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CULTURE AND ANARCHY 
 
 FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND 
 
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
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.CULTURE & ANAECHY 
 
 AN ESSAY IN 
 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CRITICISM 
 
 AND 
 
 FKIENDSHIFS GAELAND 
 
 BEING THE CONVERSATIONS, LETTERS, AND OPINIONS 
 
 OF THE LATE 
 
 ARMINIUS, BAEON VON THUNDEE-TEN-TRONCKH. 
 
 COLLECTED AND EDITED, 
 
 "WITH A DEDICATOET LETTER TO ADOLBSCBNS LEO, Esq., 
 OF "the daily telegraph" 
 
 BY MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1908 
 3 
 
^^SITK,^ 
 
 \.%AC^^ 
 
CULTUEE AND ANAECHY 
 
JHOote ergo oos perJieU,! 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 (1869.) 
 
 My foremost design in writing this Preface is to 
 address a word of exhortation to the Society for Pro- 
 moting Christian Knowledge. In the essay which 
 follows, the reader will often find Bishop Wilson 
 quoted. To me and to the members of the Society 
 for Promoting Christian Knowledge his name and 
 writings are still, no doubt, familiar. But the world 
 is fast going away from old-fashioned people of his 
 sort, and I learnt with consternation lately from a 
 brilliant and distinguished votary of the natural 
 sciences, that he had never so much as heard of 
 Bishop Wilson, and that he imagined me to have 
 invented him. At a moment when the Courts of 
 Law have just taken ofi' the embargo from the re- 
 creative religion furnished on Sundays by my gifted 
 acquaintance and others, and when St. Martin's Hall 
 and the Alhambra will soon be beginning again to 
 resound with their pulpit-eloquence, it distresses one 
 to think that the new lights should not only have, in 
 general, a very low opinion of the preachers of the 
 
VUl CtJLTUEE AND ANARCHY. 
 
 old religion, but that they should have it without 
 knowing the best that these preachers can do. And 
 that they are in this case is owing in part, certainly, 
 to the negligence of the Christian Knowledge Society. 
 In the old times they used to print and spread abroad 
 Bishop Wilson's Mcmms of Piety and ChridiomMy. 
 The copy of this work which I use is one of their 
 publications, bearing their imprint, and bound in the 
 well-known brown calf which they made familiar to 
 our childhood ; but the date of my copy is 1812. I 
 know of no copy besides, and I believe the work is 
 no longer one of those printed and circulated by the 
 Society.^ Hence the error, flattering, I own, to me 
 personally, yet in itself to be regretted, of the dis- 
 tinguished physicist already mentioned. 
 
 But Bishop Wilson's Maxims deserve to be circu- 
 lated as a religious book, not only by comparison with 
 the cartloads of rubbish circulated at present under 
 this designation, but for their own sake, and even by 
 comparison with the other works of the same author. 
 Over the far better known Scusra Privata they have 
 this advantage, that they were prepared by him for 
 his own private use, while the Sacra Privata were 
 prepared by him for the use of the public. The 
 Maxims were never meant to be printed, and have on 
 that account, like a work of, doubtless, far deeper 
 emotion and power, the Meditaiions of Marcus Aurelius, 
 something peculiarly sincere and first-hand about 
 them. Some of the best things from the Maxims 
 
 ' The Christian Knowledge Society has, since 1869, repub- 
 lished the Maxims of Bishop Wilson. 
 
PREFACE. ia 
 
 have passed into the Sacra Privata. Still, in the 
 Mcmms, we have them as they first arose ; and 
 whereas, too, in the Sacra Privata the writer speaks 
 very often as one of the clergy, and as addressing the 
 clergy, in the Maxims he almost always speaks solely 
 as a man. I am not saying a word against the Saa-a 
 Privata, for which I have the highest respect ; only 
 the MaaAms seem to me a better and more edifying 
 book still. They should be read, as Joubert says 
 Nicole should be read, with a direct aim at practice. 
 The reader will leave on one side things which, from 
 the change of time and from the changed point of 
 view which the change of time inevitably brings with 
 it, no longer suit him ; enough will remain to serve 
 as a sample of the very best, perhaps, which our 
 nation and race can do in the way of religious writing. 
 M. Michelet makes it a reproach to us that, in all the 
 doubt as to the real author of the Imitation, no one 
 has ever dreamed of ascribing that work to an Eng- 
 lishman. It is true, the Imitation could not well have 
 been written by an Englishman ; the religious deli- 
 cacy and the profound asceticism of that admirable 
 book are hardly in our nature. This would be more 
 of a reproach to us if in poetry, which requires, no 
 less than religion, a true delicacy of spiritual percep- 
 tion, our race had not done great things ; and if the 
 Imitation, exquisite as it is, did not, as I have else- 
 where remarked, belong to a class of works in which 
 the perfect balance of human nature is lost, and 
 which have therefore, as spiritual productions, in 
 their contents something excessive and morbid, in 
 
X OULTUEE AND AN AEOHT. 
 
 their form something not thoroughly sound On a 
 lower range than the Imitation, and awakening in our' 
 nature chords less poetical and delicate, the Maaims 
 of Bishop Wilson are, as a religious work, far more 
 solid. To the most sincere ardour and unction, 
 Bishop Wilson unites, in these Mwxims, that down- 
 right honesty and plain good sense which our English 
 race has so powerfully applied to the divine im- 
 possibilities of religion ; by which it has brought 
 religion so much into practical life, and has done its 
 allotted part in promoting upon earth the kingdom 
 of God. 
 
 With ardour and unction religion, as we aU know, 
 may still be fanatical ; with honesty and good sense, 
 it may still be prosaic ; and the fruit of honesty and 
 good sense united with ardour and unction is often 
 only a prosaic religion held fanatically. Bishop 
 Wilson's excellence lies in a balance of the four quali- 
 ties, and in a fulness and perfection of them, which 
 makes this untoward result impossible. His unction 
 is so perfect, and in such happy alliance with his good 
 sense, that it becomes tenderness and fervent charity. 
 His good sense is so perfect, and in such happy 
 alliance with his unction, that it becomes moderation 
 and insight While, therefore, the type of religion 
 exhibited in his Maxims is English, it is yet a type 
 of a far higher kind than is in general reached by 
 Bishop Wilson's countrymen ; and yet, being English, 
 i is possible and attainable for them. And so I 
 conclude as I began, by sajring that a work of this 
 sort is one which the Society for Promoting Christian 
 
PBEFACB. a 
 
 Knowledge should not suffer to remain out of print 
 and out of currency. 
 
 And now to pass to the matters canvassed in the 
 following essay. The whole scope of the essay is to 
 recommend culture as the great help out of our pre- 
 sent difficulties ; culture heing a pursuit of our total 
 perfection by means of getting to know, on all the 
 matters which most concern us, the best which has 
 been thought and said in the world; and through 
 this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free 
 thought upon our stock notions and habits, which 
 we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly 
 imagining that there is a virtue in following them 
 staunchly which makes up for the mischief of follow- 
 ing them mechanically. This, and this alone, is the 
 scope of the following essay. And the culture we 
 recommend is, above all, an inward operation. 
 
 But we are often supposed, when we criticise by 
 the help of culture some imperfect doing or other, to 
 have in our eye some weU-known rival plan of doing, 
 which we want to serve and recommend. Thus, for 
 instance, because we have freely pointed out the 
 dangers and inconveniences to which our literature 
 is exposed in the absence of any centre of taste and 
 authority like the French Academy, it is constantly 
 said that we want to introduce here in England an 
 institution like the French Academy. We have, 
 indeed, expressly declared that we wanted no such 
 thing ; but let us notice how it is just our worship 
 of machinery, and of external doing, which leads to 
 this charge being brought ; and how the inwardness 
 
XU CtJLTUEB AND ANAECHY. 
 
 of culture makes us seize, for watching and cure, the 
 faults to which our want of an Academy inclines us, 
 and yet prevents us from trusting to an arm of flesh, 
 as the Puritans say, — from blindly flying to this out- 
 ward machinery of an Academy, in order to help 
 ourselves. For the very same culture and free 
 inward play of thought which shows how the Corin- 
 thian style, or the whimsies about the One Primeval 
 Language, are generated and strengthened in the 
 absence of an Academy, shows us, too, how Uttle 
 any Academy, such as we should be likely to get, 
 would cure them. Every one who knows the char- 
 acteristics of our national life, and the tendencies so 
 fully discussed in the following pages, knows exactly 
 what an English Academy would be like. One can 
 see the happy family in one's mind's eye as distinctly 
 as if it were already constituted. Lord Stanhope, the 
 Dean of St. Paul's,! tj^g Bishop of Oxford,^ Mr. Glad- 
 stone, the Dean of Westminster, Mr. Froude, Mr. 
 Henry Eeeve, — everything which is influential, ac- 
 complished, and distinguished; and then, some fine 
 morning, a dissatisfaction of the public mind with 
 this brilliant and select coterie, a flight of Corinthian 
 leading articles, and an irruption of Mr. G. A. Sala. 
 Clearly, this is not what will do us good. The very 
 same faults, — the want of sensitiveness of intellectual 
 conscience, the disbelief in right reason, the dislike 
 of authority, — ^which have hindered our having an 
 Academy and have worked injuriously in our litera- 
 ture, would also hinder us from making our Academy, 
 1 The late Dean Milman. ' The late Bishop Wilberforce. 
 
PEEFACB. xiii 
 
 if we established it, one which would really correct 
 them. And culture, which shows us truly the faults 
 to be corrected, shows us this also just as truly. 
 
 Natural, as we have said, the sort of misunder- 
 standing just noticed is ; yet our usefulness depends 
 upon our being able to clear it away, and to convince 
 those who mechanically serve some stock notion or 
 operation, and thereby go astray, that it is not cul- 
 ture's work or aim to give the victory to some rival 
 fetish, but simply to turn a free and fresh stream of 
 thought upon the whole matter in question. In a 
 thing of more immediate interest, just now, than any 
 question of an Academy, the like misunderstanding 
 prevails; and until it is dissipated, culture can do 
 no good work in the matter. When we criticise 
 the present operation of disestablishing the Irish 
 Church, not by the power of reason and justice, but 
 by the power of the antipathy of the Protestant Non- 
 conformists, English and Scotch, to establishments, 
 we are called enemies of the Nonconformists, bUnd 
 partisans of the Anglican Establishment, possessed 
 with the one desire to help the clergy and to harm 
 the Dissenters. More than a few words we must 
 give to showing how erroneous are these charges; 
 because if they were true, we should be actually 
 subverting our own design, and playing false to that 
 culture which it is our very purpose to recommend. 
 
 Certainly we are no enemies of the Nonconform- 
 ists; for, on the contrary, what we aim at is their 
 perfection. But culture, which is the study of per- 
 fection, leads us, as we in the following pages have 
 
lay CULTUEB AND ANAEOHT. 
 
 shown, to conceive of true human perfection as a 
 harmonious perfection, developing all sides of our 
 humanity; and as a general perfection, developing 
 aU parts of our society. For if one member suffer, 
 the other members must suffer with it; and the 
 fewer there are that foUbw the true way of salvation, 
 the harder that way- is to find. And while the Non- 
 conformists, the successors and representatives of the 
 Puritans, and like them staunchly walking by the 
 best light they have, make a large part of what is 
 strongest and most serious in this nation, and there- 
 fore attract our respect and interest, yet all which, 
 in what follows, is said about Hebraism and Hellen- 
 ism, has for its main result to show how our Puritans, 
 ancient and modem, have not enough added to their 
 care for walking staunchly by the best light they have, 
 a care that that light be not darkness ; how they have 
 developed one side of their humanity at the expense 
 of aU others, and have become incomplete and muti- 
 lated men in consequence. Thus falling short of 
 harmonious perfection, they fail to follow the true 
 way of salvation. Therefore that way is made the 
 harder for others to find, general perfection is put 
 further off out of our reach, and the confusion and 
 perplexity, in which our society now labours, is in- 
 creased by the Nonconformists rather than diminished 
 by them. So, while we praise and esteem the zeal of 
 the Nonconformists in walking staimchly by the best 
 light they have, and desire to take no whit from it, 
 we seek to add to this what we call sweetness and 
 light, and to develop their full humanity more per- 
 
PBEFACE. XV 
 
 fectly. To seek this is certainly not to be the enemy 
 of the Nonconformists. 
 
 But now, with these ideas in our head, we come 
 upon the operation for disestablishing the Irish 
 Church by the power of the Nonconformists' anti- 
 pathy to religious establishments and endowments. 
 And we see Liberal statesmen, for whose purpose 
 this antipathy happens to be convenient, flattering it 
 all they can ; saying that though they have no inten- 
 tion of laying hands on an Establishment which is 
 eflScient and popular, Uke the Anglican Establishment 
 here in England, yet it is in the abstract a fine and 
 good thing that reUgion should be left to the 
 voluntary support of its promoters, and should thus 
 gain in energy and independence ; and Mr. Gladstone 
 has no words strong enough to express his admira- 
 tion of the refusal of State -aid by the Irish Eoman 
 Catholics, who have never yet been seriously asked 
 to accept it, but who would a good deal embarrass 
 him if they demanded it. And we see philosophical 
 politicians with a turn for swimming with the stream, 
 and philosophical divines with the same turn, seeking 
 to give a sort of grand stamp of generality and 
 solemnity to this antipathy of the Nonconformists, 
 and to dress it out as a law of human progress in the 
 future. Now, nothing can be pleasanter than swim- 
 ming with the stream ; and we might gladly, if we 
 could, try in our unsystematic way to take part in 
 labours at once so philosophical and so popular. But 
 we have got fixed in our minds that a more full and 
 harmonious development of their humanity is what 
 
 VOL. m. b 
 
xvi CULTUSE AND ANAECHY. 
 
 the Nonconformists most want, that narrowness, one 
 sidedness, and incompleteness is what they most suffer 
 from ; in a word, that in what we call provmdalUy 
 they abound, but in what we may call totality they 
 fall short. 
 
 And they fall short more than the members of 
 Establishments. The great works by which, not only 
 in literature, art, and science generally, but in religion 
 itself, the human spirit has manifested its approaches 
 to totality and to a full, harmonious perfection, and 
 by which it stimulates and helps forward the world's 
 general perfection, come, not from Nonconformists, 
 but from men who either belong to Establishments 
 or have been trained in them. A Nonconformist 
 minister, the Eev. Edward White, who has written a 
 temperate and weU-reasoned pamphlet against Church 
 Establishments, says that "the unendowed and un- 
 established communities of England exert full as 
 much moral and ennobling influence upon the conduct 
 of statesmen as that Church which is both established 
 and endowed." That depends upon what one means 
 by moral and ennobling influence. The believer in 
 machinery may think that to get a Government to 
 abolish Church -rates or to legalise marriage with a 
 deceased wife's sister is to exert a moral and ennobling 
 influence upon Government. But a lover of perfec- 
 tion, who looks to inward ripeness for the true springs 
 of conduct, will surely think that as Shakspeare has 
 done more for the inward ripeness of our statesmen 
 than Dr. Watts, and has, therefore, done more to 
 Bjoraljse apd ennoble them, so an Establishment 
 
PREFACE. rvii 
 
 which has produced Hooker, Barrow, Butler, has done 
 more to moralise and ennoble English statesmen and 
 their conduct than communities which have produced 
 the Nonconformist divines. The fruitful men of 
 English Puritanism and Nonconformity are men who 
 were trained within the pale of the Establishment, — 
 Milton, Baxter, Wesley. A generation or two out- 
 side the Establishment, and Puritanism produces men 
 of national mark no more. With the same doctrine 
 and discipline, men of national mark are produced in 
 Scotland ; but in an Establishment. With the same 
 doctrine and discipline, men of national and even 
 European mark are produced in Germany, Switzer- 
 land, France ; but in Establishments. Only two re- 
 ligious disciplines seem exempted, or comparatively 
 exempted, from the operation of the law which 
 appears to forbid the rearing, outside of national 
 Churches, of men of the highest spiritual significance 
 These two are the Koman Catholic and the Jewish. 
 And these, both of them, rest on Establishments, 
 which, though not indeed national, are cosmopolitan ; 
 and perhaps here, what the individual man does not 
 lose by these conditions of his rearing, the citizen, and 
 the State of which he is a citizen, loses. 
 
 What, now, can be the reason of this undeniable 
 provincialism of the English Puritans and Protestant 
 Nonconformists ! Men of genius and character are 
 bom and reared in this medium as in any other. 
 From the faults of the mass such men will always be 
 comparatively free, and they will always excite our 
 interest ; yet in this medium they seem to have a 
 
rriii CULTUKE AND ANARCHY. 
 
 special difficulty in breaking through what bounds 
 them, and in developing their totality. Surely the 
 reason is, that the Nonconformist is not in contact 
 with the main current of national life, like the 
 member of an Establishment. In a matter of such 
 deep and vital concern as religion, this separation 
 from the main current of the national life has peculiar 
 importance. In the following essay we have discussed 
 at length the tendency in us to Hebraise, as we call it ; 
 that is, to sacrifice all other sides of our being to the 
 religious side. This tendency has its cause in the 
 divine beauty and grandeur of religion, and bears 
 affecting testimony to them. But we have seen that 
 it has dangers for us, we have seen that it leads to a 
 narrow and twisted growth of our religious side itself, 
 and to a failure in perfection. But if we tend to 
 Hebraise even in an Establishment, with the main 
 current of national life flowing round us, and remind- 
 ing us in all ways of the variety and fulness of human 
 existence, — by a Church which is historical as the 
 State itself is historical, and whose order, ceremonies, 
 and monuments reach, like those of the State, far 
 beyond any fancies and devisings of ours ; and by in- 
 stitutions such as the Universities, formed to defend 
 and advance that very culture and many-sided de- 
 velopment which it is the danger of Hebraising to 
 make us neglect, — how much more must we tend to 
 Hebraise when we lack these preventives. One may 
 say that to be reared a member of a national Church is 
 in itself a lesson of religious moderation, and a help 
 towards culture and harmonious perfection. Instead 
 
PEBFAOE. XIX 
 
 of battling for his own private forms for expressing 
 the inexpressible and defining the undefinable, a man 
 takes those which have commended themselves most 
 to the religious life of his nation ; and while he may 
 be sure that within those forms the religious side of 
 his own nature may find its satisfaction, he has leisure 
 and composure to satisfy other sides of his nature as 
 welL 
 
 But with the member of a Nonconforming or self- 
 made religious community, how different! The 
 sectary's eigene grosse Erfindimgerij as Goethe calls 
 them, — the precious discoveries of himself and his 
 friends for expressing the inexpressible and defining 
 the undefinable in peculiar forms of their own, 
 cannot but, as he has voluntarily chosen them, and is 
 personally responsible for them, fill his whole mind. 
 He is zealous to do battle for them and afiBrm them ; 
 for in affirming them he aflums himself, and 'that is 
 what we all like. Other sides of his being are thuR 
 neglected, because the religious side, always tending 
 in every serious man to predominance over our other 
 spiritual sides, is in him made quite absorbing and 
 tyrannous by the condition of self-assertion and 
 challenge which he has chosen for himself. And 
 just what is not essential in religion he comes to 
 mistake for essential, and a thousand times the more 
 readily because he has chosen it of himself; and 
 religious activity he fancies to consist in battling for 
 it. All this leaves him little leisure or inclination 
 for culture ; to which, besides, he has no great insti- 
 tutions not of his own making, like the Universities 
 
Xt CtJLTCEE AND ANAECHY. 
 
 connected with the National Church to invite him , 
 but only such institutions, as, like the order and dis- 
 cipline of his religion, he may have invented foi 
 himself, and invented under the sway of the narro'w 
 and tyrannous notions of religion fostered in him as 
 we have seen. Thus, while a national establishmenf 
 of religion favours totality, hole-and-corner fonas oJ 
 religion (to use an expressive popular word) inevitablj 
 favour provincialism. 
 
 But the Nonconformists, and many of our Libera' 
 friends along with them, have a plausible plan foj 
 getting rid of this provincialism, if, as they car 
 hardly quite deny, it exists. " Let us aU be in th( 
 same boat," they cry ; " open the Universities t( 
 everybody, and let there be no establishment o: 
 religion at all ! " Open the Universities by al 
 means ; but, as to the second point about establish 
 ment, let us sift the proposal a little. It does seen 
 at first a little like that proposal of the fox, wh( 
 had lost his own tail, to put all the other foxes in th( 
 same case by a general cutting off of tails ; and w( 
 know that moralists have decided that the righ" 
 course here was, not to adopt this plausible sugges 
 tion, and cut off tails all round, but rather that thi 
 other foxes should keep their tails, and that the fo3 
 without a tail should get one. And so we might b( 
 inclined to urge, that, to cure the evil of the Non 
 conformists' provincialism, the right way can hardl] 
 be to provincialise us all round. 
 
 However, perhaps we shall not be provincialised 
 For Mr. White says that probably, "when all goo< 
 
PREFACE. xxi 
 
 men alike are placed in a condition of religious 
 equality, and the whole complicated iniquity of 
 Government Church patronage is swept away, more 
 of moral and ennobling influence than ever will be 
 brought to bear upon the action of statesmen." 
 
 We already have an example of religious equality 
 in our colonies. " In the colonies," says The Times, 
 "we see religious communities unfettered by State- 
 control, and the State relieved from one of the most 
 troublesome and irritating responsibilities." But 
 America is the great example alleged by those who 
 are against establishments for religion. Our topic 
 at this moment is the influence of religious establish- 
 ments on culture ; and it is remarkable that Mr. 
 Bright, who has taken lately to representing himself 
 as, above all, a promoter of reason and of the simple 
 natural truth of things, and his policy as a fostering of 
 the growth of intelligence, — just the aims, as is well 
 known, of culture also, — Mr. Bright, in a speech at 
 Birmingham about education, seized on the very point 
 which seems to concern our topic, when he said : " I 
 believe the people of the United States have offered 
 to the world more valuable information during the 
 last forty years, than all Europe put together." So 
 America, without religious establishments, seems to 
 get ahead of us all, even in light and the things of 
 the mind. 
 
 On the other hand, another friend of reason and 
 the simple natural truth of things, M Eenan, says of 
 America, in a book he has recently published, what 
 Beems to conflict violently with what Mr. Bright says 
 
XXH CULTUEE AJSTD ANAEOHT. 
 
 Mr. Bright avers that not only have the United States 
 thus informed Europe, but they have done it withoui 
 a great apparatus of higher and scientific instruction, 
 and by dint of all classes in America being " suffi- 
 ciently educated to be able to read, and to compre- 
 hend, and to think; and that, I maintain, is the 
 foundation of all subsequent progress." And then 
 comes M. Eenan, and says : " The sound instruction 
 of the people is an effect of the high culture of certain 
 classes. The amntrieswhiick, like the United States, have 
 ereated a considerdbk popular instruction wUhout any 
 serious higher imtrudion, will long have to expiate this 
 fault by their intellectual mediocrity, their vulgarity oj 
 manmers, their svperficml spirit, their lack of general 
 intelligence."'^ 
 
 Now, which of these two friends of light are we 
 to believe 1 M. Eenan seems more to have in view 
 what we ourselves mean by culture; because Mr. 
 Bright always has in his eye what he calls " a com- 
 mendable interest " in politics and in political agita 
 tions. As he said only the other day at Birmingham : 
 "At this moment, — in fact, I may say at every 
 moment in the history of a free country, — ^there is 
 nothing that is so much worth discussing as politics." 
 And he keeps repeating, with all the powers of his 
 noble oratory, the old story, how to the thoughtful- 
 ness and intelligence of the people of great towns wo 
 
 • " Lcs pays qui, comme les Etats-Unis, out ctki un enseigne- 
 ment populaire considfaable sans instruction supdrieure sdrieuse, 
 cxpieront longtemps encore leur faute par leur mediooriti Intel- 
 lectuelle, leur grossi&reti de moeurs, leur esprit superficiel, lent 
 manque d'intelligence g&^rale." 
 
PREFACE. xxiii 
 
 owe all our improvements in the last thirty years, and 
 how these improvements have hitherto consisted in 
 Parliamentary reform, and free trade, and abolition 
 of Church rates, and so on ; and how they are now 
 about to consist in getting rid of minority-members, 
 and in introducing a free breakfast- table, and in 
 abolishing the Irish Church by the power of the 
 Nonconformists' antipathy to establishments, and 
 much more of the same kind. And though out 
 pauperism and ignorance, and aU the questions which 
 are called social, seem now to be forcing themselves 
 upon his mind, yet he still goes on with his glorifying 
 of the great towns, and the Liberals, and their 
 operations for the last thirty years. It never seems 
 to occur to him that the present troubled state of 
 our social life has anything to do with the thirty 
 years' blind worship of their nostrums by himself and 
 our Liberal friends, or that it throws any doubts upon 
 the sufficiency of this worship. But he thinks that 
 what is still amiss is due to the stupidity of the 
 Tories, and will be cured by the thoughtfulness and 
 intelligence of the great towns, and by the Liberals 
 going on gloriously with their political operations as 
 before; or that it will cure itself. So we see what 
 Mr. Bright means by thoughtfulness and intelligence, 
 and in what matter, according to him, we are to grow 
 in them. And, no doubt, in America all classes read 
 their newspaper, and take a commendable interest in 
 politics, more than here or anywhere else in Europe. 
 
 But in the following essay we have been led to 
 doubt the sufficiency of all this political operating, 
 
SadV CULTURE AND AHAECHf. 
 
 pursued mechanically as our race pursues it ; and we 
 found that general intelligence, as M. Eenan calls it, 
 or, as we say, attention to the reason of things, waa 
 just what we were without, and that we were without 
 it because we worshipped our machinery so devoutly. 
 Therefore, we conclude that M. Kenan, more than 
 Mr. Bright, means by reason and intelligence the 
 same thing as we do. And when M. Eenan says 
 that America, that chosen home of newspapers and 
 politics, is without general intelligence, we think it 
 likely, from the circumstances of the case, that this 
 is so; and that in the things of the mind, and in 
 culture and totality, America, instead of surpassing 
 us all, falls short 
 
 And, — to keep to our point of the influence of 
 religious establishments upon culture and a high 
 development of our humanity,*— we can surely see 
 reasons why, with all her energy and fine gifts, 
 America does not show more of this development, or 
 more promise of this. In the following essay it will 
 be seen how our society distributes itself into Bar- 
 barians, Philistines, and Populace; and America is 
 just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and 
 the Populace nearly. This leaves the Philistines for 
 the great bulk of the nation ; — a livelier sort of Philis- 
 tine than ours, and with the pressure and fake ideal 
 of our Barbarians taken away, but left all the more 
 to himself and to have his full swing. And as we 
 have found that the strongest and most vital part of 
 English Philistinism was the Puritan and Hebraising 
 middle class, and that its Hebraising keeps it from 
 
PEEFACg. iXV 
 
 culture and totality, so it is notorious that the people 
 of the United States issues from this class, and repro- 
 duces its tendencies, — ^its narrow conception of man's 
 spiritual range and of his one thing needful. From 
 Maine to Florida, and back again, all America He- 
 braises. Difficult as it is to speak of a people merely 
 from what one reads, yet that, I think, one may 
 without much fear of contradiction say. I mean, 
 when in the United States any spiritual side in man 
 is wakened to activity, it is generally the religious 
 side, and the religious side in a narrow way. Social 
 reformers go to Moses or St. Paul for their doctrines, 
 and have no notion there is anywhere else to go to ; 
 earnest young men at schools and universities, in- 
 stead of conceiving salvation as a harmonious perfec- 
 tion only to be won by unreservedly cultivating many 
 sides in us, conceive of it in the old Puritan fashion, 
 and fling themselves ardently upon it in the old, false 
 ways of this fashion, which we know so well, and 
 such as Mr. Hammond, the American revivalist, has 
 lately at Mr. Spurgeon's Tabernacle been refreshing 
 our memory with. 
 
 Now, if America thus Hebraises more than either 
 England or Germany, will any one deny that the 
 absence of religious establishments has much to do 
 with it 1 We have seen how establishments tend to 
 give us a sense of a historical life of the human spirit, 
 outside and beyond our own fancies and feelings j 
 how they thus tend to suggest new sides and sym- 
 pathies in us to cultivate ; how, further, by saving us 
 from having to invent and fight for our own forms of 
 
XXVI CULTUEE AND ANAECHT. 
 
 religion, they give us leisure and calm to steady oui 
 view of religion itself, -i-the most overpowering of 
 objects, as it is the grandest, — and to enlarge our first 
 crude notions of the one thing needful. But, in a 
 serious people, where every one has to choose and 
 strive for his own order and discipline of reli^on, the 
 contention about these non-essentials occupies his 
 mind. His first crude notions about the one thing 
 needful do not get purged, and they invade the whole 
 spiritual man in him, and then, making a solitude, 
 they call it heavenly peace. 
 
 I remember a Nonconformist manufacturer, in a 
 town of the Midland coxmties, telling me that when 
 he first came there, some years ago, the place had no 
 Dissenters ; but he had opened an Independent chapel 
 in it, and now Church and Dissent were pretty equally 
 divided, with sharp contests between them. I said 
 that this seemed a pity. "A pity?" cried he; "not 
 at all ! Only think of aU the zeal and activity which 
 the collision calls forth ! " " Ah, but, my dear friend," 
 I answered, "only think of all the nonsense which 
 you now hold quite firmly, which you would never 
 have held if you had not been contradicting your 
 adversary in it aU these years ! " The more serious 
 the people, and the more prominent the religious side 
 in it, the greater is the danger of this side, if set to 
 choose out forms for itself and fight for existence, 
 swelling and spreading till it swallows all other 
 spiritual sides up, intercepts and absorbs all nutriment 
 which should have gone to them, and leaves Hebraism 
 rampant in us and Hellenism stamped out. 
 
PEEFACE. XXVU 
 
 Culture, and the harmonious perfection of our 
 whole being, and what we call totality, then become 
 quite secondary matters And even the institutions, 
 which should develop these, take the same narrow 
 and partial view of humanity and its wants as the 
 free religious communities take. Just as the free 
 churches of Mr. Beecher or Brother Noyes, with their 
 provincialism and want of centrality, make mere 
 Hebraisers in religion, and not perfect men, so the 
 university of Mr. Ezra Cornell, a reaUy noble monu- 
 ment of his munificence, yet seems to rest on a mis- 
 conception of what culture truly is, and to be calculated 
 to produce miners, or engineers, or architects, not 
 sweetness and Ught. 
 
 And, therefore, when Mr. White asks the same 
 kind of question about America that he has asked 
 about England, and wants to know whether, without 
 religious establishments, as much is not done in 
 America for the higher national life as is done for 
 that life here, we answer in the same way as we did 
 before, that as much is not dona Because to enable 
 and stir up people to read their Bible and the news- 
 papers, and to get a practical knowledge of their 
 business, does not serve to the higher spiritual life of 
 a nation so much as culture, truly conceived, serves ; 
 and a true conception of culture is, as M. Eenan's 
 words show, just what America fails in. 
 
 To the many who think that spirituality, and 
 sweetness, and light, are all moonshine, this will not 
 appear to matter muchj but with us, who value 
 them, and who think that we have traced much of 
 
xxvm CULTUEE AND ANARCHY. 
 
 our present discomfort to the want of them, it weighs 
 a great deal So not only do we say that the Non- 
 conformists have got provincialism and lost totality 
 by the want of a religious establishment, but we say 
 that the very example which they bring forward to 
 help their case makes against them ; and that when 
 they triumphantly show us America without religious 
 establishments, they only show us a whole nation 
 touched, amidst all its greatness and promise, with 
 that provincialism which it is our aim to extirpate in 
 the English Nonconformists. 
 
