Roman and the Teuton | Page 4

M.A.

Contents Preface by Professor F. Max Muller The Forest Children The
Dying Empire Preface to Lecture III The Human Deluge The Gothic
Civilizer Dietrich's End The Nemesis of the Goths Paulus Diaconus
The Clergy and the Heathen The Monk a Civilizer The Lombard Laws

The Popes and the Lombards The Strategy of Prividence
Appendix--Inaugural Lecture: The Limits of Exact Science as Applied
to History

PREFACE

Never shall I forget the moment when for the last time I gazed upon the
manly features of Charles Kingsley, features which Death had rendered
calm, grand, sublime. The constant struggle that in life seemed to allow
no rest to his expression, the spirit, like a caged lion, shaking the bars
of his prison, the mind striving for utterance, the soul wearying for
loving response,--all that was over. There remained only the satisfied
expression of triumph and peace, as of a soldier who had fought a good
fight, and who, while sinking into the stillness of the slumber of death,
listens to the distant sounds of music and to the shouts of victory. One
saw the ideal man, as Nature had meant him to be, and one felt that
there is no greater sculptor than Death.
As one looked on that marble statue which only some weeks ago had so
warmly pressed one's hand, his whole life flashed through one's
thoughts. One remembered the young curate and the Saint's Tragedy;
the chartist parson and Alton Locke; the happy poet and the Sands of
Dee; the brilliant novel-writer and Hypatia and Westward-Ho; the
Rector of Eversley and his Village Sermons; the beloved professor at
Cambridge, the busy canon at Chester, the powerful preacher in
Westminster Abbey. One thought of him by the Berkshire
chalk-streams and on the Devonshire coast, watching the beauty and
wisdom of Nature, reading her solemn lessons, chuckling too over her
inimitable fun. One saw him in town-alleys, preaching the Gospel of
godliness and cleanliness, while smoking his pipe with soldiers and
navvies. One heard him in drawing-rooms, listened to with patient
silence, till one of his vigorous or quaint speeches bounded forth, never
to be forgotten. How children delighted in him! How young, wild men
believed in him, and obeyed him too! How women were captivated by
his chivalry, older men by his genuine humility and sympathy!
All that was now passing away--was gone. But as one looked on him
for the last time on earth, one felt that greater than the curate, the poet,
the professor, the canon, had been the man himself, with his warm heart,

his honest purposes, his trust in his friends, his readiness to spend
himself, his chivalry and humility, worthy of a better age.
Of all this the world knew little;--yet few men excited wider and
stronger sympathies.
Who can forget that funeral on the 28th Jan., 1875, and the large sad
throng that gathered round his grave? There was the representative of
the Prince of Wales, and close by the gipsies of the Eversley common,
who used to call him their Patrico-rai, their Priest-King. There was the
old Squire of his village, and the labourers, young and old, to whom he
had been a friend and a father. There were Governors of distant
Colonies, officers, and sailors, the Bishop of his diocese, and the Dean
of his abbey; there were the leading Nonconformists of the
neighbourhood, and his own devoted curates, Peers and Members of
the House of Commons, authors and publishers; and outside the
church-yard, the horses and the hounds and the huntsman in pink, for
though as good a clergyman as any, Charles Kingsley had been a good
sportsman too, and had taken in his life many a fence as bravely as he
took the last fence of all, without fear or trembling. All that he had
loved, and all that had loved him was there, and few eyes were dry
when he was laid in his own yellow gravel bed, the old trees which he
had planted and cared for waving their branches to him for the last time,
and the grey sunny sky looking down with calm pity on the deserted
rectory, and on the short joys and the shorter sufferings of mortal men.
All went home feeling that life was poorer, and every one knew that he
had lost a friend who had been, in some peculiar sense, his own.
Charles Kingsley will be missed in England, in the English colonies, in
America, where he spent his last happy year; aye, wherever Saxon
speech and Saxon thought is understood. He will be mourned for,
yearned for, in every place in which he passed some days of his busy
life. As to myself, I feel as if another cable had snapped that tied me to
this hospitable shore.
When