The nickname of “Barbarians” for the Aristocracy he justified on the ground that, like the Barbarians of history who reinvigorated and renewed our worn-out Europe, they had eminent merits, among which were staunch individualism and a passion for doing what one likes; a love of field sports; vigour, good looks, fine complexions, care for the body and all manly exercises; distinguished bearing, high spirit, and self-confidence—­an admirable collection of attributes indeed, but marred by insufficiency of light, and “needing, for ideal perfection, a shade more soul.”  When we have done with the Barbarians at the top of the social edifice, and the Middle Class half way up, we come to the Working Class; and of that class the higher portion “looks forward to the happy day when it will sit on thrones with commercial Members of Parliament and other Middle Class potentates; and this portion is naturally akin to the Philistinism just above it.  But below this there is that vast portion of the Working Class which, raw and undeveloped, has long lain half hidden amidst its poverty and squalor, and is now issuing from its hiding-place to assert an Englishman’s heaven-born right of doing as he likes.  To this vast residuum we give the name of ‘Populace.’” In thus dividing the nation, he is careful to point out that in each class we may from time to time find “aliens”—­men free from the prejudices, the faults, the temptations of the class in which they were born; elect souls who, unhindered by their antecedents, share the higher life of intellectual and moral aspiration.

But, after making this exception, he traces in all three classes the presence and working of the same besetting sin.  All alike, by a dogged persistence in doing as they like, have come to ignore the existence of Authority or Right Reason; and this irrecognition of what ought to be the rule of life operates not only in the political sphere, but also, and conspicuously, in the spheres of morals, taste, society, and literature.  Self-satisfaction blinds all classes.  All alike believe themselves infallible, and there is no sovereign organ of opinion to set them right.  The fundamental ground of our erroneous habits, and our unwillingness to be corrected, is “our preference of doing to thinking,” The mention of this preference leads us to the subject of Chapter IV, “Hebraism and Hellenism.”

[Illustration:  Matthew Arnold, 1869

Photo Hills & Saunders]

Of all the phrases which Arnold either created or popularized, there is none more closely associated with his memory than this famous conjunction of Hebraism and Hellenism; and in this connexion, it is not out of place to note his abiding interest in, and affection for, the House of Israel.  The present writer once delivered a rather long and elaborate lecture on Arnold’s genius and writings; and next morning a daily paper gave this masterpiece of condensed and tactful reporting:  “The lecturer stated