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must needs be created in a body of cavalry by every man who falls slain or wounded; by the sinking and the plunging of every horse that is killed or disabled; and again by the wild, piteous intrusion of the riderless charger, appalled by his sudden freedom coming thus in the midst of a battle, and knowing not whither to rush unless he can rejoin his old troop and wedge himself into its ranks. It is believed by Lord Cardigan that this was the time when, in the 13th Light Dragoons, Captain Oldham, the commander of the regiment, and Captain Goad and Cornet Montgomery, and in the 17th Lancers, Captain Winter and Lieutenant Thompson, were killed; when Captain Robert White and Captain Webb and Lieutenant Sir William Gordon were struck down. The survivors of the first line who remained undisabled were feeble by this time, in numbers scarce more than some fifty or sixty; and the object they rode at was a line of twelve guns close supported by the main body of the Russian cavalry, whilst on their right flank as well as on their left there stood a whole mile's length of hostile array, comprising horse, foot, and artillery. But by virtue of innate warlike passion-the gift, it would seem, of high Heaven to chosen races of men the mere half of a hundred, carried straight by a resolute leader, were borne on against the strength of the thousands. The few in their pride claimed dominion. Rushing clear of the havoc just wrought, and with Cardigan still untouched at their head, they drove thundering into the smoke which enfolded both the front of the battery and the masses of horsemen behind it.

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Lord Cardigan and his first line, still descending at speed on their goal, had rived their way dimly through the outer folds of the cloud which lay piled up in front of the battery; but then there came the swift moment when, through what remained of the dimness, men at last saw the brass cannons gleaming with their muzzles toward the chests of our horses; and visibly the Russian artillerymen - unappalled by the tramp and the aspect of squadrons driving down through the smoke-were as yet standing fast to their guns.

By the material obstacle which they offer to the onset of horsemen, field-pieces in action, with their attendant limbercarriages and tumbrils behind them, add so sure a cause of frustration to the peril that there is in riding at the mouths of the guns, that upon the whole the expedient of attacking a battery. in front has been forbidden to cavalry leaders by a recognized

maxim of war. But the huge misconception of orders which had sent the brigade down this valley was yet to be fulfilled to its utmost conclusion; and the condition of things had now come to be such that whatever might be the madness (in general) of charging a battery in front, there by this time was no choice of measures. By far the greater part of the harm which the guns could inflict had already been suffered; and I believe that the idea of stopping short on the verge of the battery did not even present itself for a moment to the mind of the leader.

Lord Cardigan moved down at a pace which he has estimated at seventeen miles an hour, and already he had come to within some two or three horses'-lengths of the mouth of one of the guns, a gun believed to have been a twelve-pounder; but then the piece was discharged, and its torrent of flame seemed to gush in the direction of his chestnut's off fore-arm. The horse was so governed by the impetus he had gathered, and by the hand and the heel of his rider, as to be able to shy only a little at the blaze and the roar of the gun; but Lord Cardigan being presently enwrapped in the new column of smoke now all at once piled up around him, some imagined him slain. He had not been struck. In the next moment, and being still some two horses'-lengths in advance of his squadrons, he attained to the long-sought battery, and shot in between two of its guns.

There was a portion of the 17th Lancers on our extreme left which outflanked the line of the guns, but with this exception the whole of Lord Cardigan's first line descended on the front of the battery: and as their leader had just done before them, so now our horsemen drove in between the guns; and some then at the instant tore on to assail the gray squadrons drawn up in rear of the tumbrils. Others stopped to fight in the battery, and sought to make prize of the guns. After a long and disastrous advance against clouds and invisible foes, they grasped, as it were, at reality. What before had been engines of havoc dimly seen, or only inferred from the jets of their fire and their smoke, were now burnished pieces of cannon with the brightness and the hue of red gold,- cannon still in battery, still hot with the slaughter of their comrades.

CHARLES KINGSLEY

(1819-1875)

N THE autumn of 1849, in the midst of the famous Chartist movement in England, there appeared a book, a romance, which excited the enthusiasm of all "Young England" and kindled afresh the spirit of revolt against class oppression. It was called 'Alton Locke'; and was the story of a young London tailor, who, filled with yearnings, poetical and political, which his situation rendered hopeless, joined the Chartists, shared their failure, and in despair quitted England for the New World, only to die on reaching the promised land.

All his misery and failure are ascribed

to the brutal indifference of the rich and well-taught to the needs and aspirations of the workingman. When it became known that the author, Charles Kingsley, was a clergyman of the established church, a man of ancient family; that he had been forbidden by the Bishop of London to preach in that city on account of a sermon embodying radical sentiments; and that he was suffering social ostracism and newspaper attack for the stand he had taken, party enthusiasm burned still higher. He became the knight-errant, the chosen hero, of the movement known as "Christian Socialism."

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CHARLES KINGSLEY

Charles Kingsley was born in Dartmoor, Devon, England, the 13th of June, 1819. He took honors at Cambridge, was ordained, and in 1841 became in turn curate and rector of the church at Eversley, Hampshire, where he lived and died; varying his duty only when in residence as canon at Chester and Westminster, or at Cambridge where he was a professor of modern history in 1861-9. With the exception of two short holidays in the West Indies and America, and two trips on the Continent, his external life saw few changes. the peace was outward only.

