CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
CHARLES KINGSLEY AT HOME.
THE LAST OF THE HADDONS.
A VISIT TO AMAZONIA.
A QUEER CLUE.
THE MONGOOSE.
SOME CURIOUS COINCIDENCES.
MUSHROOM CULTIVATION IN JAPAN.
| No. 711. | SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 1877. | Price 1½d. |
CHARLES KINGSLEY AT HOME.
All who had the pleasure of knowing the Rev.Charles Kingsley, author of Hypatia, WestwardHo, and Alton Locke, will acknowledge that howevergreat he was as a parish clergyman, poet,novelist, naturalist, sportsman, he was greater stillat home. And how was this greatness shewn? Byhis self-denying efforts to give joy to his wife andchildren, and chivalrously to take away from themwhatever was painful. No man ever excelled himin the quality of being 'thoroughly domesticated.'In actual life we fear this is a rare attainment, forit is nothing less than the flower that indicates perfectlydeveloped manhood or womanhood. Thisflower beautified and sweetened Canon Kingsley'slife. He was a hero to those who had greater opportunitiesof knowing him than have most valets.Whatever unheroic cynics may say of the disenchantingpower of intimacy, there was an exceptionin his case. How much such an example shouldteach us all! Not one in ten thousand can hopeto become the many-sided man Kingsley was, butnone of us need despair of making that littlecorner of the world called 'home' brighter andhappier, as he made Eversley Rectory. We can allmake our homes sweet if, when company-clothesare doffed, we clothe the most ordinary and commonplaceduties of home-life with good temperand cheerfulness.
Because the Rectory-house was on low ground,the rector of Eversley, who considered violation ofthe divine laws of health a sort of acted blasphemy,built his children an outdoor nursery onthe 'Mount,' where they kept books, toys, and tea-things,spending long happy days on the highestand loveliest point of moorland in the glebe;and there he would join them when his parishwork was done, bringing them some fresh treasurepicked up in his walk, a choice wild-flower or fernor rare beetle, sometimes a lizard or a field-mouse;ever waking up their sense of wonder, calling outtheir powers of observation, and teaching themlessons out of God's great green book, without theirknowing they were learning. Out-of-doors andindoors, the Sundays were the happiest days ofthe week to the children, though to their father