eally glowing
imagination and from genuine inspiration, albeit somewhat unpruned and
ill-ordered. Now Kingsley "let himself go," in the way of Byron,
Disraeli, Bulwer, and Dickens, who not seldom poured out their
conceptions in what we now hold to be spasmodic form. It is possible
that the genteeler taste of our age may prevent the young of to-day from
caring for _Alton Locke_. But I can assure them that five-and-forty
years ago that book had a great effect and came home to the heart of
many. And the effect was permanent and creative. We may see to-day in
England widespread results of that potent social movement which was
called Christian Socialism, a movement of which Kingsley was neither the
founder nor the chief leader, but of which his early books were the main
popular exponents, and to which they gave a definiteness and a key which
the movement itself sadly lacked.

I was not of an age to take part in that movement, but in after years at
the Working Men's College, which grew out of it, I gained a personal
knowledge of what was one of the most striking movements of our time.
Nowadays, when leading statesmen assure us "we are all Socialists now,"
when the demands of the old "Chartists" are Liberal common form, when
trades-unionism, co-operation, and state-aided benefits are largely
supported by politicians, churchmen, journals, and writers, it is
difficult for us now to conceive the bitter opposition which assailed the
small band of reformers who, five-and-forty years ago, spoke up for these
reforms. Of that small band, who stood alone amongst the literary,
academic, and ecclesiastical class, Charles Kingsley was the most
outspoken, the most eloquent, and assuredly the most effective. I do not
say the wisest, the most consistent, or the most staunch; nor need we
here discuss the strength or the weakness of the Christian Socialist
reform. When we remember how widely this vague initiative has spread and
developed, when we read again _Alton Locke_ and _Yeast_, and note how
much has been practically done in forty years to redress or mitigate the
abuses against which these books uttered the first burning protest, we
may form some estimate of all that the present generation of Englishmen
owes to Charles Kingsley and his friends.

I have dwelt last and most seriously upon Kingsley's earliest books,
because they were in many respects his most powerful, his typical works.
As he grew in years, he did not develop. He