Famous leaders among men

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

In February he made his first visit to Scotland, to deliver before the Philosophical Institute at Edinburgh four lectures on the "Schools of Alexandria." He writes to his wife, "The lecture went off well. I was dreadfully nervous, and actually cried with fear up in my room beforehand; but after praying I recovered myself, and got through it very well, being much cheered and clapped."

When his wife was saddened on account of debts incurred through illness, Mr. Kingsley cheered her with his brave heart. "To pay them," he said, "I have thought, I have written, I have won for us a name which, please God, may last among the names of English writers.... So out of evil God brings good; or, rather, out of necessity He brings strength ... and the meanest actual want may be the means of calling into actual life the possible but sleeping embryo of the very noblest faculties."

In the winter of 1851 Kingsley wrote "Brave Words to Brave Soldiers," several thousand copies of which were distributed among the suffering soldiers before Sebastopol in the Crimea; also his novel, "Westward Ho!"

Many letters of appreciation came after the publication of this book. A naval officer wrote from Hong Kong, "Among the many blessings for which I have had to thank God this night, the most special has been for the impressions produced by your noble sermon of 'Westward Ho!' Some months ago I read it for the first time, then sailed on a long cruise; and now on returning have read it again with prayer that has been answered, for God's blessing has gone with it."

Kingsley gave lectures in London before the Working Men's College, and a series to women interested in laborers. To the latter he said, "Instead of reproving and fault-finding, encourage. In God's name encourage! They scramble through life's rocks, bogs, and thorn-brakes clumsily enough, and have many a fall, poor things!"

As to teaching boys, he said, "It will be a boon to your own sex, as well as to ours, to teach them courtesy, self-restraint, reverence for physical weakness, admiration of tenderness and gentleness; and it is one which only a lady can bestow.... There is a latent chivalry, doubt it not, in the heart of every untutored clod."

In the summer of 1856, when he was thirty-seven, Kingsley spent a happy vacation with Mr. Thomas Hughes and Mr. Tom Taylor at Snowdon, Wales, which resulted in the writing of "Two Years Ago."

In June, 1857, Kingsley writes to his friend Thomas Hughes, "Eight and thirty years old am I this day, Thomas, whereof twenty-two were spent in pain, in woe, and vanities, and sixteen in very great happiness, such as few men deserve, and I don't deserve at all.... Well, Tom, God has been very good to me.... The best work ever I've done has been my plain parish work."

Diphtheria, then a new disease in England, appeared at Eversley. "Some might have smiled," says Mrs. Kingsley, at seeing her husband "going in and out of the cottages with great bottles of gargle under his arm."