ch uplifted his congregation and stamped itself on their memories. It
is seen, too, in his political views. The Radical Parson, the upholder
of Chartism, was in many ways a strong Tory. He had a great belief in
the land-owning classes, and an admiration for what remained of the
Feudal System. He believed that the old relation between squire and
villagers, if each did his duty, worked far better than the modern
pretence of Equality and Independence. Like Disraeli, like Ruskin, and
like many other men of high imagination, he distrusted the Manchester
School and the policy that in the labour market each class should be
left to fend for itself. Radical as he was, he defended the House of
Lords and the hereditary system. So, too, in Church questions, though he
was an anti-Tractarian, he had a great reverence for the Athanasian
Creed and in general was a High Churchman. He had none of the fads which
we associate with the Radical party. Total abstinence he condemned as a
rigid rule, though there was no man more severe in his attitude to
drunkenness. He believed that God's gifts were for man's enjoyment, and
he set his face against asceticism. He trained his own body to vigorous
manhood and he had remarkable self-control; and he wished to help each
man to do this for himself and not to be driven to it by what he
considered a false system. Logically it may be easy to find
contradictions in the views which he expressed at different times; but
his life shows an essential unity in aim and practice.

It has been the fashion to label Charles Kingsley and his teaching with
the nickname of 'Muscular Christianity', a name which he detested and
disclaimed. It implied that he and his school were of the full-blooded
robust order of men, who had no sympathy for weakness, and no message
for those who could not follow the same strenuous course as themselves.
As a fact Kingsley had his full share of bodily illnesses and suffered
at all times from a highly-wrought nervous organization; when pain to
others was involved, he was as tender and sympathetic as a woman. He was
a born fighter, too reckless in attack, as we see in his famous dispute
with Cardinal Newman about the honesty of the Tractarians. But he was
not bitter or resentful. He owned himself that in this case he had met a
better logician than himself: later he expressed his admiration for
Newman's poem, 'The Dream of Gerontius', and in his letters he praises
the tone in which the Tracta