But

As long as there was evil in the world he stood up to fight it; head downwards he charged at every red rag of doctrine, either in defense or offense. He attacked political economy, competition, the laws of gravitation, the Manchester school, the cholera, Bishop Colenso, and Cardinal Newman. On the other hand, he pleaded the

cause of the undefended, from the oppression of Indian widows or the preservation of village greens to the struggles of the Australian canned-meat industry, the success of which, he maintained, would settle the food question forever.

The key to Kingsley's mental development must be sought in his emotional history. His youth was passed in a Devon parish, of which his father, an old-fashioned parson and keen sportsman, was rector. The boy rode to hounds as soon as he could sit a horse, and was a devoted naturalist before he was old enough to know the scientific name of a single specimen of his collection. His love of nature, so rare a quality in children, "had the intensity," said Mr. Stephen, "and the absorbing power of a sensual appetite. He gave himself up to the pure emotion as a luxuriant nature abandons itself to physical gratification."

On reaching manhood, the strength of his sympathies and the vigor of his perceptions threw him headlong into the revolt of the time against oppression and wrong. But Kingsley was as far as Disraeli from being a democrat, and as sincere in defending a social and religious hierarchy. His politics were in fact those of the great statesman's Coningsby, -a "Young England" Tory who denounces social wrongs and provides the workingman with good clothes, good food, and amusements, but will listen to no revolutionary remedy to destroy the evil.

His fighting propensity left a mark on the time and its literature. It formulated the creed that pluck and Bible texts would regenerate the world; and it created the "muscular Christian" who strutted through the pages of most of the novels of the day, from Bulwer with his 'Kenelm Chillingly' to the waxwork Sir Galahads of the Misses Wetherell. Kingsley disliked the cult, and denied that he was responsible for it; but it became to him a sort of Frankenstein's monster, growing till it assumed the proportions of strength-worship and the elevation of physical over moral force.

A passionate Protestant, he was deeply affected by the agitation in the English Church known as the "Oxford Movement," and the spirit of what was called "Manichæism," or the principle which placed the monkish over the domestic virtues. He had a theory that the love of woman is the guide of the intellect, and that the love of nature teaches the theory of the universe. Elizabeth in the Saint's Tragedy,' the heroines in Westward Ho!' Hypatia, Grace in 'Two Years Ago,' are the saving influences of the men of these books. Lancelot in 'Yeast' designs a great allegorical drawing, which sets forth the influence of the feminine charm on every variety of human being. "The picture," says a reviewer in Cornhill, "could hardly be put on canvas; but it would be a perfect frontispiece to Kingsley's works."

The stories 'Yeast' and 'Alton Locke,' written on the same theme and in the same year, are both clumsily constructed and uneven; and fifty years later, lack the interest they excited when their topics were new and immediate. Kingsley has the tendency to preach, common to all novelists with a purpose. The power of these books is in their intense feeling and sincerity, and the genuine force of their attack upon injustice. And there are scenes in 'Yeast,' such as the village feast, and the death of old Harry Verney the gamekeeper; and in Alton Locke,' such as the Chartist rising in the country, as bold as anything in English fiction. 'Alton Locke' is the more sustained effort, the more ambitious conception; but Carlyle describes it as a "vivid creation, still left half chaotic." But of Kingsley's masterpiece in the way of character, the old Scotchman Mackaye, he says, "My invaluable countryman in this book is nearly perfect."

Kingsley's historical novels are in a different strain. The further he removes his story from his own time, the more pictorial the presentation. His freshness and vigor seize upon the reader; the roots of feeling strike down into the heart of life. The desert scenes in 'Hypatia,' the thrilling tragedy of the death of the martyr, which if bad history is admirable fiction, the sea-fight in Westward Ho!' an epic "not of dull prose but of the thunder roll of Homer's verse," stir the blood and mock criticism. Concerning the history and the theology the general reader does not concern himself. The genius

of the author has already possessed him. Raphael, Wulf, and Amal — beings begot of fancy, dwelling in an unreal time—are more alive than modern photographic realism makes the latest realistic hero.

No writer in the language has shown a greater power of description than Kingsley. Landscape, beast, and bird' are invested with poetic charm. He is as close an observer as John Burroughs, and as great an artist as Turner in painting grand effects of sea and sky. There is no elaboration of detail, no exaggeration, in his glimpses of the fens of Devon and the cliffs of Lundy. The writing is alive; the man tells what he has seen; we have the atmospheric effect and the dramatic character. "In one of his pictures of Cornwall," says Mr. Leslie Stephen, «< we can tell the time of day and the state of the weather, as if he were a meteorologist."

The verdict of time has placed Kingsley among the minor poets. Great things were expected of the author of The Saint's Tragedy.' 'Andromeda'-the most successful attempt in the language in the use of hexameter verse - fulfilled these expectations in a measure. But his genius was not equal to a sustained flight. He will be best remembered by those short dramatic lyrics which he sang in measures approaching perfection.

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