of strangeness or interruption." The attempt was truly laudable, and the execution admirable for taste and ease. The majestic flow and cadence of the traditional English are never interrupted. There is no concession to such pedantries as Professor Robertson Smith's " greaves of the warrior that stampeth in the fray," or such barbarisms as Professor Cheynes' "boot of him that trampleth noisily." But here and there a turn is given to a sentence, which for the first time reveals its true meaning; here and there a word which really represents the Hebrew is substituted for one which makes nonsense of the sentence. The little book has often been reprinted; but as "A Bible Reading for Schools" it failed, as, to judge by his own melancholy words about it, he seems to have foreseen that it would fail. People who have charge of Elementary Education in England, whether in Church Schools or in Board Schools, are eminently and rightly suspicious about new views in religion; and The Great Prophecy of Israel's Restoration gave currency to a view which in 1872 was probably new to most School Managers and School Boards. He carefully disclaimed any intention to decide the authorship of the chapters which he edited. But the fact that they were detached from the earlier ones might perhaps raise questions in enquiring minds; and in the preface he stated his personal belief that "the author of the earlier part of the Book of Isaiah was not the author of these last chapters." He most truly added that "there is nothing to forbid a member of the Church of England, or, for that matter, a member of the Church of Rome either, or a member of the Jewish Synagogue, from holding such a belief "; but probably clergymen and Dissenting ministers and pious laymen of all denominations looked rather askance at it; and the little book never got itself adopted as "A Bible Reading for Schools." Thus ended his one attempt to improve, positively and by construction, the curriculum of the Elementary Schools; and we return, at the end of this study of his Educational doctrine, to the point at which we began. Organize your Elementary, your Secondary, your Superior, Education." This was the burden of his teaching for five-and-thirty years; and, if the community has at length really set its hand to that great task, it is only right that we should remember with honour the Master who first taught us (when the doctrine was unpopular) that the primary duty of a civilized State is to educate its children. CHAPTER IV SOCIETY CULTURE seeks to do away with classes and sects; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely; nourished, and not bound, by them. This is the social idea; and the men of culture are the true apostles of equality.' The words-social idea-which Arnold himself italicized in the foregoing extract from Culture and Anarchy, will indicate the sense in which Society" is here intended. We are not thinking of that which Pennialinus1 means when he writes about "Society gossip" or "a Society function." We are concerned with the thoughts and temper and actions of men, not as isolated units, but as living in an organized community; and, taking Society" in this sense, we are to examine Arnold's influence on the Society of his time. 1 A favourite creation of the late Mr. William Cory. Certainly the most obvious and palpable way of affecting Society-and to many Englishmen the only conceivable way-is by the method of Politics; by the definite and positive action of human law, and by such endeavours as we can make towards shaping that action. Now, if indeed the Political method were the only one, there could be little to be said about his effect on Society. Politics, in the limited and conventional sense just now suggested, were not much in his line. He was interested in them; he had opinions about them; he occasionally intervened in them. But he made no mark on the political work of his time; nor, so far as one can judge, did he aspire to do so. Of the man of letters in the field of politics, he said: "He is in truth not on his own ground there, and is in peculiar danger of talking at random." In politics, as in all else that he touched, he was critical rather than constructive; and in politics, “immersed," as Bacon said, "in matter," a man must be constructive, if his influence is to be felt and to endure. "Politicians," he said in 1880, "we all of us here in England are and must be, and I too cannot help being a politician; but a politician of that commonwealth of which the pattern, as the philosopher says, exists perhaps somewhere in Heaven, but certainly is at present found nowhere on earth." In 1887, describing himself as "an |