ch they had long neglected, and which had ceased to
stand for anything to them, until, "when he announced the first
confirmation, and invited all who wished to take advantage of it to come
to the rectory on a certain evening for instruction, the stud groom from
Sir John Cope's, a respectable man of five-and-thirty, was among the
first to come, bringing a message from the whips and stablemen to say
that they had all been confirmed once, but if Mr. Kingsley wished it
they would all be happy to come again." This was at a time when England
was in a really dangerous state of tumult and discontent, and when the
Church, through the heartlessness and folly of its leaders, had lost
almost all hold upon the people. Is there not in it a hint to the
unsuccessful preachers of our time?

In a few years he had raised the whole parish of Eversley to a higher
level, and had set his mark upon every individual soul in his keeping.
And after he had been appointed to the canonry of Westminster, and was
called to preach to immense congregations there, he felt the burden of
these new souls, as he had felt that of his more humble charge. He felt
that he was personally called to speak some vital word to every soul
within his hearing, and the strain upon him was great, as he realized
how difficult a thing this was to do in these later days. He expressed
his sense of this responsibility in his characteristic way. "Whenever,"
he said, "I walk along the choir to the pulpit I wish myself dead; and
whenever I walk back I wish myself more dead." But though his sense of
failure was great, it is certain that those noble sermons in the grand
abbey left their ineffaceable mark upon some of that multitude of young
men who crowded the north and south transepts of the abbey, and stood
there for two hours through a long musical service, that they might hear
Kingsley when he spoke; for he spoke with characteristic power and
eloquence, moving all by his earnestness and evident sincerity. "If you
want to be stirred to the very depths of your heart," said one of the
minor canons to Canon Farrar, "come to the abbey and hear Canon
Kingsley." And when he preached, as he often did, to classes of college
boys, even the youngest, they always found something pertinent to their
own cases in what he said.

He had married in the early days of Eversley the one woman he ever
loved, and the marriage was one of peculiar happiness, so that his home
life was always of the brigh