e took the last fence of all, without fear or
trembling. All that he had loved, and all that had loved him was there,
and few eyes were dry when he was laid in his own yellow gravel bed, the
old trees which he had planted and cared for waving their branches to him
for the last time, and the grey sunny sky looking down with calm pity on
the deserted rectory, and on the short joys and the shorter sufferings of
mortal men.

All went home feeling that life was poorer, and every one knew that he
had lost a friend who had been, in some peculiar sense, his own. Charles
Kingsley will be missed in England, in the English colonies, in America,
where he spent his last happy year; aye, wherever Saxon speech and Saxon
thought is understood. He will be mourned for, yearned for, in every
place in which he passed some days of his busy life. As to myself, I
feel as if another cable had snapped that tied me to this hospitable
shore.

When an author or a poet dies, the better part of him, it is often said,
is left in his works. So it is in many cases. But with Kingsley his
life and his works were one. All he wrote was meant for the day when he
wrote it. That was enough for him. He hardly gave himself time to think
of fame and the future. Compared with a good work done, with a good word
spoken, with a silent grasp of the hand from a young man he had saved
from mischief, or with a 'Thank you, Sir,' from a poor woman to whom he
had been a comfort, he would have despised what people call glory, like
incense curling away in smoke. He was, in one sense of the word, a
careless writer. He did his best at the time and for the time. He did
it with a concentrated energy of will which broke through all
difficulties. In his flights of imagination, in the light and fire of
his language he had few equals, if any; but the perfection and classical
finish which can be obtained by a sustained effort only, and by a
patience which shrinks from no drudgery, these are wanting in most of his
works.

However, fame, for which he cared so little, has come to him. His bust
will stand in Westminster Abbey, in the Chapel of St. John the Baptist,
by the side of his friend, Frederick Maurice; and in the Temple of Fame
which will be consecrated to the period of Victoria and Albert, there
will be a niche for Charles Kingsley, the author of Alton Locke and
Hypatia.

Sooner or later a complete edition of his works will be wanted, though we
may doubt whet