Every fight entails blows, and wounds, and scars, and some of them remain for life. Kingsley seems to have had no anxieties as a young man at school or at the University, but when he had left the University and become a curate, and, more particularly, when he had married on his small curacy and there were children, his struggles began in good earnest. He had often to write against time; he had to get up subject after subject in order to be able to write an article, simply that he might be able to satisfy the most troublesome tradesmen. He always wrote at very high pressure; fortunately his physical frame was of iron, and his determination like that of a runaway horse. People may say that he had the usual income of a country clergyman, but why will they forget that a man in Kingsley’s position had not only to give his children an expensive education, but had to keep open house for his numerous friends and admirers? There was no display in his quiet rectory at Eversley, but even the simplest hospitality entails more expense than a small living can bear, and his friends and visitors ranged from the lowest to the highest—from poor workmen to English and foreign royalties. As long as he could wield his pen he could procure the necessary supplies, but it had to be done with a very great strain on the brain. “It must be done, and it shall be done,” he said; yes, but though most of his work was done, and well done, it was like the work of an athlete who breaks down at the end of the day when his victory is won. People did not see it and did not know it, for he never would yield, and never would show signs of yielding. When, towards the end of his life, a canonry was offered him, first at Chester, then at Westminster, he felt truly grateful. “After all,” he said to me, “these stalls are good for old horses.” His professorship at Cambridge was really too much for him. He was not prepared for it. Personally he did much good among the young men, and was certainly most popular. At Cambridge as a professor he did his best, but he had hardly calculated _Quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent_. Anyhow, the work soon became too much even for his iron constitution, and he was glad to be relieved. The fact is that Kingsley was all his life, in everything he thought and in everything he did, a poet, a man of high ideals, and likewise of unswerving honesty. No one knew Kingsley, such as he really was, who had not seen him at Eversley, and among his poor people. He visited every cottage, he knew every old man and old woman, and was perfectly at home among them. His “Village Sermons” gave them just the food they wanted, though it was curious to see every Sunday a large sprinkling of young officers from Sandhurst and Aldershot sitting quietly among the smock-frocked congregation, and anxious to have some serious conversation with the preacher afterwards. Kingsley was a great martyr to stammering, it often was torture to him