 But now to evince the disinterestedness which 
 culture teaches us. We have seen the narrowness 
 generated in Puritanism by its hole-and-corner organi- 
 sation, and we propose to cure it by bringing Puri- 
 tanism more into contact with the main current of 
 national life. Here we are fuUy at one with the Dean 
 of Westminster ; and, indeed, he and we were trained 
 in the same school to mark the narrowness of Puri- 
 tanism, and to wish to cure it. But he and others 
 seem disposed simply to give to the present Anglican 
 Establishment a character the most latitudinacian, as 
 it is called, possible ; availing themselves for this 
 purpose of the diversity of tendencies and doctrines 
 which does undoubtedly exist already in the Anglican 
 formularies; and then they would say to the Puritans: 
 "Come all of you into this liberally conceived 
 Anglican Establishment." But to say this is hardly, 
 perhaps, to take sufficient account of the course of 
 history, or of the strength of men's feelings in what 
 concerns religion, or of the gravity which may havt 
 
PREFACE. XXIS 
 
 come to attach to points of religious order and 
 discipline merely. When Mr. White talks of 
 "sweeping away the whole complicated iniquity of 
 Government Church patronage," he uses language 
 which has been forced upon him by his position, but 
 which is devoid of all real solidity. But when he 
 talks of the religious communities "which have for 
 three hundred years contended for the power of the 
 congregation in the management of their own affairs," 
 then he talks history ; and his language has behind 
 it, in my opinion, facts which make the latitudin- 
 arianism of our Broad Churchmen quite illusory. 
 
 Certainly, culture will never make us think it an 
 essential of religion whether we have in our Chui'ch 
 discipline " a popular authority of elders," as Hooker 
 calls it, or whether we have Episcopal jurisdiction. 
 Certainly, Hooker himself did not think it an essen- 
 tial ; for in the dedication of his Ecdesiastical Polity, 
 speaking of these questions of church-discipline which 
 gave occasion to his great work, he says they are "in 
 truth, for the greatest part, such siUy things, that 
 very easiness doth make them hard to be disputed of 
 La serious manner." Hooker's great work against the 
 impugners of the order and discipline of the Church 
 of England was written (and this is too indistinctly 
 seized by many who read it), not because Episoo- 
 palianism is essential, but because its impugners main- 
 tained that Presbyterianism is essential, and that 
 Episcopalianism is sinfuL Neither the one nor the 
 other is either essential or sinful, and much may be 
 said on behalf of both. But what is important to be 
 
XXX CTJLTUBE AND ANAEOHY. 
 
 remarked is, that loth were m the Ghwrch of England at 
 the Befarmation, and that Presbyterianism was only 
 extruded gradually. We have mentioned Hooker, 
 and nothing better illustrates what has just been 
 asserted than the following incident in Hooker's own 
 career, which every one has read, for it is related in 
 Isaac Walton's Life of Hooker, but of which, probably, 
 the significance has been fully grasped by very few of 
 those who have read it 
 
 Hooker was through the influence of Archbishop 
 Whitgift appointed, in 1585, Master of the Temple ; 
 but a great effort had first been made to obtain the 
 place for a Mr. Walter Travers, well known in that 
 day, though now it is Hooker's name which alone 
 preserves his. This Travers was then afternoon- 
 lecturer at the Temple. The Master whose death 
 made the vacancy, Alvey, recommended on his death- 
 bed Travers for his successor. The Society was 
 favourable to Travers, and he had the support of the 
 Lord Treasurer Burghley. Although Hooker was 
 appointed to the Mastership, Travers remained after- 
 noon-lecturer, and combated in the afternoons the 
 doctrine which Hooker preached in the mornings. 
 Now, this Travers, originally a Fellow of Trinity 
 CoUege, Cambridge, afterwards afternoon-lecturer at 
 the Temple, recommended for the Mastership by the 
 foregoing Master whose opinions, it is said, agreed 
 with his, favoured by the Society of the Temple and 
 supported by the Prime Minister, — this Travers was 
 not an Episcopally ordained clergyman at aU. He 
 was a Presbyterian, a partisan of the Geneva church- 
 
PREFACE. XXXI 
 
 discipline, as it was then called, and "had taken 
 orders," says Walton, "by the Presbyters in Antwerp/' 
 In another place Walton speaks of his orders yet more 
 fully: — "He had disowned," he says, 'the English 
 Established Church and Episcopacy, and went to 
 Geneva, and afterwards to Antwerp, to be ordained 
 minister, as he was by Villers and Cartwright and 
 others the heads of a congregation there; and so 
 came back again more confirmed for the discipline." 
 Villers and Cartwright are in like manner examples 
 of Presbyterianism within the Church of England, 
 which was common enough at that time. But perhaps 
 nothing can better give us a lively sense of its presence 
 there than this history of Travers, which is as if Mr. 
 Binney were now ^ afternoon-reader at Lincoln's Inn 
 or the Temple ; were to be a candidate, favoured by 
 the Benchers and by the Prime Minister, for the 
 Mastership ; and were only kept out of the post by 
 the accident of the Archbishop of Canterbury's in- 
 fluence with the Queen carrying a rival candidate. 
 
 Presbyterianism, with its popular principle of the 
 power of the congregation in the management of their 
 own affairs was extruded from the Church of England, 
 and men like Travers can no longer appear in hei 
 pulpits. Perhaps if a government like that of Eliza- 
 beth, with secular statesmen like the Cecils, and 
 ecclesiastical statesmen like Whitgift, could have been 
 prolonged, Presbyterianism might, by a wise mixture 
 of concession and firmness, have been absorbed in the 
 Establishment. Lord Bolingbroke, on a matter of 
 
 1 1869. 
 
 VOL, m. c 
 
XXXU CULTURE AND ANAECHT. 
 
 this kind a very clear-judging and impartial witness, 
 says, in a work far too little read, his Bemarks on 
 English History: — "The measures pursued and the 
 temper observed in Queen Elizabeth's time tended to 
 diminish the religious opposition by a slow, a gentle, 
 and for that very reason an effectual progression. 
 There was even room to hope that when the first 
 fire of the Dissenters' zeal was passed, reasonable 
 terms of union with the Established Church might 
 be accepted by such of them as were not intoxicated 
 with fanaticism. These were friends to order, though 
 they disputed about it. If these friends of Calvin's 
 discipline had been once incorporated with the Estab- 
 lished Church, the remaining sectaries would have 
 been of little moment, either for numbers or reputar 
 tion ; and the very means which were proper to gain 
 these friends were likewise the most effectual to 
 hinder the increase of them, and of the other sectaries 
 in the meantime." The temper and iU judgment of 
 the Stuarts made shipwreck of all policy of this kind. 
 Yet speaking even of the time of the Stuarts, but 
 their early time. Clarendon says that if Bishop 
 Andrewes had succeeded Bancroft at Canterbury, the 
 disaffection of separatists might have been stayed and 
 healed. This, however, was not to be ; and Presby- 
 terianism, after exercising for some years the law ol 
 the strongest, itself in Charles the Second's reign 
 suffered under this law, and was finally cast out from 
 the Church of England. 
 
 Now the points of church-discipline at issue be- 
 tween Presbyteriapism and Episcopalianism are, ae 
 
PREFACE. XXXIU 
 
 has been said, not essential. They might probably 
 once have been settled in a sense altogether favour- 
 able to Episcopalianism. Hooker may have been 
 right in thinking that there were in his time circum- 
 stances which made it essential that they should be 
 settled in this sense, though the points in themselves 
 were not essential But by the very fact of the 
 settlement not having then been effected, of the 
 breach having gone on and widened, of the Non- 
 conformists not having been amicably incorporated 
 with the Establishment but violently cast out from 
 it, the circumstances are now altogether altered. 
 Isaac Walton, a fervent Churchman, complains that 
 "the principles of the Nonconformists grew at last 
 to such a height and were vented so daringly, that, 
 beside the loss of life and limbs, the Church and 
 State were both forced to use such other severities 
 as will not admit of an excuse, if it had not been to 
 prevent confusion and the perilous consequences of 
 it." But those very severities have of themselves 
 made union on an Episcopalian footing impossible. 
 Besides, Presbyterianism, the popular authority of 
 elders, the power of the congregation in the manage- 
 ment of their own aflFairs, has that warrant given to 
 it by Scripture and by the proceedings of the early 
 Christian Churches, it is so consonant with the spirit 
 of Protestantism which made the Eeformation and 
 which has great strength in this country, it is so 
 predominant in the practice of other Eeformed 
 Churches, it was so strong in the original Eeformed 
 Church of England, that one cannot help doubting 
 
JCXXIV CULTDEE AND ANARCHY. 
 
 whether any settlement which suppressed it could 
 have been really permanent, and whether it would 
 not have kept appearing again and again, and causing 
 dissension. 
 
 Well, then, if culture is the disinterested endeavour 
 after man's perfection, will it not make us wish to 
 cure the provincialism of the Nonconformists, not by 
 rendering Churchmen provincial along with them, 
 but by letting their popular church -disciphne, for- 
 merly present in the national Church and stUl pre- 
 sent in the affections and practice of a good part of 
 the nation, appear in the national Church once more ; 
 and thus to bring Nonconformists into contact again, 
 as their greater fathers were, ■with the main stream 
 of national lifei Why should not a Presbyterian 
 Church, based on this considerable and important, 
 though not essential principle, of the congregation's 
 share in the church-management, be established, — 
 with equal rank for its chiefs with the chiefs of 
 Episcopacy, and with admissibility of its ministers, 
 under a revised system of patronage and preferment 
 to benefices, — side by side with the Episcopal Church, 
 as the Calvinist and Lutheran Churches are estab- 
 lished side by side in France and Germany ! Such 
 a Presbyterian Church would unite the main bodies 
 of Protestants who are now separatists ; and separa- 
 tion would cease to be the law of their religious order. 
 And thus, — through this concession on a really con- 
 siderable point of difference, — that endless splitting 
 into hole-and-corner churches on quite inconsiderable 
 points of difference, which must prevail so long as 
 
PKEFACE. ' XXXV 
 
 separatism is the first law of a Nonconformist's re- 
 ligious existence, would be checked. Culture would 
 then find a place among English followers of the 
 popular authority of Elders, as it has long found it 
 among the followers of Episcopal jurisdiction. And 
 this we should gain by merely recognising, regular- 
 ising, and restoring an element which appeared once 
 in the reformed national Church, and which is con- 
 siderable and national enough to have a sound claim 
 to appear there still. 
 
 So far, then, is culture from making us unjust to 
 the Nonconformists because it forbids us to worship 
 their fetishes, that it even leads us to propose to do 
 more for them than they themselves venture to claim. 
 It leads us, also, to respect what is solid and respect- 
 able in their convictions. Not that the forms in which 
 the human spirit tries to express the inexpressible, or 
 the forms by which man tries to worship, have or can 
 have, as has been said, for the follower of perfection, 
 anything necessary or eternal. If the New Testa- 
 ment and the practice of the primitive Christians 
 sanctioned the popular form of church -government 
 a thousand times more expressly than they do, if 
 the Church since Constantine were a thousand times 
 more of a departure from the scheme of primitive 
 Christianity than it can be shown to be, that does 
 not at all make, as is supposed by men in bondage 
 to the letter, the popular form of church-government 
 alone and always sacred and binding, or the work of 
 Constantine a thing to be regretted. 
 
 What is alone and always sacred and binding for 
 
xxxvi CULTURE AND ANARCHY. 
 
 man is the making progress towards his total perfec- 
 tion ; and the machinery by which he does this varies 
 in value according as it helps him to do it The 
 planters of Christianity had their roots in deep and 
 rich grounds of human life and achievement, both 
 Jewish and also Greek; and had thus a compara- 
 tively firm and wide basis amidst aU the vehement 
 inspiration of their mighty movement and change. 
 By their strong inspiration they carried men off the 
 old basis of life and culture, whether Jewish or 
 Greek, and generations arose who had their roots in 
 neither world, and were in contact therefore with no 
 fuU and great stream of human life. If it had not 
 been for some such change as that of the fourth 
 century, Christianity might have lost itself in a 
 multitude of hole-and-corner churches like the 
 churches of English Nonconformity after its founders 
 departed ; churches without great men, and without 
 furtherance for the higher life of humanity. At a 
 critical moment came Constantino, and placed Chris- 
 tianity, — or let us rather say, placed the human 
 spirit, whose totality was endangered, — in contact 
 with the main current of human life. And his work 
 was justified by its fruits, in men like Augustine and 
 Dante, and indeed in all the great men of Christianity, 
 Catholics or Protestants, ever since. 
 
 And one may go beyond this. M. Albert R6ville, 
 whose religious writings are always interesting, says 
 that the conception which cultivated and philosophical 
 Jews now entertain of Christianity and its Founder, 
 is probably destined to become the conception which 
 
PREFACE. XXXVll 
 
 Christians themselves will entertain. Soeinians are 
 fond of saying the same thing about the Socinian 
 conception of Christianity. Now, even if this were 
 true, it would still have been better for a man, during 
 the last eighteen hundred years, to have been a 
 Christian and a member of one of the great Christian 
 communions, than to have been a Jew or a Socinian ; 
 because the being in contact with the main stream of 
 human life is of more moment for a man's total spiri- 
 tual growth, and for his bringing to perfection the 
 gifts committed to him, which is his business on earth, 
 than any speculative opinion which he may hold or 
 think he holds. Luther, — whom we have called a 
 Philistine of genius, and who, because he was a Philis- 
 tine, had a coarseness and lack of spiritual delicacy 
 which have harmed his disciples, but who, because he 
 was a genius, had splendid flashes of spiritual insight, 
 — Luther says admirably in his Commentary .on the 
 Book of Daniel : "A God is simply that whereon the 
 human heart rests with trust, faith, hope, and love. 
 If the resting is right, then the God too is right ; if 
 the resting is wrong, then the God too is illusory.'' 
 In other words, the worth of what a man thinks about 
 God and the objects of religion depends on what the 
 man is; and what the man is, depends upon his 
 having more or less reached the measure of a perfect 
 and total man. 
 
 Culture, disinterestedly seeking in its aim at per- 
 fection to see things as they really are, shows us how 
 worthy and divine a thing is the religious side in man, 
 though it is not the whole of man. But while recog- 
 
XXXViii CULTURE AND ANAKOHY. 
 
 nising the grandeur of the religious side in man, 
 culture yet makes us also eschew an inadequate con- 
 ception of man's totality. Therefore to the worth 
 and grandeur of the religious side in man, culture is 
 rejoiced and willing to pay any tribute, except the 
 tribute of man's totality. Unless it is proved that 
 contact with the main current of national life is of no 
 value (and we have shown that it is of the greatest 
 value), we cannot safely, even to please the Noncon- 
 formists in a matter where we would please them as 
 much as possible, admit their doctrines of disestab- 
 lishment and separation. 
 
 Culture, again, can be disinterested enough to per- 
 ceive and avow, that for Ireland the ends of human 
 perfection might be best served by establishing, — 
 that is, by bringing into contact with the main cur- 
 rent of the national life, — ^the Eoman Catholic and the 
 Presbyterian Churches along with the Anglican 
 Church. It can perceive and avow that we should 
 really, in this way, be working to make reason and 
 the will of God prevail; because we should be makiag 
 Eoman Catholics better citizens, and both Protestants 
 and Eoman Catholics larger-minded and more com- 
 plete men. Undoubtedly there are great difficulties 
 in such a plan as this ; and the plan is not one which 
 looks very likely to be adopted. The Churchman 
 must rise above his ordinary self in order to favour 
 it And the Nonconformist has worshipped his fetish 
 of separatism so long that he is likely to wish to 
 remain, like Ephraim. " a wild ass alone by himself." 
 It is a plan more for a time of creative statesmen, like 
 
PKEFAOE. XXXIX 
 
 the time of Elizabeth, than for a time of instrumental 
 statesmen like the present The centre of power being 
 where it is, our statesmen have every temptation, 
 when they must act, to go along as they do with the 
 ordinary self of those on whose favour they depend, 
 to adopt as their own its desires, and to serve them 
 with fidelity, and even, if possible, with ardour. This 
 is the more easy for them, because there are not want- 
 ing, — and there never wiU be wanting, — thinkers to 
 call the desires of the ordinary self of any great sec- 
 tion of the community edicts of the national mind and 
 laws of human progress, and to give them a general, 
 a philosophic, and imposing expression. Therefore a 
 plan such as that which we have indicated does not 
 seem a plan so likely to find favour as a plan for 
 abolishing the Irish Church by the power of the Non- 
 conformists' antipathy to establishments. 
 
 But although cidture makes us fond stickers to no 
 machinery, not even our own, and therefore we are 
 willing to grant that perfection can be reached with- 
 out it, — with free churches as with established 
 churches, and with instrumental statesmen as with 
 creative statesmen, — yet perfection can never be 
 reached without seeing things as they really are ; and 
 it is to this, therefore, and to no machinery in the 
 world, that we stick. We insist that men should not 
 mistake, as they are prone to mistake, their natural 
 taste for the bathos for a relish for the sublime. 
 And if statesmen, either with their tongue in their 
 cheek or with a fine impulsiveness, tell people that 
 their natural taste for the bathos is a relish for the 
 
Xl CULTURE AND ANARCHY. 
 
 sublime, there is the more need to tell them the 
 •contrary. 
 
 It is delusion on this point which is fatal, and 
 against delusion on this point culture works. It is 
 not fatal to our Liberal friends to labour for free 
 trade, extension of the suffrage, and abolition of 
 church-rates, instead of graver social ends ; but it is 
 fatal to them to be told by their flatterers, and to 
 believe, with our social condition what it is, that 
 they have performed a great, a heroic work, by occu- 
 pying themselves exclusively, for the last thirty years, 
 with these Liberal nostrums, and that the right and 
 good course for them now is to go on occupying 
 themselves with the like for the future. It is not 
 fatal to Americans to have no religious establishments 
 and no effective centres of high culture; but it is 
 fatal to them to be told by their flatterers, and to 
 believe, that they are the most intelligent people in 
 the whole world, when of intelligence, in the true 
 and fruitful sense of the word, they even singularly, 
 as we have seen, come short. It is not fatal to the 
 Nonconformists to remain with their separated 
 churches ; but it is fatal to them to be told by their 
 flatterers, and to believe, that theirs is the one true 
 way of worshipping God, that provincialism and loss 
 of totality have not come to them from following it, 
 or that provincialism and loss of totality are not 
 evils. It is not fatal to the English nation to abolish 
 the Irish Church by the power of the Nonconformists' 
 antipathy to estabKshments ; but it is fatal to it to 
 be told by its flatterers, and to believe, that it ii^ 
 
PREFACE. xli 
 
 abolishing it through reason and justice, when it is 
 really abolishing it through this power : or to expect 
 the fruits of reason and justice from anything but the 
 spirit of reason and justice themselves, 
 
 Now culture, because of its keen sense of what is 
 really fatal, is all the more disposed to be rather 
 indifferent about what is not fatal. And because 
 machinery is the one concern of our actual politics, 
 and an inward working, and not machinery, is what 
 we most want, we keep advising our ardent young 
 Liberal friends to think less of machinery, to stand 
 more aloof from the arena of politics at present, and 
 rather to try and promote, with us, an inward work- 
 ing. They do not listen to us, and they rush into 
 the arena of politics, where their merits, indeed, seem 
 to be little appreciated as yet ; and then they com- 
 plain of the reformed constituencies, and call the new 
 Parliament a I*hiListiae Parliament As if a nation, 
 nourished and reared as ours has been, could give us, 
 just yet, anything but a Philistine Parliament ! — and 
 would a Barbarian Parliament be even so good, or a 
 Populace Parliament? For our part, we rejoice to 
 see our dear old friends, the Hebraising Philistines, 
 gathered in force in the Valley of Jehoshaphat previous 
 to their final conversion, which will certainly come. 
 But, to attain this conversion, we must not try to 
 oust them from their places and to contend for 
 machinery with them, but we must work on them 
 inwardly and cure their spirit. Ousted they will not 
 be, but transformed. Ousted they do not deserve to 
 be, and wUl not be. 
 
jdii CDLTUEE AND ANAECHT. 
 
 For the days of Israd are kmwrmrahle ; and in its 
 blame of Hebraising too, and in its praise of Hellen- 
 ising, culture must not fail to keep its flexibility, and 
 to give to its judgments that passing and provisional 
 character which we have seen it impose on its prefer- 
 ences and rejections of machinery. Now,, and for us, 
 it is a time to Hellenise, and to praise knowing ; for 
 we have Hebraised too much, and have over-valued 
 doing. But the habits and discipline received from 
 Hebraism remain for our race an eternal possession ; 
 and, as humanity is constituted, one must never assign 
 to them the second rank to-day, without being pre- 
 pared to restore to them the first rank to-morrow. 
 Let us conclude by marking this distinctly. 
 
 To walk staimchly by the best light one has, to be 
 strict and sincere with oneself, not to be of the number 
 of those who say and do not, to be in earnest, — this 
 is the discipline by which alone man is enabled to 
 rescue his life from thraldom to the passing moment 
 and to his bodily senses, to ennoble it, and to make 
 it eternal. And this discipline has been nowhere so 
 effectively taught as in the school of Hebraism. The 
 intense and convinced energy with which the Hebrew, 
 both of the Old and of the New Testament, threw 
 himself upon his ideal of righteousness, and which 
 inspired the incomparable definition of the great 
 Christian virtue, faith, — the substance of things hoped 
 for, the evidence of things rwt seen, — this energy of 
 devotion to its ideal has belonged to Hebraism alone. 
 As our idea of perfection widens beyond the narrow 
 limits to which the over -rigour of Hebraising has 
 
PREFACE. xliii 
 
 tended to confine it, we shall yet come again to 
 Hebraism for that devout energy in embracing our 
 ideal, which alone can give to man the happiness of 
 doing what he knows. "If ye know these things, 
 happy are ye if ye do them!" — the last word for 
 infirm humanity will always he that. For this word, 
 reiterated with a power now sublime, now affecting, 
 but always admirable, our race will, as long as the 
 world lasts, return to Hebraism; and the Bible, 
 which preaches this word, will for ever remain, as 
 Goethe called it, not only a national book, but the 
 Book of the Nations. Again and again, after what 
 seemed breaches and separations, the prophetic pro- 
 mise to Jerusalem will still be true : — Lo, thy soni 
 come, whom thou seniest away ; they come gaihered from 
 the west wrdo the east by the word of the Holy One, re^olo 
 mg m tlie remembtoMce of God, 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 v/iuij-. PAGE 
 
 iNTEODtrCTION . . . . i 
 
 I. Sweetness and Liqht .... 6 
 
 II. Doing as one Likes . . .40 
 
 III. Babbakians, Philistines, Populace , , 72 
 
 IV. Hebkaism and Hellenism . . . 109 
 
 V. POERO UNUM EST NeCESSAKITJM . . .128 
 
 IV. OuE Liberal Practitioners , . 152 
 
 Conclusion . . , . 195 
 
CULTURE AND ANAECHY. 
 
 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 In one of his speeches a short time ago, that fine 
 speaker and famous Liberal, Mr. Bright, took occasion 
 to have a fling at the friends and preachers of culture. 
 "People who talk about what they call cuUwre/" 
 said he, contemptuously; "by ■which they mean a 
 smattering of the two dead languages of Greek and 
 Latin." And he went on to remark, in a strain with 
 which modern speakers and writers have made us 
 very familiar, how poor a thing this culture is, how 
 little good it can do to the world, and how absurd it 
 is for its possessors to set much store by it. And the 
 other day a younger Liberal than Mr. Bright, one of 
 a school whose mission it is to bring into order and 
 system that body of truth with which the earlier 
 Liberals merely fumbled, a member of the University 
 of Oxford, and a very clever writer, Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison, developed, in the systematic and stringent 
 maimer of his school, the thesis which Mr. Bright 
 VOL. III. & B 
 
2 CULTUEB AND ANARCHY. 
 
 had propounded in only general terms. "Perhaps 
 the very silliest cant of the day," said Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison, "is the cant about culture. Culture is a 
 desirable quality in a critic of new books, and sits 
 well on a possessor of belles-lettres ; but as applied to 
 politics, it means simply a turn for small fault-finding, 
 love of selfish ease, and indecision in action. The 
 man of culture is in politics one of the poorest mortals 
 alive. For simple pedantry and want of good sense 
 no man is his equal. Xo assumption is too unreal; 
 no end is too unpractical for him. But the active 
 exercise of politics requires common sense, sjrmpathy, 
 trust, resolution, and enthusiasm, qualities which 
 your man of culture has carefuUy rooted up, lest they 
 damage the delicacy of his critical olfactories. Per- 
 haps they are the only class of responsible beings in 
 the community who cannot with safety be entrusted 
 with power." 
 
 Now for my part I do not wish to see men of 
 culture asking to be entrusted with power; and, 
 indeed, I have freely said, that in my opinion the 
 speech most proper, at present, for a man of culture 
 to make to a body of his fellow-countrymen who get 
 him into a committee-room, is Socrates's : Kiwm thy- 
 self I and this is not a speech to be made by men 
 wanting to be entrusted with power. For this very 
 indifference to direct political action I have been 
 taken to task by the BaHly Tdegra/ph, coupled, by a 
 strange perversity of fate, with just that very one of 
 the Hebrew prophets whose style I admire the least, 
 and called "an elegant Jeremiah." It is because 1 
 
INTEODUCTION. 3 
 
 say (to use the words which the Daily Telegraph puts 
 in my mouth): — "You mustn't make a fuss because 
 you have no vote, — that is vulgarity; you mustn't 
 hold big meetings to agitate for reform bills and to 
 repeal com laws, — that is the very height of vul- 
 garity," — ^it is for this reason that I am called some- 
 times an elegant Jeremiah, sometimes a spurious 
 Jeremiah, a Jeremiah about the reality of whose 
 mission the writer in the Daily Telegraph has his 
 doubts. It is evident, therefore, that I have so taken 
 my line as not to be exposed to the whole brunt of 
 Mr. Frederic Harrison's censure. Still, I have often 
 spoken in praise of culture, I have striven to make 
 all my works and ways serve the interests of culture. 
 I take culture to be something a great deal more than 
 what Mr. Frederic Harrison and others call it : "a 
 desirable quality in a critic of new books." Nay, 
 even though to a certain extent I am disposed to 
 agree with Mr. Frederic Harrison, that men of culture 
 are just the class of responsible beings in this com- 
 munity of ours who cannot properly, at present, be 
 entrusted with power, I am not siu:e that I do not 
 think this the fault of otir community rather than of 
 the men of culture. In short, although, like Mr. 
 Bright and Mr. Frederic Harrison, and the editor of 
 the Daily Telegraph, and a large body of valued friends 
 of mine, I am a Liberal, yet I am a Liberal tempered 
 by experience, reflection, and renouncement, and I 
 am, above all, a believer in culture. Therefore I 
 propose now to try and inquire, in the simple un- 
 systematic way which best suits both my taste and 
 
4 CULTURE AND AN AECHY. 
 
 my powers, what culture really is, what good it can 
 do, what is our own special need of it ; and I shall 
 seek to find some plaia grounds on which a faith in 
 culture, — both my own faith in it and the faith of 
 others, — may rest securely 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 
 
 The disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity; 
 sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere ex- 
 clusiveness and vanity. The culture which is sup- 
 posed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and 
 Latin is a culture -which is begotten by nothing so 
 intellectual as curiosity; it is valued either out of 
 sheer vanity and ignorance or else as an engine of 
 social and class distinction, separating its holder, like 
 a badge or title, from other people who have not got 
 it. No serious man would call this cultwre, or attach 
 any value to it, as culture, at all. To find the real 
 ground for the very diflFerent estimate which serious 
 people will set upon culture, we must find some 
 motive for culture in the terms of which may lie a 
 real ambiguity ; and such a motive the word cwiosity 
 gives us. 
 
 I have before now pointed out that we English do 
 not, like the foreigners, use this word in a good sense 
 as well as in a bad sense. With us the word is 
 always used in a somewhat disapproving sense. A 
 liberal and intelligent eagerness about the things of 
 
6 CULTURE AND ANAEOHV. ichap, 
 
 the mind may be meant by a foreigner when he speaks 
 of curiosity, but with us the word always conveys a 
 certain notion of frivolous and unedifying activity, 
 In the Quarterly Review, some little time ago, was an 
 estimate of the celebrated French critic, ML Sainte- 
 Beuve, and a very inadequate estimate it in my judg- 
 ment was. And its inadequacy consisted chiefly in 
 this: that in our English way it left out of sight 
 the double sense really involved in the word curiosity, 
 thinking enough was said to stamp M. Sainte-Beuve 
 with blame if it was said that he was impelled in his 
 operations as a critic by curiosity, and omitting either 
 to perceive that M. Sainte-Beuve himself, and many 
 other people with him, would consider that this was 
 praiseworthy and not blameworthy, or to point out 
 why it ought really to be accounted worthy of blame 
 and not of praise. For as there is a curiosity about 
 intellectual matters which is futile, and merely a 
 disease, so there is certainly a curiosity, — a desire 
 after the things of the mind simply for their own 
 sakes and for the pleasure of seeing them as they 
 are, — which is, in an intelligent being, natural and 
 laudable. Nay, and the very desire to see things as 
 they are implies a balance and regulation of mind 
 which is not often attained without fruitful effort, 
 and which is the very opposite of the blind and dis- 
 eased impulse of mind which is what we mean to 
 blame when we blame curiosity. Montesquieu says : 
 " The first motive which ought to impel us to study 
 is the desire to augment the excellence of our nature, 
 and to render an intelligent being yet more intelli- 
 
I.] SWEETNESS AND LICHT. ? 
 
 gent." This is the true ground to assign for the 
 genuine scientific passion, however manifested, and 
 for culture, viewed simply as a fruit of this passion ; 
 and it is a worthy ground, even though we let the 
 term cmiosity stand to describe it. 
 
 But there is of culture another view, in which not 
 solely the scientiiic passion, the sheer desire to see 
 things as they are, natural and proper in an intelli- 
 gent being, appears as the ground of it There is a 
 view in which all the love of our neighbour, the 
 impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the 
 desire for removing human error, clearing human 
 confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble 
 aspiration to leave the world better and happier than 
 we found it, — motives eminently such as are called 
 social, — come in as part of the grounds of culture, 
 and the main and pre-eminent part. Culture is then 
 properly described not as having its origin in curi- 
 osity, but as having its origin in the love of perfec- 
 tion ; it is a study of perfection. It moves by the 
 force, not merely or primarily of the scientific passion 
 for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social 
 passion for doing good. As, in the first view of it, 
 we took for its worthy motto Montesquieu's words : 
 "To render an intelligent being yet more intelli- 
 gent!" so, in the second view of it, there is no 
 better motto which it can have than these words of 
 Bishop Wilson: "To make reason and the wiU of 
 God prevail !" 
 
 Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt to 
 be overhasty in determining what reason and the 
 
8 CULTUEE AND ANARCHY. [CHAP 
 
 will of God say, because its turn is for acting rather 
 than thinking and it wants to be beginning to act ; and 
 whereas it is apt to take its own conceptions, which 
 proceed from its own state of development and share 
 in all the imperfections and immaturities of this, for 
 a basis of action ; what distinguishes culture is, that 
 it is possessed by the scientific passion as well as by 
 the passion of doing good ; that it demands worthy 
 notions of reason and the will of God, and does not 
 readUy suffer its own crude conceptions to substitute 
 themselves for them. And knowing that no action 
 or institution can be salutary and stable which is 
 not based on reason and the wiU of God, it is not so 
 bent on acting and instituting, even with the great 
 aim of diminishing human error and misery ever 
 before its thoughts, but that it can remember that 
 acting and instituting are of little use, unless we 
 know how and what we ought to act and to institute. 
 This culture is more interesting and more far- 
 reaching than that other, which is founded solely 
 on the scientific passion for knowing. But it needs 
 times of faith and ardour, times when the intellectual 
 horizon is opening and widening all round us, to 
 flourish in. And is not the close and bounded intel- 
 lectual horizon within which we have long Kved and 
 moved now lifting up, and are not new lights finding 
 free passage to shine in upon us ? For a long time 
 there was no passage for them to make their way 
 in upon us, and then it was of no use to think of 
 adapting the world's action to them. Where was 
 the hope of making reason and the will of God 
 
I.] SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 9 
 
 prevail among people who had a routine which they 
 had christened reason and the will of God, in which 
 they were inextricably bound, and beyond which 
 they had no power of looking t But now the iron 
 force of adhesion to the old routine, — social, political, 
 religious, — has wonderfully yielded ; the iron force of 
 exclusion of aU which is new has wonderfully yielded. 
 The danger now is, not that people should obsti- 
 nately refuse to allow anything but their old routine 
 to pass for reason and the will of God, but either 
 that they should allow some novelty or other to pass 
 for these too easily, or else that they should under- 
 rate the importance of them altogether, and think 
 it enough to follow action for its own sake, without 
 troubling themselves to make reason and the will of 
 God prevail therein. Now, then, is the moment for 
 culture to be of service, culture which believes in 
 making reason and the wiU of God prevail, believes 
 in perfection, is the study and pursuit of perfection, 
 and is no longer debarred, by a rigid invincible 
 exclusion of whatever is new, from getting accept- 
 ance for its ideas, simply because they are new. 
 
 The moment this view of culture is seized, the 
 moment it is regarded not solely as the endeavour to 
 see things as they are, to draw towards a knowledge 
 of the universal order which seems to be intended 
 and aimed at in the world, and which it is a man's 
 happiness to go along with or his misery to go 
 counter to, — to learn, in short, the will of God, — 
 the moment, I say, culture is considered not merely 
 as the endeavour to see and learn this, but as the 
 
10 CULTUEE AND AifAECHY. [OHAP. 
 
 endeavoiu", also, to make it prevail, the moral, social, 
 and beneficent character of culture becomes mani- 
 fest. The mere endeavour to see and learn the truth 
 for our own personal satisfaction is indeed a com- 
 mencement for making it prevail, a preparing the 
 way for this, which always serves this, and is 
 wrongly, therefore, stamped with blame absolutely 
 in itself and not only in its caricature and degenera- 
 tion. But perhaps it has got stamped with blame, 
 and disparaged with the dubious title of curiosity, 
 because in comparison with this wider endeavour of 
 such great and plain utility it looks selfish, petty, and 
 unprofitable. 
 
 And religion, the greatest and most important of 
 the efforts by which the human race has manifested 
 its impulse to perfect itself, — ^religion, that voice of 
 the deepest human experience, — does not only enjoin 
 and sanction the aim which is the great aim of cul- 
 ture, the aim of setting ourselves to ascertain what 
 perfection is and to make it prevail; but also, in 
 determining generally in what human perfection 
 consists, religion comes to a conclusion identical 
 with that which culture, — culture seeking the de- 
 termination of this question through all the voices 
 of human experience which have been heard upon 
 it, of art, science, poetry, philosophy, history, as 
 well as of religion, in order to give a greater fulaess 
 and certainty to its solution, — ^likewise reaches. 
 Religion says: The Mmgdom of God is mthin you; 
 and culture, in like manner, places human perfec- 
 tion in an vnfemal condition, in the growth and 
 
I.] SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 11 
 
 predominance of our humanity proper, as distin- 
 guished from our animality. It places it in the 
 ever-increasing efficacy and in the general harmoni- 
 ous expansion of those gifts of thought and feeling, 
 which make the peculiar dignity, wealth, and happi- 
 ness of human nature. As I have said on a former 
 occasion : " It is in making endless additions to itself, 
 in the endless expansion of its powers, in endless 
 growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit of the 
 human race finds its ideal. To reach this ideal, cul- 
 ture is an indispensable aid, and that is the true 
 value of culture." Not a having and a resting, but 
 a growing and a becoming, is the character of per- 
 fection as culture conceives it; and here, too, it 
 coincides with religion. 
 
 And because men are all members of one great 
 whole, and the sjnmpathy which is in human nature 
 will not allow one member to be indifferent to the 
 rest or to have a perfect welfare independent of the 
 rest, the expansion of our humanity, to suit the idea 
 of perfection which culture forms, must be a general 
 expansion. Perfection, as culture conceives it, is not 
 possible while the individual remains isolated. The 
 individual is required, under pain of being" stunted 
 and enfeebled in his own development if he disobeys, 
 to carry others along with him in his march towards 
 perfection, to be continually doing all he can to 
 enlarge and increase the volume of the human 
 stream sweeping thitherward. And here, once more, 
 culture lays on us the same obligation as religion, 
 which says, as Bishop Wilson has admirably put it. 
 
12 CULTURE AND ANARCHY. [OHAP, 
 
 that "to promote the kingdom of God is to increase 
 and hasten one's own happiness." 
 
 But, finally, perfection, — as culture from a 
 thorough disinterested study of human nature and 
 human experience learns to conceive it, — ^is a har- 
 monious expansion of all the powers which make the 
 beauty and worth of human nature, and is not con- 
 sistent with the over-development of any one power 
 at the expense of the rest. Here culture goes be- 
 yond religion, as religion is generally conceived by 
 us. 
 
 If culture, then, is a study of perfection, and oi 
 harmonious perfection, general perfection, and perfec- 
 tion which consists in becomiag something rather 
 than in having something, in an inward condition of 
 the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circum- 
 stances, — it is clear that culture, instead of being the 
 frivolous and useless thing which Mr. Bright, and Mr. 
 Frederic Harrison, and many other Liberals are apt 
 to call it, has a very important function to fulfil for 
 mankind. And this function is particularly important 
 in our modem world, of which the whole civilisation 
 is, to a much greater degree than the civilisation of 
 Greece and Eome, mechanical and external, and tends 
 constantly to become more so. But above all in our 
 own country has culture a weighty part to perform, 
 because here that mechanical character, which civilisa- 
 tion tends to take everywhere, is shown in the most 
 eminent degree. Indeed nearly all the characters of 
 perfection, as culture teaches us to fix them, meet in 
 this country with some powerful tendency which 
 
I.] SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 13 
 
 thwarts them and sets them at defiance. The idea of 
 perfection as an mwcvrd condition of the mind and 
 spirit is at variance with the mechanical and material 
 civilisation in esteem with us, and nowhere, as I have 
 said, so much in esteem as with us. The idea of per- 
 fection as a general expansion of the human family is 
 at variance with our strong individualism, our hatred 
 of all limits to the unrestrained swing of the indivi- 
 dual's personality, our maxim of " every man for 
 himself." Above aU, the idea of perfection as a har- 
 monious expansion of human nature is at variance 
 with our want of flexibility, with our inaptitude for 
 seeing more than one side of a thing, with our intense 
 energetic absorption in the particular pursuit we 
 happen to be following. So culture has a rough task 
 to achieve in this country. Its preachers have, and are 
 likely long to have, a hard time of it, and they wiU 
 much oftener be regarded, for a great while to come, 
 as elegant or spurious Jeremiahs than as friends and 
 benefactors. That, however, will not prevent their 
 doing in the end good service if they persevere. And, 
 meanwhile, the mode of action they have to pursue, 
 and the sort of habits they must fight against, ought 
 to be made quite clear for every one to see, who may 
 be willing to look at the matter attentively and dis- 
 passionately. 
 
 Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger; 
 often in machinery most absurdly disproportioned to 
 the end which this machinery, if it is to do any good 
 at all, is to serve ; but always in machinery, as if it 
 had a value in and for itself. What is freedom but 
 
14 CULTUEE AND ANAECHY. [OHAP 
 
 machinery t what is population but machinery t what 
 is coal but machinery? what are railroads but 
 machinery 1 what is wealth but machinery 1 what 
 are, even, religious organisations but machinery 1 
 Now almost every voice in England is accustomed to 
 speak of these things as if they were precious ends 
 in themselves, and therefore had some of the charac- 
 ters of perfection indisputably joined to them. I 
 have before now noticed Mr. Eoebuck's stock argu- 
 ment for proving the greatness and happiness of 
 England as she is, and for quite stopping the mouths 
 of all gainsayers. Mr. Eoebuck is never weary of 
 reiterating this argument of his, so I do not know 
 why I should be weary of noticing it. "May not 
 every man in England say what he likes 1" — Mr. Eoe- 
 buck perpetually asks ; and that, he thinks, is quite 
 sufficient, and when every man may say what he 
 likes, our aspirations ought to be satisfied. But the 
 aspirations of culture, which is the study of perfec- 
 tion, are not satisfied, unless what men say, when 
 they may say what they like, is worth saying, — ^has 
 good in it, and more good than bad. In the same 
 way the Times, replying to some foreign strictures on 
 the dress, looks, and behaviour of the English abroad, 
 urges that the English ideal is that every one should 
 be free to do and to look just as he likes. But cul- 
 ture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw 
 person may like the rule by which he fashions him- 
 self j but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is 
 indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get 
 the raw person to like that 
 
I.] SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 15 
 
 And in the same way with respect to railroads and 
 coal. Every one must have observed the strange 
 language current during the late discussions as to the 
 possible failures of our supplies of coal Our coal, 
 thousands of people were saying, is the real basis of 
 our national greatness; if our coal runs short, there is 
 an end of the greatness of England. But what is 
 greatness? — culture makes us ask. Greatness is a 
 spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and 
 admiration ; and the outward proof of possessing 
 greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admira^ 
 tion. If England were swallowed up by the sea to- 
 morrow, which of the two, a hundred years hence, 
 would most excite the love, interest, and admiration 
 of mankind, — would most, therefore, show the evi- 
 dences of having possessed greatness, — the England of 
 the last twenty years, or the England of Elizabeth, of 
 a time of splendid spiritual effort, but when our coal, 
 and our industrial operations depending on coal, were 
 very little developed 1 WeU, then, what an unsound 
 habit of mind it must be which makes us talk of 
 things like coal or iron as constituting the greatness 
 of England, and how salutary a friend is culture, bent 
 on seeing things as they are, and thus dissipating de- 
 lusions of this kind and fixing standards of perfection 
 that are real ! 
 
 Wealth, again, that end to which our prodigious 
 works for material advantage are directed, -r-the com- 
 monest of commonplaces teUs us how men are always 
 apt to regard wealth as a precious end in itself ; and 
 certainly they have never been so apt thus to regard 
 
16 CULTURE AND ANARCHY. [OHAP. 
 
 it as they are in England at the present time. Never 
 did people believe anything more firmly than nine 
 Englishmen out of ten at the present day believe that 
 our greatness and welfare are proved by our being so 
 very ricL Now, the use of culture is that it helps 
 us, by means of its spiritual standard of perfection, to 
 regard wealth as but machinery, and not only to say 
 as a matter of words that we regard wealth as but 
 machinery, but really to perceive and feel that it is 
 so. If it were not for this purging effect wrought 
 upon our minds by culture, the whole world, the 
 future as well as the present, would inevitably belong 
 to the Philistiaes. The people who believe most that 
 our greatness and welfare are proved by our being 
 very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts 
 to becoming rich, are just the very people whom 
 we call Philistines. Culture says : " Consider these 
 people, then, their way of life, their habits, their 
 manners, the very tones of their voice ; look at them 
 attentively; observe the literature they read, the 
 things which give them pleasure, the words which 
 come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which 
 make the furniture of their minds; would any amount 
 of wealth be worth having with the condition that 
 one was to become just like these people by having 
 it ? " And thus culture begets a dissatisfaction which 
 is of the highest possible value in stemming the com- 
 mon tide of men's thoughts in a wealthy and indus- 
 trial community, and which saves the future, as one 
 may hope, from being vulgarised, even if it cannot 
 save the present. 
 
I.] SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 17 
 
 Population, again, and bodily health and vigour, 
 are things which are nowhere treated in such an un- 
 intelligent, misleading, exaggerated way as in England. 
 Both are really machinery ; yet how many people all 
 around us do we see rest in them and fail to look 
 beyond them ! Why, one has heard people, fresh 
 from reading certain articles of the Times on the 
 Eegistrar-General's returns of marriages and births in 
 this country, who would talk of our large English 
 families in quite a solemn strain, as if they had some- 
 thing in itself beautiful, elevating, and meritorious in 
 them ; as if the British Philistine would have only 
 to present himself before the Great Judge with his 
 twelve children, in order to be received among the 
 sheep as a matter of right ! 
 
 But bodily health and vigour, it may be said, are 
 not to be classed with wealth and population as mere 
 machinery; they have a more real and essential value. 
 True; but only as they are more intimately connected 
 with a perfect spiritual condition than wealth or popu- 
 lation are. The moment we disjoin them from the 
 idea of a perfect spiritual condition, and pursue them, 
 as we do pursue them, for their own sake and as ends 
 in themselves, our worship of them becomes as mere 
 worship of machinery, as our worship of wealth or 
 population, and as unintelligent and vulgarising a 
 worship as that is. Every one with anything like an 
 adequate idea of human perfection has distinctly 
 marked this subordination to higher and spiritual 
 ends of the cultivation of bodily vigour and activity. 
 " Bodily exercise profiteth little ; but godliness is 
 
 VOL. m. Q 
 
18 CULTUEE AND ANARCHY. [OHAP. 
 
 profitable unto all things," says the author of the 
 Epistle to Timothy. And the utilitarian Franklin 
 says just as explicitly: — "Eat and drink such an 
 exact quantity as suits the constitution of thy body, 
 in reference to the services of the mind." But the point 
 of view of culture, keeping the mark of human per- 
 fection simply and broadly in view, and not assigning 
 to this perfection, as religion or utilitarianism assigns 
 to it, a special and limited character, this point of 
 view, I say, of culture is best given by these words 
 of Epictetus : — " It is a sigh of dtpvta," says he, — that 
 is, of a nature not finely tempered, — " to give your- 
 selves up to things which relate to the body; to make, 
 for instance, a great fuss about exercise, a great fuss 
 about eating, a great fuss about drinking, a great fuss 
 about walking, a great fuss about riding. All these 
 things ought to be done merely by the way : the for- 
 mation of the spirit and character must be our real 
 concern." This is admirable ; and, indeed, the Greek 
 word fv^vta, a finely tempered nature, gives exactly 
 the notion of perfection as culture brings us to con- 
 ceive it: a harmonious perfection, a perfection in 
 which the characters of beauty and intelligence are 
 both present, which tmites " the two noblest of things,'' 
 — as Swift, who of one of the two, at any rate, had 
 himself aU too little, most happily calls them in his 
 Battle of the Books, — " the two noblest of things, sweet- 
 ness and light." The evtpvq^ is the man who tends 
 towards sweetness and light ; the o^u^s, on the other 
 hand, is our Philistine. The immense spiritual signi- 
 fjcance of the Greeks is due to their having been 
 
I.] SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 19 
 
 inspired with this central and happy idea of the 
 essential character of human perfection; and Mr. 
 Blight's misconception of culture, as a smattering of 
 Greek and Latin, comes itself, after all, from this 
 wonderful significance of the Greeks having affected 
 the very machinery of our education, and is in itself 
 a kind of homage to it. 
 
 In thus making sweetness and light to be charac- 
 ters of perfection, culture is of like spirit with poetry, 
 follows one law with poetry. Far more than on our 
 freedom, our population, and our industrialism, many 
 amongst us rely upon our religious organisations to 
 save us. I have called religion a yet more important 
 manifestation of human nature than poetry, because 
 it has worked on a broader scale for perfection, and 
 with greater masses of men. But the idea of beauty 
 and of a human nature perfect on all its sides, which 
 is the dominant idea of poetry, is a true and invalu- 
 able idea, though it has not yet had the success that 
 the idea of conquering the obvious faults of our 
 animality, and of a human nature perfect on the 
 moral side, — which is the dominant idea of religion, 
 — has been enabled to have ; and it is destined, add- 
 ing to itself the religious idea of a devout energy, to 
 transform and govern the other. 
 
 The best art and poetry of the Greeks, in which 
 religion and poetry are one, in which the idea of 
 beauty and of a human nature perfect on all sides 
 adds to itself a religious and devout energy, and works 
 in the strength of that, is on this account of such sur- 
 passing interest and instructiveness for us, though it 
 
20 CULTURE AKD ANAECHY. [OHAP 
 
 was, — as, having regard to the human race in general, 
 and, indeed, having regard to the Greeks themselves, 
 we must own, — a premature attempt, an attempt 
 which for success needed the moral and religious 
 fibre in humanity to be more braced and developed 
 than it had yet been. But Greece did not err in 
 having the idea of beauty, harmony, and complete 
 human perfection, so present and paramount. It is 
 impossible to have this idea too present and parar 
 mount; only, the moral fibre must be braced too. 
 And we, because we have braced the moral fibre, are 
 not on that account in the right way, if at the same 
 time the idea of beauty, harmony, and complete 
 human perfection, is wanting or misapprehended 
 amongst us; and evidently it is wanting or misap- 
 prehended at present. And when we rely as we do 
 on our religious organisations, which in themselves 
 do not and cannot give us this idea, and think we 
 have done enough if we make them spread and pre- 
 vail, then, I say, we fall into our common fault of 
 overvaluing machinery. 
 
 Nothing is more common than for people to con- 
 found the inward peace and satisfaction which follows 
 the subduing of the obvious faults of our animality 
 with what I may call absolute inward peace and satis- 
 faction, — the peace and satisfaction which are reached 
 as we draw near to complete spiritual perfection, and 
 not merely to moral perfection, or rather to relativa 
 moral perfection. No people in the world have done 
 more and struggled more to attain this relative moral 
 perfection than our English race has. For no people 
 
I.] SWEETNESS AOT) LIGHT. 21 
 
 in the world has the command to resist the devil, to 
 overcome the vAcked one, in the nearest and most obvious 
 sense of those words, had such a pressing force and 
 reality. And we have had our reward, not only in 
 the great worldly prosperity which our obedience to 
 this command has brought us, but also, and far more, 
 in great inward peace and satisfaction. But to me 
 few things are more pathetic than to see people, on 
 the strength of the inward peace and satisfaction 
 which thd!r rudimentary efforts towards perfection 
 have brought them, employ, concerning their incom- 
 plete perfection and the religious organisations within 
 which they have found it, language which properly 
 apphes only to complete perfection, and is a far-oflf 
 echo of the human soul's prophecy of it. Eeligion 
 itself, I need hardly say, supphes them in abundance 
 with this grand language. And very freely do they 
 use it ; yet it is really the severest possible criticism 
 of such an incomplete perfection as alone we have yet 
 reached through our religious organisations. 
 
 The impulse of the English race towards moral 
 development and self-conquest has nowhere so power- 
 fully manifested itself as in Puritanism. Nowhere 
 has Puritanism found so adequate an expression as in 
 the religious organisation of the Independents. The 
 modem Independents have a newspaper, the Nonam- 
 formist, written with great sincerity and ability. The 
 motto, the standard, the profession of faith which this 
 organ of theirs carries aloft, is : " The Dissidence of 
 Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant reli- 
 gion." There is sweetness and light, and an ideal of 
 
22 CtTLTUEE AND ANARCHY. [chap. 
 
 complete harmonious human perfection ! One need 
 not go to culture and poetry to find language to judge 
 it. Eeligion, with its instinct for perfection, supplies 
 language to judge it, language, too, which is in our 
 mouths every day. "Finally, be of one mind, united 
 in feeling," says St. Peter. There is an ideal which 
 judges the Puritan ideal: "The Dissidenceof Dissent 
 and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion ! " 
 And religious organisations like this are what people 
 believe in, rest in, would give their lives ror ! Such, 
 I say, is the wonderful virtue of even the beginnings 
 of perfection, of having conquered even the plain 
 faults of our animality, that the religious organisar 
 tion which has helped us to do it can seem to us 
 something precious, salutary, and to be propagated, 
 even when it wears such a brand of imperfection on 
 its forehead as this. And men have got such a habit 
 of giving to the language of religion a special applica- 
 tion, of making it a mere jargon, that for the con- 
 demnation which religion itself passes on the short- 
 comings of their religious organisations they have no 
 ear ; they are sure to cheat themselves and to explain 
 this condemnation away. They can only be reached 
 by the criticism which culture, like poetry, speaking 
 a language not to be sophisticated, and resolutely 
 testing these organisations by the ideal of a human 
 perfection complete on all sides, applies to them. 
 
 But men of culture and poetry, it wiU be said, are 
 again and again failing, and failing conspicuously, in 
 the necessary first stage to a harmonious perfection, 
 in the subduing of the great obvious faults of oui 
 
I.] SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 23 
 
 animality, which it is the glory of these religious 
 organisations to have helped us to suhdue. True, 
 they do often so fail. They have often been with 
 out the virtues as well as the faults of the Puritan ; 
 it has been one of their dangers that they so felt the 
 Puritan's faults that they too much neglected the 
 practice of his virtues. I will not, however, excul- 
 pate them at the Puritan's expense. They have 
 often failed in morality, and morality is indispen- 
 sable. And they have been punished for their failure, 
 as the Puritan has been rewarded for his performance. 
 They have been punished wherein they erred ; but 
 their ideal of beauty, of sweetness and light, and a 
 human nature complete on all its sides, remains the 
 true ideal of perfection stiU ; just as the Puritan's 
 ideal of perfection remains narrow and inadequate, 
 although for what he did well he has been richly 
 rewarded. Notwithstanding the mighty results of 
 the PDgrim Fathers' voyage, they and their standard 
 of perfection are rightly judged when we figure to 
 ourselves Shakspeare or Virgil, — souls in whom 
 sweetness and Hght, and all that in human nature is 
 most humane, were eminent, — accompanying them 
 on their voyage, and think what intolerable company 
 Shakspeare and Virgil would have found them ! In 
 the same way let us judge the religious organisations 
 which we see all around us. Do not let us deny the 
 good and the happiness which they have accomplished ; 
 but do not let us fail to see clearly that their idea of 
 human perfection is narrow and inadequate, and that 
 the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the 
 
24 CULTURE AND ANAECHY. [OHAP 
 
 Protestant religion will never bring humanity to its 
 true goal. As I said with regard to wealth : Let us 
 look at the life of those who live in and for it, — so I 
 say with regard to the religious organisations. Look 
 at the life imaged in such a newspaper as the Ncm- 
 conformist, — a life of jealousy of the Establishment, 
 disputes, tearmeetings, openings of chapels, sermons ; 
 and then think of it as an ideal of a human life com- 
 pleting itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its 
 organs after sweetness, hght, and perfection ! 
 
 Another newspaper, representing, like the Mmcon- 
 formist, one of the religious organisations of this 
 country, was a short time ago giving an account of 
 the crowd at Epsom on the Derby day, and of all the 
 vice and hideousness which was to be seen in that 
 crowd ; and then the writer turned suddenly roimd 
 upon Professor Huxley, and asked him how he pro- 
 posed to cure all this vice and hideousness without 
 religion. I confess I felt disposed to ask the asker 
 this question : and how do you propose to cure it 
 with such a religion as yours 1 How is the ideal of 
 a life so unlovely, so unattractive, so incomplete, so 
 narrow, so far removed from a true and satisfying 
 ideal of human perfection, as is the life of your 
 religious organisation as you yoiKself reflect it, to 
 conquer and transform all this vice and hideousness 1 
 Indeed, the strongest plea for the study of perfection 
 as pursued by culture, the clearest proof of the actual 
 inadequacy of the idea of perfection held by the 
 religious organisations, — expressing, as I have said, 
 the most widespread effort which the human race has 
 
I.] SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 25 
 
 yet made after perfection, — is to be found in the state 
 of our life and society with these in possession of it, 
 and having been in possession of it I know not how 
 many himdred years. We are all of us included in 
 some religious organisation or other j we all call 
 ourselves, in the sublime and aspiring language of 
 religion which I have before noticed, children of God. 
 Children of God ; — it is an immense pretension ! — 
 and how are we to justify it ? By the works which 
 we do, and the words which we speak. And the 
 work which we collective children of God do, our 
 grand centre of Ufe, our city which we have builded 
 for us to dwell in, is London ! London, with its 
 unutterable external hideousness, and with its in- 
 ternal canker of publich egestas, prwatim a^iUeniia, — to 
 use the words which SaUust puts into Cato's mouth 
 about Eome, — unequalled in the world ! The word, 
 again, which we children of God speak, the voice 
 which most hits our collective thought, the newspaper 
 with the largest circulation in England, nay, with the 
 largest circulation in the whole world, is the Daily 
 Telegraph I I say that when our religious organisa- 
 tions, — which I admit to express the most considerable 
 effort after perfection that our race has yet made, — 
 land us in no better result than this, it is high time 
 to examine carefully their idea of perfection, to see 
 whether it does not leave out of account sides and 
 forces of human nature which we might turn to great 
 use ; whether it would not be more operative if it 
 were more complete. And I say that the English 
 reliance on our religious organisations and on their 
 
26 CULTUEE AND AiTAKCHT. [oHAP.- 
 
 ideas of human perfection just as they stand, is hke 
 our reUance on freedom, on muscular Christianity, 
 on population, on coal, on wealth, — mere belief in 
 machinery, and unfruitful ; and that it is wholesomely 
 counteracted by culture, bent on seeing things as they 
 are, and on drawing the human race onwards to a 
 more complete, a harmonious perfection. 
 
 Culture, however, shows its single-minded love of 
 perfection, its desire simply to make reason and the will 
 of God prevail, its freedom from fanaticism, by its atti- 
 tude towards all this machinery, even while it insists 
 that it is machinery. Fanatics, seeing the mischief men 
 do themselves by their blind belief in some machinery 
 or other, — ^whether it is wealth and industrialism, or 
 whether it is the cultivation of bodily strength and 
 activity, or whether it is a political organisatioji, — or 
 whether it is a religious organisation, — oppose with 
 might and main the tendency to this or that poUtical 
 and religious organisation, or to games and athletic 
 exercises, or to wealth and industrialism, and try 
 violently to stop it. But the flexibility which sweet- 
 ness and light give, and which is one of the rewards 
 of culture pursued in good faith, enables a man to see 
 that a tendency may be necessary, and even, as a 
 preparation for something in the future, salutary, and 
 yet that the generations or individuals who obey this 
 tendency are sacrificed to it, that they fall short of the 
 hope of perfection by following it; and that its 
 mischiefs are to be criticised, lest it should take too 
 firm a hold and last after it has served its purpose. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone well pointed out, in a speech at 
 
I.] SWEETNESS XSX> LIGHT. 27 
 
 Paris, — and others have pointed out the same thing, — 
 how necessary is the present great movement towards 
 wealth and industrialism, in order to lay broad founda- 
 tions of material well-being for the society of the 
 future. The worst of these justifications is, that they 
 are generally addressed to the very people engaged, 
 body and soul, in the movement in question ; at all 
 events, that they are always seized with the greatest 
 avidity by these people, and taken by them as quite 
 justifying their life; and that thus they tend to 
 harden them in their sins. Now, culture admits the 
 necessity of the movement towards fortune-making 
 and exaggerated industrialism, readily allows that the 
 future may derive benefit from it; but insists, at 
 the same time, that the passing generations of indus- 
 trialists, — forming, for the most part, the stout main 
 body of Philistinism, — are sacrificed to it. In the 
 same way, the result of all the games and sports which 
 occupy the passing generation of boys and yoimg men 
 may be the establishment of a better and sounder 
 physical type for the future to work with. Culture 
 does not set itself against the games and sports ; it 
 congratulates the future, and hopes it will make a 
 good use of its improved physical basis ; but it points 
 out that our passing generation of boys and young 
 men is, meantime, sacrificed. Puritanism was perhaps 
 necessary to develop the moral fibre of the English 
 race. Nonconformity to break the yoke of ecclesiastical 
 domination over men's minds and to prepare the way 
 for freedom of thought in the distant future; still, 
 culture points out that the harmonious perfection of 
 
28 CULTURE AND ANAECHT. [ohap 
 
 generations of Puritans and Nonconformists have been, 
 in consequence, sacrificed. Freedom of speech may be 
 necessary for the society of the future, but the young 
 lions of the BaUy Tdegraph in the meanwhile are sacri- 
 ficed. A voice for every man in his country's govern- 
 ment may be necessary for the society of the future, but 
 meanwhile Mr. Beales and Mr. Bradlaugh are sacrificed. 
 Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many faults ; 
 and she has heavily paid for them in defeat, in isola- 
 tion, in want of hold upon the modem world Yet 
 we in Oxford, brought up amidst the beauty and 
 sweetness of that beautiful place, have not failed to 
 seize one truth, — the truth that beauty and sweetness 
 are essential characters of a complete human perfec- 
 tion. When I insist on this, I am all in the faith and 
 tradition of Oxford. I say boldly that this our senti- 
 ment for beauty and sweetness, our sentiment against 
 hideousness and rawness, has been at the bottom of 
 our attachment to so many beaten causes, of our 
 opposition to so many triumphant movements. And 
 the sentiment is true, and has never been wholly 
 defeated, and has shown its power even in its defeat. 
 We have not won our political battles, we have not 
 carried our main points, we have not stopped our 
 , adversaries' advance, we have not marched victoriously 
 with the modern world; but we have told silently 
 upon the mind of the country, we have prepared 
 currents of feeling which sap our adversaries' position 
 when it seems gained, we have kept up our own 
 communications with the future. Look at the course 
 of the great movement which shook Oxford to its centre- 
 
I.] SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 29 
 
 some thirty years ago ! It was directed, as any one 
 who reads Dr. Newman's Apology may see, against what 
 in one word may be called " Liberalism." Liberalism 
 prevailed ; it was the appointed force to do the 
 work of the hour ; it was necessary, it was iaevitable 
 that it should prevail. The Oxford movement was 
 broken, it failed ; our wrecks are scattered on every 
 shore : — 
 
 Qiise regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ? 
 
 But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw 
 it, and as it really broke the Oxford movement ? It 
 was the great middle-class liberalism, which had for 
 the cardinal points of its belief the Eeform Bill of 
 1832, and local self-government, in politics; in the 
 social sphere, free -trade, unrestricted competition, 
 and the making of large industrial fortunes ; in the 
 religious sphere, the Dissidence of Dissent and the 
 Protestantism of the Protestant religion. I do not 
 say that other and more intelligent forces than this 
 were not opposed to the Oxford movement : but this 
 was the force which really beat it ; this was the force 
 which Dr. Newman felt himself fighting with ; this 
 was the force which till only the other day seemed to 
 be the paramount force in this country, and to be in 
 possession of the future ; this was the force whose 
 achievements fiU Mr. Lowe with such inexpressible 
 admiration, and whose rule he was so horror-struck 
 to see threatened. And where -is this great force of 
 Philistinism now ? It is thrust into the second rank, 
 it is become a power of yesterday, it has lost the 
 future. A new power has suddenly appeared, a 
 
30 CULTURE AND ANAECHT. [chap, 
 
 power -which it is impossible yet to judge fully, but 
 which is certainly a wholly dififerent force from middle- 
 class liberalism ; different in its cardinal points of 
 belief, different in its tendencies in every sphere. It 
 loves and admires neither the legislation of middle- 
 class Parhaments, nor the local self-government of 
 middle-class vestries, nor the unrestricted competition 
 of middle -class industrialists, nor the dissidence of 
 middle-class Dissent and the Protestantism of middle- 
 class Protestant religion. I am not now praising this 
 new force, or saying that its own ideals are better ; 
 all I say is, that they are wholly different. And who 
 will estimate how much the currents of feeling created 
 by Dr. Newman's movements, the keen desire for 
 beauty and sweetness which it nourished, the deep 
 aversion it manifested to the hardness and vulgarity 
 of middle-class liberalism, the strong light it turned 
 on the hideous and grotesque illusions of middle-class 
 Protestantism, — who wiU estimate how much all these 
 contributed to swell the tide of secret dissatisfaction 
 which has mined the ground under self-confident 
 liberaUsm of the last thirty years, and has prepared 
 the way for its sudden collapse and supersession 1 It 
 is in this manner that the sentiment of Oxford for 
 beauty and sweetness conquers, and in this manner 
 long may it continue to conquer ! 
 
