As regards Kingsley, in 1850 he had published tracts on "Christian Socialism." _Alton Locke_ had already come out and met with scorn on the part of the Press, though working men--who recognized Kingsley as their truest friend--welcomed it gladly. In 1851--a year of great trouble and distress all over England--he thought out plans to drain parts of Eversley (his parish), for there had been many cases of fever there, and Kingsley was pre-eminently a _practical_ Christian. He was also far ahead of his time (as all great men invariably are), and he saw clearly how inseparably close in this present world is the connection between physical matters and spiritual. He recognized that if a man is _living_ in unsanitary conditions, it affects in a very real though inexplicable way his spiritual life. He could trace the connection in a parishioner's life history between bad drainage and drunkenness: later on--though it might perhaps be very much later on--a "bee-in-the-bonnet" of his child: and he saw in this unhappy, unfortunate Little Result the outcome of someone's sinful failure in his duty to his neighbour in years gone by, when the first insanitary conditions were allowed to live and be mighty. In some senses drainage, therefore, has a decided effect upon the spiritual life of men and women. Everyone probably will remember Dr. Nettleship's resolute assertion, that "even a stomach-ache could be a spiritual experience." And so Kingsley pushed forward the drainage improvements in his parish, and considered it, what in very truth it was, a fitting subject for the energies of a parish priest, at work night and day for the betterment of the souls and bodies of his parishioners. I cannot avoid quoting here Francis Newman's own strongly expressed views on drainage of the land:-- "Now, the drains being out of sight, it is morally certain that defects will exist, or be caused by wear and tear, unseen. In one place evil liquids and gases will percolate; in another evil accumulations will putrefy. Instead of blending small portions of needful manure quickly with small portions of earth that needs it, we secure in the drains a slow putrefaction and a permanent source of pestilence; we relieve a town by imposing a grave vexation and danger on the whole neighbourhood where its drains have exit; we make the mouth of every tide river a harbour and storehouse of pollution; and after thus wasting an agricultural treasure we send across the Atlantic ships for a foul commerce in a material destined to replace it.... "It was quite notorious forty years ago that the refuse of the animal was the food of the vegetable, and ought to be saved for use, not wasted in poisoning waters. How could well-informed men delude themselves into an approval of this course? Only one explanation occurs: _they despaired of returning to Nature_. They assumed that we must live by artifice, and they entitled artifice 'Science.'" I return now to the letter from Newman to Martineau:--