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