glad to see a countryman of his in these Gothic wildernesses. I understand and appreciate your motives for visiting them: excuse the incivility and rudeness which you have experienced. But we will endeavour to make you reparation. You are this moment free; but it is late; I must find you a lodging for the night. I know one close by which will just suit you. Let us repair thither this moment. Stay, I think I see a book in your hand.

Myself. The New Testament.

Alcalde.-What book is that?

Myself. A portion of the sacred writings, the Bible. Alcalde.-Why do you carry such a book with you? Myself. One of my principal motives in visiting Finisterra was to carry this book to that wild place.

Alcalde. Ha, ha! how very singular. Yes, I remember. I have heard that the English highly prize this eccentric book. How very singular that the countrymen of the grand Baintham should set any value upon that old monkish book.

It was now late at night, and my new friend attended me to the lodging which he had destined for me, and which was at the house of a respectable old female, where I found a clean and comfortable room. On the way I slipped a gratuity into the hand of Antonio, and on my arrival, formally, and in the presence of the alcalde, presented him with the Testament, which I requested he would carry back to Finisterra, and keep in remembrance of the Englishman in whose behalf he had so effectually interposed.

Antonio.-I will do so, your worship; and when the winds blow from the north-west, preventing our launches

from putting to sea, I will read your present. Farewell, my captain, and when you next come to Finisterra I hope it will be in a valiant English bark, with plenty of contrabando on board, and not across the country on a pony, in company with nuveiros and men of Padron.

Presently arrived the handmaid of the alcalde with a basket, which she took into the kitchen, where she prepared an excellent supper for her master's friend. On its being served up the alcalde bade me farewell, having first demanded whether he could in any way forward my plans.

"I return to St. James to-morrow," I replied, " and I sincerely hope that some occasion will occur which will enable me to acquaint the world with the hospitality which I have experienced from so accomplished a scholar as the Alcalde of Corcuvion."

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

1819-1875.

Kingsley was the son of a London clergyman of honourable descent. He was a precocious boy, writing sermons and verses at the age of four, but he was not a diligent pupil, being fonder of studying botany and geology in the fields than of applying himself to the work prescribed at school and college. At Oxford he read a great deal of poetry and modern prose, especially Coleridge and Carlyle; the latter was after-’ wards a personal friend, and greatly influenced him. In 1842 he became curate and in 1844 rector of Eversley, a small country parish in Hampshire, where he spent the rest of his life. He was very fond of field sports, and enjoyed nothing better than a day's fishing or following the hounds on an old horse "picked up cheap for parson's work." On account of this devotion to athletics and an out-door life, a reviewer accused him of advocating "muscular Christianity." He was an opponent of the High Church agitation known as the Oxford movement, his sympathies being on the side of the Reformation and Puritanism; this involved him later in a controversy with Cardinal Newman, which added little to his fame. But his supreme interest was in social questions; along with the Rev. F. D. Maurice and Mr. Thomas Hughes (author of Tom Brown's School Days) he was much concerned about the misery and unrest of the working classes, many of whom, disappointed at the result of the Reform Laws, were endeavouring to obtain the further changes included in the People's Charter. Kingsley mixed with the workingmen in their meetings, and at one of them, when the clergy were being attacked with great violence, he got up and said, with his characteristic

stammer, "I am a Church of England parson-and a Chartist.” "My quarrel with the Charter is that it does not go far enough," he wrote in his "Letters to the Chartists," and he insisted on the need for social as well as political reform. He signed these letters "Parson Lot," because, like the Patriarch in Sodom, he stood absolutely alone, and seemed even to his friends " as one that mocked." It was his misfortune to offend both sides of the controversy; the Chartists mistrusted him because he was a clergyman, and the clergy disapproved of his connection with the Chartists. The incumbent of a London church, who had invited him to preach, at the end of his sermon disowned the doctrine contained in it, and for a time Kingsley was forbidden to preach in the diocese. Yet there was nothing in his teaching which would now be regarded as objectionable. He and his friends-the "Christian Socialists," as they were called-aimed at improving the condition of the working people by two ways-co-operation and education. The attempt to enable workmen to become their own employers failed, but Kingsley did a great deal to interest cultivated people in the welfare of the working classes by his pamphlets and his early novels, Yeast and Alton Locke. His purely historical novels, Hypatia and Westward Ho! were still more successful, and the latter remains one of the best books for boys ever written. As the political controversies he took part in excited less interest and his literary fame increased, his evident sincerity and devotion to duty won for him a large share of public esteem. He became professor of modern history at Cambridge, was made a canon, and towards the end of his life visited Canada and the United States, where

he was very warmly received. He was buried in Eversley Churchyard, and the horses and hounds of the pack attended his funeral.

MY WINTER-GARDEN.

So, my friend: you ask me to tell you how I contrive to support this monotonous country life; how, fond as I am of excitement, adventure, society, scenery, art, literature, I go cheerfully through the daily routine of a commonplace country profession, never requiring a sixweeks' holiday; not caring to see the Continent, hardly even to spend a day in London; having never yet actually got to Paris.

You wonder why I do not grow dull as those round me, whose talk is of bullocks-as indeed mine is, often enough; why I am not by this time "all over blue mould"; why I have not been tempted to bury myself in my study, and live a life of dreams among old books.

I will tell you. I am a minute philosopher: though one, thank Heaven, of a different stamp from him whom the great Bishop Berkeley silenced-alas! only for a while. I am possibly, after all, a man of small mind, content with small pleasures. So much the better for me. Meanwhile, I can understand your surprise, though you cannot understand my content. You have played a greater game than mine; have lived a life, perhaps more fit for an Englishman; certainly more in accordance with the taste of our common fathers, the Vikings, and their patron Odin "the goer," father of all them that go ahead. You have gone ahead, and over many lands; and I reverence you for it, though I envy you not. You have commanded a regiment—indeed an army, and "drank delight of battle with your peers"; you have ruled