lad; or whether they are pathetic, like the
"Doll's Song," in "Water Babies"; or whether they attack an abuse, as in
the song of "The Merry Brown Hares"; or whether they soar higher, as in
"Deep, deep Love, within thine own abyss abiding"; or whether they are
mere noble nonsense, as in "Lorraine Loree":--

"She mastered young Vindictive; oh, the gallant lass was she,
And kept him straight and won the race, as near as near could be;
But he killed her at the brook against a pollard willow tree;
Oh, he killed her at the brook, the brute, for all the world to see,
And no one but the baby cried for poor Lorraine Loree."

The truth about Charles Kingsley seems to be that he rather made a brave
and cheery noise in this night-battle of modern life, than that he
directed any movement of forces. He kept cheering, as it were, and
waving his sword with a contagious enthusiasm. Being a poet, and a man
both of heart and of sentiment, he was equally attached to the best
things of the old world and to the best of the new world, as far as one
can forecast what it is to be. He loved the stately homes of England,
the ancient graduated order of society, the sports of the past, the
military triumphs, the patriotic glories. But he was also on the side of
the poor: as "Parson Lot" he attempted to be a Christian Socialist.

Now, the Socialists are the people who want to take everything; the
Christians are the persons who do not want to give more than they find
convenient. Kingsley himself was ready to give, and did give, his time,
his labour, his health, and probably his money, to the poor. But he was
by no means minded that they should swallow up the old England with
church and castle, manor-house and tower, wealth, beauty, learning,
refinement. The man who wrote "Alton Locke," the story of the starved
tailor-poet, was the man who nearly wept when he heard a fox bark, and
reflected that the days of fox-hunting were numbered. He had a poet's
politics, Colonel Newcome's politics. He was for England, for the poor,
for the rich, for the storied houses of the chivalrous past, for the
cottage, for the hall; and was dead against the ideas of Manchester, and
of Mr. John Bright. "My father," he says in a letter, "would have put
his hand to a spade or an axe with any man, and so could I pretty well,
too, when I was in my prime; and my eldest son is now working with his
own hands at farming, previous to emigrating to South Amer