attitude, and disclosed a state of things which made all fair minded people
wonder, not that there had been violent speaking and some rioting, but that
the metropolis had escaped the scenes which had lately been enacted in
Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and other Continental capitals.

It is only by an effort that one can now realize the strain to which the
nation was subjected during that winter and spring, and which, of course,
tried every individual man also, according to the depth and earnestness of
his political and social convictions and sympathies. The group of men who
were working under Mr. Maurice were no exceptions to the rule. The work of
teaching and visiting was not indeed neglected, but the larger questions
which were being so strenuously mooted--the points of the people's charter,
the right of public meeting, the attitude of the labouring-class to the
other classes--absorbed more and more of their attention. Kingsley was
very deeply impressed with the gravity and danger of the crisis--more so,
I think, than almost any of his friends; probably because, as a country
parson, he was more directly in contact with one class of the poor than any
of them. How deeply he felt for the agricultural poor, how faithfully he
reflected the passionate and restless sadness of the time, may be read in
the pages of "Yeast," which was then coming out in "Fraser." As the winter
months went on this sadness increased, and seriously affected his health.

"I have a longing," he wrote to Mr. Ludlow, "to do _something_--what, God
only knows. You say, 'he that believeth will not make haste,' but I think
he that believeth must _make_ haste, or get damned with the rest. But I
will do anything that anybody likes--I have no confidence in myself or in
anything but God. I am not great enough for such times, alas! '_ne pour
faire des vers_,' as Camille Desmoulins said."

This longing became so strong as the crisis in April approached, that he