Arnold's favourite butts, regarded his facetious tormentor with friendly and respectful admiration. This was very creditable to Mr. Sala, but it was creditable to Mr. Arnold too. There was plenty of salt in his wit, and not much pepper. Friendship's Garland is by far the most amusing book he ever wrote, and, indeed, for anything better of its kind we must go to Voltaire. Yet nothing would induce Mr. Arnold to publish a second edition of it, and for many years before his death it was out of print. He thought it ephemeral, as parts of it no doubt are, and his fastidious taste condemned it to oblivion. Fortunately, the destinies of a book are not under the permanent control of the author, and in 1898 Friendship's Garland was brought out once more. The special phase of smug, complacent Philistine Liberalism, at which it is chiefly aimed, had ceased to be predominant. But the fun is immortal, and the criticism deep as well as sound. If the book can be said to have a practical moral, it is that Englishmen should practise the virtue of obedience, and improve the education of the middle classes. But the charm of these pages, the most vivacious that even Mr. Arnold ever penned, lies in the inimitable drollness of the social satire, and perhaps I can hardly do better than quote at full length the conversation between Arminius and the author upon the justices at petty sessions.

"The three magistrates in that inn,' said I, 'are not three Government functionaries all cut out of one block; they embody our whole national life; the land, religion, commerce, are all represented by them. Lord Lumpington is a peer of old family and great estate; Esau Hittall is a clergyman; Mr. Bottles is one of our self-made middle-class

men.

Their politics are not all of one colour, and that colour the Government's. Lumpington is a constitutional Whig; Hittall is a benighted old Tory. As for Mr. Bottles, he is a Radical of the purest water; quite one of the Manchester school. He was one of the earliest free-traders, he has always gone as straight as an arrow about Reform; he is an ardent voluntary in every possible line, opposed the Ten Hours' Bill, was one of the leaders of the Dissenting opposition out of Parliament which smashed up the education clauses of Sir James Graham's Factory Act; and he paid the whole expenses of a most important church-rate contest out of his own pocket. And, finally, he looks forward to marrying his deceased wife's sister. Table, as my friend Mr. Grant Duff says, the whole Liberal creed, and in not a single point of it will you find Bottles tripping.' 'That is all very well as to their politics,' said Arminius, 'but I want to hear about their education and intelligence.' 'There, too, I can satisfy you,' I answered. 'Lumpington was at Eton. Hittall was on the foundation at Charterhouse, placed there by his uncle, a distinguished prelate, who was one of the trustees. You know we English have no notion of your bureaucratic tyranny of treating the appointments to these great foundations as public patronage, and vesting them in a responsible minister; we vest them in independent magnates, who relieve the State of all work and responsibility, and never take a shilling of salary for their trouble. Hittall was the last of six nephews nominated to the Charterhouse by his uncle, this good prelate, who had thoroughly learnt the divine lesson that charity begins at home.' But I want to know what his nephew learnt,' interrupted Arminius, and what Lord Lumpington learnt at Eton.' They followed,' said I, 'the grand, old, fortifying, classical curriculum.' 'Did they know anything when they left?' asked Arminius. 'I have seen some longs and shorts of Hittall's,' said I, 'about the Calydonian Boar, which were not bad. But you surely don't need me to tell you, Arminius, that it is rather in training and bracing the mind for future acquisition a course of mental gymnastics we call it - than in teaching any set thing, that the classical curriculum is so

valuable.' 'Were the minds of Lord Lumpington and Mr. Hittall much braced by their mental gymnastics?' inquired Arminius. 'Well,' I answered, 'during their three years at Oxford they were so much occupied with Bullingdon and hunting, that there was no great opportunity to judge. But for my part I have always thought that their both getting their degree at last with flying colours, after three weeks of a famous coach for fast men, four nights without going to bed, and an incredible consumption of wet towels, strong cigars, and brandy and water, was one of the most astonishing feats of mental gymnastics I ever heard of.' 'That will do for the land and the Church,' said Arminius; and now let us hear about commerce.' 'You mean how was Bottles educated?' answered I. 'Here we get into another line altogether, but a very good line in its way, too. Mr. Bottles was brought up at the Lycurgus House Academy, Peckham. You are not to suppose from the name of Lycurgus that any Latin and Greek was taught in the establishment; the name only indicates the moral discipline, and the strenuous earnest character, imparted there. As to the instruction, the thoughtful educator who was principal of the Lycurgus House Academy, Archimedes Silverpump, Ph.D., you must have heard of him in Germany ? — had modern views. "We must be men of our age," he used to say. "Useful knowledge, living languages, and the forming of the mind through observation and experiment, these are the fundamental articles of my educational creed." Or as I have heard his pupil Bottles put it in his expansive moments after dinner: "Original man, Silverpump! fine mind! fine system. None of your antiquated rubbish-all practical work latest discoveries in science - mind constantly kept excited-lots of interesting experiments- lights of all colours -fizz! fizz! bang! bang! That's what I call forming a man!"' 'And pray,' cried Arminius impatiently, 'what sort of man do you suppose this infernal quack really formed in your precious friend Mr. Bottles?' 'Well,' I replied, 'I hardly know how to answer that question. Bottles has certainly made an immense fortune; but as to Silverpump's effect on his mind, whether it was from any fault in the

Lycurgus House system, whether it was that with a sturdy self-reliance thoroughly English, Bottles, ever since he quitted Silverpump, left his mind wholly to itself, his daily newspaper, and the Particular Baptist minister under whom he sat, or from whatever cause it was, certainly his mind, quâ mind -' 'You need not go on,' interrupted Arminius, 'I know what that man's mind, quâ mind, is, well enough.'

I do not think that Matthew Arnold ever surpassed this dialogue. The only criticism I should make upon it is that the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill got upon his nerves, and that he always seemed to regard it as a compulsory measure. Public opinion, however, was to some extent with him, for it has not yet become law.

K

CHAPTER XI

MR. ARNOLD'S THEOLOGY

IF any formal theologian should cast a roving eye over this book, or over this chapter, he will probably deny that Mr. Arnold had any theology at all. For just as Mr. Frederic Harrison "sought vainly in him a system of philosophy with principles coherent, interdependent, subordinate, and derivative," so Mr. Gladstone observed, with less pedantry, and more humour, that he combined a sincere devotion to the Christian religion with a faculty for presenting it in such a form as to be recognisable neither by friend nor foe. This is a more "damning sentence," to adopt Mr. Arnold's own phrase, than Mr. Harrison's. It is indeed the best and tersest criticism ever passed upon Mr. Arnold's theological writings. I am not in the least inclined to agree with Mr. Russell, who dismisses those writings in a sigh, or with Professor Saintsbury, who disposes of them with a sneer. I do not understand how a real scholar like Mr. Saintsbury can think, that unless the Fourth Gospel is "revelation," its date is immaterial, whether that date were the first century, the fourth century, or the fourteenth. On the contrary, it seems to me that Mr. Arnold set before himself a perfectly legitimate, and even laudable object, but that with many brilliant qualifications there were fatal obstacles to his success. The date of the Gospels,