why the first attempt to meet Miss Bremer was unsuccessful. It will be
remembered that Miss Bremer came to England in order to collect material
for her _Life in the Old World_. (This year was also the date of Kossuth's
first visit to our shores.) Miss Bremer was Swedish by descent, but
Finnish by birth, for she was born in Finland in the year 1801.

As regards Kingsley, in 1850 he had published tracts on "Christian
Socialism." _Alton Locke_ had already come out and met with scorn on the
part of the Press, though working men--who recognized Kingsley as their
truest friend--welcomed it gladly. In 1851--a year of great trouble and
distress all over England--he thought out plans to drain parts of Eversley
(his parish), for there had been many cases of fever there, and Kingsley
was pre-eminently a _practical_ Christian. He was also far ahead of his
time (as all great men invariably are), and he saw clearly how inseparably
close in this present world is the connection between physical matters and
spiritual. He recognized that if a man is _living_ in unsanitary
conditions, it affects in a very real though inexplicable way his
spiritual life. He could trace the connection in a parishioner's life
history between bad drainage and drunkenness: later on--though it might
perhaps be very much later on--a "bee-in-the-bonnet" of his child: and he
saw in this unhappy, unfortunate Little Result the outcome of someone's
sinful failure in his duty to his neighbour in years gone by, when the
first insanitary conditions were allowed to live and be mighty.

In some senses drainage, therefore, has a decided effect upon the
spiritual life of men and women. Everyone probably will remember Dr.
Nettleship's resolute assertion, that "even a stomach-ache could be a
spiritual experience."

And so Kingsley pushed forward the drainage improvements in his parish,