The Rev. Charles Kingsley to Mrs. Gaskell. Let me renew our long-interrupted acquaintance by complimenting you on poor Miss Brontë's 'Life.' You have had a delicate and a great work to do, and you have done it admirably. Be sure that the book will do good. It will shame literary people into some stronger belief that a simple, virtuous, practical homelife, is consistent with high imaginative genius; and it will shame, too, the prudery of a not over cleanly though carefully whitewashed age, into believing that purity is now (as in all ages till now) quite compatible with the knowledge of evil. I confess that the book has made me ashamed of myself. Jane Eyre' I hardly looked into, very seldom reading a work of fiction—yours, indeed, and Thackeray's are the only ones I care to open. 'Shirley' disgusted me at the opening, and I gave up the writer and her books with a notion that she was a person who liked coarseness. How I misjudged her! and how thankful I am that I never put a word of my misconceptions into print, or recorded my misjudgments of one who is a whole heaven above me. Well have you done your work, and given us the picture of a valiant woman made perfect by sufferings. I shall now read carefully and lovingly every word she has written, especially those poems, which ought not to have fallen dead as they did, and which seem to be (from a review in the current Fraser) of remarkable strength and purity. CCCXLIX. Mr. Charles Kingsley very much objected to be called a 'Muscular Christian.' In taking notice of a review by a clergyman in which this term is applied to him he is making an exception to his rule never to reply to the critics. The Rev. Charles Kingsley to a Clergyman. October 19, 1858. Dear Sir,-A common reviewer, however complimentary or abusive, would have elicited no answer from me; but in your notice of me, there is-over and above undeserved kind words-an evident earnestness to speak the truth and do good, which makes me write frankly to you. You have used that, to me painful, if not offensive, term 'Muscular Christianity.' My dear Sir, I know of no Christianity save one, which is the likeness of Christ, and the same for all men, viz., to be transformed into Christ's likeness, and to consecrate to His service, as far as may be, all the powers of body, soul, and spirit, regenerate and purified in His Spirit. All I wish to do is, to say to the strong and healthy man, even though he be not very learned, or wise, or even delicate-minded-in the æsthetic sense: You too, can serve God with the powers which He has given you. He will call you to account for them, just as much as he will call the parson, or the devout lady.' You seem to be of the same mind as some good-natured youth, who, in reviewing me the other day, said that I must never have known aught but good health, never had an ache in my life. As if one could know health, without having known sickness, or joy-without having known sorrow!... May God grant that you may never go through what I have done of sickness, weakness, misery, physical, mental, spiritual. You fancy that I cannot sympathise with the struggles of an earnest spirit, fettered, tormented, crushed to the very earth by bodily weakness and sickness. If I did not, I were indeed a stupid and a bad man; for my life for fifteen years was nothing else but that struggle. But what if, when God gave to me suddenly and strangely health of body and peace of mind, I learnt what a priceless blessing that corpus sanum was, and how it helped-humiliating as the confession may be to spiritual pride—to the producing of mentem sanam? What if I felt bound to tell those who had enjoyed all their life that health which was new to me, what a debt they owed to God, how they must and how they might pay that debt? Whom have I wronged in so doing? What, too, if it has pleased God that I should have been born and bred and have lived ever since in the tents of Esau? What if-by no choice of my own-my relations, and friends should have been the hunters and fighters? What if, during a weakly youth, I was forced to watch-for it was always before my eyes-Esau rejoicing in his strength, and casting away his birthright for a mess of pottage? What if, by long living with him, I have learnt to love him as my own soul, to understand him, his capabilities, and weaknesses? Whom have I wronged therein? What if I said to myself, Jacob has a blessing, but Esau has one also, though his birthright be not his ; and what blessing he has he shall know of, that he may earn it? Jacob can do well enough without me. He has some 15,000 clergy, besides dissenting preachers, taking care of him (though he is pretty well able to take care of himself, and understands sharp practice as well as he did in his father Isaac's time), and telling him that he is the only ideal; and that Esau is a poor, profane blackguard, only fit to have his blood poured out like water on Crimean battle-fields, while Jacob sits comfortably at home, making money, and listening to those who preach smooth things to him? And what if, when I tried, I found that Esau would