Charles Kingsley was also by profession a theologian, and his disastrous controversy with Newman remains as a proof of the interest he took in the movement Newman sought to serve by _Callista_. But fortunately Kingsley did not allow this interest to dominate his books. Tractarianism is indeed one of the themes of his earliest novels, _Alton Locke_ (1850) and _Yeast_ (1848), but socialism, to which his attention had been turned by the personal influence of Maurice, is a far more prominent one. _Yeast_ pictures the condition of agricultural labour, _Alton Locke_ that of labour in crowded cities. Both books are immature, sometimes rash, and on the whole not well constructed; but they have the merits of vigour, earnestness and knowledge at first-hand; for Kingsley had personally taken part in the labour movements in London which resulted in Chartism. _Hypatia_ (1853) is an ambitious novel, at once historical and philosophical, impressive in parts, but on the whole heavy. Kingsley, a man whose physical nature and instincts were quite as well developed as his intellect, is happiest where he can bring to play the experiences of his life, and where he can describe scenes familiar to him. About his best work there is always a breath of the moor, of the fen or of the sea; for he had lived by them all and had learnt to love them. This is shown by his verse as well as his prose. His _Ode to the North-East Wind_, his _Sands of Dee_, and the images scattered everywhere through his poems, prove how the features of the scenery and of the weather had sunk into his mind. So do such novels as _Westward Ho!_ (1855) and _Hereward the Wake_ (1866). The former, a historical romance, the scene of which is laid in the time of Elizabeth, is generally considered Kingsley's best work; and it is only a small minority, to which the writer happens to belong, who find it dreary. The power of some of the descriptions must be acknowledged; but whether _Westward Ho!_ will live is a question on which there may be difference of opinion. _Hereward the Wake_, generally ranked much lower, is certainly uneven and in parts dull. But it has two great merits: it reproduces in a marvellous way the impression of the fen country; and, by vivid flashes, though not constantly, the reader seems to see before his eyes the very life of the old vikings.