II Love of the Tropics 29 



of theirs had acquired on the plantation a love of 

 * tropical sensations and scenery,' and had transmitted 

 it to them as an instinctive desire. And it seems to 

 be extremely probable that this desire in George 

 Kingsley and his brothers was, at least in great 

 measure, an outcome of their early dreamings over 

 their grandfather's books and journals. One thing, 

 however, is certain : save, perchance, it were in the 

 delirium of a temporary mania induced by the 

 unwelcome attentions of myriads of mosquitoes, no 

 one of them — with a certain notable exception — 

 ever laid himself open to a charge of having spoken 

 disrespectfully of the Equator. In truth, their happi- 

 ness, to no inconsiderable extent, depended upon 

 their proximity to it. Henry Kingsley used to say 

 that in England ' he could never feel the sunshine 

 in his bones,' and often would he far, far rather have 

 been in Australia, gazing over * the hot, gray plains 

 away to the white sea-haze of the Southern Ocean,' 

 or over ' the great wooded ranges, rolling away west- 

 ward, tier beyond tier, till they were crowned by the 

 gleam of the everlasting snow,' than wearily writing 

 novels in Kentish Town. 



Charles Kingsley was, as all the world knows, 

 an enthusiastic welcomer of icy tempests, a scorner 

 of the soft south-wind, who soon got tired 



' of Summer, 

 Tired of gaudy glare.' 



Still, did he not once confess that in the days of his 

 boyhood ' he had often shed strange tears, he knew 