listen to me; that he had a heart as well as Jacob; that he would come to hear me preach, would ask my advice, would tell me his sorrows, would talk to me about his mother, and what he had learnt at his mother's knee, because he felt that I was at least one of like passions as himself, who had been tempted on all points like as he was, and with many sins? What if he told me at the same time that he could not listen to Jacob's private chaplains, that he did not understand them, nor they him ; that he looked on them with alternate fear and contempt? If I said to myself more and more clearly as the years rolled on, I will live for Esau and with Esau ;—if I be called a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, the friend of publicans and sinners, there is One above me who was called the same, and to Him I commit myself and my work ;—it is enough for me that He knows my purpose, and that on Crimean battle-fields and Indian marches, poor Esau has died with a clearer conscience and a lighter heart for the words which I have spoken to him. If I have said this, whom have I wronged? I have no grudge against Jacob and his preachers; only when I read the 17th verse of the 3rd chapter of Revelations, I tremble for him, and for England, knowing well that on Jacob depends the well-being of England, whether physical, intellectual, or spiritual, and that my poor Esau is at best food for powder. God help him! But surely there is room in God's kingdom for him, and for one parson; though, thank God, there is more than one who will teach him what God requires of him. Therefore my mind is made up. As long as Esau comes to me as to a friend; and as long as Esau's mother comes to me to save her child from his own passions and appetites-would God that I could do it! so long shall I labour at that which, if I cannot do it well, seems to me the only thing which I can do. CCCL. By the kindness and courtesy of Sir Theodore Martin, the Editor has received permission to publish the following contributions from the letters of the late Prince Consort. The first most characteristic example does not appear in so complete a form in Sir Theodore's Life of the Prince Consort. The second is the fragment quoted at page 467, vol. iv. of the same work. The Prince Consort to the Crown Princess of Prussia. That you take delight in modelling does not surprise me. As an art it is even more attractive than painting, because in it the thought is actually incorporated; it also derives a higher value and interest from the circumstance that in it we have to deal with the three dimensions, instead of having to do with surface merely, and are not called upon to resort to the illusion of perspective. As the artist combines material and thought without the intervention of any other medium, his creation would be perfect, if life, which the divine Creator can alone give, could also be breathed into his work; and I quite understand and feel with the sculptor in the Fable, who implored the gods to let his work descend from its pedestal. We have an art, however, in which even this third element of creation-force and growth-is presented, and which has therefore had extraordinary attractions for me of late years, indeed, I may say, from earliest childhood, viz. the art of gardening. In this the artist who lays out the work, and devises a garment for a piece of ground, has the delight of seeing his work live and grow, hour by hour, and while it is growing he is able to polish it, to cut and carve upon it, to fill up here and there, to hope, and to grow fond. I will get Alice to read to me the article about Freemasons. It is not likely to contain the whole secret. The circumstance which provokes you only into finding fault with the order, viz. that husbands dare not communicate the secret of it to their wives, is just one of its best features. If to be able to be silent is one of a husband's chief virtues, then the test, which puts him in opposition to that being, towards whom he constantly shows the greatest weakness, is the hardest of all tests and therefore virtue in its most condensed and comprehensive form. The wife, therefore, should not only rejoice to see him capable of withstanding such a test, but should take occasion out of it to vie with him in virtue, by taming the inborn curiosity which she inherits from mother Eve. If moreover the subject of the secret be nothing more important than an apron, then every chance is given to virtue on both sides, without disturbing the confidence of marriage, which ought to be complete. CCCLI. The Prince Consort to the Crown Princess of Prussia. Buckingham Palace: June 22, 1859. Royal personages, to whom services are being constantly rendered, often forget, that these involve all sorts of sacrifices to the persons who render them, which-if those to whom they are rendered would only keep their eyes open-might be obviated and spared. But it is just the most faithful servants and the worthiest friends who are most silent about their own affairs, and who have therefore to be thoroughly probed before we get at the truth. |