A New Word-Philistia of Old-Milton's Samson-A Shade more Soul-The Barbarians-The People-Mr. Carlyle and the Nobility-Trade-The World's Ideals.

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SINGULAR son of a very remarkable father -one who is in some measure a leader of modern thought, has helped to circulate a new word,* and to affix upon British men and manners Matthew Arnold, the son of Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, a name dear to many, be

a new name.

* The word Philister, or Philistine, was used in its modern sense by Carlyle, Sydney Smith, and others before Matthew Arnold was born; it has been current in Germany-more particularly in university towns among students—as a cant term to express the trading townspeople, the Kleinstädter of Lessing, for more than a century. Carlyle coined our English Philistinism, and the word soon found currency in America. Matthew Arnold adopts it in its German sense-the littleness of trade in money-grubbing.

loved by the boys' hearts still remaining in the breasts of grey-headed men, one of the chief leaders in Church and State, is he who has done this; and it is worth while to examine how far he is truly inspired when he plays upon this one-stringed harp, and endeavours to affix on his countrymen a name disgraceful and abhorrent to all the noble and pure-minded.

We must go back to sacred history, and no less to the poetry of Milton, to examine who the Philistines were. People who have merely an indefinite idea that they were a rich nation on the confines of Judæa, often at war with the Israelites, and whose soldiers were slaughtered by the thousand with the jawbone of an ass, wielded by Samson, will not realise nor feel the insult and the sneer, nor will they profit by the lesson, which we think at least necessary and salutary.

The Philistines, as we should properly call these people, then inhabited the plain of Philistia; and bounded on the north by Phoenicia and Syria, and on the south by Egypt and Arabia, the fertility and the position of their country gave them enormous wealth. So far they were like England. Ashdod and Gaza were the keys of Egypt, and commanded the transit trade,' says a writer on this people; and the stores of frankincense and myrrh which Alexander captured at the latter place prove it to have been a depôt of Arabian produce.' Moreover, the Philistines seem to have possessed a navy,

and to have attacked the Egyptians from their ships: they were extremely skilful as armourers, smiths, and as architects of walled and strong towns. They were skilled goldsmiths, for they made emerods and gold mice, images, and gods and goddesses without question. Their wealth was abundant, and they were strong in their own conceit, given to feasting, to assembling together and holding long palavers or parliaments, and had all the appearances of a strong and eminently respectable people. If we take these characteristics, we shall find that Mr. Matthew Arnold, who so well knows how to point his satire, was not very wrong in calling us by the name he has used.

It is just when Philistia is at the culmination of her complacent power, able to worry and oppress the Israelites, ready to send armed men from her own rich land to spoil that of her poor but holier neighbours, that there appears on the scene a very remarkable man, named Samson, who was 'a Nazarite unto God from the womb.' Previous to his birth, his mother drank no wine nor strong drink; neither did she eat any unclean thing. Samson grew up a very tower of strength, mighty as the fabled Hercules, if indeed he was not he, and the spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.'

How it moved him we all know. Despising the rich living of the Philistines, caring neither for their gold

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smiths' work, nor for their great trade, nor for their wine and their feastings, their riches, their clothing, and their large houses, although they had dominion over Israel, he sought an occasion against them, and, as we know, not in vain. Tricked by them with regard to his riddle and the raiment, he went down to Ashkelon and slew thirty men of them, and took their spoil, and gave change of garments unto them which expounded his riddle. Afterwards he set fire-branded foxes into their standing corn, and smote them hip and thigh with great slaughter, and again, with the jawbone of an ass, slew a thousand of them, was bound and snared, and again burst forth to slay them, until, snared by Delilah, he was blinded by his enemies, made a mockery of, and set to grind corn while the Philistian lords feasted in a great house; when his strength came again, and he cried, 'O Lord God, remember me, I pray Thee, and strengthen me, I pray Thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes;' and then, sure that the Lord had heard him, he bowed his strong arm with all his might, holding 'the two middle pillars upon which the house stood; and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people that were within; and the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.'

So ends the story of Samson, judge of Israel, one who received his strength from the Lord, and who hated the

Philistines, but who was snared and blinded, and made to grind corn for them, and to be their sport, but who was faithful and undaunted, and though stained somewhat, as our new morality makes us think, with the sins of the flesh, was not yet deserted by God, but carried out in his death the end for which he was born. Certainly, he pulled down destruction on his own head; but, as his father, Manoah, in Milton's great dramatic poem, is made to say, even that was a triumph.

He left

To himself and father's house eternal fame;
And, which is best and happiest yet, all this
With God not parted from him, as was fear'd,
But favouring and assisting to the end.

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail

Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise or blame; nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble.

It is significant that Milton, in his blindness, turned to the history of Samson to illustrate his own feelings, and pictured to himself his loyalist countrymen rejoicing in the return of the foolish and bad King Charles II. No doubt, also, the people of England figured to him under the name of Philistines.

What Mr. Matthew Arnold means he explains more fully under the title of 'Anarchy and Authority.' He shows, by a side glance as it were, that our nation has fallen into a very sad state, and that we are, in the main, incapable of governing ourselves, and a long way out of