"All this is wonderful blessing falling to me beyond my share, after I had thought that my life was ended, and that, so to speak, my coffin was ready for me in the next room. Deep down below there is a hidden river of sadness, but this must always be with those who have lived so long; but I am able to enjoy my newly reopened life. I shall be a better, more loving creature than I could have been in solitude. To be constantly, lovingly grateful for the gift of a perfect love is the best illumination of one's mind to all the possible good there may be in store for man on this troublous little planet. I was getting hard, and if I had decided differently I think I should have become selfish.
"The whole history is something like a miracle-legend. But instead of any former affection being displaced, I seem to have recovered the loving sympathy that I was in danger of losing. I mean that I had been conscious of a certain drying-up of tenderness in me, and that now the spring seems to have risen again."
The consolations of this new love and tenderness were to cheer her but a little time, for they were scarcely settled in the new home after the trip abroad, during which time she had excellent health and enjoyed everything much, before the final illness came, and "the fever called living was over at last."
Amid the falling of the bitter rain of winter, in the deadliest desolation of the year, they bore her to her rest amid the silent. She whose speech has endeared her to the whole thinking world, whose thoughts have borne us like an anthem ever upward to the loftiest and the best, all her sacred service done, shall know hereafter no more work, no more device, but the deep calm of rest, untroubled by the vexing sights and shows of time.
We cannot think that she met the solemn, swift release with dread. She looked too deeply into life to make of it a mere thing of daily bread, of common homely joys and trifling labors; but all its sorest problems weighed her down, and all its deepest doubt and dull despairing went with her to the last, saddening even the happiest moments of her life. And the falling of that cold and solemn winter rain into that grave, about which gathered many of the greatest minds in England with reverent tears, seems not sad but sweet,—a kind release from the stress and strain of a tumultuous existence. Nevermore will that still heart be crushed and riven by wrongs and woes which she has no power to aid; nevermore life's terrors hold and o'ermaster her; nevermore a questioning world look upon her in judgment. With the great of every time and nation she has at last taken her place, and will hold it evermore.
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
Charles Kingsley was born at Holne Vicarage, under the brow of Dartmore, in 1819; but his family removed almost immediately into Nottinghamshire, although he always felt himself to be, and called himself, a Devonshire man. Of his parents he himself gives account as follows:—