At the breakfast-table the next morning we had much talk in regard to American writers.  Kingsley admitted Emerson’s high merit, but thought him too fragmentary a writer and thinker to have enduring fame.  He had meant that this should be implied as his opinion in the title he gave to Phaethon—­“Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers”—­a book he had written in direct opposition to what he understood to be the general teaching of Emerson.  I remarked upon the great beauty of some of Emerson’s later writings and the marvelous clearness of insight which was shown in his English Traits.  Kingsley acquiesced in this, but referred to some American poetry, so called, which Emerson had lately edited, and in his preface had out-Heroded Herod.  Kingsley said the poems were the production of a coarse, sensual mind.  His reference, of course, was to Walt Whitman, and I had no defence to make.  Of Lowell, Mr. Kingsley spoke very highly:  his Fable for Critics was worthy of Rabelais.  Mr. Froude, who is Kingsley’s brother-in-law, had first made him acquainted with Lowell’s poetry.  Hawthorne’s style he thought was exquisite:  there was scarcely any modern writing equal to it.  Of all his books he preferred the Blithedale Romance.

We talked of Mr. Froude, whom Kingsley spoke of as his dearest friend:  he thought Froude sincerely regretted ever having written the Nemesis of Faith.  Mr. Helps, author of Friends in Council, he spoke of as his near neighbor there in Hampshire, and his intimate friend.  Mr. Charles Reade he knew, and I think he said he was also a neighbor:  his Christie Johnston he thought showed high original power.  Mrs. Gaskell we talked of, whose Life of Charlotte Bronte had just then been published:  Mr. Kingsley thought it extremely interesting and “slightly slanderous.”  He told me of the author of Tom Brown’s School-days, a copy of which, fresh from the publishers, was lying on his table.  Mr. Hughes is now so well known to us I need only mention that Mr. Kingsley spoke of him as an old pupil of Arnold’s and a spiritual child of Maurice.  He spoke most warmly of him, and offered me a letter of introduction to him.  I could not avail myself of this, having so little time to remain in London.

I must mention, as showing further Mr. Kingsley’s state of mind toward Maurice, that he had named his son after him.  He spoke of the boy as being intended for the army:  the family, he said, had been soldiers for generations.  “That is the profession England will need for the next five-and-twenty years.”  Of Forster he said, “What a pity he had not been put in the army at the age of eighteen!—­he would have been a general now.  England has need of such men.”  I note this as showing the curious apprehension of war which he, an Englishman, felt eighteen years ago, and which he expressed to me, an American.  How little either of us thought of the struggle which men of English blood were to engage in in three years from that time!  How little I could dream that one of the decisive battles of the world was so soon to be fought in my own State, Pennsylvania!