Even in the full flood of Liberal victory which followed the General Election of 1880, he saw what was coming.  “What strikes one is the insecureness of the Liberals’ hold upon office and upon public favour; the probability of the return, perhaps even more than once, of their adversaries to office, before that final and happy consummation is reached—­the permanent establishment of Liberalism in power.”  And, while he saw what was coming, he thus divined the cause.  The official and commanding part of the Liberal Party was at the best stolidly indifferent to Social Reform; at the worst, viciously angry with the idea and those who propagated it.  The commercialism of the great Middle Class had covered the face of England with places like St. Helens, which the capitalists called “great centres of national enterprise,” and Cobbett called “Hell-Holes.”  In these places life was lived under conditions of squalid and hideous misery, and the inhabitants were beginning to find out, in the words of one of their own class, that “free political institutions do not guarantee the well-being of the toiling class.”  Under these circumstances it was natural that the toilers, having looked for redress to the Liberal Party and looked in vain, should, when next they had the chance, try a spell of that Democratic Toryism which at any rate held out some shadowy hope of social betterment.  Arnold’s misgivings about the future of the Liberal Party were abundantly made good by the General Election of 1885; but enough has now been said about his contribution to the practical politics of his time.  A much larger space must be given to the influence which he brought to bear on Society by methods not political—­by criticism, by banter, by literary felicities, by “sinuous, easy, unpolemical” methods.

England had known him first as a poet, then as a literary critic.  Next came a rather hazy impression that he was an educational reformer whose suggestions might be worth attending to.  It was not till 1869 that his countrymen became fully aware of him as a social critic, a commentator on life and society.  Looking back, one seems to see that by that time his poetical function was fulfilled.  As far as the medium of poetry is concerned, he had said his say; said it incomparably well, said it with abiding effect.  Now it seemed that a new function presented itself to him; a great door and effectual was opened to him.  He found a fresh sphere of usefulness and influence in applying his critical method to the ideals and follies of his countrymen; to their scheme of life, ways of thinking and acting, prejudices, conventions, and limitations.  Mr. Paul said, as we have already seen, that the appearance of Essays in Criticism was “a great intellectual event.”  That is perfectly true; and the appearance of Culture and Anarchy was a great social event.  The book so named was published in 1869; but the ground had been prepared for it by some earlier writings, and these we must consider before we come to the book itself.