 In this manner it works to the same end as culture, 
 and there is plenty of work for it yet to do. I have 
 said that the new and more democratic force which is 
 now superseding our old middle-class liberalism can- 
 not yet be rightly judged. It has its main tendencies 
 
I.] SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 31 
 
 still to form. We hear promises of its giving us 
 administrative reform, law reform, reform of educa- 
 tion, and I know not what ; but those promises come 
 rather from its advocates, wishing to make a good 
 plea for it and to justify it for superseding middle- 
 class liberalism, than from clear tendencies which it 
 has itself yet developed. But meanwhile it has 
 plenty of well-intentioned friends against whom 
 culture may with advantage continue to uphold 
 steadily its ideal of human perfection ; that this is 
 an inward spi/rUiial actwUy, hawing for its eharaders 
 increased sweetness, i/ncreased light, increased life, increased 
 sympathy. Mr. Bright, who has a foot in both worlds, 
 the world of middle-class liberalism and the world of 
 democracy, but who brings most of his ideas from the 
 world of middle-class liberalism in which he was bred, 
 always inclines to inculcate that faith in machinery 
 to which, as we have seen. Englishmen are so prone, 
 and which has been the bane of middle-class liberalism. 
 He complains with a sorrowful indignation of people 
 who " appear to have no proper estimate of the value 
 of the franchise ; " he leads his disciples to believe, — 
 what the Englishman is always too ready to believe, 
 — that the having a vote, like the having a large 
 family, or a large business, or large muscles, has in 
 itself some edifying and perfecting effect upon human 
 nature. Or else he cries out to the democracy, — 
 " the men," as he calls them, " upon whose shoulders 
 the greatness of England rests," — he cries out to 
 them : " See what you have done ! I look over this 
 country and see the cities you have built, the railroads 
 
32 CULTURE AND ANARCHY. [CHAP. 
 
 you have made, the manufactures you have produced, 
 the cargoes which freight the ships of the greatest 
 mercantile navy the world has ever seen ! I see that 
 you have converted by your labours what was once a 
 wilderness, these islands, into a fruitful garden ; I 
 know that you have created this wealth, and are a 
 nation whose name is a word of power throughout aU 
 the world." Why, this is just the very style of 
 laudation with which Mr. Eoebuck or Mr. Lowe de- 
 bauches the minds of the middle classes, and makes such 
 Philistines of them. It is the same fashion of teaching 
 a man to value himself not on what he is, not on his 
 progress in sweetness and light, but on the number of 
 the railroads he has constructed, or the bigness of the 
 tabernacle he has built. Only the middle classes are 
 told they have done it all with their energy, self- 
 reliance, and capital, and the democracy are told they 
 have done it all with their hands and sinews. But 
 teaching the democracy to put its trust in achieve- 
 ments of this kind is merely training them to be 
 Philistines to take the place of the Philistines whom 
 they are superseding ; and they too, like the middle 
 class, will be encouraged to sit down at the banquet 
 of the future without having on a wedding garment, 
 and nothing excellent can then come from them. 
 Those who know their besetting faults, those who have 
 watched them and listened to them, or those who will 
 read the instructive account recently given of them by 
 one of themselves, the Journeyman Engineer, will agree 
 that the idea which culture sets before us of perfec- 
 tion, — an increased spiritual activity, having for its 
 
I.] SWEETNESS AND UGHT. 33 
 
 characters increased sweetness, increased light, in- 
 creased life, increased sympathy, — is an idea which 
 the new democracy needs far more than the idea of 
 the blessedness of the franchise, or the wonderfulness 
 of its own industrial performances. 
 
 Other weU-meaning friends of this new power are 
 for leading it, not in the old ruts of middle -class 
 Philistinism, hut in ways which are naturally alluring 
 to the feet of democracy, though in this country they 
 are novel and untried ways. I may caU them the 
 ways of Jacobinism. Violent indignation with the 
 past, abstract systems of renovation applied whole- 
 sale, a new doctrine drawn up in black and white for 
 elaborating down to the very smallest details a rational 
 society for the future, — these are the ways of Jacob- 
 inism. Mr. Frederic Harrison and other disciples 
 of Comte, — one of them, Mr. Congreve, is an old 
 friend of mine, and I am glad to have an opportunity 
 of publicly expressing my respect for his talents and 
 character, — are among the friends of democracy who 
 are for leading it in paths of this kind. Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison is very hostile to culture, and from a natural 
 enough motive ; for culture is the eternal opponent 
 of the two things which are the signal marks of 
 Jacobinism, — its fierceness, and its addiction to an 
 abstract system. Culture is always assigning to 
 system -makers and systems a smaller share in the 
 bent of human destiny than their friends like. A 
 current in people's minds sets towards new ideas j 
 people are dissatisfied with their old narrow stock of 
 Philistine ideas, Anglo-Saxon ideas, or any other; 
 
 VOL. III. D 
 
34 CULTURE AND ANARCHY. [ohap, 
 
 and some man, some Bentham or Comte, who has the 
 real merit of having early and strongly felt and helped 
 the new current, but who brings plenty of narrowness 
 and mistakes of his own into his feeling and help of 
 it, is 1 credited with being the author of the whole 
 current, the fit person to be entrusted with its regula- 
 tion and to guide the human race. 
 
 The excellent German historian of the mythology 
 of Eome, Preller, relating the introduction at Eome 
 under the Tarquins of the worship of ApoUo, the god 
 of light, healing, and reconciliation, will have us 
 observe that it was not so much the Tarquins who 
 brought to Eome the new worship of Apollo, as a 
 current in the mind of the Eoman people which set 
 powerfully at that time towards a new worship of this 
 kind, and away from the old run of Latin and Sabine 
 religious ideas. In a similar way, culture directs our 
 attention to the natural current there is in human 
 affairs, and to its continual working, and will not let 
 us rivet our faith upon any one man and his doings. 
 It makes us see not only his good side, but also how 
 much in him was of necessity limited and transient j 
 nay, it even feels a pleasure, a sense of an increased 
 freedom and of an ampler future, in so doing. 
 
 I remember, when I was under the influence of a 
 mind to which I feel the greatest obligations, the 
 mind of a man who was the very incarnation of sanity 
 and clear sense, a man the most considerable, it seems 
 to me, whom America has yet produced, — ^Benjamin 
 Franklin, — I remember the relief with which, after 
 long feeling the sway of Franklin's imperturbable 
 
1.1 SWEETNESS iND LIGHT. 35 
 
 common-sense, I came upon a project of his for a new 
 version of the Book of Job, to replace the old ver- 
 sion, the style of which, says Franklin, has become 
 obsolete, and thence less agreeable. " I give,'' he 
 continues, " a few verses, which may serve as a 
 sample of the kind of version I would recommend." 
 We all recoUect the famous verse in our translation : 
 " Then Satan answered the Lord and said : ' Doth 
 Job fear God for nought t ' " Franklin makes this : 
 " Does your Majesty imagine that Job's good conduct 
 is the effect of mere personal attachment and affec- 
 tion 1" I well remember how, when first I read that, 
 I drew a deep breath of relief, and said to myself : 
 "After all, there is a stretch of humanity beyond 
 Franklin's victorious good sense ! " So, after hearing 
 Bentham cried loudly up as the renovator of modem 
 society, and Bentham's mind and ideas proposed as 
 the rulers of our future, I open the Deontology. There 
 I read : " While XenopUon was writing his history 
 and Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato 
 were talking nonsense under pretence of talking wis- 
 dom and morality. This morality of theirs consisted 
 in words ; this wisdom of theirs was the denial of 
 matters known to every man's experience." From 
 the moment of reading that, I am delivered from the 
 bondage of Bentham ! the fanaticism of his adherents 
 can touch me no longer. I feel the inadequacy of 
 his mind and ideas for supplying the rule of human 
 society, for perfection. 
 
 Culture tends always thus to deal with the men of 
 b system, of disciples, of a school ; with men like 
 
36 CULTUEE AND ANARCHY. [cHAP 
 
 Comte, or the late Mr. Buckle, or Mr. MiU. How- 
 ever much it may find to admire in these personages, 
 or in some of them, it nevertheless remembers the 
 text : " Be not ye called Eabbi ! " and it soon passes 
 on from any Eabbi But Jacobinism loves a Eabbi ; 
 it does not want to pass on from its Eabbi in pursuit 
 of a future and stiU unreached perfection ; it wants 
 its Eabbi and his ideas to stand for perfection, that 
 they may with the more authority recast the world ; 
 and for Jacobinism, therefore, culture, — eternally 
 passing onwards and seeking, — is an impertinence 
 and an offence. But culture, just because it resists 
 this tendency of Jacobinism to impose on us a man 
 with limitations and errors of his own along with the 
 true ideas of which he is the organ, really does the 
 world and Jacobinism itself a service. 
 
 So, too. Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the past 
 and of those whom it makes liable for the sins of the 
 past, cannot away with the inexhaustible indulgence 
 proper to culture, the consideration of circumstances, 
 the severe judgment of actions joined to the merciful 
 judgment of persons. "The man of culture is in 
 politics," cries Mr. Frederic Harrison, " one of the 
 poorest mortals alive ! " Mr. Frederic Harrison wants 
 to be doing business, and he complains that the man 
 of culture stops him with a "turn for small fault- 
 finding, love of selfish ease, and indecision in action." 
 Of what use is culture, he asks, except for " a critic 
 of new books or a professor of belles-lettres ? " Why, 
 it is of use because, in presence of the fierce exaspera- 
 tion which breathes, or rather, I may say, hisses 
 
I.] SWEETMSS AlfD LIGHT. 37 
 
 through the whole production in which Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison asks that question, it reminds us that the 
 perfection of human nature is sweetness and light. 
 It is of use because, like reUgion, — that other effort 
 after perfection, — it testifies that, where bitter envy- 
 ing and strife are, there is confusion and every evil 
 work. 
 
 The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of 
 sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness 
 and light, works to make reason and the wiU of God 
 prevail He who works for machinery, he who works 
 for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks 
 beyond machinery, culture hates hatred ; culture has 
 one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. 
 It has one even yet greater ! — the passion for making 
 them prevaU. It is not satisfied till we all come to a 
 perfect man ; it knows that the sweetness and light 
 of the few must be imperfect until the raw and un- 
 kindled masses of humanity are touched with sweet- 
 ness and light. If I have not shrunk from saying 
 that we must work for sweetness and light, so neither 
 have I shrunk from saying that we must have a broad 
 basis, must have sweetness and light for as many as 
 possible. Again and again I have insisted how those 
 are the happy moments of humanity, how those are 
 the marking epochs of a people's life, how those are 
 the flowering times for literature and art and all the 
 creative power of genius, when there is a national glow 
 of life and thought, when the whole of society^ is in 
 the fullest measure permeated by thought, sensible to 
 beauty, intelligent and alive. Only it must be real 
 
38 CtJLTtTEE AMD ANAECHY. toHA» 
 
 thought and real beauty; real sweetness and real 
 light Plenty of people will try to give the masses, 
 as they call them, an intellectual food prepared and 
 adapted in the way they think proper for the actual 
 condition of the masses. The ordinary popular litera 
 ture is an example of this way of working on the 
 masses. Plenty of people will try to indoctrinate the 
 masses with the set of ideas and judgments constitut- 
 ing the creed of their own profession or party. Our 
 religious and political organisations give an example 
 of this way of working on the masses. I condemn 
 neither way ; but culture works differently. It does 
 not try to teach down to the level of inferior classes ; 
 it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its 
 own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords. 
 It seeks to do away with classes ; to make the best 
 that has been thought and known in the world current 
 everywhere ; to make all men live in an atmosphere 
 of sweetness and Ught, where they may use ideas, as 
 it uses them itself; freely, — nourished, and not bound 
 by them. 
 
 This is the sodoU 'idea ; and the men of culture are 
 the true apostles of equality. The great men of cul- 
 ture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, 
 for making prevail, for carrying from one end of 
 society to the other, the best knowledge, the best 
 ideas of their time ; who have laboured to diveat 
 knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, 
 abstract, professional, exclusive ; to humanise it, to 
 make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated 
 and learned, yet still remaining the hest knowledge 
 
1.1 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT. 39 
 
 and thought of the time, and a true source, therefore, 
 of sweetness and light. Such a man was Abelard in 
 the Middle Ages, in spite of all his imperfections] 
 and thence the boundless emotion and enthusiasm 
 which Abelard excited. Such were Lessing and 
 Herder in Germany, at the end of the last century ; 
 and their services to Germany were in this way in- 
 estimably precious. Generations will pass, and literary 
 monuments will accumulate, and works far more per- 
 fect than the works of Lessing and Herder will be 
 produced in Germany j and yet the names of these 
 two men wUl fill a German with • a reverence and 
 enthusiasm such as the names of the most gifted 
 masters will hardly awaken. And why? Because 
 they humanised knowledge; because they broadened 
 the basis of Hfe and intelligence; because they worked 
 powerfully to diifuse sweetness and light, to make 
 reason and the will of God prevail. With Saint 
 Augustine they said : " Let us not leave thee alone 
 to make in the secret of thy knowledge, as thou didst 
 before the creation of the firmament, the division of 
 light from darkness; let the children of thy spirit, 
 placed in their firmament, make their light shine upon 
 the earth, mark the division of night and day, and 
 announce the revolution of the times ; for the old 
 order is passed, and the new arises; the night is 
 spent, the day is come forth ; and thou shalt crown 
 the year with thy blessing, when thou shalt send forth 
 labourers into thy harvest sown by other hands than 
 theirs; when thou shalt send forth new labourers to 
 new seed-times, whereof the harvest shall be not yet." 
 
CHAPTER n. 
 
 DOING AS ONE LIKES. 
 
 I HAVE been trying to show that culture is, or ought 
 to be, the study and pursuit of perfection ; and that 
 of perfection as pursued by culture, beauty and in- 
 telligence, or, in other words, sweetness and light, are 
 the main characters. But hitherto I have been in- 
 sisting chiefly on beauty, or sweetness, as a character 
 of perfection. To complete rightly my design, it 
 evidently remains to speak also of intelligence, or 
 light, as a character of perfection. 
 
 First, however, I ought perhaps to notice that, 
 both here and on the other side of the Atlantic, all 
 sorts of objections are raised against the " religion of 
 culture," as the objectors mockingly call it, which I 
 am supposed to be promulgating. It is said to be a 
 religion proposing parmaceti, or some scented salve 
 or other, as a cure for human miseries; a religion 
 breathing a spirit of cultivated inaction, making its 
 believer refuse to lend a hand at uprooting the de- 
 finite evils on all sides of us, and filling him with 
 antipathy against the reforms and reformers which 
 try to extirpate them. In general, it is summed up 
 
Maf. ii.l DblifG AS ONE tIKES. 41 
 
 as being not practical, or, — as some critics familiarly 
 put it, — all moonshine. That Alcibiades, the editor 
 of the Morning Star, taunts me, as its promulgator, 
 with living out of the world and knowing nothing of 
 life and men. That great austere toiler, the editor of 
 the Daily Telegraph, upbraids me, — but kindly, and 
 more in sorrow than in anger, — for trifling with 
 aesthetics and poetical fancies, while he himself, in 
 that arsenal of his in Fleet Street, is bearing the 
 burden and heat of the day. An intelligent American 
 newspaper, the Nation, says that it is very easy to 
 sit in one's study and find fault with the course of 
 modem society, but the thing is to propose practical 
 improvements for it. While, finally, Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison, in a very good-tempered and witty satire, 
 which makes me quite understand his having ap- 
 parently achieved such a conquest of my young 
 Prussian friend, Arminius, at last gets moved to an 
 almost stem moral impatience, to behold, as he says, 
 "Death, sin, cruelty stalk among us, filling their maws 
 with innocence and youth," and me, in the midst of the 
 general tribulation, handing out my pouncet-box. 
 
 It is impossible that all these remonstrances and 
 reproofs should not affect me, and I shall try my 
 very best, in completing my design and in speaking 
 of light as one of the characters of perfection, and of 
 culture as giving us light, to profit by the objections 
 I have heard and read, and to drive at practice as 
 much as I can, by showing the communications and 
 passages into practical life from the doctrine which I 
 am inculcating. 
 
42 CULTURE AND ANAECHY. [chap. 
 
 It is said that a man with my theories of sweetness 
 and light is full of antipathy against the rougher or 
 coarser movements going on around him, that he will 
 not lend a hand to the humble operation of uprooting 
 evil by their means, and that therefore the believers 
 in action grow impatient with him. But what if 
 rough and coarse action, ill-calculated action, action 
 with insufficient light, is, and has for a long time 
 been, our bane 1 What if our urgent want now is, 
 not to act at any price, but rather to lay in a stock of 
 light for our difficulties? In that case, to refuse to 
 lend a hand to the rougher and coarser movements 
 going on round us, to make the primary need, both 
 for oneself and others, to consist in enlightening our- 
 selves and qualifying ourselves to act less at random, 
 is surely the best and in real truth the most practical 
 line our endeavours can take. So that if I can show 
 what my opponents call rough or coarse action, but 
 what I would rather call random and iU-regulated 
 action, — action with insufficient hght, action pursued 
 because we Hke to be doing something and doing it 
 as we please, and do not like the trouble of thinking 
 and the severe constraint of any kind of rule, — if I 
 can show this to be, at the present moment, a practi- 
 cal mischief and dangerous to us, then I have found a 
 practical use for hght in correcting this state of 
 things, and have only to exemplify how, in cases which 
 fall under everybody's observation, it may deal with it. 
 
 When I began to speak of culture, I insisted on 
 our bondage to machinery, on our proneness to value 
 machinery as an end in itself, without looking beyond 
 
II.] DOING AS ONE LIKES. 43 
 
 it to the end for which alone, in truth, it is valuable 
 Freedom, I said, was one of those things which we 
 thus worshipped in itself, without enough regarding 
 the ends for which freedom is to be desired. In 
 our common notions and talk about freedom, we 
 eminently show our idolatry of machinery. Our 
 prevalent notion is, — and I quoted a number of in- 
 stances to prove it, — that it is a most happy and im- 
 portant thing for a man merely to be able to do as 
 he likes. On what he is to do when he is thus free 
 to do as he likes, we do not lay so much stress. Our 
 familiar praise of the British Constitution under 
 which we Uve, is that it is a system of . checks, — a 
 system which stops and paralyses any power in inter- 
 fering with the free action of individuals. To this 
 effect Mr. Bright, who loves to walk in the old ways 
 of the Constitution, said forcibly in one of his great 
 speeches, what many other people are every day saying 
 less forcibly, that the central idea of English life and 
 politics is the assertion of perscmai liberty. Evidently 
 this is so ; but evidently, also, as feudalism, which 
 with its ideas and habits of subordination was for 
 many centuries silently behind the British Constitu- 
 tion, dies out, and we are left with nothing but our 
 system of checks, and our notion of its being the 
 great right and happiness of an Englishman to do as 
 far as possible what he likes, we are in danger of 
 drifting towards anarchy. We have not the notion, 
 so familiar on the Continent and to antiquity, of the 
 State, — the nation in its collective and corporate char- 
 acter, entrusted with stringent powers for the gene* 
 
44 CULTURE AND ANAECHT. [cHAi, 
 
 ral advantage, and controlling individual wills in the 
 name of an interest wider than that of individuals. 
 We say, what is very true, that this notion is often 
 made instrumental to tyranny ; we say that a State 
 is in reality made up of the individuals who compose 
 it, and that every individual is the best judge of his 
 own interests. Our leading class is an aristocracy, 
 and no aristocracy likes the notion of a State-authority 
 greater than itself, with a stringent administrative 
 machinery superseding the decorative inutilities of 
 lord-lieutenancy, deputy -lieutenancy, and the posse 
 comtatus, which are all in its own hands. Our 
 middle class, the great representative of trade and 
 Dissent, with its maxims of every man for himself in 
 business, every man for himself in religion, dreads a 
 powerful administration which might somehow inter- 
 fere with it; and besides, it has its own decorative 
 inutilities of vestrymanship and guardianship, which 
 are to this class what lord-lieutenancy and the county 
 magistracy are to the aristocratic class, and a stringent 
 administration might either take these functions out 
 of its hands, or prevent its exercising them in its 
 own comfortable, independent manner, as at present 
 Then as to our working class. This class, pressed 
 constantly by the hard daily compulsion of material 
 wants, is naturally the very centre and stronghold of 
 our national idea, that it is man's ideal right and 
 felicity to do as he likes. I think I have somewhere 
 related how M. Michelet said to me of the people of 
 France, that it was " a nation of barbarians civilised 
 by the conscription." He meant that through their 
 
II.] DOING AS ONE LIKES. 45 
 
 military service the idea of public duty and of dis- 
 cipline was brought to the mind of these masses, in 
 other respects so raw and uncultivated. Our masses 
 are quite as raw and uncultivated as the French ; 
 and so far from their having the idea of public duty 
 and of discipline, superior to the individual's self-will, 
 brought to their mind by a universal obligation of 
 military service, such as that of the conscription, — so 
 far from their having this, the very idea of a conscrip- 
 tion is so at variance with our English notion of the 
 prime right and blessedness of doing as one Ukes, that 
 I remember the manager of the Clay Cross works in 
 Derbyshire told me during the Crimean war, when 
 our want of soldiers was much felt and some people 
 were talking of a conscription, that sooner than sub- 
 mit to a conscription the population of that district 
 would flee to the mines, and lead a sort of Eobin 
 Hood life under ground. 
 
 For a long time, as I have said, the strong feudal 
 habits of subordination and deference continued to 
 tell upon the working class. The modem spirit has 
 now almost entirely dissolved those habits, and the 
 anarchical tendency of our worship of freedom in and 
 for itself, of our superstitious faith, as I say, in 
 machinery, is becoming very manifest. More and 
 more, because of this our blind faith in machinery, 
 because of our want of light to enable us to look 
 beyond machinery to the end for which machinery is 
 valuable, this and that man, and this and that body 
 of men, all over the country, are beginning to assert 
 and put in practice an Englishman's right to do what 
 
46 COLTUEE AND ANARCHY. [CHA» 
 
 he likes; his right to march where he likes, meet 
 where he likes, enter where he likes, hoot as he likes, 
 threaten as he likes, smash as he Kkes. All this, 
 I say, tends to anarchy; and though a number of 
 excellent people, and particularly my friends of the 
 Liberal or progressive party, as they call themselves, 
 are kind enough to reassure us by saying that these 
 are trifles, that a few transient outbreaks of rowdyism 
 signify nothing, that our system of liberty is one 
 which itself cures all the evils which it works, that 
 the educated and intelligent classes stand in over- 
 whelming strength and majestic repose, ready, like 
 our military force in riots, to act at a moment's 
 notice, — yet one finds that one's Liberal friends gener- 
 ally say this because they have such faith in them- 
 selves and their nostrums, when they shall return, as 
 the public welfare requires, to place and power. But 
 this faith of theirs one cannot exactly share, when 
 one has so long had them and their nostrums at work, 
 and sees that they have not prevented our coming to 
 our present embarrassed condition. And one finds, 
 also, that the outbreaks of rowdyism tend to become 
 less and less of trifles, to become more frequent rather 
 than less frequent ; and that meanwhile our educated 
 and intelligent classes remain in their majestic repose, 
 and somehow or other, whatever happens, their over- 
 whelming strength, like our miUtaxy force in riots, 
 never does act 
 
 How, indeed, sJwuM their overwhelming strength 
 act, when the man who gives an inflammatory lecture, 
 or breaks down the park railings, or invades a Secre- 
 
II.] DOING AS ONE LIKES. 47 
 
 tary of State's office, is oiily following an Englishman's 
 impulse to do as he likes ; and our own conscience 
 tells us that we ourselves have always regarded this 
 impulse as something primary and sacred? Mr. 
 Murphy lectiures at Birmingham, and showers on the 
 Catholic population of that town " words," says the 
 Home Secretary, "only fit to be addressed to thieves 
 or murderers." What then] Mr. Murphy has his 
 own reasons of several kinds. He suspects the 
 Eoman Catholic Church of designs upon Mrs. Murphy; 
 and he says if mayors and magistrates do not care 
 for their wives and daughters, he does. But, above 
 all, he is doing as he likes ; or, in worthier language, 
 asserting his personal liberty. " I will carry out my 
 lectures if they walk over my body as a dead corpse , 
 and I say to the Mayor of Birmingham that he is my 
 servant while I am in Birmingham, and as my servant 
 he must do his duty and protect me." Touching and 
 beautiful words, which find a sympathetic chord in 
 every British bosom ! The moment it is plainly put 
 before us that a man is asserting his personal liberty, 
 we are half disarmed ; because we are believers in 
 freedom, and not in some dream of a right reason to 
 which the assertion of our freedom is to be subor- 
 dinated. Accordingly, the Secretary of State had to 
 say that although the lecturer's language was 
 " only fit to be addressed to thieves or murderers," 
 yet, "I do not think he is to be deprived, I do 
 not think that anything I have said could justify 
 the inference that he is to be deprived, of the right 
 of protection in a place built by him for the purpose 
 
48 CULTUEE AND ANAECHT. loHAP. 
 
 of these lectures; because the language was not 
 language which ajflfbrded grounds for a criminal prose- 
 cutioa" No, nor to be silenced by Mayor, or Home 
 Secretary, or any administrative authority on earth, 
 simply on their notion of what is discreet and 
 reasonable ! This is in perfect consonance with our 
 public opinion, and with our national love for the 
 assertion of personal liberty. 
 
 In quite another department of affairs, an experi- 
 enced and distinguished Chancery Judge relates an 
 incident which is just to the same effect as this of Mr. 
 Murphy. A testator bequeathed £300 a year, to be 
 for ever applied as a pension to some person who 
 had been unsuccessful in literature, and whose duty 
 should be to support and diffuse, by his writings, 
 the testator's own views, as enforced in the testator's 
 publications. The views were not worth a straw, 
 and the bequest was appealed against in the Court of 
 Chancery on the ground of its absurdity ; but, being 
 only absurd, it was upheld, and the so-called charity 
 was established. Having, I say, at the bottom of our 
 English hearts a very strong belief in freedom, and a 
 very weak belief in right reason, we are soon silenced 
 when a man pleads the prime right to do as he Kkes, 
 because this is the prime right for ourselves too; 
 and even if we attempt now and then to mumble 
 something about reason, yet we have ourselves 
 thought so little about this and so much about 
 liberty, that we are in conscience forced, when 
 our brother Phihstine with whom we are meddling 
 turns boldly round upon us and asks : Have ymi 
 
«.] DOING AS ONE LIKES. 49 
 
 amy light? — ^to shake our heads ruefully, and to let 
 him go his own way after alL 
 
 There are many things to be said on behalf of this 
 exclusive attention of ours to liberty, and of the 
 relaxed habits of government which it has engendered. 
 It is very easy to mistake or to exaggerate the sort 
 of anarchy from which we are in danger through 
 them. "We are not in danger from Fenianism, fierce 
 and turbulent as it may show itself ; for against this 
 our conscience is free enough to let us act resolutely 
 and put forth our overwhelming strength the moment 
 there is any real need for it. In the first place, it 
 never was any part of our creed that the great right 
 and blessedness of an Irishman, or, indeed, of anybody 
 on earth except an Englishman, is to do as he Ukes ; 
 and we can have no scruple at all about abridging, if 
 necessary, a non- Englishman's assertion of personal 
 liberty. The British Constitution, its checks, and its 
 prime virtues, are for Englishmen. We may extend 
 them to others out of love and kindness ; but we find 
 no real divine law written on our hearts constraining 
 us so to extend them. And then the difierence 
 between an Irish Fenian and an English rough is so 
 immense, and the case, in dealing with the Fenian, so 
 much more clear ! He is so evidently desperate and 
 dangerous, a man of a conquered race, a Papist, with 
 centuries of ill-usage to inflame him against us, with 
 an alien religion established in his country by us at 
 his expense, with no admiration of our institutions, 
 no love of our virtues, no talents for our business, no 
 turn for our comfort! Show him our symbolical 
 
 VOL. m. B 
 
50 CULTURE AND ANAECHY. [ohap. 
 
 Truss Manufactory on the finest site in Europe, and 
 tell him that British industrialism and individualism 
 can bring a man to that, and he remains cold ! 
 Evidently, if we deal tenderly with a sentimentalist 
 like this, it is out of pure philanthropy. 
 
 But with the Hyde Park rioter how different! 
 He is our own flesh and blood; he is a Protestant; 
 he is framed by nature to do as we do, hate what 
 we hate, love what we love ; he is capable of feeling 
 the symbolical force of the Truss Manufactory ; the 
 question of questions, for him, is a wages question. 
 That beautiful sentence Sir Daniel Gooch quoted to 
 the Swindon workmen, and which I treasure as Mrs. 
 Goooh's Golden Rule, or the Divine Injunction " Be 
 ye Perfect" done into British, — the sentence Sir 
 Daniel Gooch's mother repeated to him every morning 
 when he was a boy going to work : — "Ever remember, 
 my dea/r Dan, that you should took forwa/rd to being some 
 dwy mcmager of. that concern ! " — this truthful maxim is 
 perfectly fitted to shine forth in the heart of the 
 Hyde Park rough also, and to be his guiding-star 
 through life. He has no visionary schemes of revolu- 
 tion and transformation, though of course he would 
 like his class to rule, as the aristocratic class Hke their 
 class to rule, and the middle class theirs. But mean- 
 while our social machine is a little out of order; 
 there are a good many people in our paradisiacal 
 centres of industrialism and individualism taking the 
 bread out of one another's mouths. The rough has 
 not yet quite found his groove and settled down to his 
 work, and so he is juat asserting his personal liberty a 
 
a] DOING AS ONE LIKES. 51 
 
 little, going where he likes, assembling where he likes, 
 bawling as he likes, hustling as he likes. Just as the 
 rest of us, — as the country squires in the aristocratic 
 class, as the political dissenters in the middle class, — 
 he has no idea of a State, of the nation in its collective 
 and corporate character controlling, as government, 
 the free swing of this or that one of its members in the 
 name of the higher reason of all of them, his own as 
 well as that of others. He sees the rich, the aristo- 
 cratic class, in occupation of the executive government, 
 and so if he is stopped from making Hyde Park a 
 bear-garden or the streets impassable, he says he is 
 being butchered by the aristocracy. 
 
 His apparition is somewhat embarrassing, because 
 too many cooks spoil the broth ; because, while the 
 aristocratic and middle classes have long been doing 
 as they like with great vigour, he has been too un- 
 developed and submissive hitherto to join in the 
 game; and now, when he does come, he comes in 
 immense numbers, and is rather raw and rough. But 
 he does not break many laws, or not many at one 
 time ; and, as our laws were made for very dififerent 
 circumstances from oxa present (but always with an 
 eye to Englishmen doing as they like), and as the 
 clear letter of the law must be against our English- 
 man who does as he likes and not only the spirit of 
 the law and public policy, and as Government must 
 neither have any discretionary power nor act resolutely 
 on its own interpretation of the law if any one disputes 
 it, it is evident our laws give our playful giant, in 
 doing as he likes, considerable advantage. Besides, 
 
62 CULTDEB AND ANARCHY. [OHAP, 
 
 even if he can be clearly proved to commit an illegality 
 in doing as he likes, there is always the resource of 
 not putting the law in force, or of abolishing it. So 
 he has his way, and if he has his way he is soon 
 satisfied for the time. However, he falls into the 
 habit of taking it oftener and oftener, and at last 
 begins to create by his operations a confusion of which 
 mischievous people can take advantage, and which, at 
 any rate, by troubling the common course of business 
 throughout the country, tends to cause distress, and 
 so to increase the sort of anarchy and social disinte- 
 gration which had previously commenced. And thus 
 that profound sense of settled order and security, 
 without which a society like ours cannot live and 
 grow at all, sometimes seems to be beginning to 
 threaten us with taking its departure. 
 
