But your crusader—­still more your anti-crusader—­never stops, and Mr Arnold was now pledged to this crusade or anti-crusade.  In October 1869 he began, still in the Cornhill,—­completing it by further instalments in the same place later in the year, and publishing it in 1870,—­the book called St Paul and Protestantism, where he necessarily exchanges the mixed handling of Culture and Anarchy for a dead-set at the religious side of his imaginary citadel of Philistia.  The point of at least ostensible connection—­of real departure—­is taken from the “Hebraism and Hellenism” contrast of the earlier book; and the same contrast is strongly urged throughout, especially in the coda, “A Comment on Christmas.”  But this contrast is gradually shaped into an onslaught on Puritanism, or rather on its dogmatic side, for its appreciation of “conduct” of morality is ever more and more eulogised.  As regards the Church of England herself, the attack is oblique; in fact, it is disclaimed, and a sort of a Latitudinarian Union, with the Church for centre, and dogma left out, is advocated.  Another of our Arnoldian friends, the “Zeit-Geist,” makes his appearance, and it is more than hinted that one of the most important operations of this spirit is the exploding of miracles.  The book is perfectly serious—­its seriousness, indeed, is quite evidently deliberate and laboured, so that the author does not even fear to appear dull.  But it is still admirably written, as well as studiously moderate and reverent; no exception can be taken to it on the score of taste, whatever may be taken on the score of orthodoxy from the one side, where no doubt the author would hasten to plead guilty, or on those of logic, history, and the needs of human nature on the other, where no doubt his “not guilty” would be equally emphatic.

The case is again altered, and very unfortunately altered, in the next, the most popular and, as has been said, the most famous of the series—­its zenith at once and its nadir—­Literature and Dogma.  A very much smaller part of this had appeared in magazine form; indeed, the contents of St Paul and Protestantism itself must have seemed odd in that shape, and only strong sympathies on the part of the editor could have obtained admission for any part of Literature and Dogma.  Much of it must have been written amid the excitement of the French-Prussian War, when the English public was athirst for “skits” of all sorts, and when Mr Arnold himself was “i’ the vein,” being engaged in the composition of much of the matter of Friendship’s Garland. St Paul and Protestantism had had two editions in the same year (Culture and Anarchy, a far better thing, waited six for its second), and altogether the state of things was such as to invite any author to pursue the triumph and partake the gale.  And he might at first flatter himself that he had caught the one and made cyclone-use of the other; for the book, appearing at the end of 1872, with the date of 1873, passed through three editions in that year, a fourth in 1874, and a fifth two years later.  It was thus by far Mr Arnold’s most popular book; I repeat also that it is quite his worst.