



Charles Kingsley was the greatest of the three 

 Kingsley brothers, and shed honour on his name 

 and credit on his nation for all time. Henry had 

 possibly the greater literary gift ; George was the 

 most typical Kingsley, at the best, of all three, and 

 was a brother very dear to the great Canon, who 

 was not only a Kingsley, but a great man among 

 humanity at large. The affection between Charles 

 and George was never dimmed, although ' George's 

 awful temper ' was an accepted fact in the family. 

 Still the Canon understood this brother of his, and, 

 understanding, loved him. They were more of an 

 age than Henry, and both remembered that other 

 brother of theirs, Gerald, to whom as boys they had 

 looked up as to a superior being — to wit, an officer 

 in the Royal Navy. Gerald's fate was a tragic one. 

 He served on Her Majesty's ship Pique in the 

 bombardment of St. Jean d'Acre, and seemed to 

 have before him a most brilliant future. But in 

 1844 he met with a ghastly death in the Gulf of 

 Carpentaria on board a disease-stricken gunboat, the 

 Royalist, There she lay with her wretched crew 

 roasting, rotting, and pining in her day after day, 

 never heard of, nor hearing of, a living soul outside 

 for a year and a half. The commander died, half 

 the crew died, the officers died, and so on, till in the 

 month of May no officer was left except Gerald 