 Now, if culture, which simply means trying to 
 perfect oneself, and one's mind as part of oneself, 
 brings us light, and if light shows us that there is 
 nothing so very blessed in merely doing as one likes, 
 that the worship of the mere freedom to do as one 
 likes is worship of machinery, that the really blessed 
 thing is to like what right reason ordains, and to 
 follow her authority, then we have got a practical 
 benefit out of culture. We have got a much wanted 
 principle, a principle of authority, to counteract the ten- 
 dency to anarchy which seems to be threatening us. 
 
 But how to organise this authority, or to what 
 hands to entrust the wielding of itl How to get 
 your State, summing up the right reason of the com- 
 munity, and giving effect to it, as circumstances maj 
 
n.] DOING AS ONE LIKES. 53 . 
 
 require, with vigour 1 And here I think I see my 
 enemies waiting for me with a hungry joy in their 
 eyes. But I shall elude them. 
 
 The State, the power most representing the right 
 reason of the nation, and most worthy, therefore, of 
 ruling, — of exercising, when circumstances require it, 
 authority over us all, — ^is for Mr. Carlyle the aristo- 
 cracy. For Mr. Lowe, it is the middle class with its 
 incomparable Parliament. For the Eeform League, 
 it is the working class, the class with " the brightest 
 powers of sympathy and readiest powers of action." 
 Now culture, with its disinterested pursuit of perfec- 
 tion, culture, simply trying to see things as they are 
 in order to seize on the best and to make it prevail, 
 is surely well fitted to help us to judge rightly, by 
 all the aids of observing, reading, and thinking, the 
 qualifications and titles to our confidence of these 
 three candidates for authority, and can thus render 
 us a practical service of no mean value. 
 
 So when Mr. Carlyle, a man of genius to whom 
 we have aU at one time or other been indebted for 
 refreshment and stimulus, says we should give rule 
 to the aristocracy, mainly because of its dignity and 
 politeness, surely culture is useful in reminding us, 
 that in our idea of perfection the characters of beauty 
 and intelligence are both of them present, and sweet- 
 ness and Hght, the two noblest of things, are united. 
 Allowing, therefore, with Mr. Carlyle, the aristocratic 
 class to possess sweetness, culture insists on the neces- 
 sity of light also, and shows us that aristocracies, 
 being by the very nature of things inaccessible to 
 
54 OULTUEE AND ANAEOHY. [oHAP. 
 
 ideas, unapt to see how the world is going, must be 
 somewhat wanting in light, and must therefore be, at 
 a moment when light is our great requisite, inadequate 
 to our needs. Aristocracies, those children of the 
 established fact, are for epochs of concentration. In 
 epochs of expansion, epochs such as that in which we 
 now live, epochs when always the warning voice is 
 again heard : Now is the judgmerd of this world, — in 
 such epochs aristocracies with their natural clinging 
 to the established fact, their want of sense for the 
 flux of things, for the inevitable transitoriness of all 
 human institutions, are bewildered and helpless. Their 
 serenity, their high spirit, their power of haughty 
 resistance, — the great qualities of an aristocracy, and 
 the secret of its distinguished maimers and dignity, — 
 these very qualities, in an epoch of expansion, turn 
 against their possessors. Again and again I have 
 said how the refinement of an aristocracy may be 
 precious and educative to a raw nation as a kind of 
 shadow of true refinement; how its serenity and 
 dignified freedom from petty cares may serve as a 
 useful foil to set off the vulgarity and hideousness of 
 that type of life which a hard middle class tends to 
 establish, and to help people to see this vulgarity and 
 hideousness in their true colours. But the true grace 
 and serenity is that of which Greece and Greek art 
 suggest the admirable ideals of perfection, — a serenity 
 which comes from having made order among ideas 
 and harmonised them ; whereas the serenity of aristo- 
 cracies, at least the peculiar serenity of aristocracies 
 of Teutonic origin, appears to come from their never 
 
ti.] DOING AS ONE LIKES. 56 
 
 having liad any ideas to trouble them. And so, in a 
 time oi expansion like the present, a time for ideas, 
 one gets perhaps, in regarding an aristocracy, even 
 more than the idea of serenity, the idea of futility 
 and sterility. 
 
 One has often wondered whether upon the whole 
 earth there is anything so unintelligent, so unapt to 
 perceive how the world is really going, as an ordinary 
 young Englishman of our upper class. Ideas he has 
 not, and neither has he that seriousness of our middle 
 class which is, as I have often said, the great strength 
 of this class, and may become its salvation. Why, a 
 man may hear a young Dives of the aristocratic class, 
 when the whim takes him to sing the praises of wealth 
 and material comfort, sing them with a cynicism from 
 which the conscience of the veriest Philistine of our 
 industrial middle class would recoil in affright. And 
 when, with the natural sjrmpathy of aristocracies for 
 firm dealing with the multitude, and his uneasiness 
 at our feeble dealing with it at home, an unvarnished 
 young Englishman of our aristocratic class applauds 
 the absolute rulers on the Continent, he in general 
 manages completely to miss the grounds of reason 
 and intelligence which alone can give any colour of 
 justification, any possibility of existence, to those 
 rulers, and applauds them on grounds which it would 
 make their own hair stand on end to listen to. 
 
 And all this time we are in an epoch of expansion ; 
 and the essence of an epoch of expansion is a move- 
 ment of ideas, and the one salvation of an epoch of 
 expansion is a harmony of ideas. The very principle 
 
56 CULTURE AND ANAECHY. [chap 
 
 of the authority which we are- seeking as a defence 
 against anarchy is right reason, ideas, light. The 
 more, therefore, an aristocracy calls to its aid its 
 innate forces, — ^its impenetrability, its high spirit, its 
 power of haughty resistance, — to deal with an epoch 
 of expansion, the graver is the danger, the greater 
 the certainty of explosion, the surer the aristocracy's 
 defeat ; for it is trying to do violence to nature instead 
 of working along with it. The best powers shown by 
 the best men of an aristocracy at such an epoch are, 
 it wiU be observed, non-aristocratical powers, powers 
 pf industry, powers of intelligence ; and these powers 
 thus exhibited, tend really not to strengthen the 
 aristocracy, but to take their owners out of it, to 
 expose them to the dissolving agencies of thought 
 and change, to make them men of the modem spirit 
 and of the future. If, as sometimes happens, they 
 add to their non-aristocratical qualities of labour and 
 thought, a strong dose of aristocratical qualities also, 
 — of pride, defiance, turn for resistance, — this truly 
 aristocratical side of them, so far from adding any 
 strength to them, really neutralises their force and 
 makes them impracticable and ineffective. 
 
 Knowing myself to be indeed sadly to seek, as 
 one of my many critics says, in " a philosophy with 
 coherent, interdependent, subordinate, and derivative 
 principles," I continually have recourse to a plain 
 man's expedient of trying to make what few simple 
 notions I have, clearer and more intelligible to myseli 
 by means of example and illustration. And having 
 been brought up at Oxford in the bad old times. 
 
U.] DOING AS ONE LIKES. 67 
 
 when we were stuffed with Greek and Aristotle, and 
 thought nothing of preparing ourselves by the study 
 of modem languages, — as after Mr. Lowe's great 
 speech at Edinburgh we shall do, — to fight the 
 battle of life with the waiters in foreign hotels, my 
 head is stiU full of a lumber of phrases we learnt at 
 Oxford from Aristotle, about virtue being in a mean, 
 and about excess and defect, and so on. Once when 
 I had had the advantage of listening to the Eeform 
 debates in the House of Commons, having heard a 
 number of interesting speakers, and among them a 
 well-known lord and a well-known baronet, I re- 
 member it struck me, applying Aristotle's machinery 
 of the mean to my ideas about our aristocracy, that 
 the lord was exactly the perfection, or happy mean, 
 or virtue, of aristocracy, and the baronet the excess. 
 And I fancied that by observing these two we might 
 see both the inadequacy- of aristocracy to supply the 
 principle of authority needful for our present wants, 
 and the danger of its trying to supply it when it was 
 not really competent for the business. On the one 
 hand, in the brilliant lord, showing plenty of high 
 spirit, but remarkable, far above and beyond his gift 
 of high spirit, for the fine tempering of his high 
 spirit, for ease, serenity, politeness, — the great vir- 
 tues, as Mr. Carlyle says, of aristocracy, — in this 
 beautiful and virtuous mean, there seemed evidently 
 some insufficiency of light ; while, on the other hand, 
 the worthy baronet, in whom the high spirit of 
 aristocracy, its impenetrability, defiant courage, and 
 pride of resistance, were developed even in excess, 
 
58 CULTURE ASD ANAECHT. [CHAi> 
 
 was manifestly capable, if he had his way given him, 
 of causing us great danger, and, indeed, of throwing 
 the whole commonwealth into confusion. Then I 
 reverted to that old fundamental notion of mine 
 about the grand merit of our race being really our 
 honesty. And the very helplessness of our aristo- 
 cratic or governing class in dealing with our per- 
 turbed social condition, their jealousy of entrusting 
 too much power to the State as it now actually exists 
 — ^that is to themselves — ^gave me a sort of pride and 
 satisfaction; because I saw they were, as a whole, 
 too honest to try and manage a business for which 
 they did not feel themselves capable. 
 
 Surely, now, it is no inconsiderable boon which 
 culture confers upon us, if in embarrassed times 
 like the present it enables us to look at the ins 
 and the outs of things in this way, without hatred 
 and without partiality, and with a disposition to see 
 the good in everybody all round. And I try to 
 follow just the same course with our middle class 
 as with our aristocracy. Mr. Lowe talks to us of 
 this strong middle part of the nation, of the un- 
 rivalled deeds of our Liberal middle -class Parlia- 
 ment, of the noble, the heroic work it has per- 
 formed in the last thirty years ; and I begin to ask 
 myself if we shall not, then, find in our middle class 
 the principle of authority we want, and if we had 
 not better take administration as well as legislation 
 away from the weak extreme which now administers 
 for us, and commit both to the strong middle part. 
 I observe, too, that the heroes of middle-class liberal- 
 
11.] DOING AS ONE LIKES. 59 
 
 ism, such as we have hitherto known it, speak with 
 a kind of prophetic anticipation of the great destiny 
 which awaits them, and as if the future was clearly 
 theirs. The advanced party, the progressive party, 
 the party in alliance with the future, are the names 
 they like to give themselves. " The principles which 
 will obtain recognition in the future," says Mr. MiaU, 
 a personage of deserved eminence among the political 
 Dissenters, as they are called, who have been the 
 backbone of middle-class liberalism, — " the principles 
 which will obtain recognition in the future are the 
 principles for which I have long and zealously 
 laboured. I quaUfied myself for joining in the 
 work of harvest by doing to the best of my ability 
 the duties of seedtime." These duties, if one is to 
 gather them from the works of the great Liberal 
 party in the last thirty years, are, as I have else- 
 where summed them up, the advocacy of free trade, 
 of Parliamentary reform, of abolition of church-rates, 
 oi voluntaryism in religion and education, of non- 
 interference of the State between employers and 
 employed, and of marriage with one's deceased 
 wife's sister. 
 
 Now I know, when I object that all this is 
 machinery, the great Liberal middle class has by 
 this time grown cunning enough to answer that it 
 always meant more by these things than meets the 
 eye ; that it has had that within which passes show, 
 and that we are soon going to see, in a Free Church 
 and all manner of good things, what it was. But I 
 have learned from Bishop Wilson (if Mr. Frederic 
 
60 CULTUEE AND AUAECHY. [OHAP. 
 
 Harrison will forgive my again quoting that pooJ 
 old hieropliant of a decayed superstition) : " If we 
 would really know our heart let us impartially view 
 our actions ;" and I cannot help thinking that if our 
 Liberals had had so much sweetness and light in 
 their inner minds as they allege, more of it must 
 have come out in their sayings and doings. 
 
 An American friend of the English Liberals says, 
 indeed, that their Dissidence of Dissent has been a 
 mere instrument of the political Dissenters for 
 making reason and the will of God prevail (and no 
 doubt he would say the same of marriage with one's 
 deceased wife's sister); and that the abolition of a 
 State Church is merely the Dissenter's means to this 
 end, just as culture is mine. Another American 
 defender of theirs says just the same of their indus- 
 trialism and free trade ; indeed, this gentleman, 
 taking the bull by the horns, proposes that we 
 should for the future call industrialism culture, and 
 the industrialists the men of culture, and then of 
 course there cpn be no longer any misapprehension 
 about their true character ; and besides the pleasure 
 of being wealthy and comfortable, they wiU have 
 authentic recognition as vessels of sweetness and 
 light. 
 
 All this is undoubtedly specious; but I must 
 remark that the culture of which I talked was an 
 endeavour to come at reason and the wiU of God 
 by means of reading, observing, and thinking; and 
 that whoever calls anything else culture, may, indeed, 
 call it so if he Ukes, but then he talks of something 
 
n.] DOING AS ONE LIKES. 6? 
 
 quite different from what I talked of. And, again, 
 as culture's way of working for reason and the will 
 of God is by directly trying to know more about 
 them, while the Dissidence of Dissent is evidently 
 in itself no effort of this kind, nor is its Free Church, 
 in fact, a church with worthier conceptions of God 
 and the ordering of the world than the State Church 
 professes, but with mainly the same conceptions of 
 these as the State Church has, only that every man 
 is to comport himself as he hkes in professing them, 
 — this being so, I cannot at once accept the Non- 
 conformity any more than the industrialism and the 
 other great works of our Liberal middle class as 
 proof positive that this class is in possession of light, 
 and that here is the true seat of authority for which 
 we are in search ; but I must try a little further, and 
 seek for other indications which may enable me to 
 make up my mind. 
 
 Why should we not do with the middle class as 
 we have done with the aristocratic class, — find in it 
 some representative men who may stand for the 
 virtuous mean of this class, for the perfection of its 
 present qualities and mode of being, and also for the 
 excess of them. Such men must clearly not be men 
 of genius like Mr. Bright j for, as I have formerly 
 said, so far as a man has genius he tends to take 
 himself out of the category of class altogether, and 
 to become simply a man. Some more ordinary man 
 would be more to the purpose, — would sum up bettei 
 in himself, without disturbing influences, the general 
 liberal force of the middle class, the force by which 
 
62 CULTURE AND ANAECHT. [ohap. 
 
 it has done its great works of free trade, Parliar 
 mentary reform, voluntaryism, and so on, and the 
 spirit in which it has done them. Now it happens 
 that a typical middle-class man, the member for one 
 of our chief industrial cities, has given us a famous 
 sentence which bears directly on the resolution of 
 our present question : whether there is light enough 
 in our middle class to make it the proper seat of the 
 authority we wish to establish. When there was a 
 talk some little whUe ago about the state of middle- 
 class education, our friend, as the representative of 
 that class, spoke some memorable words : — " There 
 had been a cry that middle-class education ought to 
 receive more attention. He confessed himself very 
 much surprised by the clamour that was raised. 
 He did not think that class need excite the sym- 
 pathy either of the legislature or the public.'' Now 
 this satisfaction of our middle-class member of Par- 
 liament with the mental state of the middle class 
 was truly representative, and makes good his claim 
 to stand as the beautiful and virtuous mean of that 
 class. But it is obviously at variance with our 
 definition of culture, or the pursuit of light and 
 perfection, which made light and perfection consist, 
 not in resting and being, but in growing and be- 
 coming, in a perpetual advance in beauty and wisdom. 
 So the middle class is by its essence, as one may say, 
 by its incomparable self-satisfaction decisively ex- 
 pressed through its beautiful and virtuous mean, 
 self-excluded from wielding an authority of which 
 light is to be the very souL 
 
«.] DOING AS OITB LIKES. 63 
 
 Clear as this is, it mil be made clearer still if we 
 take some representative man as the excess of the 
 middle class, and remember that the middle class, in 
 general, is to be conceived as a body swaying between 
 the qualities of its mean and of its excess, and on 
 the whole, of course, as human nature is constituted, 
 inclining rather towards the excess than the mean. 
 Of its excess no better representative can possibly be 
 imagined than a Dissenting minister from Walsall, 
 who came before, the public in connection with the 
 proceedings at Birmingham of Mr. Murphy, already 
 mentioned. Speaking in the midst of an irritated 
 popxilation of Catholics, this Walsall gentleman ex- 
 claimed : " I say, then, away with the Mass ! It is 
 from the bottomless pit; and in the bottomless pit 
 shall all liars have their part, in the lake that bumeth 
 with fire and brimstone." And again : " When all 
 the praties were black in Ireland, why didn't the 
 priests say the hopus-pocus over them, and make them 
 all good again ? " He shared, too, Mr. Murphy's fears 
 of some invasion of his domestic happiness : " What 
 I wish to say to you as Protestant husbands is. Take 
 care of yowr mwes 1 " And finally, in the true vein of 
 an Englishman doing as he likes, a vein of which I 
 have at some length pointed out the present dangers, 
 he recommended for imitation the example of some 
 churchwardens at Dublin, among whom, said he, 
 " there was a Luther and also a Melanchthon," who 
 had made very short work with some ritualist or 
 other, hauled him down from his pulpit, and kicked 
 him out of church. Now it is manifest, as I said in 
 
64 CULTURE AND ANASCHY. [cHAP. 
 
 the case of our aristocratical baronet, that if we let 
 this excess of the sturdy English middle class, this 
 conscientious Protestant Dissenter, so strong, so self- 
 reliant, so fully persuaded in his own mind, have his 
 way, he would be capable, with his want of hght, — 
 or, to use the language of the religious world, with his 
 zeal without knowledge, — of stirring up strife which 
 neither he nor any one else could easily compose. 
 
 And then comes in, as it did also with the aristo- 
 cracy, the honesty of our race, and by the voice of 
 another middle-class man, Alderman of the City of 
 London and Colonel of the City of London Militia, 
 proclaims that it has twinges of conscience, and that 
 it will not attempt to cope with our social disorders, 
 and to deal with a business which it feels to be too 
 high for it. Every one remembers how this virtuous 
 Alderman-Colonel, or Colonel- Alderman, led his militia 
 through the London streets ; how the bystanders 
 gathered to see him pass ; how the London roughs, 
 asserting an Englishman's best and most blissful right 
 of doing what he likes, robbed and beat the bystanders ; 
 and how the blameless warrior-magistrate refused to 
 let his troops interfere. " The crowd," he touchingly 
 said afterwards, " was mostly composed of fine healthy 
 strong men, bent on mischief ; if he had allowed his 
 soldiers to interfere they might have been over- 
 powered, their rifles taken from them and used 
 against them by the mob ; a riot, in fact, might have 
 ensued, and been attended with bloodshed, compared 
 with which the assaults and loss of property that actu- 
 fjly occurred would have been as nothing." Honest 
 
II.] DOING AS ONE LIKES. 65 
 
 and affecting testimony of the English middle class to 
 its own inadequacy for the authoritative part one's 
 admiration would sometimes incline one to assign to 
 it ! " Who are we," they say by the voice of their 
 Alderman -Colonel, " that we should not be over- 
 powered if we attempt to cope with social anarchy, 
 our rifles taken from us and used against us by the 
 mob, and we, perhaps, robbed and beaten ourselves 1 
 Or what light have we, beyond a free-born English- 
 man's impulse to do as he likes, which could justify 
 us in preventing, at the cost of bloodshed, other free- 
 bom Englishmen from doing as they like, and robbing 
 and beating us as much as they please ? " 
 
 This distrust of themselves as an adequate centre 
 of authority does not mark the working class, as was 
 shown by their readiness the other day in Hyde Park 
 to take upon themselves all the functions of govern- 
 ment. But this comes from the working class being, 
 as I have often said, still an embryo, of which no one 
 can yet quite foresee the final development; and 
 from its not having the same experience and self- 
 knowledge as the aristocratic and middle classes. 
 Honesty it no doubt has, just like the other classes of 
 Englishmen, but honesty in an inchoate and untrained 
 state ; and meanwhile its powers of action, which are, 
 as Mr. Frederic Harrison says, exceedingly ready, 
 easily run away with it. That it cannot at present 
 have a sufficiency of light which comes by culture, 
 — that is, by reading, observing, and thinking, — is 
 clear from the very nature of its condition ; and, 
 indeed, we saw that Mr. Frederic Harrison, in seeking 
 
 VOL. III. F 
 
66 OULTUKE AND ANARCHY. [chap. 
 
 to make a free stage for its bright powers of sym- 
 pathy and ready powers of action, had to begin by 
 throwing overboard culture, and flouting it as only 
 fit for a professor of belles-lettres. StUl, to make it 
 perfectly manifest that no more in the working class 
 than in the aristocratic and middle classes can one 
 find an adequate centre of authority, — that is, as cul- 
 ture teaches us to conceive our required authority, of 
 light, — let us again foUow, with this class, the method 
 we have followed with the aristocratic and middle 
 classes, and try to bring before our minds repre- 
 sentative men, who may figure to us its virtue and 
 its excess. 
 
 We must not take, of course, men like the chiefs 
 of the Hyde Park demonstration. Colonel Dickson or 
 Mr. Beales ; because Colonel Dickson, by his martial 
 profession and dashing exterior, seems to belong pro- 
 perly, like Julius Osesar and Mirabeau and other 
 great popular leaders, to the aristocratic class, and to 
 be carried into the popular ranks only by his ambi- 
 tion or his genius ; while Mr. Beales belongs to our 
 solid middle class, and, perhaps, if he had not been a 
 great popular leader, would have been a Philistine. 
 But Mr. Odger, whose speeches we have aU read, and 
 of whom his friends relate, besides, much that is 
 favourable, may very well stand for the beautiful and 
 virtuous mean of our present working class ; and I 
 think everybody will admit that in Mr. Odger there 
 is manifestly, with all his good points, some insuffi- 
 ciency of light. The excess of the working class, in 
 its present state of development, is perhaps best 
 
n.] DOING AS ONE LIKES. 67 
 
 shown in Mr. Bradlaugh, the iconoclast, who seems 
 to be almost for baptizing us all in blood and fire 
 into his new social dispensation, and to whose reflec- 
 tions, now that I have once been set going on Bishop 
 Wilson's track, I cannot forbear commendiag this 
 maxim of the good old man : " Intemperance in talk 
 makes a dreadful havoc in the heart." Mr. Bradlaugh, 
 like our types of excess in the aristocratic and middle 
 classes, is evidently capable, if he had his head given 
 him, of running us all into great dangers and con- 
 fusion. I conclude, therefore, — what indeed, few of 
 those who do me the honour to read this disquisition 
 are likely to dispute, — that we can as little find in 
 the working class as in the aristocratic or in the 
 middle class our much-wanted source of authority, as 
 culture suggests it to us. 
 
 Well, then, what if we tried to rise above the idea 
 of class to the idea of the whole community, the State, 
 and to find our centre of light and authority there 1 
 Every one of us has the idea of country, as a senti- 
 ment ; hardly any one of us has the idea of the State, 
 as a working power. And why ? Because we habitu- 
 ally live in our ordinary selves, which do not carry 
 us beyond the ideas and wishes of the class to which 
 we happen to belong. And we are all afraid of giving 
 to the State too much power, because we only conceive 
 of the State as something equivalent to the class in 
 occupation of the executive government, and are afraid 
 of that class abusing power to its own purposes. If 
 we strengthen the State with the aristocratic class in 
 occupation of the executive government, we imagine 
 
68 CULTURE AND ANARCHY. [cHAP, 
 
 we are delivering ourselves up captive to the ideas 
 and wishes of our fierce aristocratical baronet ; if with 
 the middle class in occupation of the executive go- 
 vernment, to those of our truculent middle-class Dis- 
 senting minister ; if with the working class, to those 
 of its notorious tribune, Mr. Bradlaugh. And with 
 much justice ; owing to the exaggerated notion which 
 we English, as I have said, entertain of the right and 
 blessedness of the mere doing as one likes, of the 
 affirming oneself, and oneself just as it is. People of 
 the aristocratic class want to affirm their ordinary 
 selves, their likings and disUkings; people of the 
 middle class the same, people of the working class 
 the same. By our every day selves, however, we are 
 separate, personal, at war ; we are only safe from one 
 another's tyranny when no one has any power ; and 
 this safety, in its turn, cannot save us from anarchy. 
 And when, therefore, anarchy presents itself as a 
 danger to us, we know not where to turn. 
 
 But by our best self we are united, impersonal, at 
 harmony. We are in no peril from giving authoritj 
 to this, because it is the truest friend we all of us can 
 have; and when anarchy is a danger to us, to this 
 authority we may turn with sure trust Well, and 
 this is the very self which culture, or the study of 
 perfection, seeks to develop in us ; at the expense of 
 our old untransformed self, taking pleasure only in 
 doing what it Ukes or is used to do, and exposing us 
 to the risk of clashing with every one else who is 
 doing the same ! So that our poor culture, which is 
 flouted as so unpractical, leads us to the very ideas 
 
II.] DOING AS ONE LIKES. 69 
 
 capable of meeting the great want of our present 
 embarrassed times ! We want an authority, and we 
 find nothing but jealous classes, checks, and a dead- 
 lock ; culture suggests the idea of the State. We find 
 no basis for a firm State-power in our ordinary selves; 
 culture suggests one to us in our best self. 
 
 It cannot but acutely try a tender conscience to be 
 accused, in a practical country like ours, of keeping 
 aloof from the work and hope of a multitude of 
 earnest - hearted men, and of merely toying with 
 poetry and aesthetics. So it is with no Httle sense of 
 relief that I find myself thus in the position of one 
 who makes a contribution in aid of the practical 
 necessities of our times. The great thing, it will be 
 observed, is to find our best self, and to seek to affirm 
 nothing but that ; not, — as we English with our over- 
 value for merely being free and busy have been so 
 accustomed to do, — resting satisfied with a self which 
 comes uppermost long before our best self, and affirm- 
 ing that with blind energy. In short, — to go back yet 
 once more to Bishop Wilson, — of these two excellent 
 rules of Bishop Wilson's for a man's guidance : "Firstly, 
 never go against the best light you have ; secondly, 
 take care that your light be not darkness," we Eng- 
 lish have followed with praiseworthy zeal the first 
 rule, but we have not given so much heed to the 
 second. We have gone manfully according to the 
 best Ught we have ; but we have not taken enough 
 care that this should be really the best light possible 
 for us, that it should not be darkness. And, our 
 honesty being very great, conscience has whispered 
 
70 CULTURE AND ANAECHT. [OHAP. 
 
 to US that the light we were following, our ordinary 
 self, was, indeed, perhaps, only an inferior self, only 
 darkness ; and that it would not do to impose this 
 seriously on all the world. 
 
 But our best self inspires faith, and is capable of 
 affording a serious principle of authority. For example. 
 We are on our way to what the late Duke of Well- 
 ington, with his strong sagacity, foresaw and admir- 
 ably described as "a revolution by due course of law." 
 This is undoubtedly, — if we are still to live and grow, 
 and this famous nation is not to stagnate and dwindle 
 away on the one hand, or, on the other, to perish 
 miserably in mere anarchy and confusion, — ^what we 
 are on the way to. Great changes there must be, for 
 a revolution cannot accomplish itself without great 
 changes ; yet order there must be, for without order 
 a revolution cannot accomplish itself by due course of 
 law. So whatever brings risk of tumult and disorder, 
 multitudinous processions in the streets of our crowded 
 towns, multitudinous meetings in their public places 
 and parks, — demonstrations perfectly unnecessary in 
 the present course of our affairs, — our best self, or 
 right reason, plainly enjoins us to set our faces against 
 It enjoins us to encourage and uphold the occupants 
 of the executive power, whoever they may be, in 
 firmly prohibiting thenu But it does this clearly and 
 resolutely, and is thus a real principle of authority, 
 because it does it with a free conscience j because in 
 thus provisionally strengthening the executive power, 
 it knows that it is not doing this merely to enable our 
 aristocratical baronet to affirm himself as against our 
 
tl.] DOING AS ONE LIKES. 71 
 
 working-men's tribune, or our middle-class Dissenter 
 to affirm himself as against both. It knows that it 
 is establishing the State, or organ of our collective best 
 self, of our national right reason. And it has the 
 testimony of conscience that it is stablishing the State 
 on behalf of whatever great changes are needed, just 
 as much as on behalf of order ; stablishing it to deal 
 just as stringently, when the time comes, with our 
 baronet's aristocratical prejudices, or with the fanati- 
 cism of our middle-class Dissenter, as it deals with 
 Mr. Bradlaugh's street-processions. 
 
CHAPTER in 
 
 BARBARIANS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 
 
 Fkom a man without a philosophy no one can expect 
 philosophical completeness. Therefore I may observe 
 without shame, that in trying to get a distinct notion 
 of our aristocratic, our middle, and our working class, 
 with a view of testing the claims of each of these 
 classes to become a centre of authority, I have 
 omitted, I find, to complete the old-fashioned analysis 
 which I had the fancy of applying, and have not 
 shown in these classes, as well as the virtuous mean 
 and the excess, the defect also. I do not know that 
 the omission very much matters. Still, as clearness 
 is the one merit which a plain, unsystematic writer, 
 without a philosophy, can hope to have, and as our 
 notion of the three great English classes may perhaps 
 be made clearer if we see their distinctive qualities 
 in the defect, as well as in the excess and in the 
 mean, let us try, before proceeding further, to remedy 
 this omission. 
 
 It is manifest, if the perfect and virtuous mean of 
 that fine spirit which is the distinctive quality of 
 aristocracies, is to be found in a high, chivalrous 
 
CHAi. m.] BARBARIANS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 73 
 
 style, and its excess in a fierce turn for resistance, 
 that its defect must lie in a spirit not bold and high 
 enough, and in an excessive and pusillanimous unapt- 
 ness for resistance. If, again, the perfect and virtuous 
 mean of that force by which our middle class has 
 done its great works, and of that self-reliance with 
 which it contemplates itself and them, is to be seen 
 in the performances and speeches of our commercial 
 member of Parliament, and the' excess of that force 
 and of that self-reliance in the performances and 
 speeches of our fanatical Dissenting minister, then it 
 is manifest that their defect must lie in a helpless in- 
 aptitude for the great works of the middle class, and 
 in a poor and despicable lack of its self-satisfaction. 
 
