uld draw
such joy from familiar English landscapes, and could communicate it to
others. The cult of sport, of science, and of beauty has here become one
and has found its true high priest. In poetry his more ambitious efforts
were _The Saint's Tragedy_, a drama in blank verse on the story of St.
Elizabeth of Hungary, and _Andromeda_, a revival of the old Greek legend
in the old hexameter measure. But what are most sure to live are his
lyrics, 'Airlie Beacon', 'The Three Fishers', 'The Sands of Dee', with
their simplicity and true note of song.

The combination of this poetic gift with a strong interest in science
and a wide knowledge of it is most unusual; but there can be no
mistaking the genuine feeling which Charles Kingsley had for the latter.
It took one very practical form in his zeal for sanitation. In 1854 when
the public, so irrational in its moments of excitement, was calling for
a national fast-day on account of the spread of cholera, he heartily
supported Lord Palmerston, who refused to grant it. He held it impious
and wrong to attribute to a special visitation from God what was due to
the blindness, laziness, and selfishness of our governing classes. His
article in _Fraser's Magazine_ entitled 'Who causes pestilence?' roused
much criticism: it said things that comfortable people did not like to
hear, and said them frankly; it was far in advance of the public opinion
of that time, but its truth no one would dispute to-day. And what his
pen did for the nation, his example did for the parish. He drained
unwholesome pools in his own garden, and he persuaded his neighbours to
do the same. He taught them daily lessons about the value of fresh air
and clean water: no details were too dull and wearisome in the cause. To
many people his novels, like those of Dickens and Charles Reade, are
spoilt by the advocacy of social reforms. The novel with a purpose was
characteristic of the early Victorian Age, and both in _Alton Locke_ and
in _Two Years Ago_ he makes little disguise of the zeal with which he
preaches sanitary reform. Of the more attractive sciences, which he
pursued with equal intensity, there is little room to speak. Botany was
his first love and it remained first to the end. Zoology at times ran it
close, and his letters from seaside places are full of the names of
marine creatures which he stored in tanks and examined with his
microscope. A dull day on the coast was inconceivable to him. Geology,
too, thri