his popularity, it is the fit time to speak of his shortcomings with that frankness which is the truest respect.
The historian of Frederick the Great and the author of Hypatia have many points of resemblance, but always with a variation. They are cast in the same mould, but fashioned of different clays and animated by different spirits. Both are terribly in earnest; but Kingsley's is the earnestness of youthful vigour and a sanguine temper, Carlyle's is the profound cynicism of a bitter and a gloomy spirit. He is, if not the saddest, assuredly the most saddening of writers, the very Apostle of Despair. Both seem penetrated to the very core of their nature with the sharpest sense of the wrongs and sufferings of humanity; but the one is thereby driven to preach a crusade of vengeance on their authors, the other a crusade of rescue and deliverance for their victims. Mr. Kingsley's earnestness as a social philosopher and reformer develops itself mainly in the direction of action and of sympathy; Mr. Carlyle's exhales itself, for the most part, in a fierce contempt against folly and weakness, which is always unmeasured and usually unchristian. The earnestness of Carlyle, though savagely sincere, never condescends enough to detail or to knowledge to make him a practical reformer; that of Kingsley is so restless as to allow him no repose, and sends him rushing, tête baissée, at every visible evil or abuse. The one has stirred thousands to bitterest discontent with life and with the world, but scarcely erected a finger-post or supplied a motive; the other has roused numbers to buckle on their armour in a holy cause, but has often directed them astray, and has not always been careful either as to banner or to watchword.
Both are fearfully pugnacious; indeed, they are beyond comparison the two most combative writers of their age. Nature sent them into the world full of aggressive propensities; and strong principles, warm hearts, and expansive sympathies, have enlisted these propensities on the side of benevolence and virtue. Happier than many, they have been able to enlist their passions in the cause of right. But their success or good fortune in doing this has led them into the delusion common in such cases. They fancy that the cause consecrates the passion. They feel
"We have come forth upon the field of life
and once satisfied that it is evil against which they are contending, they let themselves go, and give full swing to all the vehemence of their unregenerate natures. We comprehend the full charms of such a tilt. It must be delightful to array all the energies of the old Adam against the foes of the new. What unspeakable relief and joy for a Christian like Mr. Kingsley, whom God