 To be chosen to exemplify the happy mean of a 
 good quality, or set of good qualities, is evidently a 
 praise to a man ; nay, to be chosen to exemplify even 
 their excess, is a kind of praise. Therefore I could 
 have no hesitation in taking actual personages to 
 exemplify, respectively, the mean and the excess of 
 aristocratic and middle-class qualities. But perhaps 
 there might be a want of urbanity in singling out 
 this or that personage as the representative of defect. 
 Therefore I shall leave the defect of aristocracy un- 
 illustrated by any representative man. But with 
 oneself one may always, without impropriety, deal 
 quite freely; and, indeed, this sort of plain-deaUng 
 with oneself has in it, as all the moralists tell us, 
 something very wholesome. So I will venture to 
 humbly ofFer myself as an illustration of defect in 
 those forces and qualities which make our middle 
 
74 CULTUEE AND ANARCHY. [cHAP. 
 
 class what it is. The too well-founded reproaches oi 
 my opponents declare how little I have lent a hand 
 to the great works of the middle class ; for it is evi- 
 dently these works, and my slackness at them, which 
 are meant, when I am said to " refuse to lend a hand 
 to the humble operation of uprooting certain definite 
 evils" (such as church-rates and others), and that 
 therefore "the believers in action grow impatient" 
 with me. The line, again, of a stOl unsatisfied seeker 
 which I have followed, the idea of self-transformation, 
 of growing towards some measure of sweetness and 
 light not yet reached, is evidently at clean variance 
 with the perfect self-satisfaction current in my class, 
 the middle class, and may serve to indicate in me, 
 therefore, the extreme defect of this feeling. But these 
 confessions, though salutary, are bitter and unpleasant. 
 To pass, then, to the working class. The defect 
 of this class would be the falling short in what Mr. 
 Frederic Harrison calls those " bright powers of sym- 
 pathy and ready powers of action," of which we saw 
 in Mr. Odger the virtuous mean, and in Mr. Brad- 
 laugh the excess. The working class is so fast growing 
 and rising at the present time, that instances of this 
 defect cannot well be now very common. Perhaps 
 Canning's " Needy Knife-Grinder " (who is dead, and 
 therefore cannot be pained at my taking him for an 
 illustration) may serve to give us the notion of defect 
 in the essential quality of a working class ; or I might 
 even cite (since, though he is alive in the flesh, he is 
 dead to all heed of criticism) my poor old poaching 
 friend, Zephaniah Diggs, who, between his hare- 
 
III.] BAEBARIANS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 75 
 
 snaring and his gin-drinking, has got his powers of 
 sympathy quite dulled and his powers of action 
 in any great moyement of his class hopelessly 
 impaired. But examples of this defect belong, as I 
 have said, to a bygone age rather than to the present. 
 The same desire for clearness, which has led me 
 thus to extend a little my first analysis of the three 
 great classes of English society, prompts me also to 
 improve my nomenclature for them a little, with a 
 view to making it thereby more manageable. It is 
 awkward and tiresome to be always saying the aristo- 
 cratic class, the middle class, the working class. For 
 the middle class, for that great body which, as we 
 know, " has done aU the great things that have been 
 done in aU departments," and which is to be conceived 
 as moving between its two cardinal points of our 
 commercial member of Parliament and our fanatical 
 Protestant Dissenter, — for this class we have a desig- 
 nation which now has become pretty well known, and 
 which we may as well still keep for them, the desig- 
 nation of Philistines. What this term means I have 
 so often explained that I need not repeat it hera 
 For the aristocratic class, conceived mainly as a body 
 moving between the two cardinal points of our 
 chivalrous lord and our defiant baronet, we have as 
 yet got no special designation. Almost all my atten- 
 tion has naturally been concentrated on my own 
 class, the middle class, with which I. am in closest 
 sympathy, and which has been, besides, the great 
 power of our day, and has had its praises sung by all 
 speakers and newspapers. 
 
76 CULTUKE AND ANAECHY. [OHAP 
 
 Still the aristocratic class is so important in itself, 
 and the weighty functions which Mr. Oarlyle pro- 
 poses at the present critical time to commit to it, 
 must add so much to its importance, that it seems 
 neglectful, and a strong instance of that want of 
 coherent philosophic method for which Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison blames me, to leave the aristocratic class so 
 much without notice and denomination. It may be 
 thought that the characteristic which I have occasion- 
 ally mentioned as proper to aristocracies, — their 
 natural inaccessibility, as children of the established 
 fact, to ideas, — points to our extending to this class 
 also the designation of Phihstines; the Philistine 
 being, as is well known, the enemy of the children of 
 light or servants of the idea. Nevertheless, there 
 seems to be an inconvenience in thus giving one and 
 the same designation to two very different classes ; 
 and besides, if we look into the thing closely, we shall 
 find that the term Philistine conveys a sense which 
 makes it more peculiarly appropriate to our middle 
 class than to our aristocratic. For Philistine gives 
 the notion of something particularly stiff-necked and 
 perverse in the resistance to light and its children ; 
 and therein it specially suits our middle class, who 
 not only do not pursue sweetness and light, but who 
 even prefer to them that sort of machinery of business, 
 chapels, tea-meetings, and addresses from Mr. Murphy, 
 which makes up the dismal and illiberal life on which 
 I have so often touched. But the aristocratic class 
 has actually, as we have seen, in its well-known 
 politeness, a kind of image or shadow of sweetness ; 
 
HI.] BARBARIANS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 77 
 
 and as for light, if it does not pursue light, it is not 
 that it perversely cherishes some dismal and iUiheral 
 existence in preference to hght, hut it is lured off 
 from following hght by those mighty and eternal 
 seducers of our race which weave for this class their 
 most irresistible charms, — by worldly splendour, 
 security, power, and pleasure. These seducers are 
 exterior goods, but in a way they are goods ; and he 
 who is hindered by them from caring for hght and 
 ideas, is not so much doing what is perverse as what 
 is too natural. 
 
 Keeping this in view, I have in my own mind 
 often indulged myself with the fancy of employing, in 
 order to designate our aristocratic class, the name of 
 The Barbarians. The Barbarians, to whom we all 
 owe so much, and who reinvigorated and renewed 
 our worn-out Europe, had, as is well known, eminent 
 merits ; and in this country, where we are for the 
 most part sprung from the Barbarians, we have never 
 had the prejudice against them which prevails among 
 the races of Latin origin. The Barbarians brought 
 with them that staunch individuah'sm, as the modem 
 phrase is, and that passion for doing as one likes, for 
 the assertion of personal Uberty, which appears to Mr. 
 Bright the central idea of English life, and of which 
 we have, at any rate, a very rich supply. The strong- 
 hold and natural seat of this passion was in the 
 nobles of whom our aristocratic class are the in- 
 heritors ; and this class, accordingly, have signally 
 manifested it, and have done much by their example 
 fco recommend it to the body of the nation, who 
 
78 CULTUBB AND ANAECHY. [chap, 
 
 already, indeed, had it in their blood. The Barbar 
 rians, again, had the passion for field-sports ; and they 
 have handed it on to our aristocratic class, who of 
 this passion too, as of the passion for asserting one's 
 personal liberty, are the great natural stronghold. The 
 care of the Barbarians for the body, and for all manly 
 exercises; the vigour, good looks, and fine complexion 
 which they acquired and perpetuated in their families 
 by these means, — all this may be observed still in our 
 aristocratic class. The chivalry of the Barbarians, 
 with its characteristics of high spirit, choice manners, 
 and distinguished bearing, — what is this but the 
 attractive commencement of the politeness of our 
 aristocratic class? In some Barbarian noble, no 
 doubt, one would have admired, if one could have 
 been then alive to see it, the rudiments of our politest 
 peer. Only, all this culture (to call it by that name) 
 of the Barbarians was an exterior culture mainly. It 
 consisted principally in outward gifts and graces, in 
 looks, manners, accomplishments, prowess. The chief 
 inward gifts which had part in it were the most 
 exterior, so to speak, of inward gifts, those which 
 come nearest to outward ones; they were courage, 
 a high spirit, self-confidence. Far within, and un- 
 awakened, lay a whole range of powers of thought 
 and feeling, to which these interesting productions of 
 nature had, from the circumstances of their life, no 
 access. Making allowances for the difierence of the 
 times, surely we can observe precisely the same thing 
 now in our aristocratic class. In general its culture 
 is exterior chiefly ; all the exterior graces and accom- 
 
Ill.l BARBARIANS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 79 
 
 plisLments, and the more external of the inward 
 virtues, seem to be principally its portion. It now, 
 of course, cannot but be often in contact with those 
 studies by which, from the world of thought and 
 feeling, true culture teaches us to fetch sweetness and 
 light ; but its hold upon these very studies appears 
 remarkably external, and unable to exert any deep 
 power upon its spirit. Therefore the one insufficiency 
 which we noted in the perfect mean of this class was 
 an insufficiency of hght. And owing to the same 
 causes, does not a subtle criticism lead us to make, 
 even on the good looks and politeness of our aristo- 
 cratic class, and of even the most fascinating half of 
 that class, the feminine half, the one qualifying re- 
 mark, that in these charming gifts there should 
 perhaps be, for ideal perfection, a shade more sml f 
 
 I often, therefore, when I want to distinguish 
 clearly the aristocratic class from the PhiUstines 
 proper, or middle class, name the former, in my own 
 nund, the Barbarians. And when I go through the 
 country, and see this and that beautiful and imposing 
 seat of theirs crowning the landscape, " There," I say 
 to myself, "is a great fortified post of the Bar- 
 barians." 
 
 It is obvious that that part of the working class 
 which, working diligently by the light of Mrs. Gooch's 
 Golden Eule, looks forward to the happy day when 
 it wiU sit on thrones with commercial members of 
 Parliament and other middle-class potentates, to sur- 
 vey, as Mr. Bright beautifully says, " the cities it has 
 built, the railroads it has made, the manufactures it 
 
80 CULTURE AND ANAKCHT. [OHAP. 
 
 has produced, the cargoes which freight the ships of 
 the greatest mercantile navy the world has ever seen," 
 — it is obvious, I say, that this part of the working 
 class is, or is in a fair way to be, one in spirit with 
 the industrial middle class. It is notorious that our 
 middle -class Liberals have long looked forward to 
 this consummation, when the working class shall join 
 forces with them, aid them heartily to carry forward 
 their great works, go in a body to their tea-meetings, 
 and, in short, enable them to bring about their 
 millennium. That part of the working class, there- 
 fore, which does really seem to lend itself to these 
 great aims, may, with propriety, be numbered by us 
 among the Phihstines. That part of it, again, which 
 so much occupies the attention of philanthropists at 
 present, — the part which gives aU its energies to 
 organising itself, through trades' unions and other 
 means, so as to constitute, first, a great working-class 
 power independent of the middle and aristocratic 
 classes, and then, by dint of numbers, give the law lo 
 them and itself reign absolutely, — tliis lively and pro- 
 mising part must also, according to our definition, go 
 with the Philistines; because it is its class and its 
 class instinct which it seeks to affirm — its ordinary 
 self, not its best self ; and it is a machinery, an indus- 
 trial machinery, and power and pre-eminence and 
 other external goods, which fiU its thoughts, and not 
 an mward perfection. It is wholly occupied, accord- 
 ing to Plato's subtle expression, with the things of 
 itself and not its real seK, with the things of the 
 State and not the real State. But that vast portion, 
 
HI,] BAKBAKIAIirS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 81 
 
 lastly, of the -working class which, raw and halt 
 developed, 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 
 privilege of doing as he likes, and is beginning to 
 perplex us by marching where it likes, meeting where 
 it likes, bawling what it likes, breaking what it likes, 
 — to this vast residuum we may vtdth great propriety 
 give the name of Populace. 
 
 Thus we have got three distinct terms, Barbarians, 
 Philistines, Populace, to denote roughly the three 
 great classes into which our society is divided ; and 
 though this humble attempt at a scientific nomen- 
 clature falls, no doubt, very far short in precision of 
 what might be required from a writer equipped with 
 a complete and coherent philosophy, yet, from a 
 notoriously unsystematic and unpretending writer, it 
 will, I trust, be accepted as sufiicient. 
 
 But in using this new, and, I hope, convenient 
 division of English society, two things are to be borne 
 in mind. The first is, that since, under all our class 
 divisions, there is a common basis of human nature, 
 therefore, in every one of us, whether we be properly 
 Barbarians, Philistines, or Populace, there exists, 
 sometimes only in germ and potentially, sometimes 
 more or less developed, the same tendencies and pas- 
 sions which have made our fellow-citizens of other 
 classes what they are. This consideration is very im- 
 portant, because it has great influence in begetting 
 that spirit of indulgence which is a necessary part of 
 sweetness, and which, indeed, when our culture is 
 
 VOL. in. cs 
 
82 CULTURB AND ANAECHY. [CHAP. 
 
 complete, is, as I have said, inexhaustible. Thus, an 
 English Barbarian who examines himself "wiU, in 
 general, find himself to be not so entirely a Barbarian 
 but that he has in him, also, something of the Philis- 
 tine, and even something of the Populace as well 
 And the same with Englishmen of the two other 
 
 This is an experience which we may aU verify 
 every day. For instance, I myself (I again take my- 
 self as a sort of carim vUe to serve for illustration in 
 a matter where serving for illustration may not by 
 every one be thought agreeable), I myself am properly 
 a Philistine, — Mr. Swinburne would add, the son of a 
 Philistine. And although, through circumstances 
 which will perhaps one day be known if ever the 
 affecting history of my conversion comes to be written, 
 I have, for the most part, broken with the ideas and 
 the tearmeetings of my own class, yet I have not, on 
 that account, been brought much the nearer to the 
 ideas and works of the Barbarians or of the Populaca 
 Nevertheless, I never take a gun or a fishing-rod m 
 my hands without feeling that I have in the ground 
 of my nature the self-same seeds which, fostered by 
 circumstances, do so much to make the Barbarian ; 
 and that, with the Barbarian's advantages, I might 
 have rivalled him. Place me in one of his great 
 fortified posts, with these seeds of a love for field- 
 sports sown in my nature, with all the means of de- 
 veloping them, with all pleasures at my command, 
 with most whom I met deferring to me, every one I 
 met smiling on me, and with every appearance of 
 
III.] BAEBAKIANS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 83 
 
 permaneuce and security before me and behind me, 
 — then I too might have grown, I feel, into a very 
 passable child of the established fact, of commendable 
 spirit and politeness, and, at the same time, a little 
 inaccessible to ideas and light; not, of course, with 
 either the eminent fine spirit of our type of aristo- 
 cratic perfection, or the eminent turn for resist- 
 ance of our type of aristocratic excess, but, according 
 to the measure of the common run of mankind, some- 
 thing between the two. And as to the Populace, 
 who, whether he be Barbarian or Philistine, can look 
 at them without sympathy, when he remembers how 
 often, — every time that we snatch up a vehement 
 opinion in ignorance and passion, every time that we 
 long to crush an adversary by sheer violence, every 
 time that we are envious, every time that we are 
 brutal, every time that we adore mere power or suc- 
 cess, every time that we add our voice to swell a 
 blind clamour against some unpopular personage, 
 every time that we trample savagely on the fallen, — 
 he has found in his own bosom the eternal spirit 
 of the Populace, and that there needs only a little 
 help from circumstances to make it triumph in him 
 untamably. 
 
 The second thing to be borne in mind I have 
 iudicated several times already. It is this. All of 
 us, so far as we are Barbarians, Philistines, or Popu- 
 lace, imagine happiness to consist in doing what one's 
 ordinary self likes. What one's ordinary self likes 
 differs according to the class to which one belongs, 
 and has its severer and its lighter side ; always, how- 
 
84 CULTUKE AND ANAECHY. [OHAP, 
 
 ever, remaining machinery, and nothing more. The 
 graver self of the Barbarian likes honours and con- 
 sideration; his more relaxed self, field-sports and 
 pleasure. The graver self of one kind of Philistine 
 likes fanaticism, business, and money-making; his 
 more relaxed self, comfort and tea-meetings. Of 
 another kind of Philistine, the graver self likes 
 rattening; the relaxed self, deputations, or hearing 
 Mr. Odger speak. The sterner self of the Populace 
 likes bawling, hustling, and smashing; the Kghter 
 self, beer. But in each class there are bom a certain 
 number of natures with a curiosity about their best 
 self, with a bent for seeing things as they are, for 
 disentangling themselves from machinery, for simply 
 concerning themselves with reason and the will of 
 God, and doing their best to make these prevail ; — 
 for the pursuit, in a word, of perfection. To certain 
 manifestations of this love for perfection mankind 
 have accustomed themselves to give the name of 
 genius; implying, by this name, something original 
 and heaven-bestowed in the passion. But the passion 
 is to be found far beyond those manifestations of it 
 to which the world usually gives the name of genius, 
 and in which there is, for the most part, a talent of 
 some kind or other, a special and striking faculty of 
 execution, informed by the heaven-bestowed ardour, 
 or genius. It is to be found in many manifestations 
 besides these, and may best be called, as we have called 
 it, the love and pursuit of perfection ; culture being 
 the true nurse of the pursuing love, and sweetness 
 and light the true character of the pursued perfection. 
 
ni.] BARBARIANS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 85 
 
 Natures with this bent emerge in all classes, — among 
 the Barbarians, among the Philistines, among the 
 Populace. And this bent always tends to take them 
 out of their class, and to make their distinguishing 
 characteristic not their Barbarianism or their Philis- 
 tinism, but their JmrncmUy. They have, in general, 
 a rough time of it in their lives ; but they are sown 
 more abundantly than one might think, they appear 
 where and when one least expects it, they set up a 
 fire which enfilades, so to speak, the class with which 
 they are ranked ; and, in general, by the extrication 
 of their best self as the self to develop, and by the 
 simplicity of the ends fixed by them as paramouni, 
 they hinder the unchecked predominance of that 
 class-hfe which is the affirmation of our ordinary self, 
 and seasonably disconcert mankind in their worship 
 of machinery. 
 
 Therefore, when we speak of ourselves as divided 
 into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace, we must 
 be understood always to imply that within each of 
 these classes there are a certain number of aliens, if 
 we may so call them, — persons who are mainly led, 
 not by their class spirit, but by a general hmume 
 spirit, by the love of human perfection ; and that this 
 number is capable of being diminished or augmented. 
 I mean, the number of those who will succeed in 
 developing this happy instinct will be greater or 
 smaller, in proportion both to the force of the original 
 instinct within them, and to the hindrance or en- 
 couragement which it meets with from without. In 
 almost all who have it, it is mixed with some infusion 
 
86 CULTUEE AND ANARCHY. [chap 
 
 of the spirit of an ordinary self, some quantity of 
 class-instinct, and even, as has been shown, of more 
 than one class-instinct at the same time ; so that, in 
 general, the extrication of the best self, the pre- 
 dominance of the hmrume instinct, will very much 
 depend upon its meeting, or not, with what is fitted 
 to help and elicit it. At a moment, therefore, when 
 it is agreed that we want a source of authority, and 
 when it seems probable that the right source is our 
 best self, it becomes of vast importance to see whether 
 or not the things around us are, in general, such as 
 to help and elicit our best self, and if they are not, 
 to see why they are not, and the most promising way 
 of mending them. 
 
 Now, it is clear that the very absence of any 
 powerful authority amongst us, and the prevalent 
 doctrine of the duty and happiness of doing as one 
 likes, and asserting our personal liberty, must tend 
 to prevent the erection of any very strict standard of 
 excellence, the belief in any very paramount authority 
 of right reason, the recognition of our best self as 
 anything very recondite and hard to come at. It 
 may be, as I have said, a proof of our honesty that 
 we do not attempt to give to our ordinary self, as we 
 have it in action, predominant authority, and to im- 
 pose its rule upon other people. But it is evident 
 also, that it is not easy, with our style of proceeding, 
 to get beyond the notion of an ordinary self at all, or 
 to get the paramount authority of a commanding best 
 self, or right reason, recognised. The learned Mar- 
 tinus Scriblerus well says : — "the taste of the bathos 
 
HI,] BARBARIANS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 8V 
 
 is implanted by nature itself in the soul of man ; till, 
 perverted by custom or example, he is taught, oi 
 rather compelled, to relish the sublime." But with 
 us everything seems directed to prevent any such 
 perversion of us by custom or example as might 
 compel us to relish the sublime ; by all means we are 
 encouraged to keep our natural taste for the bathos 
 unimpaired. 
 
 I have formerly pointed out how in literature the 
 absence of any authoritative centre, like an Academy, 
 tends to do this. Each Section of the public has its 
 own literary organ, and the mass of the public is 
 without any suspicion that the value of these organs 
 is relative to their being nearer a certain ideal centre 
 of correct information, taste, and intelligence, or 
 farther away from it. I have said that within certain 
 limits, which any one who is likely to read this will 
 have no difficulty in drawing for himself, my old 
 adversary, the Saturday Review, may, on matters of 
 literature and taste, be fairly enough regarded, rela- 
 tively to the mass of newspapers which treat these 
 matters, as a kind of organ of reason. But I re- 
 member once conversing with a company of Noncon- 
 formist admirers of some lecturer who had let off a 
 great firework, which the Saiwrday Beview said was 
 all noise and false lights, and feeling my way as 
 tenderly as I could about the effect of this unfavour- 
 able judgment upon those with whom I was con- 
 versing " Oh," said one who was their spokesman, 
 with the most tranquil air of conviction, "it is true 
 the Saturday Review abuses the lecture, but the British 
 
88 CULTURE AND ANAKCHT. [chap 
 
 Banner" (I am not quite sure it was the British 
 Banner, but it was some newspaper of that stamp) 
 "says that the Satwday Review is quite wrong." 
 The speaker had evidently no notion that there 
 was a scale of value for judgments on these topics, 
 and that the judgments of the Saiwrday Review 
 ranked high on this scale, and those of the British 
 Banner low ; the taste of the bathos implanted by 
 nature in the literary judgments of man had never, 
 in my friend's case, encountered any let or hind- 
 rance. 
 
 Just the same in religion as in literature. We 
 have most of us little idea of a high standard to 
 choose our guides by, of a great and profound spirit 
 which is an authority while inferior spirits are none. 
 It is enough to give importance to things that this or 
 that person says them decisively, and has a large 
 following of some strong kind when he says them. 
 This habit of ours is very well shown in that able 
 and interesting work of Mr. Hepworth Dixon's, 
 which we were all reading lately. The Mormons, by 
 One of Themselves. Here, again, I am not quite sure 
 that my memory serves me as to the exact title, but 
 I mean the well-known book ia which Mr. Hepworth 
 Dixon described the Mormons, and other similar 
 reUgious bodies in America, with so much detail and 
 such warm sympathy. In this work it seems enough 
 for Mr. Dixon that this or that doctrine has its 
 Eabbi, who talks big to him, has a staunch body of 
 disciples, and, above all, has plenty of rifles. That 
 there are any further stricter tests to be applied to a 
 
HI.] BAHBAEIAjNS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 89 
 
 doctrine, before it is pronounced important, nevei 
 seems to occur to him. " It is easy to say," he writes 
 of the Mormons, "that these saints are dupes and 
 fanatics, to laugh at Joe Smith and his church, but 
 what then 1 The great fads remam. Young and his 
 people are at Utah ; a church of 200,000 souls ; an 
 army of 20,000 rifles." But if the followers of a 
 doctrine are really dupes, or worse, and its pro- 
 mulgators are really fanatics, or worse, it gives the 
 doctrine no seriousness or authority the more that 
 there should be found 200,000 souls,— 200,000 of the 
 innumerable multitude with a natural taste for the 
 bathos, — to hold it, and 20,000 rifles to defend it. 
 And again, of another religious organisation in 
 America : " A fair and open field is not to be refused 
 when hosts so mighty throw down wager of battle 
 on behalf of what they hold to be true, however 
 strange their faith may seem.'' A fair and open field 
 is not to be refused to any speaker ; but this solemn 
 way of heralding him is quite out of place, unless he 
 has, for the best reason and spirit of man, some 
 significance. " Well, but,'' says Mr. Hepworth Dixon, 
 " a theory which has been accepted by men like 
 Judge Edmonds, Dr. Hare, Elder Frederick, and 
 Professor Bush ! " And again : " Such are, in brief, 
 the bases of what Newman Weeks, Sarah Horton, 
 Deborah Butler, and the associated brethren, pro- 
 claimed in Eolt's Hall as the new covenant ! " If he 
 was summing up an account of the doctrine of Plato, 
 or of St. Paul, and of its followers, Mr. Hepworth 
 Dixon could not be more earnestly reverential. But 
 
90 CULTURE AND ANARCHY. [ohap. 
 
 the question is, Have personages like Judge Edmonds, 
 and Newman "Weeks, and Elderess Polly, and Elderess 
 Antoinette, and the rest of Mr. Hepworth Dixon's 
 heroes and heroines, anything of the weight and 
 significance for the best reason and spirit of man that 
 Plato and St. Paul have 1 Evidently they, at present, 
 have not ; and a very small taste of them and their 
 doctrines ought to have convinced Mr. Hepworth 
 Dixon that they never could have. " But," says he, 
 " the magnetic power which Shakerism is exercising 
 on American thought would of itself compel us," — 
 and so on. Now, so far as real thought is concerned, 
 —thought which affects the best reason and spirit of 
 man, the scientific or the imaginative thought of the 
 world, the only thought which deserves speaking of 
 in this solemn way, — America has up to the present 
 time been hardly more than a province of England, 
 and even now would not herself claim to be more 
 than abreast of England ; and of this only real human 
 thought, English thought itself is not just now, as we 
 must all admit, the most significant factor. Neither, 
 then, can American thought be; and the magnetic 
 power which Shakerism exercises on American thought 
 is about as important, for the best reason and spirit 
 of man, as the magnetic power which Mr. Murphy 
 exercises on Birmingham Protestantism. And as we 
 shall never get rid of our natural taste for the bathos 
 in religion, — never get access to a best self and right 
 reason which may stand as a serious authority, — by 
 treating Mr. Murphy as his own disciples treat him, 
 seriously, and as if he was as much an authority aa 
 
til.] BAEBAEIANS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE, 91 
 
 any one else : so we shall never get rid of it while oui 
 able and popular writers treat their Joe Smiths and 
 Deborah Butlers, with their so many thousands souls 
 and so many thousand rifles, in the like exaggerated 
 and misleading manner, and so do their best to con- 
 firm us in a bad mental habit to which we are already 
 too prone. 
 
 If our habits make it hard for us to come at the 
 idea of a high best self, of a paramount authority, in 
 literature or religion, how much more do they make 
 this hard in the sphere of politics ! In other countries 
 the governors, not depending so iinmediately on the 
 favour of the governed, have everything to urge 
 them, if they know anything of right reason (and 
 it is at least supposed that governors should know 
 more of this than the mass of the governed), to set 
 it authoritatively before the community. But our 
 whole scheme of government being representative, 
 every one of our governors has all possible tempta- 
 tion, instead of setting up before the governed who 
 elect him, and on whose favour he depends, a Mgh 
 standard of right reason, to accommodate himself as 
 much as possible to their natural taste for the bathos ; 
 and even if he tries to go counter to it, to proceed in 
 this with so much flattering and coaxing, that they 
 shall not suspect their ignorance and prejudices to be 
 anything very unlike right reason, or their natural 
 taste for the bathos to differ much from a relish for 
 the sublime. Every one is thus in every possible way 
 encouraged to trust in his own heart ; but, " he that 
 trusteth in his own heart," says the Wise Man, "is a 
 
92 CULTUEE AND ANARCHY. [OHAP. 
 
 fool ; " and at any rate this, which Bishop Wilson 
 says, is undeniably true : " The number of those who 
 need to be awakened is far greater than that of those 
 who need comfort" 
 
 But in our political system everybody is comforted. 
 Our guides and governors who have to be elected by the 
 influence of the barbarians, and who depend on their 
 favour, sing the praises of the Barbarians, and say all 
 the smooth things that can be said of them. With Mr. 
 Tennyson, they celebrate " the great broad-shouldered 
 genial Englishman," with his " sense of duty," 
 his "reverence for' the laws," and his "patient force," 
 who saves us from the "revolts, republics, revolutions, 
 most no graver than a schoolboy's barring out," which 
 upset other and less broad-shouldered nations. Our 
 guides who are chosen by the Philistines and who 
 have to look to their favour, tell the Philistines how 
 " all the world knows that the great middle class of 
 this country supplies the mind, the will, and the 
 power requisite for all the great and good things 
 that have to be done," and congratulate them on 
 their " earnest good sense, which penetrates through 
 sophisms, ignores commonplaces, and gives to con- 
 ventional illusions their true value." Our guides who 
 look to the favour of the Populace, teU them that 
 " theirs are the brightest powers of sympathy, and the 
 readiest powers of action." 
 
 Harsh things are said too, no doubt, against all the 
 great classes of the community ; but these things so 
 evidently come from a hostile class, and are so mani- 
 festly dictated by the passions and prepossessions of 
 
in.] BAKBAEIANS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 93 
 
 a hostile class, and not by right reason, that they 
 make no serious impression on those at whom they 
 are launched, but sUde easily off their minds. For 
 instance, when the Reform League orators inveigh 
 against our cruel and bloated aristocracy, these 
 invectives so evidently show the passions and point 
 of view of the Populace, that they do not sink into 
 the minds of those at whom they are addressed, 
 or awaken any thought or self-examination in them. 
 Again, when our aristocratical baronet describes the 
 Philistines and the Populace as influenced with a kind 
 of hideous mania for emasculating the aristocracy, 
 that reproach so clearly comes from the wrath and 
 excited imagination of the Barbarians, that it does 
 not much set the Philistines and the Populace thiaking. 
 Or when Mr. Lowe calls the Populace drunken and 
 yenal, he so evidently calls them this in an agony of 
 apprehension for his Philistine or middle-class Parlia- 
 ment, which has done so many great and heroic 
 works, and is now threatened with mixture and 
 debasement, that the populace do not lay his words 
 seriously to heart. 
 
 So the voice which makes a permanent impression 
 on each of our classes is the voice of its friends, and 
 this is from the nature of things, as I have said, a 
 comforting voice. The Barbarians remain in the 
 belief that the great broad-shouldered genial English- 
 man may be well satisfied with himself; the Philistines 
 remain in the belief that the great middle class of this 
 country, with its earnest common-sense penetrating 
 through sophisms and ignoring commonplaces, may 
 
94 CULTURE AND AITAROHY. [ohap 
 
 be well satisfied with itself ; the Populace, that the 
 working man with his bright powers of sympathy and 
 ready powers of action, may be weU satisfied with 
 himself. What hope, at this rate, of extinguishing 
 the taste of the bathos implanted by nature itself in 
 the soul of man, or of inculcating the belief that excel- 
 lence dwells among high and steep rocks, and can 
 only be reached' by those who sweat blood to reach 
 her? 
 
 But it will be said, perhaps, that candidates for 
 political influence and leadership, who thus caress the 
 self-love of those whose suffrages they desire, know 
 quite well that they are not saying the sheer truth as 
 reason sees it, but that they are using a sort of con- 
 ventional language, or what we call clap-trap, which 
 is essential to the working of representative institu- 
 tions. And therefore, I suppose, we ought rather to 
 say with Tigaro : Qui est-ce gu'on troTnipe id f Now, I 
 admit that often, but not always, when our governors 
 say smooth things to the self-love of the class whose 
 political support they want, they know very well that 
 they are overstepping, by a long stride, the bounds of 
 truth and soberness ; and while they talk, they in a 
 manner, no doubt, put their tongue in their cheek. 
 Not always; because, when a Barbarian appeals to 
 his own class to make him their representative and 
 give him political power, he, when he pleases their 
 self-love by extolling broad-shouldered genial English- 
 men with their sense of duty, reverence for the laws, 
 and patient force, pleases his own self-love and extols 
 himself, and is, therefore, himself ensnared by hia 
 
III.] BAEBAEIAITS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 95 
 
 own smooth words. And so, too, when a Philistine 
 wants to be sent to Parliament by his brothei 
 Philistines, and extols the earnest good sense which 
 characterises Manchester and supplies the mind, the 
 will, and the power, as the DaUf News eloquently 
 says, requisite for all the great and good things that 
 have to be done, he intoxicates and deludes himself 
 as well as his brother PhiHstines who hear him. 
 
