for a reform of Parliament; how deeply he sympathized with their sense of
the injustice of the law as it affected them; how ready he was to help in
all ways to get these things set right; and then to denounce their methods,
in very much the same terms as I have already quoted from his letters to
the Chartists. Probably no one who was present ever heard a speech which
told more at the time. I had a singular proof that the effect did not
pass away. The most violent speaker on that occasion was one of the staff
of the leading Chartist newspaper. I lost sight of him entirely for more
than twenty years, and saw him again, a little grey shrivelled man, by
Kingsley's side, at the grave of Mr. Maurice, in the cemetery at Hampstead.

The experience of this meeting encouraged its promoters to continue the
series, which they did with a success which surprised no one more than
themselves. Kingsley's opinion of them may be gathered from the following
extract from a letter to his wife:--

"_June_ 4, 1848, Evening.--A few words before bed. I have just come home
from the meeting. No one spoke but working men, gentlemen I should call
them, in every sense of the term. Even _I_ was perfectly astonished by the
courtesy, the reverence to Maurice, who sat there like an Apollo, their
eloquence, the brilliant, nervous, well-chosen language, the deep simple
earnestness, the rightness and moderation of their thoughts. And these are
the _Chartists_, these are the men who are called fools and knaves--who are
refused the rights which are bestowed on every profligate fop.... It is
God's cause, fear not He will be with us, and if He is with us, who shall
be against us?"

But while he was rapidly winning the confidence of the working classes, he
was raising up a host of more or less hostile critics in other quarters by
his writings in "Politics for the People," which journal was in the midst