50 By Stream and Sea. 



appreciate, apprise, and lament the worthy labourer in the 

 fruitful vineyard of literature. His greatest creations, all the 

 better perhaps for flaw-specks here and there, have received 

 their due ; the unspottedness of his character, his fidelity to 

 the career which he chose for the exercise of his faculties, 

 were acknowledged in all honour. This and more, how- 

 ever, we must here be content to take for granted. 



There are two essays, published in Eraser's Magazine 

 during 1858, which, so far as I have seen, were not referred 

 to in any of the obituary notices which all classes of English- 

 men, and English speakers, must have been indeed sorry to 

 read, when the fatal announcement of Kirigsley's death was 

 telegraphed to the world. The one he terms " My Winter 

 Garden," the other "Chalk Stream Studies." They are 

 most delightful prose idylls ; more than that, they portray 

 an aspect of Kingsley's character which is a very pleasant 

 one to contemplate, and which seems somewhat to have 

 faded out of notice. In them, too, we find illustrated 

 with peculiar exactness the many, and not unfrequently 

 diverse, elements which combined to form a noble nature, 

 the comprehension of which cannot be complete unless we 

 study him through them. 



The first of these essays is a superb and sustained self- 

 communing which has such an air of actuality about it 

 that we may without question accept the circumstances 

 of its occurrence ; herein also I find justification for the, to 

 some, perhaps, startling title given to this chapter. Charles 

 Kingsley in the saddle was to many connoisseurs of 

 oratory a pleasanter sight than Charles Kingsley in the 

 pulpit; the whole country-side would tell you he was a 

 splendid horseman, but with all deference it might be said 

 that the gift of an eloquent tongue was not his. Well can I 

 remember the figure of a wiry, eager-eyed, manly-faced mail, 



