ures at
King's College, London, and preparing for Cambridge. These were by no
means among his happier years. He disliked London and he rebelled
against the dullness of life in a vicarage overrun with district
visitors and mothers' meetings. His father, a strong evangelical,
objected to various forms of public amusement, and Charles, though loyal
and affectionate to his parents, fretted to find no outlet for his
energies. He made a few friends and devoured many books, but his chief
delight was to get away from town to old west-country haunts. Nor was
his life at Cambridge entirely happy. His excitability was great: his
self-control was not yet developed. Rowing did not exhaust his physical
energy, which broke out from time to time in midnight fishing raids and
walks from Cambridge to London. He wasted so much of his time that he
nearly imperilled his chance of taking a good degree, and might perhaps
count himself lucky when, thanks to a heroic effort at the eleventh
hour, his excellent abilities won him a first class in classics. At
this time he was terribly shaken by religious doubts. But in one of his
vacations in 1839 he met Fanny Grenfell, his future wife, and soon he
was on such a footing that he could open to her his inmost thoughts. It
was she who helped him in his wavering decision to take Holy Orders;
and, when he went down in 1842, he set himself to read seriously and
thoroughly for Ordination. Early in 1844 he was admitted to deacon's
orders at Farnham.

His first office marked out his path through life. With a short interval
between his holding the curacy and the rectory of Eversley,[31] he had
his home for thirty-three years at this Hampshire village so intimately
connected with his name. Eversley lies on the borders of Berkshire and
Hampshire, in the diocese of Winchester, near the famous house of
Bramshill, on the edge of the sandy fir-covered waste which stretches
across Surrey. To understand the charm of its rough commons and
self-sown woods one must read Kingsley's _Prose Idylls_, especially the
sketch called 'My Winter Garden'. There he served for a year as curate,
living in bachelor quarters on the green, learning to love the place and
its people: there, when Sir John Cope offered him the living in 1844, he
returned a married man to live in the Rectory House beside the church,
which may still be seen little altered to-day. A breakdown from
overwork, an illness of his wife's, a higher appointment in th