III
To pass to Kingsley, is like turning from the world to the kingdom of God: all is religious fervor, humanitarian purpose. Here again the activity is multiple but the dominant spirit is that of militant Christianity. Outside of the Novel, Kingsley has left in "Water Babies" a book deserving the name of modern classic, unless the phrase be a contradiction in terms. "Alton Locke," read to-day, is felt to be too much the tract to bear favorable comparison with Eliot's "Felix Holt"; but it has literary power and noble sincerity. Kingsley is one of the first to feel the ground-swell of social democracy which was to sweep later fiction on its mighty tide. "Westward Ho!" is a sterling historical romance, one of the more successful books in a select list which embraces "The Cloister and the Hearth," "Lorna Doone," and "John Inglesant." "Hypatia," examined dispassionately, may be described as an historical romance with elements of greatness rather than a great historical romance. But it shed its glamour over our youth and there is affectionate dread in the thought of a more critical re-reading.
In truth, Kingsley, viewed in all his literary work, stands out as an athlete of the intellect and the emotions, doing much and doing it remarkably well—a power for righteousness in his day and generation, but for this very reason less a professional novelist of assured standing. His gifted, erratic brother Henry, in the striking series of stories dealing prevailingly with the Australian life he so well knew, makes a stronger impression of singleness of power and may last longer, one suspects, than the better-known, more successful Charles, whose significance for the later generation is, as we have hinted, in his sensitiveness to the new spirit of social revolt,—an isolated voice where there is now full chorus.