"where Kingsley vindicates his claim to be the author not merely of 

 good passages, but of a good book, is in the sustained passion of 

 patriotism, the heroic height of adventure and chivalry, which 

 pervades it from first to last." 



"The writing of Westward Ho! has done me good," wrote 



Kingsley to Maurice. " I have been living in those Elizabethan 



books among such grand, beautiful, silent men, that I am learning to 



' be sure of what I all along suspected — that I am a poor, queasy, 



hysterical, half-baked sort of a fellow." 



THE LIFE OF NELSON, by R. SOUTHEY. 



The Life of Nelson, in Macaulay's opinion, is Southey's "most 

 .perfect and delightful work. . . . No writer, perhaps, ever lived 

 whose talents so precisely qualified him to write the history of the 

 great naval warrior. . . . The character of the hero lay on the 

 •surface, the exploits were brilliant and picturesque. ... It would 

 • not be easy to find, in all literary history, an instance of a more exact 

 'hit between wind and water." 



An amazing tribute was paid to the book by the United States 

 Government. It printed an edition of it on fine paper for every 

 - officer, and on coarser paper for every man in its fleet. Someone 

 wrote to Southey telling him this, and said : " This is what should 

 have been done here long ago, and would have been if our noblemen 

 had been anything better than politicians. It ought to be in the 

 chest of every seaman, from the admiral to the cabin-boy." 



TOM 'BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS, by 

 THOMAS HUGHES. 



Tom Brown's School Days is the classic of the public school ; a 



.fine etching of Rugby and its famous headmaster, Arnold. "I tried 



.to realise to myself," says the author, " what the commonest type of 



..English boy cf the upper middle class was, so far as my experience 



went. My sole object in writing was to preach to boys." 



When the book was first published, Kingsley wrote to the author : 



" From everyone, from the fine lady on her throne to the redcoat on 



,his cockhorse and the schoolboy on his forrum (as our Irish brethren 



.call it), I have heard but one word, and that is that it is the jolliest 



" book they ever read." 



VOYAGE OF H.M.S. BEAGLE, by 



CHARLES DARWIN. 



Darwin's voyage round the world as naturalist to the " Beagle " 

 was a most momentous incident in its effect on modern thought. It 

 brought to his knowledge certain facts which "seemed to throw some 

 light on the origin of species — that mystery of mysteries." Darwin's 

 great theory of the "origin of species" resulted from this voyage, 

 and that theory, as Grant Allen puts it, "completely revolutionised 

 the sciences of Botany and Zoology, and made the doctrine of organic 