 But it is true that a Barbarian often wants the 
 political support of the Philistines ; and he unques- 
 tionably, when he flatters the self-love of Philistinism, 
 and extols, in the approved fashion, its energy, 
 enterprise, and self-reliance, knows that he is talking 
 clap-trap, and so to say, puts his tongue in his cheek. 
 On all matters where Nonconformity and its catch- 
 words are concerned, this insincerity of Barbarians 
 needing Nonconformist support, and, therefore, flat- 
 tering the self-love of Nonconformity and repeating its 
 catchwords without the least real belief in them, is 
 very noticeable. When the Nonconformists, in a 
 transport of bhnd zeal, threw out Sir James Graham's 
 useful Education Clauses in 1843, one-half of their 
 Parliamentary advocates, no doubt, who cried aloud 
 against "trampling on the religious liberty of the 
 Di.ssenters by taking the money of Dissenters to teach 
 the tenets of the Church of England," put their tongue 
 in their cheek while they so cried out. And perhaps 
 there is even a sort of motion of Mr. Frederic Har- 
 rison's tongue towards his cheek when he talks of 
 "the shriek of superstition," and tells the working 
 class that " theirs are the brightest powers of sympathy 
 
36 CtTLTUEE ABD ANABCHY. [OHAP. 
 
 and the readiest powers of action." But the point on 
 which I wotdd insist is, that this involuntary tribute 
 to truth and soberness on the part of certain of oui 
 governors and guides never reaches at all the mass of 
 us governed, to serve as a lesson to us, to abate oui 
 seK-love, and to awaken in us a suspicion that our 
 favourite prejudices may be, to a higher reason, all 
 nonsense. Whatever by-play goes on among the 
 more intelligent of our leaders, we do not see it ; and 
 we are left to believe that, not only in our own eyes, 
 but in the eyes of our representative and ruling men, 
 there is nothing more admirable than our ordinary 
 self, whatever our ordinary self happens to be, 
 Barbarian, Philistine, or Populace. 
 
 Thus everything in our political life tends to hide 
 from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary 
 selves, and to prevent our getting the notion of a 
 paramount right reason. Eoyalty itself, in its idea 
 the expression of the collective nation, and a sort of 
 constituted witness to its best mind, we try to turn 
 into a kind of grand advertising van, meant to give 
 publicity and credit to the inventions, sound or 
 unsound, of the ordinary self of individuals. 
 
 I remember, when I was in North Germany, having 
 this very strongly brought to my mind in the matter 
 of schools and their institution. In Prussia, the best 
 schools are Crown patronage schools, as they are 
 called ; schools which have been established and en- 
 dowed (and new ones are to this day being established 
 and endowed) by the Sovereign himself out of his own 
 revenues, to be under the direct control and manage- 
 
rii.] BAEBAEIANS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 97 
 
 ment of him or of those representing him, and to serve 
 as types of what schools should be. The Sovereign, 
 as his position raises him above many prejudices and 
 littlenesses, and as he can always have at his disposal 
 the best advice, has evident advantages over private 
 founders in well planning and directing a school; 
 while at the same time his great means and his great 
 influence secure, to a well-planned school of his, credit 
 and authority. This is what, in North Germany, the 
 governors do in the matter of education for the 
 governed ; and one may say that they thus give the 
 governed a lesson, and draw out in them the idea 
 of a right reason higher than the suggestions of an 
 ordinary man's ordinary self. 
 
 But in England how different is the part which in 
 this matter our governors are accustomed to play ! 
 The Licensed Victuallers or the Commercial Travellers 
 propose to make a school for their children ; and I 
 suppose, in the matter of schools, one may call the 
 Licensed Victuallers or the Commercial Travellers 
 ordinary men, with their natural taste for the bathos 
 stUl strong ; and a Sovereign with the advice of men 
 like Wilhelm von Humboldt or Schleiermacher may, 
 in this matter, be a better judge, and nearer to right 
 reason. And it will be allowed, probably, that right 
 reason would suggest that, to have a sheer school of 
 Licensed Victuallers' children, or a sheer school of 
 Commercial Travellers' children, and to bring them 
 all up, not only at home but at school too, in a kind 
 of odour of licensed victuaUsm or of bagmanism, is 
 not a wise training to give to these children. And in 
 
 VOL. UL n 
 
98 CULTUBE AND ANAECHY. [cHAR 
 
 Germany, I have said, the action of the national guides 
 or governors is to suggest and provide a better. But, 
 in England, the action of the national guides or gover- 
 nors is, for a Eoyal Prince or a great Minister to go 
 down to the opening of the Licensed Victuallers' or 
 of the Commercial Travellers' school, to take the 
 chair, to extol the energy, and self-reliance of the 
 Licensed Victuallers or the Commercial Travellers, to 
 be all of their way of thinking, to predict full success 
 to their schools, and never so much as to hint to them 
 that they are probably doing a very foolish thing, and 
 that the right way to go to work with their children's 
 education is quite different. And it is the same in 
 almost every department of affairs. While, on the 
 Continent, the idea prevails that it is the business of 
 the heads and representatives of the nation, by virtue 
 of their superior means, power, and information, to 
 set an example and to provide suggestions of right 
 reason, among us the idea is that the business of the 
 heads and representatives of the nation is to do 
 nothing of the kind, but to applaud the natural taste 
 for the bathos showing itself vigorously in any part of 
 the community, and to encourage its works. 
 
 Now I do not say that the political system of 
 foreign countries has not inconveniences which may 
 outweigh the inconveniences of our own political 
 system ; nor am I the least proposing to get rid of 
 our own political system and to adopt theirs. But a 
 sound centre of authority being what, in this disquisi- 
 tion, we have been led to seek, and right reason, or 
 our best self, appearing alone to offer such a sound 
 
III.] BAEBARIAHS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 99 
 
 centre of authority, it is necessary to take note of the 
 chief impediments which hinder, in this country, the 
 extrication or recognition of this right reason as a 
 paramount authority, with a view to afterwards try- 
 ing in what way they can best be removed. 
 
 This being borne in mind, I proceed to remark 
 how not only do we get no suggestions of right reason, 
 and no rebukes of our ordinary self, from our gover- 
 nors, but a kind of philosophical theory is widely 
 spread among us to the effect that there is no such 
 thing at all as a best self and a right reason having 
 claim to paramount authority, or, at any rate, no 
 such thing ascertainable and capable of being made 
 use of ; and that there is nothing but an infinite 
 number of ideas and works of our ordinary selves, 
 and suggestions of our natural taste for the bathos, 
 pretty nearly equal in value, which are doomed either 
 to an irreconcilable conflict, or else to a perpetual give 
 and take ; and that wisdom consists in choosing the 
 give and take rather than the conflict, and in sticking 
 to our choice with patience and good humour. 
 
 And, on the other hand, we have another philoso- 
 pliical theory rife among us, to the effect that without 
 the labour of perverting ourselves by custom or ex- 
 ample to relish right reason, but by continuing all of 
 us to foUow freely our natural taste for the bathos, 
 we shall, by the mercy of Providence, and by a kind 
 of natural tendency of things, come in due time to 
 relish and follow right reason. 
 
 The great promoters of these philosophical theories 
 are our newspapers, which, no less than our ParUa- 
 
100 CULTURE AND ANARCHY. [OHAP. 
 
 mentary representatives, may be said to act the part 
 of guides and governors to us; and these favourite 
 doctrines of theirs I call, — or should call, if the 
 doctrines were not preached by authorities I so much 
 respect, — the first, a peculiarly British form of Athe- 
 ism, the second, a peculiarly British form of Quietism. 
 The first-named melancholy doctrine is preached in 
 the Times with great clearness and force of style; 
 indeed, it is well known, from the example of the 
 poet Lucretius and others, what great masters of style 
 the atheistic doctrine has always counted among its 
 promulgators. " It is of no use," says the Times, " for 
 us to attempt to force upon our neighbours our several 
 likings and dislikings. We must take things as they 
 are. Everybody has his own little vision of religious 
 or civil perfection. Under the evident impossibility 
 of satisfying everybody, we agree to take our stand 
 on equal laws and on a system as open and liberal as 
 is possible. The result is that everybody has more 
 liberty of action and of speaking here than anywhere 
 else in the Old World." We come again here upon 
 Mr. Roebuck's celebrated definition of happiness, on 
 which I have so often commented : "I look around 
 me and ask what is the state of England ? Is not 
 every man able to say what he likes 1 I ask you 
 whether the world over, or in past history, there is 
 anything like iti Nothing. I pray that our un- 
 rivalled happiness may last." This is the old story 
 of our system of checks and every Englishman doing 
 as he likes, which we have already seen to have been 
 convenient enough so long as there were only the 
 
in.] BARBAEIANS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 101 
 
 Barbarians and the Philistines to do what they liked, 
 but to be getting inconvenient, and productive of 
 anarchy, now that the Populace wants to do what it 
 likes too. 
 
 But for all that, I will not at once dismiss this 
 famous doctrine, but will first quote another passage 
 from the Times, appljdng the doctrine to a matter of 
 which we have just been speaking, — education. " The 
 difficulty here" (in providing a national system of 
 education), says the Times, "does not reside in any 
 removable arrangements. It is inherent and native 
 in the actual and inveterate state of things in this 
 country. All these powers and personages, all these 
 conflicting influences and varieties of character, exist, 
 and have long existed among us ; they are fighting it 
 out, and will long continue to fight it out, without 
 coming to that happy consummation when some one 
 element of the British character is to destroy or to 
 absorb all the rest.'' There it is ! the various prompt- 
 ings of the natural taste for the bathos in this man 
 and that amongst us are fighting it out ; and the day 
 win never come (and, indeed, why should we wish it 
 to come ?) when one man's particular sort of taste for 
 the bathos shall tyrannise over another man's ; nor 
 when right reason (if that may be called an element 
 of the British character) shall absorb and rule them 
 alL "The whole system of this country, like the 
 constitution we boast to inherit, and are glad to up- 
 hold, is made up of established facts, prescriptive 
 authorities, existing usages, powers that be, persons 
 in possession, and communities or classes that have 
 
102 CULTURE AUTD ANAECHY. [chap. 
 
 won dominion for themselves, and will hold it against 
 all comers." Every force in the world, evidently, 
 except the one reconciUng force, right reason ! Bar- 
 barian here, Philistine there, Mr. Bradlaugh and 
 Populace striking in!: — puU devil, pull baker ! Eeally, 
 presented with the mastery of style of our leading 
 journal, the sad picture, as one gazes upon it, assumes 
 the iron and inexorable solemnity of tragic Destiny. 
 
 After this, the milder doctrine of our other philo- 
 , sophical teacher, the Daily News, has, at first, some- 
 thing very attractive and assuaging. The Daily News 
 begins, indeed, in appearance, to weave the iron web 
 of necessity round us like the Times. " The alterna- 
 tive is between a man's doing what he likes and his 
 doing what some one else, probably not one whit 
 wiser than himself, likes." This, points to the tacit 
 compact, mentioned in my last paper, between the 
 Barbarians and the Philistines, and into which it is 
 hoped that the Populace wiU one day enter; the 
 compact, so creditable to English honesty, that since 
 each class has only the ideas and aims of its ordinary 
 self to give efiect to, none of them shall, if it exercise 
 power, treat its ordinary self too seriously, or attempt 
 to impose it on others ; but shall let these others, — 
 the fanatical Protestant, for instance, in his Papist- 
 baiting, and the popular tribune in his Hyde Park 
 anarchy-mongering, — have their fling. . But then the 
 DaAly News suddenly lights up the gloom of necessi- 
 tarianism with bright beams of hope. " No doubt," 
 it says, " the common reason of society ought to check 
 the aberrations of individual eccentricity." This 
 
HI. J BAEBAKUNS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 103 
 
 common reason of society looks very like our best 
 self or right reason, to which we want to give autho- 
 rity, by making the action of the Siafe, or nation in 
 its collective character, the expression of it. But of 
 this project of ours, the Daily News, with its subtle 
 dialectics, makes havoc. " Make the State the organ 
 of the common reason 1 " — it says. " You make it 
 the organ of something or other, but how can you be 
 certain that reason will be the quality which will be 
 embodied in it ? " You cannot be certain of it, un- 
 doubtedly, if you never try to bring the thing about ; 
 but the question is, the action of the State being the 
 action of the collective nation, and the action of the 
 collective nation carrying naturally great publicity, 
 weight, and force of example with it, whether we 
 should not try to put into the action of the State as 
 much as possible of right reason or our best self, which 
 may, in this manner, come back to us with new force 
 and authority; may have visibility, form, and influ- 
 ence ; and help to confirm us, in the many moments 
 when we are tempted to be our ordinary selves merely, 
 in resisting our natural taste of the bathos rather than 
 in giving way to it ? 
 
 But no ! says our teacher : " It is better there 
 should be an infinite variety of experiments iu human 
 action j the common reason of society will in the main 
 check the aberrations of individual eccentricity well 
 enough, if left to its natural operation." This is what 
 I call the specially British form of Quietism, or a 
 devout, but excessive reliance on an over-ruUng Pro- 
 videnca Providence, as the moralists are careful to 
 
104 CULTURE AND ANAECHY. loHAP. 
 
 tell us, generally works in human affairs by human 
 means ; so, when we want to make right reason act 
 on individual inclination, our best self on our ordinary 
 self, we seek to give it more power of doing so by 
 giving it public recognition and authority, and em- 
 bodying it, so far as we can, in the State. It seems 
 too much to ask of Providence, that while we, on our 
 part, leave our congenital taste for the bathos to its 
 natural operation and its infinite variety ,of experi- 
 ments. Providence should mysteriously guide it into 
 the true track, and compel it to relish the sublime. At 
 any rate, great men and great institutions have hitherto 
 seemed necessary for producing any considerable effect 
 of this kind. No doubt we have an infinite variety of 
 experiments and an ever -multiplying multitude of 
 explorers. Even in these few chapters I have enume- 
 rated many : the British Banner, Judge Edmonds, New- 
 man Weeks, Deborah Butler, Elderess Polly, Brother 
 Noyes, Mr. Murphy, the Licensed Victuallers, the Com- 
 mercial Travellers, and I know not how many more ; 
 and the members of the noble army are swelling every 
 day.' But what a depth of Quietism, or rather, what 
 an over-bold call on the direct interposition of Provi- 
 dence, to believe that these interesting explorers will 
 discover the true track, or at any rate, " will do so 
 in the main well enough " (whatever that may mean) 
 if left to their natural operation ; that is, by going on 
 as they are ! Philosophers say, indeed, that we learn 
 virtue by performing acts of virtue ; but to say that 
 we shall learn virtue by performing any acts to which 
 our natural taste for the bathos carries us, that the 
 
III.] BAEBAEIANS, PHIIilSTINES, POPtJLACE. 105 
 
 fanatical Protestant comes at his best self by Papist- 
 baiting, or Newman "Weeks and Deborah Butler at 
 right reason by following their noses, this certainly 
 does appear over-sanguine. 
 
 It is true, what we want is to make right reason 
 act on individual reason, the reason of individuals; 
 all our search for authority has that for its end and 
 aim. The Daily News says, I observe, that all my 
 argument ior authority "has a non-intellectual root;" 
 and from what I know of my own mind and its 
 poverty I think this so probable, that I should be 
 inclined easily to admit it, if it were not that, in the 
 first place, nothing of this kind, perhaps, should be 
 admitted without examination ; and, in the second, a 
 way of accounting for the charge being made, in this 
 particular instance, without good grounds, appears to 
 present itself. What seems to me to account here, 
 perhaps, for the charge, is the want of flexibility of our 
 race, on which I have so often remarked. I mean, it 
 being admitted that the conformity of the individual 
 reason of the fanatical Protestant or the popular rioter 
 with right reason is our true object, and not the mere 
 restraining them, by the strong arm of the State, from 
 Papist-baiting, or railing-breaking, — admitting this, 
 we English have so little flexibility that we cannot 
 readily perceive that the State's restraining them from 
 these indulgences may yet fix clearly in their minds 
 that, to the collective nation, these indulgences appear 
 irrational and unallowable, may make them pause and 
 reflect, and may contribute to bringing, with time, 
 their individual reason into harmony with right reason 
 
106 CULTURE AND ANARCHY. [chap. 
 
 But in no country, owing to the want of intellectual 
 flexibility above mentioned, is the leaning which is 
 our natural one, and, therefore, needs no recommend- 
 ing to us, so sedulously recommended, and the leaning 
 which is not our natural one, and, therefore, does not 
 need dispraising to us, so sedulously dispraised, as in 
 ours. To rely on the individual being, with us, the 
 natural leaning, we will hear of nothing but the good 
 of relying on the individual ; to act through the col- 
 lective nation on the individual being not our natural 
 leaning, we will hear nothing in recommendation of 
 it. But the wise know that we often need to hear 
 most of that to which we are least inclined, and even 
 to learn to employ, in certain circumstances, that which 
 is capable, if employed amiss, of being a danger to u& 
 Elsewhere this is certainly better understood than 
 here. In a recent number of the WestmiTister Beview, 
 an able writer, but with precisely our national want 
 of flexibility of which I have been speaking, has un- 
 earthed, I see, for our present needs, an English trans- 
 lation, published some years ago, of Wilhelm von 
 Humboldt's book. The Sphere and Duties of Government. 
 Humboldt's object in this book is to show that the 
 operation of government ought to be severely limited 
 to what directly and immediately relates to the security 
 of person and property. Wilhelm von Humboldt, one 
 of the most beautiful souls that have ever existed, 
 used to say that one's business in life was first to per- 
 fect one's self by all the means in one's power, and 
 secondly, to try and create in the world around one 
 an aristocracy, the most numerous that one possibly 
 
til.] BAEBAEIANS, PHILISTINES, POPULACE. 107 
 
 could, of talents and characters. He saw, of course, 
 that, in the end, everything comes to this, — that the 
 individual must act for himself, and must be perfect 
 in himself; and he lived in a country, Germany, 
 where people were disposed to act too little for them- 
 selves, and to rely too much on the Government. 
 But even thus, such was his flexibility, so little was 
 he in bondage to a mere abstract maxim, that he saw 
 very well that for his purpose itself, of enabling the 
 individual to stand perfect on his own foimdations 
 and to do without the State, the action of the State 
 would for long, long years be necessary. And soon 
 after he wrote his book on The Sphere and Duties of 
 Government, Wilhelm von Humboldt became Minister 
 of Education in Prussia ; and from his ministry all 
 the great reforms which give the control of Prussian 
 education to the State, — the transference of the man- 
 agement of public schools from their old boards of 
 trustees to the State, the obligatory State-examina- 
 tion for schoolmasters, and the foundation of the great 
 State-University of Berlin, — take their origin. This 
 his English reviewer says not a word of. But, writing 
 for a people whose dangers lie, as we have seen, on 
 the side of their unchecked and unguided individual 
 action, whose dangers none of them lie on the side of 
 an over-reliance on the State, he quotes just so much 
 of Wilhelm von Humboldt's example as can flatter 
 them in their propensities, and do them no good ; and 
 just what might make them think, and be of use to 
 them, he leaves on one side. This precisely recalls 
 the manner, it will be observed, in which we have 
 
108 CULTUEE AND ANARCHY. [cHAP. lU 
 
 seen that our royal and noble personages proceed with 
 the Licensed Victuallers. 
 
 In France the action of the State on individuals is 
 yet more preponderant than in Germany; and the 
 need which friends of human perfection feel for what 
 may enable the individual to stand perfect on his own 
 foundations is all the stronger. But what says one of 
 the staunchest of these friends, M. Eenan, on State 
 action; and even State action in that very sphere 
 where in France it is most excessive, the sphere of 
 education? Here are his words : — " A Liberal believes 
 in liberty, and liberty signifies the non-intervention 
 of the State. Bvi such an ideal is stUl a long way off 
 from us, and the very means to reWfOve it to an indefinite 
 distance would be precisely the State's withdrawing Us 
 action too soon.'' And this, he adds, is even truer of 
 education than of any other department of public 
 affairs. 
 
 We see, then, how indispensable to that human 
 perfection which we seek is, in the opinion of good 
 judges, some public recognition and establishment of 
 our best self, or right reason. We see how our habits 
 and practice oppose themselves to such a recognition, 
 and the many inconveniences which we therefore 
 suffer. But now let us try to go a little deeper, and 
 to find, beneath our actual habits and practice, the 
 very ground and cause out of which they spring. 
 
CHAPTER ly. 
 
 HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 
 
 This fundamental ground is our preference of doing 
 to thinking. Now this preference is a main element 
 in our nature, and as we study it we find ourselves 
 opening up a number of large questions on every 
 side. 
 
 Let me go back for a moment to Bishop Wilson, 
 who says : " First, never go against the best light you 
 have ; secondly, take care that your light be not 
 darkness.'' We show, as a nation, laudable energy 
 and persistence in walkiag according to the best 
 light we have, but are not quite careful enough, 
 perhaps, to see that our light be not darkness. This 
 is only another version of the old story that energy 
 is our strong point and favourable characteristic, 
 rather than intelligence. But we may give to this 
 idea a more general form still, in which it will have 
 a yet larger range of application. We may regard 
 this energy driving at practice, this paramount sense 
 of the obligation of duty, self-control, and work, this 
 earnestness in going manfully with the best light we 
 have, as one force. And we may regard the intelli- 
 
110 CULTUEE AND ANAKCHY. [CHAP. 
 
 gence driving at those ideas which are, after all, the 
 basis of right practice, the ardent sense for all the 
 new and changing combinations of them which man's 
 development brings with it, the indomitable imptdse 
 to know and adjust them perfectly, as another force. 
 And these two forces we may regard as in some sense 
 rivals, — rivals not by the necessity of their own 
 nature, but as exhibited in man and his history, — 
 and rivals dividing the empire of the world between 
 them. And to give these forces names from the two 
 races of men who have supplied the most signal and 
 splendid manifestations of them, we may call them 
 respectively the forces of Hebraism and Hellenism. 
 Hebraism and Hellenism, — between these two points 
 of influence moves our world. At one time it feels 
 more powerfully the attraction of one of them, at 
 another time of the other ; and it ought to be, though 
 it never is, evenly and happily balanced between 
 them. 
 
 The final aim of both Hellenism and Hebraism, as 
 of all great spiritual disciplines, is no doubt the same : 
 man's perfection or salvation. The very language 
 which they both of them use in schooling us to reach 
 this aim is often identical Even when their language 
 indicates by variation, — sometimes a broad variation, 
 often a but slight and subtle variation, — the different 
 courses of thought which are uppermost in each dis- 
 cipline, even then the unity of the final end and aim 
 is stUl apparent. To employ the actual words of that 
 discipline with which we ourselves are aU of us most 
 familiar, and the words of which, therefore, come 
 
IT.] HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. Ill 
 
 most home to us, that final end and aim is " that we 
 might be partakers of the divine nature." These are 
 the words of a Hebrew apostle, but of Hellenism and 
 Hebraism alike this is, I say, the aim. When the 
 two are confronted, as they very often are confronted, 
 it is nearly always with what I may call a rhetorical 
 purpose ; the speaker's whole design is to exalt and 
 enthrone one of the two, and he uses the other only as 
 a foil and to enable him the better to give effect to his 
 purpose. Obviously, with us, it is usually Hellenism 
 which is thus reduced to minister to the triumph of 
 Hebraism. There is a sermon on Greece and the 
 Greek spirit by a man never to be mentioned without 
 interest and respect, Frederick Eobertson, in which 
 this rhetorical use of Greece and the Greek spirit, 
 and the inadequate exhibition of them necessarily 
 consequent upon this, is almost ludicrous, and would 
 be censurable if it were not to be explained by the 
 exigencies of a sermon. On the other hand, Heinrich 
 Heine, and other writers of his sort, give us the 
 spectacle of the tables completely turned, and of 
 Hebraism brought in just as a foil and contrast to 
 Hellenism, and to make the superiority of Hellenism 
 more manifest. In both these cases there is injustice 
 and misrepresentation. The aim and end of both 
 Hebraism and Hellenism is, as I have said, one and 
 the same, and this aim and end is august and admir- 
 able. 
 
 Still, they pursue this aim by very different courses. 
 The uppermost idea with Hellenism is to see things 
 as they really are ; the uppermost idea with Hebraism 
 
112 CULTTJEE AND ANAECHY. [OHAP. 
 
 is conduct and obedience. Nothing can do away with 
 this ineffaceable difference. The Greek quarrel with 
 the body and its desires is, that they hinder right 
 thinking; the Hebrew quarrel with them is, that they 
 hinder right acting. " He that keepeth the law, 
 happy is he ; " " Blessed is the man that f eareth the 
 Eternal, that delighteth greatly in his command- 
 ments ; " — that is the Hebrew notion of felicity; and, 
 pursued with passion and tenacity, this notion would 
 not let the Hebrew rest tUl, as is well known, he had 
 at last got out of the law a network of prescriptions 
 to enwrap his whole life, to govern every moment of 
 it, every impulse, every action. The Greek notion of 
 felicity, on the other hand, is perfectly conveyed in 
 these words of a great French moralist : " Cest le 
 hmhew des hommes," — when 1 when they abhor that 
 which is evil? — no; when they exercise themselves 
 in the law of the Lord day and night 1 — no ; when 
 they die daily ^— no ; when they walk about the New 
 Jerusalem with palms in their hands ? — no ; but when 
 they think aright, when their thought hits : " quaTid 
 Us pensent juste." At the bottom of both the Greek 
 and the Hebrew notion is the desire, native in man, 
 for reason and the will of God, the feeling after the 
 universal order, — in a word, the love of God. But, 
 while Hebraism seizes upon certain plain, capital in- 
 timations of the universal order, and rivets itself, one 
 may say, with unequalled grandeur of earnestness 
 and intensity on the study and observance of them, 
 the bent of Hellenism is to follow, with flexible 
 activity, the whole play of the universal order, to be 
 
IV.] HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 113 
 
 apprehensive of missing any part of it, of sacrificing 
 one part to another, to shp away from resting in this 
 or that intimation of it, however capital. An un- 
 clouded clearness of mind, an unimpeded play of 
 thought, is what this hent drives at. The governing 
 idea of Hellenism is sfpomiwneUy of consciousness ; that of 
 Hebraism, strictness of conscience. 
 
 Christianity changed nothing in this essential bent of 
 Hebraism to set doing above knowing. Self-conquest, 
 self-devotion, the following not our own individual 
 will, but the will of God, obedience, is the fundamental 
 idea of this form, also, of the discipline to which we 
 have attached the general name of Hebraism. Only, 
 as the old law and the network of prescriptions with 
 which it enveloped human life were evidently a 
 motive -power not driving and searching enough to 
 produce the result aimed at, — patient continuance 
 in well-doing, self-conquest, — Christianity substituted 
 for them boundless devotion to that inspiring and 
 affecting pattern of self- conquest offered by Jesus 
 Christ ; and by the new motive-power, of which the 
 essence was this, though the love and admiration of 
 Christian churches have for centuries been employed 
 in varying, amplifying, and adorning the plain de- 
 scription of it, Christianity, as St. Paul truly says, 
 " establishes the law," and in the strength of the 
 ampler power which she has thus supplied to fulfil 
 it, has accomplished the miracles, which we all see, of 
 her history. 
 
 So long as we do not forget that both Hellenism 
 and Hebraism are profound and admirable manifesta- 
 
 VOL. IIL I 
 
IH CULTURE AND ANARCHY. [cHAP. 
 
 tions of man's life, tendencies, and powers, and that 
 both of them aim at a like final result, we can hardly 
 insist too strongly on the divergence of line and of 
 operation with which they proceed. It is a diver- 
 gence so great that it most truly, as the prophet 
 Zechariah says, " has raised up thy sons, Zion, 
 against thy sons, Greece ! " The difiFerence whether 
 It is by doing or by knowing that we set most store, 
 and the practical consequences which follow from 
 this difference, leave their mark on all the history of 
 our race and of its development. Language may be 
 abundantly quoted from both Hellenism and Hebraism 
 to make it seem that one follows the same current as 
 the other towards the same goal. They are, truly, 
 borne towards the same goal ; but the currents which 
 bear them are infinitely different. It is true, Solomon 
 will praise knowing : " Understanding is a well-spring 
 of life unto him that hath it." And in the Now 
 Testament, again, Jesus Christ is a "light," and 
 "truth makes us free." It is true, Aristotle will 
 undervalue knowing : " In what concerns virtue," 
 says he, "three things are necessary — knowledge, 
 deliberate will, and perseverance; but, whereas the 
 two last are all-important, the first is a matter of 
 little importance." It is true that with the same 
 impatience with which St. James enjoins a man to be 
 not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, Epictetus 
 exhorts us to do what we have demonstrated to our- 
 selves we ought to do ; or he taunts us with futility, 
 for being armed at all points to prove that lying is 
 wrong, yet all the time continuing to lie. It is true, 
 
rv.l HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 115 
 
 Plato, in words which are almost the words of the 
 New Testament or the Imitation, calls life a learning 
 to die. But underneath the superficial agreement 
 the fundamental divergence still subsists. The un- 
 derstanding of Solomon is " the walking in the way 
 of the commandments ; " this is " the way of peace," 
 and it is of this that blessedness comes. In the New 
 Te.stament, the truth which gives us the peace of God 
 and makes us free, is the love of Christ constraining 
 us to crucify, as he did, and with a like purpose of 
 moral regeneration, the flesh with its affections and 
 lusts, and thus establishing, as we have seen, the law. 
 The moral virtues, on the other hand, are with Aris- 
 totle but the porch and access to the intellectual, and 
 with these last is blessedness. That partaking of the 
 divine life, which both Hellenism and Hebraism, as 
 we have said, fix as their crowning aim, Plato ex- 
 pressly denies to the man of practical virtue merely, 
 of self-conquest with any other motive than that of 
 perfect intellectual vision. He reserves it for the 
 lover of pure knowledge, of seeing things as they 
 really are, — the ^(Ao/iadijs. 
 
 Both Hellenism and Hebraism arise out of the 
 wants of human nature, and address themselves to 
 satisfying those wants. But their methods are so 
 different, they lay stress on such different points, 
 and call into being by their respective disciplines 
 such different activities, that the face which human 
 nature presents when it passes from the hands of 
 one of them to those of the other, is no longer the 
 same. To get rid of one's ignorance, to see things 
 
116 CULTUKE AND ANAEOHY. [chap, 
 
 as they are, and by seeing them as they are to see 
 them in their beauty, is the simple and attractive 
 ideal which Hellenism holds out before human 
 nature; and from the simplicity and charm of this 
 ideal, Hellenism, arid human life in the hands of 
 Hellenism, is invested with a kind of aerial ease, 
 clearness, and radiancy; they are full of what we 
 call sweetness and light. Diificulties are kept out 
 of view, and the beauty and rationalness of the 
 ideal have all our thoughts. "The best man is he 
 who most tries to perfect himself, and the happiest 
 man is he who most feels that he is perfecting him- 
 self," — this account of the matter by Socrates, the 
 true Socrates of the Memorabilia, has something so 
 simple, spontaneous, and unsophisticated about it, 
 that it seems to fill us with clearness and hope when 
 we hear it. But there is a saying which I have 
 heard attributed to Mr. Carlyle about Socrates, — 
 a verj' happy saying, whether it is really Mr. Car- 
 lyle's or not, — which excellently marks the essential 
 point in which Hebraism differs from Hellenism. 
 "Socrates," this saying goes, "is terribly at ease in 
 Zion." Hebraism, — and here is the source of its 
 wonderful strength, — has always been severely pre- 
 occupied with an awful sense of the impossibility of 
 being at ease in Zion ; of the difiSculties which oppose 
 themselves to man's pursuit or attainment of that 
 perfection of which Socrates talks so hopefully, and, 
 as from this point of view one might almost say, so 
 glibly. It is all very well to talk of getting rid of 
 one's ignorance, of seeing things in their reality. 
 
