and harnessing himself to all manner of unsuitable vehicles, to the private history of the decade.  This, though sadly chequered by Mr Arnold’s first domestic troubles, was on the whole prosperous, was somewhat less laborious than the earlier years, and was lightened by ever more of the social and public distractions, which no man entirely dislikes, and which—­to a certain extent and in a certain way—­Mr Arnold did not dislike at all.  The changes of occupation and of literary aim by the termination of the professorship coincided, as such things have a habit of doing, with changes in place and circumstance.  The Chester Square house grew too small for the children, and a move to Harrow was first meditated and then achieved.  A very pleasant letter to his mother, in November 1867, tells how he was present at the farewell dinner to Dickens on his departure for America, how they wanted him (vainly) to come to the high table and speak, and how Lord Lytton finally brought him into his own speech.  He adds that some one has given him “a magnificent box of four hundred Manilla cheroots” (he must surely have counted wrong, for they usually make these things in two-hundred-and-fifties or five-hundreds), welcome to hand on, though he did not smoke himself.  In another he expresses the evangelical desire to “do Mr Swinburne some good.”

But in January 1868 his baby-child Basil died; and the intense family affection, which was one of his strongest characteristics, suffered of course cruelly, as is recorded in a series of touching letters to his sister and mother.  He fell and hurt himself at Cannon Street, too, but was comforted by his sister with a leading case about an illiterate man who fell into a reservoir through not reading a notice.  The Harrow house became a reality at Lady Day, and at Midsummer he went to stay at Panshanger, and “heard the word ‘Philistine’ used a hundred times during dinner and ‘Barbarian’ nearly as often” (it must be remembered that the “Culture and Anarchy” articles were coming out now).  This half-childish delight in such matters (like Mr Pendennis’s “It’s all in the papers, and my name too!”) is one of the most fascinating things about him, and one of not a few, proving that, if there was some affectation, there was no dissimulation in his nature.  Too many men, I fear, would have said nothing about them, or assumed a lofty disdain.  In September he mentions to Mr Grant Duff a plan (which one only wishes he had carried out, letting all the “Dogma” series go [Greek:  kat ouron] as it deserved) for “a sketch of Greek poetry, illustrated by extracts in harmonious prose.”  This would have been one of the few great literary histories of the world, and so Apollo kept it in his own lap.  The winter repeated, far more heavily, the domestic blow of the spring, and Tom, his eldest son, who had always been delicate, died, aged sixteen only, at Harrow, where since the removal he had been at school.  There is something about this in the Letters; but on the great principle of curae leves, less, as we should expect, than about the baby’s death.