liberty to hold service there. Unfortunately since it was opened no one has yet appeared wishful to do so, and the holding of a Sunday-school is the only use it has been put to, at least, that is to say, up to last September.

There being neither church nor chapel to attend, we took a walk instead in the quiet of the Sabbath day, past the few scattered houses which form the colony of the valley, until we had apparently left all human life behind us. Birds were flying to and fro amongst the trees; lizards were darting about over the stones and rocks, or basking in the hot sunshine, while thousands of little gray katydids were keeping up their monotonous chirping all around. They seemed to be everywhere: leaping about in the dry brown grass; bruising themselves against the stones in their headlong flights; splashing up from the dusty road by hundreds at our approach, and even springing up against our very faces.

Very still and quiet it felt when we had at last made our way to the Mirror Lake, where a deserted and dilapidated old wooden restaurant was the only sign of human habitation.

In the stillness and solitude of nature those great granite cliffs, rising all around in their solemn majesty, seemed to be preaching a wordless sermon as eloquently as though they had had a human voice, appealing to the best and deepest feelings of man's heart. The sun shone in all his glory; the sky was cloudless and of the softest, purest blue, and there was scarcely a breath of wind to stir the branches of the trees. All nature was lifting up her voice in silent praise.

"Here let the mountains thunder forth sonorous,

Alleluia !

And let the valleys sing in gentle chorus,

Alleluia!"

The words of the grand old hymn seemed to rise unbidden, as we sat alone with Nature in her grandeur and her beauty; those mighty works of the Creator standing there as witnesses of His power, singing their never-ending "Laus Deo!" While we, regarding them with wonder and with reverence, raised our humble note of praise to the Hand that formed them, acknowledging with awe and thankfulness that "the strength of the hills is His also."

E. W. FIRTH.

THOUGHTS ON THE WRITINGS OF CHARLES

KINGSLEY.

NEAR the monuments of Wordsworth and Keble, in the baptistery of Westminster Abbey, stand two recently-erected busts, placed there in memory of two friends and fellow-workers, whose united labours have very powerfully influenced the men and women of the present generation-Frederick D. Maurice, and Charles Kingsley.

If we care to separate, in the coolness of criticism, those who were united equally by friendship and by sympathy in religious thought, we shall no doubt have to pronounce that, of the two, Maurice was the man of more powerful mind. He must, one feels, have possessed that calm strength which in the greatest natures exists along with profundity of intellect and depth of feeling; and which, joined with these, characterises beyond anything else those whom their fellow-men not only "willingly call master," but on whom they lean as on a rock.

Kingsley, the younger man, looked up reverently to his friend as a teacher and guide; and as such Maurice has exerted a profound influence on men—an influence which will not soon die away. But, as he was essentially a theologian, he is little known beyond. the comparatively limited circle of those who think on theological subjects; while Kingsley (a poet by temperament, intense, brilliant, mobile, almost childlike in his quickness of feeling,-capable of passionate enthusiasm for the beautiful in every form, as well as the good and the true,-understanding almost every mode of thought, and sympathising with almost

every kind of interest that stirs the minds and hearts of men), gained by his winning character and by his many-sided mind, the interest, the sympathy, and the admiration of a wide circle of readers, no less than of personal friends. How wide was the interest he excited may be judged from the many notices of him that have appeared since his death in the newspapers and periodicals. It may be questioned, however, whether these articles have, as a rule, done justice to Charles Kingsley; for, even excluding those written in a flippant or ungenerous spirit, there has too frequently been a patronising air about them, not very suggestive of a large capacity for reverence in the writers. But the literary and the personal character of Kingsley stand little in need of the favourable verdict of critics.

In considering his works as a whole, perhaps the first thing which strikes us is the many-sidedness of his genius. His pen was employed on a greater variety of subjects than that of almost any other writer of our time; he wrote popular treatises on scientific subjects, essays, poems, novels, and sermons; and in all these various kinds of writing he was successful.

To begin with the first; it is granted of course that, among professed men of science, there are those whose attempts to bring the popular mind into contact with the facts of Nature are in some respects more valuable than those of Kingsley; but of such writers we have few; and even the best of them seldom contrive to communicate to others so large an amount of their own delight in their subject as does Kingsley. For he was a warm lover of nature, not in a vague, sentimental way, but with a genuine earnest interest in little details, as well as in the grand whole; he was a close observer, and an eager learner; and was possibly all the more fitted to inspire ordinary minds with something of his own ardour for observing and learn

ing, because, though far more at home in scientific subjects than most of his readers, he was yet not so utterly beyond them as to make them incapable of comprehending his enthusiasm.

But another and a still stronger reason for his success in making science attractive, is that he was able to regard Nature at the same time from a scientific and from a poetical point of view; for he was gifted with the true poetic inspiration. And, as a poet ought, he knew both how to find beauty in the most simple and homely things, and also how to rise to the grand conception of an Eternal Law which, as he believed, is an expression of the Eternal Love. The poetic faculty is visible, too, in the descriptive passages which are to be found in so many of his works; scarcely any contemporary writer can call before us as he can the bold hills, rich woods, and glorious sea of his native Devon-the bleak and barren moors of Hampshire-the limestone crags, high moorlands, and deep narrow valleys of the north of England-or the luxuriant vegetation and gorgeous colouring of the Tropics. And that power by which the poet makes the dead past live again was his in a large measure; in fact it is this which constitutes one of the principal charms of his historical novels. In the description of individual character he is surpassed by others; but in re-producing an age, and describing types of character which belonged to it, few have been more successful. He seems equally to understand his own countrymen of the sixteenth century, and the motley population of Alexandria in the fifth; and makes his readers picture with equal vividness the stern Puritan warrior, the gentle Egyptian recluse, the cynical philosopher, and the excitable and savage Alexandrian populace. Of all ages, however, the Elizabethan was his favourite, and the men whom he described with most delight were those who fought at "Britain's Salamis." Courage