in a grandee,” when Lord Ravensworth consulted him about Latin verses.  “At present far too many of Lord Ravensworth’s class are mere men of business, or mere farmers, or mere horse-racers, or mere men of pleasure.”  That was a consummation which delicacy in the Aristocratic class would make impossible.  To cultivate in oneself, and apply in one’s conduct, this instinct of delicacy, was a lesson which no one, who fell under Arnold’s influence, could fail to learn.  He taught us to “liberate the gentler element in oneself,” to eschew what was base and brutal, unholy and unkind.  He taught us to seek in every department of life for what was “lovely and of good report,” tasteful, becoming, and befitting; to cultivate “man’s sense for beauty, and man’s instinct for fit and pleasing forms of social life and manners.”  He taught us to plan our lives, as St. Paul taught the Corinthians to plan their worship, [Greek:  euschmnonos kai kata taxin],”—­in right, graceful, or becoming figure, and by fore-ordered arrangement."[45] Alike his teaching and his example made us desire (however imperfectly we attained our object) to perceive in all the contingencies and circumstances of life exactly the line of conduct which would best consist with Delicacy, and so to make virtue victorious by practising it attractively.

[Illustration:  Matthew Arnold, 1880

From the Painting by G.F.  Watts, R.A.

Photo F. Hollyer]

[Footnote 33:  The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, by Edward Dowden, LL.D. 1886.]

[Footnote 34:  His third son.]

[Footnote 35:  His elder daughter.]

[Footnote 36:  His younger daughter.]

[Footnote 37:  His fourth son.]

[Footnote 38:  His eldest son.]

[Footnote 39:  His second son.]

[Footnote 40:  “Chastity was the supreme virtue in the eyes of the Church, the mystic key to Christian holiness.  Continence was one of the most sacred pretensions by which the organized preachers of superstition claimed the reverence of men and women.  It was identified, therefore, in a particular manner with that Infamous, against which the main assault of the time was directed.”—­Morley’s Voltaire.]

[Footnote 41:  “Rules of Cautions; or, Helps to Obedience:  called by some the Hedge of the Law.”—­Bishop Andrews.]

[Footnote 42:  F.W.H.  Myers.]

[Footnote 43:  Page 15.]

[Footnote 44:  The allusion is to the late Mr. W. Hepworth Dixon, and his writings on the Polygamous Sects of America.]

[Footnote 45:  W.E.  Gladstone, The Church of England and Ritualism.]

CHAPTER VI

THEOLOGY