Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: i CHAPTER II. KINGSLEY AS COUNTRY PARSON—EVERSLEY HOME- LIFE AND PAROCHIAL LABOURS. In 1842 Kingsley took charge of the curacy of Eversley, to which he was appointed as Rector two years later, and where he spent thirty-three years of his life. Here, remarks one who knew him intimately in this beautiful home-scene and truly ideal English. Rectory, was " the fountain-head of all his strength and greatness." The surrounding scenery though lovely is not exciting. With acacias on the lawn, a glimpse of the fir forest and moors at a distance, the old Windsor forest forming part of the parish boundaries, there was just enough and not too much in the environment to inspire a quiet and young parish priest in his labours. The people among whom he was to minister were " heth-croppers," and, we are told, poachers by instinct, and there is a curiously half disguised sympathy with. poachers in the poems written about this time. How quickly Kingsley caught the spirit of his surroundings, and learned to assimilate his nature and identify his own instincts with those of the people whose spiritualdirector he had become, may be seen in a passage taken from the Prose Idylls, and quoted in the Letters and Memories of his Life. "The clod of these parts is the descendant of many generations of broom squires and deer-stealers; the instinct of sport is strong within him still, though no more of the Queen's deer are to be shot in the winter turnip-fields, or even caught by an apple-baited hook hung from an orchard bough. He now limits his aspirations to hares and pheasants, and too probably once in his life 'hits the keeper into the river,' and re-considers himself for awhile over a crank in "Winchester gaol. "Well, he has his faults, and I... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.