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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
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