IV.] HEBEAISM AND HELLENISM. 117 
 
 seeing them in their beauty ; but how is this to be 
 done when there is something which tliwarts and 
 spoils all our efforts 'i 
 
 This something is sm; and the space which sin 
 fills in Hebraism, as compared with Hellenism, is 
 indeed prodigious. This obstacle to perfection fills 
 the whole scene, and perfection appears remote and 
 rising away from earth, in the background. Under 
 the name of sin, the difficulties of knowing oneself 
 and conquering oneself which impede man's passage 
 to perfection, become, for Hebraism, a positive, active 
 entity hostile to man, a mysterious power which I 
 heard Dr. Pusey the other day, in one of his impres- 
 sive sermons, compare to a hideous hunchback seated 
 on our shoulders, and which it is the main business 
 of our lives to hate and oppose. The discipline of 
 the Old Testament may be summed up as a discip- 
 line teaching us to abhor and flee from sin; the 
 discipline of the New Testament, as a discipline 
 teaching us to die to it. As Hellenism speaks of 
 thinking clearly, seeing things in their essence and 
 beauty, as a grand and precious feat for man to 
 achieve, so Hebraism speaks of becoming conscious 
 of sin, of awakening to a sense of sin, as a feat of 
 this kind. It is obvious to what wide divergence 
 these diflfering tendencies, actively followed, must 
 lead. As one passes and repasses from Hellenism 
 to Hebraism, from Plato to St. Paul, one feels in- 
 clined to rub one's eyes and ask oneself whether 
 man is indeed a gentle and simple being, showing 
 the traces of a noble and divine nature ; or an un- 
 
118 CULTDEE AND ANARCHY. [CHAP. 
 
 happy chained captive, labouring with groaninga 
 that cannot be uttered to free himself from the 
 body of this death. 
 
 Apparently it was the Hellenic conception of 
 human nature which was unsound, for the world 
 could not live by it. Absolutely to call it unsound, 
 however, is to fall into the common error of its 
 Hebraising enemies; but it was unsound at that 
 particular moment of man's development, it was 
 premature. The indispensable basis of conduct and 
 self-control, the platform upon which alone the per- 
 fection aimed at by Greece can come into bloom, 
 was not to be reached by our race so easily; cen- 
 turies of probation and discipline were needed to 
 bring us to it. Therefore the bright promise of 
 Hellenism faded, and Hebraism ruled the world. 
 Then was seen that astonishing spectacle, so well 
 marked by the often -quoted words of the prophet 
 Zechariah, when men of all languages and nations 
 took hold of the skirt of him that was a Jew, saying : 
 — " JVe will go with you, for we have heard that God is 
 with you." And the Hebraism which thus received 
 and ruled a world all gone out of the way and alto- 
 gether become unprofitable, was, and could not but 
 be, the later, the more spiritual, the more attractive 
 development of Hebraism. It was Christianity; 
 that is to say, Hebraism aiming at self-conquest and 
 rescue from the thraU of vile affections, not by 
 obedience to the letter of a law, but by conformity 
 to the image of a self-sacrificing example. To a 
 world stricken with moral enervation Christianity 
 
IV.] HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 119 
 
 offered its spectacle of an inspired self-sacrifice j to 
 men who refused themselves nothing, it showed one 
 who refused himself everything; — "my Saviour ban- 
 ished joy I" says George Herbert. "When the dma 
 Venus, the life-giving and joy-giving power of nature, 
 so fondly cherished by the Pagan world, could nol 
 save her followers from self-dissatisfaction and ennui, 
 the severe words of the apostle came bracingly and 
 refreshingly: "Let no man deceive you with vain 
 words, for because of these things cometh the wrath 
 of God upon the children of disobedience." Through 
 age after age and generation after generation, our 
 race, or all that part of our race which was most 
 living and progressive, was baptized irdo a death ; and 
 endeavoured, by suffering in the flesh, to cease from 
 sin. Of this endeavour, the animating labours and 
 afflictions of early Christianity, the touching asceti- 
 cism of mediaeval Christianity, are the great historical 
 manifestations. Literary monuments of it, each in 
 its own way incomparable, remain in the Epistles of 
 St. Paul, in St Augustine's Confessions, and in the 
 two original and simplest books of the Imitation.^ 
 
 Of two disciplines laying their main stress, the 
 one, on clear intelligenpe, the other, on firm obedi- 
 ence; the one, on comprehensively knowing the 
 grounds of one's duty, the other, on diligently prac- 
 tising it ; the one, on taking all possible care (to use 
 Bishop Wilson's words agam) that the light we have 
 be not darkness, the other, that according to the 
 best light we have we diligently walk, — the priority 
 ^ The two first books. 
 
120 CULTUEE AND ANARCHY. [CHAP. 
 
 naturally belongs to that discipline which braces all 
 man's moral powers, and founds for him an indis- 
 pensable basis of character. And, therefore, it is 
 justly said of the Jewish people, who were charged 
 with setting powerfully forth that side of the divine 
 order to which the words conscience and self-conquest 
 point, that they were " entrusted with the' oracles 
 of God;" as it is justly said of Christianity, which 
 followed Judaism and which set forth this side with 
 a much deeper effectiveness and a much wider in- 
 fluence, that the wisdom of the old Pagan world was 
 foolishness compared to it. No words of devotion 
 and admiration can be too strong to render thanks 
 to these beneficent forces which have so borne for- 
 ward humanity in its appointed work of coming to 
 the knowledge and possession of itself; above all, 
 in those great moments when their action was the 
 wholesomest and the most necessary. 
 
 But the evolution of these forces, separately and in 
 themselves, is not the whole evolution of humanity, — 
 their single history is not the whole history of man ; 
 whereas their admirers are always apt to make it 
 stand for the whole history. Hebraism and Hellenism 
 are, neither of them, the law . of human development, 
 as their admirers are prone to make them ; they are, 
 each of them, coniribviiom to human development^ — 
 august contributions, invaluable contributions; and 
 each showing itself to us more august, more invalu- 
 able, more preponderant over the other, according to 
 the moment in which we take them, and the relation 
 in which we stand to them. The nations of out 
 
IV.] HEBKAISM AND HELLENISM. 121 
 
 modem world, children of that immense and salutary 
 movement which broke up the Pagan world, inevitably 
 stand to Hellenism in a relation which dwarfs it, and 
 to Hebraism in a relation which magnifies it. They 
 are inevitably prone to take Hebraism as the law of 
 human development, and not as simply a contribution 
 to it, however precious. And yet the lesson must 
 perforce be learned, that the human spirit is wider 
 than the most priceless of the forces which bear it 
 onward, and that to the whole development of man 
 Hebraism itself is, like Hellenism, but a contribution. 
 Perhaps we may help ourselves to see this clearer 
 by an illustration drawn from the treatment of a 
 single great idea which has profoundly engaged the 
 human spirit, and has given it eminent opportunities 
 for showing its nobleness and energy. It surely must 
 be perceived that the idea of immortality, as this idea 
 rises in its generality before the human spirit, is 
 something grander, truer, and more satisfying, than 
 it is in the particular forms by which St. Paul, in 
 the famous fifteenth chapter of the Epistle to the 
 Corinthians, and Plato, in the Phedo, endeavour to 
 develop and establish it. Surely we cannot but feel, 
 that the argumentation with which the Hebrew 
 apostle goes about to expound this great idea is, after 
 all, confused and inconclusive ; and that the reason- 
 ing, drawn from analogies of likeness and equality, 
 which is employed upon it by the Greek philosopher, 
 is over-subtle and sterile. Above and beyond the 
 inadequate solutions which Hebraism and Hellenism 
 here attempt, extends the immense and august pro- 
 
1§3 CULTURE AND ANAECHT. [CHAP. 
 
 blem itself, and the hunian spirit which gave birth to 
 it. And this single illustration may suggest to ua 
 how the same thing happens in other cases also. 
 
 But meanwhile, by alternations of Hebraism and 
 Hellenism, of a man's intellectual and moral impulses, 
 of the effort to see things as they really are, and the 
 effort to win peace by self-conquest, the human spirit 
 proceeds; and each of these two forces has its appointed 
 hours of culmination and seasons of rule. As the 
 great movement of Christianity was a triumph of 
 Hebraism and man's mcral impulses, so the great 
 movement which goes by the name of the Eenascence ^ 
 was an uprising and re-instatement of man's intel- 
 lectual impulses and of Hellenism. We in England, 
 the devoted children of Protestantism, chiefly know 
 the Eenascence by its subordinate and secondary side 
 of the Reformation. The Eeformation has been often 
 called a Hebraising revival, a return to the ardour and 
 sincereness of primitive Christianity. No one, how- 
 ever, can study the development of Protestantism 
 and of Protestant churches without feeling that into 
 the Eeformation too, — Hebraising child of the Ee- 
 nascence and offspring of its fervour, rather than its 
 intelligence, as it undoubtedly was, — the subtle 
 Hellenic leaven of the Eenascence found its way, and 
 that the exact respective parts, in the Eeformation, 
 of Hebraism and of Hellenism, are not easy to 
 
 ' I have ventured to give to the foreign word Bejuiissance, — 
 destined to become of more common use amongst us as the 
 movement which it denotes comes, as it will come, increasingly 
 to interest us, — an English form. 
 
tv.] HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 123 
 
 separate. But what we may with truth say is, that 
 all which Protestantism was to itself clearly conscious 
 of, all which it succeeded in clearly setting forth in 
 words, had the characters of Hebraism rather than of 
 Hellenism. The Eeformation was strong, in that it 
 was an earnest return to the Bible and to doing from 
 the heart the wiU of God as there written. It was 
 weak, in that it never consciously grasped or applied 
 the central idea of the Renascence, — the Hellenic 
 idea of pursuing, in all lines of activity, the la.w and 
 science, to use Plato's words, of things as they really 
 are. Whatever direct superiority, therefore, Protes- 
 tantism had over Catholicism was a moral superiority, 
 a superiority arising out of its greater sincerity and 
 earnestness, — at the moment of its apparition at any 
 rate, — in dealing with the heart and conscience. Its 
 pretensions to an intellectual superiority are in general 
 quite illusory. For Hellenism, for the thinking side 
 in man as distinguished from the acting side, the 
 attitude of mind of Protestantism towards the Bible 
 in no respect dififers from the attitude of mind of 
 Catholicism towards the Church. The mental habit 
 of him who imagines that Balaam's ass spoke, in no 
 respect dififers from the mental habit of him who 
 imagines that a Madonna of wood or stone winked ; 
 and the one, who says that God's Church makes him 
 believe what he believes, and the other, who says that 
 God's Word makes him believe what he believes, are 
 for the philosopher perfectly alike in not really and 
 truly knowing, when they say God^s Chwch and God'i 
 Word, what it is they say, or whereof they affirm. 
 
IH CULTUEE AND ANAKCHY. [cHAE 
 
 In the sixteenth century, therefore, Hellenism re- 
 entered the world, and again stood in presence of 
 Hebraism, — a Hebraism renewed and purged. Now, 
 it has not been enough observed, how, in the seven- 
 teenth century, a fate befell Hellenism in some 
 respects analogous to that which befell it at the 
 commencement of our era. The Eenascence, that 
 great re-awakening of Hellenism, that irresistible 
 return of humanity to nature and to seeing things as 
 they are, which in art, in literature, and in physics, 
 produced such splendid fruits, had, like the anterior 
 Hellenism of the Pagan world, a side of moral weak- 
 ness and of relaxation or insensibility of the moral 
 fibre, which in Italy showed itself with the most 
 startling plainness, but which in France, England, 
 and other countries was very apparent too. Again 
 this loss of spiritual balance, this exclusive preponder- 
 ance given to man's perceiving and knowing side, this 
 unnatural defect of his feeling and acting side, pro- 
 voked a reaction. Let us trace that reaction where 
 it most nearly concerns us. 
 
 Science has now made visible to everybody the 
 great and pregnant elements of difference which lie 
 in race, and in how signal a manner they make the 
 genius and history of an Indo-European people vary 
 from those of a Semitic people. Hellenism is of 
 Indo-European growth, Hebraism is of Semitic growth; 
 and we English, a nation of Indo-European stock, 
 seem to belong naturally to the movement of Hellen- 
 ism. But nothing more strongly marks the essential 
 unity of man, than the afSnities we can perceive, in 
 
rv.] HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 125 
 
 this point or that, between members of one family of 
 peoples and members of another. And no affinity of 
 this kind is more strongly marked than that likeness . 
 in the strength and prominence of the moral fibre, 
 which, notwithstanding immense elements of differ- 
 ence, knits in some special sort the genius and history 
 of us English, and our American descendants across 
 the Atlantic, to the genius and history of the Hebrew 
 people. Puritanism, which has been so great a power 
 in the English nation, and in the strongest part of 
 the English nation, was originally the reaction in the 
 seventeenth century of the conscience and moral sense 
 of our race, against the moral indifference and lax 
 rule of conduct which in the sixteenth century came 
 in with the Eenascence. It was a reaction of 
 Hebraism against Hellenism ; and it powerfully mani- 
 fested itself, as was natural, in a people with much of 
 what we call a Hebraising turn, with a signal affinity 
 for the bent which was the master-bent of Hebrew 
 life. Eminently Indo-European by its hwmow, by the 
 power it shows, through this gift, of imaginatively 
 acknowledging the multiform aspects of the problem 
 of life, and of thus getting itself unfixed from its own 
 over-certainty, of smiling at its own over-tenacity, our 
 race has yet (and a great part of its strength lies 
 here), in matters of practical life and moral conduct, 
 a strong share of the assuredness, the tenacity, the 
 intensity of the Hebrews. This turn manifested 
 itself in Puritanism, and has had a great part in 
 shaping our history for the last two hundred years. 
 Undoubtedly it checked and changed amongst us that 
 
126 CULTUKE AND ANAECHY. [cHAP 
 
 movement of the Renascence which we see producing 
 in the reign of Elizabeth such wonderful fruits. Un- 
 doubtedly it stopped the prominent rule and direct 
 development of that order of ideas which we call by 
 the name of Hellenism, and gave the first rank to a 
 different order of ideas. Apparently, too, as we said 
 of the former defeat of Hellenism, if Hellenism was 
 defeated, this shows that Hellenism was imperfect, 
 and that its ascendency at that moment would not 
 have been for the world's good. 
 
 Yet there is a very important difference between 
 the defeat inflicted on Hellenism by Christianity 
 eighteen hundred years ago, and the check given to 
 the Renascence by Puritanism. The greatness of the 
 difference is well measured by the difference in force, 
 beauty, significance, and usefulness, between primitive 
 Christianity and Protestantism. Eighteen hundred 
 years ago it was altogether the hour of Hebraism. 
 Primitive Christianity was legitimately and truly the 
 ascendant force in the world at that time, and the 
 way of mankind's progress lay through its full 
 development Another hour in man's development 
 began in the fifteenth century, and the main road of 
 his progress then lay for a time through Hellenism. 
 Puritanism was no longer the central current of the 
 world's progress, it was a side stream crossing the 
 central current and checking it. The cross and the 
 check may have been necessary and salutary, but that 
 does not do away with the essential difference between 
 the main stream of man's advance and a cross or side 
 stream. For more than two hundred years the main 
 
IV.] HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM. 127 
 
 Btream of man's advance has moved towards knowing 
 himself and the world, seeing things as they are, 
 spontaneity of consciousness ; the main impulse of a 
 great part, and that the strongest part, of our nation 
 has been towards strictness of conscience. They have 
 made the secondary the principal at the wrong mo- 
 ment, and the principal they have at the wrong 
 moment treated as secondary. This contravention of 
 the natural order has produced, as such contravention 
 always must produce, a certain confusion and false 
 movement, of which we are now beginning to feel, in 
 almost every direction, the inconvenience. In all 
 directions our habitual causes of action seem to be 
 losing efiBcaciousness, credit, and control, both with 
 others and even with ourselves. Everywhere we see 
 the beginnings of confusion, and we want a clue to 
 some sound order and authority. This we can only 
 get by going back upon the actual instincts and forces 
 which rule our life, seeing them as they really are, 
 connecting them with other instincts and forces, and 
 enlarging our whole view and rule of life. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 PORRO UNUM EST NECESSAEIUM. 
 
 The matter here opened is so large, and the trains ol 
 thought to which it gives rise are so manifold, that 
 we must be careful to limit ourselves scrupulously to 
 what has a direct bearing upon our actual discussion. 
 We have found that at the bottom of our present 
 unsettled state, so full of the seeds of trouble, lies the 
 notion of its being the prime right and happiness, 
 for each of us, to affirm himself, and his ordinary 
 self ; to be doing, and to be doing freely and as he 
 likes. "We have found at the bottom of it the dis- 
 belief in right reason as a lawful authority. It was 
 easy to show from our practice and current history 
 that this is so j but it was impossible to show why it 
 is so without taking a somewhat wider sweep and 
 going into things a little more deeply. Why, in fact, 
 should good, well-meaning, energetic, sensible people, 
 like the bulk of our countrymen, come to have such 
 light belief in right reason, and such an exaggerated 
 value for their own independent doing, however 
 crude t The answer is : because of an exclusive and 
 excessive development in them, without due allowance 
 
CHAP, v.] POEEO UNUM EST NECESSABIUM. 129 
 
 for time, place, and circumstance, of that side of 
 human nature, and that group of human forces, to 
 which we have given the general name of Hebraism. 
 Because they have thought their real and only im- 
 portant homage was owed to a power concerned with 
 obedience rather than with their intelligence, a power 
 interested in the moral side of their nature almost 
 exclusively. Thus they have been led to regard in 
 themselves, as the one thing needful, strictness of con- 
 science, the staunch adherence to some fixed law of 
 doing we have got already, instead of spontaneity of 
 consciousness, which tends continually to enlarge our 
 whole law of doing. They have fancied themselves 
 to have in their religion a sufficient basis for the 
 whole of their life fixed and certain for ever, a full 
 law of conduct and a full law of thought, so far as 
 thought is needed, as well ; whereas what they really 
 have is a law of conduct, a law of unexampled power 
 for enabling them to war against the law of sin in 
 their members and not to serve it in the lusts thereof. 
 The book which contains this invaluable law they call 
 the Word of God, and attribute to it, as I have said, 
 and as, indeed, is perfectly well known, a reach and 
 sufficiency co-extensive with aU the wants of himian 
 nature. 
 
 This might, no doubt, be so, if humanity were not 
 the composite thing it is, if it had only, or in quite 
 overpowering eminence, a moral side, and the group 
 of instincts and powers which we call moral. But it 
 has besides, and in notable eminence, an intellectual 
 side, and the group of instincts and powers which we 
 
 VOL. IIL K 
 
130 CULTURE AND ANAECHT. [chap. 
 
 call intellectual. No doubt, mankind makes in 
 general its progress in a fashion which gives at one 
 time full swing to one of these groups of instincts, at 
 another time to the other ; and man's faculties are so 
 intertwined, that when his moral side, and the current 
 of force which we call Hebraism, is uppermost, this 
 side will manage somehow to provide, or appear to 
 provide, satisfaction for his intellectual needs; and 
 when his intellectual side, and the current of force 
 which we call Hellenism, is uppermost, this again wiU 
 provide, or appear to provide, satisfaction for men's 
 moral needs. But sooner or later it becomes manifest 
 that when the two sides of humanity proceed in this 
 fashion of alternate preponderance, and not of mutual 
 understanding and balance, the side which is upper- 
 most does not really provide in a satisfactory manner 
 for the needs of the side which is undermost, and a 
 state of confusion is, sooner or later, the result The 
 Hellenic half of our nature, bearing rule, makes a 
 sort of provision for the Hebrew half, but it turns 
 out to be an inadequate provision; and again the 
 Hebrew half of our nature, bearing rule, makes a sort 
 of provision for the Hellenic half, but this, too, turns 
 out to be an inadequate provision. The true and 
 smooth order of humanity's development is not 
 reached in either way. And therefore, while we 
 willingly admit with the Christian apostle that the 
 world by wisdom, — that is, by the isolated prepondeiv 
 ance of its intellectual impulses, — knew not God, or 
 the true order of things, it is yet necessary, also, to 
 set up a sort of converse to this proposition, and to 
 
v.] POKED TJNUM EST NECESSAEIUM. 131 
 
 say likewise (what is equally trae) that the world by 
 Puritanism knew not God. And it is on this con- 
 verse of the apostle's proposition that it is particularly 
 needful to insist in our own country just at present. 
 
 Here, indeed, is the answer to many criticisms 
 which have been addressed to all that we have said 
 in praise of sweetness and light. Sweetness and light 
 evidently have to do with the bent or side in humanity 
 which we call HeUenic. Greek intelligence has ob- 
 viously for its essence the instinct for what Plato 
 calls the true, firm, intelligible law of things ; the law 
 of light, of seeing things as they are. Even in the 
 natural sciences, where the Greeks had not time and 
 means adequately to apply this instinct, and where 
 we have gone a great deal further than they did, it is 
 this instinct which is the root of the whole matter 
 and the ground of all our success ; and this instinct 
 the world has mainly learnt of the Greeks, inasmuch 
 as they are humanity's most signal manifestation of 
 it. Greek art, again, Greek beauty, have their root 
 in the same impulse to see things as they really are, 
 inasmuch as Greek art and beauty rest on fidelity to 
 nature, — the best nature, — and on a delicate discriminar 
 tion of what this best nature is. To say we work for 
 sweetness and light, then, is only another way of 
 saying that we work for Hellenism. But, oh! cry 
 many people, sweetness and Kght are not enough ; 
 you must put strength or energy along with them, 
 and make a kind of trinity of strength, sweetness and 
 light, and then, perhaps, you may do some good. 
 That is to say, we are to join Hebraism, strictness of 
 
132 CULT0EB AND AITAECHY, [CHAP 
 
 the moral conscience, and manful walking by the best 
 light we have, together with Hellenism, inculcate 
 both, and rehearse the praises of both. 
 
 Or, rather, we may praise both in conjunction, 
 but we must be careful to praise Hebraism most. 
 "Culture," says an acute, though somewhat rigid 
 critic, Mr. Sidgwick, " diffuses sweetness and light. 
 I do not undervalue these blessings, but religion 
 gives fire and strength, and the world wants fire and 
 strength even more than sweetness and light." By 
 religion, let me explain, Mr. Sidgwick here means 
 particularly that Puritanism on the insufficiency of 
 which I have been commenting and to which he says 
 I am unfair. Now, no doubt, it is possible to be a 
 fanatical partisan of light and the instincts which 
 push us to it, a fanatical enemy of strictness of moral 
 conscience and the instincts which push us to it. A 
 fanaticism of this sort deforms and vulgarises the 
 well-known work, in some respects so remarkable, of 
 the late Mr. Buckle. Such a fanaticism carries its 
 own mark with it, in lacking sweetness ; and its own 
 penalty, in that, lacking sweetness, it comes in the 
 end to lack light too. And the Greeks, — the great 
 exponents of humanity's bent for sweetness and light 
 united, of its perception that the truth of things must 
 be at the same time beauty, — singularly escaped the 
 fanaticism which we moderns, whether we HeUenise 
 or whether we Hebraise, are so apt to show. They 
 arrived, — though failing, as has been said, to give 
 adequate practical satisfaction to the claims of man's 
 moral side, — at the idea of a comprehensive adjust- 
 
v.] POEKO UNUM EST NECESSAEIUM. 133 
 
 meut of the claims of both the sides in man, the 
 moral as well as the intellectual, of a full estimate of 
 both, and of a reconciliation of both ; an idea which 
 is philosophically of the greatest value, and the best 
 of lessons for us modems. So we ought to have no 
 difficulty in conceding to Mr. Sidgwick that manful 
 walking by the best light one has, — fire and strength 
 as he calls it, — has its high value as weU as culture, 
 the endeavour to see things in their truth and beauty, 
 the pursuit of sweetness and light. But whether at 
 this or that time, and to this or that set of persons, 
 one ought to insist most on the praises of fire and 
 strength, or on the praises of sweetness and light, 
 must depend, one would think, on the circumstances 
 and needs of that particular time and those particular 
 persons. And all that we have been saying, and 
 indeed any glance at the world around us shows that 
 with us, with the most respectable and strongest part 
 of us, the ruling force is now, and long has been, a 
 Puritan force, — the care for fire and strength, strict- 
 ness of conscience, Hebraism, rather than the care 
 for sweetness and light, spontaneity of consciousness, 
 Hellenism. 
 
 WeU, then, what is the good of our now rehears- 
 ing the praises of fire and strength to ourselves, who 
 dwell too exclusively on them already t When Mr. 
 Sidgwick says so broadly, that the world wants fire 
 and strength even more than sweetness and light, is 
 he not carried away by a turn for broad generalisa- 
 tion ? does he not forget that the world is not all of 
 one piece, and every piece with the same needs at 
 
134 CULTURE AND ANAECHT. [chap 
 
 the same time ? It may be true that the Boman 
 world at the beginning of our era, or Leo the Tenth's 
 Court at the time of the Eeformation, or French 
 society in the eighteenth century, needed fire and 
 strength even more than sweetness and light. But 
 can it be said that the Barbarians who overran the 
 empire needed fire and strength even more than 
 sweetness and light; or that the Puritans needed 
 them more; or that Mr. Murphy, the Birmingham 
 lecturer, and his friends, need them more ? 
 
 The Puritan's great danger is that he imagines 
 himself in possession of a rule telling him the vmiwm 
 necesswrium, or one thing needful, and that he then 
 remains satisfied with a very crude conception of what 
 this rule really is and what it tells him, thinks he 
 has now knowledge and henceforth needs only to act, 
 and, in this dangerous state of assurance and self- 
 satisfaction, proceeds to give full swing to a number 
 of the instincts of his ordinary self. Some of the in- 
 stincts of his ordinary self he has, by the help of his 
 rule of life, conquered ; but others which he has not 
 conquered by this help he is so far from perceiving to 
 need subjugation, and to be instincts of an inferior 
 self, that he even fancies it to be his right and duty, 
 in virtue of having conquered a limited part of him- 
 self, to give unchecked swing to the remainder. He 
 is, I say, a victim of Hebraism, of the tendency to 
 cultivate strictness of conscience rather than spon- 
 taneity of consciousness. And what he wants is a 
 larger conception of human nature, showing him the 
 number of other points at which his nature must 
 
v.] PORKO DNUM EST NECESSARI0.M. 135 
 
 come to its best, besides the points which he himself 
 knows and thinks of. There is no wimm necessarium, 
 or one thing needful, which can free human nature 
 from the obligation of trying to come to its best 
 at all these points. The real imwn necessarivm for 
 us is to come to our best at all points. Instead of 
 our "one thing needful," justifying in us vulgarity, 
 hideousness, ignorance, violence, — our vulgarity, 
 hideousness, ignorance, violence, are really so many 
 touchstones which try ovii one thing needful, and 
 which prove that in the state, at any rate, in which 
 we ourselves have it, it is not all we want. And as 
 the force which encourages us to stand staunch and 
 fast by the rule and ground we have is Hebraism, so 
 the force which encourages us to go back upon this 
 rule, and to try the very ground on which we appear 
 to stand, is Hellenism, — a turn for giving our con- 
 sciousness free play and enlarging its range. And 
 what I say is, not that Hellenism is always for every- 
 body more wanted than Hebraism, but that for Mr. 
 Murphy at this particular moment, and for the great 
 majority of us his fellow-countrymen, it is more 
 wanted. 
 
 Nothing is more striking than to observe in how 
 many ways a limited conception of human nature, the 
 notion of a one thing needful, a one side in us to be 
 made uppermost, the disregard of a full and harmoni- 
 ous development of ourselves, tells injuriously on our 
 thinking and acting. In the first place, our hold 
 upon the nde or standard, to which we look for our 
 one tiling needful, tends to become less and less neai 
 
136 CULTUKE AND ANARCHY. [oHAP 
 
 and vital, our conception of it more and more 
 mechanical, and more and more unlike the thing 
 itself as it was conceived in the mind where it origi- 
 nated. The dealings of Puritanism with the writings 
 of St. Paul, afford a noteworthy illustration of this. 
 Nowhere so much as in the writings of St. Paul, and 
 in that great apostle's greatest work, the Epistle to 
 the Eomans, has Puritanism found what seemed to 
 furnish it with the one thing needful, and to give it 
 canons of truth absolute and final. Now all writings, 
 as has been already said, even the most precious writ- 
 ings and the most fruitful, must inevitably, from the 
 very nature of things, be but contributions to human 
 thought and human development, which extend wider 
 than they do. Indeed, St. Paul, in the very Epistle 
 of which we are speaking, shows, when he asks, 
 'Who hath known the mind of the Lordi" — who 
 hath known, that is, the true and divine order of 
 things in its entirety, — that he himself acknowledges 
 this fully. And we have already pointed out in 
 another Epistle of St. Paul a great and vital idea of 
 the human spirit, — the idea of immortality,— trans- 
 cending and overlapping, so to speak, the expositor's 
 power to give it adequate definition and expression. 
 
 But quite distinct from the question whether St 
 Paul's expression, or any man's expression, can be a 
 perfect and final expression of truth, comes the ques- 
 tion whether we rightly seize and understand his 
 expression as it exists. Now, perfectly to seize 
 another man's meaning, as it stood in his own mind, 
 is not easy ; especially when the man is separated 
 
v.] POERO UNUM EST NECESSABIUM. 137 
 
 from us by such differences of race, training, time, 
 and circumstances as St. Paul. But there are degrees 
 of nearness in getting at a man's meaning ; and 
 though we cannot arrive quite at what St. Paul had 
 in his mind, yet we may come near it. And who, 
 that comes thus near it, must not feel how terms 
 which St. Paul employs, in trying to follow with his 
 analysis of such profound power and originality some 
 of the most delicate, intricate, obscure, and contrar 
 dictory workings and states of the human spirit, are 
 detached and employed by Puritanism, not in the 
 connected and fluid way in which St. Paul employs 
 them, and for which alone words are really meant, 
 but in an isolated, fixed, mechanical way, as if they 
 were talismans ; and how aU trace and sense of St. 
 Paul's true movement of ideas, and sustained masterly 
 analysis, is thus lost 1 Who, I say, that has watched 
 Puritanism, — the force which so strongly Hebraises, 
 which so takes St. Paul's writings as something abso- 
 lute and final, containing the one thing needful, — 
 handle such terms as grace, faith, election, righteousness, 
 but must feel, not only that these terms have for the 
 mind of Puritanism a sense false and misleading, but 
 also that this sense is the most monstrous and gro- 
 tesque caricature of the sense of St. Paul, and that 
 his true meaning is by these worshippers of his words 
 altogether lost ? 
 
 Or to take another eminent example, in which not 
 Puritanism only, but, one may say, the whole re- 
 ligious world, by their mechanical use of St. Paul's 
 writings, can be shown to miss or change his real 
 
138 CDLTUEE AND ANARCHY. [OHAP 
 
 meaning. The whole religious world, one may say, 
 use now the word resurrection, — a word which is so 
 often in their thoughts and on their hps, and which 
 they find so often in St. Paul's writings,— in one sense 
 only. They use it to mean a rising again after the 
 physical death of the body. Now it is quite true 
 that St. Paul speaks of resurrection in this sense, 
 that he tries to describe and explain it, and that he 
 condemns those who doubt and deny it. But it is 
 true, also, that in nine cases out of ten where St. 
 Paul thinks and speaks of resurrection, he thinks and 
 speaks of it in a sense different from this; — in the 
 sense of a rising to a new life before the physical 
 death of the body, and not after it. The idea on 
 which we have already touched, the profound idea of 
 being baptized into the death of the great exemplar 
 of self-devotion and self-annulment, of repeating in 
 our own person, by virtue of identification with our 
 exemplar, his course of self-devotion and self-annul- 
 ment, and of thus coming, within the limits of our 
 present life, to a new life, in which, as in the death 
 going before it, we are identified with our exemplar, 
 — this is the fruitful and original conception of being 
 risen with Christ which possesses the mind of St. Paul, 
 and this is the central point round which, with such 
 incomparable emotion and eloquence, all his teaching 
 moves. For him, the life after our physical death is 
 really in the main but a consequence and continuation 
 of the inexhaustible energy of the new life thus origi- 
 nated on this side the grave. This grand Pauline 
 idea of Christian resurrection is worthily rehearsed in 
 
v.] POEEO UNUM EST NECESSAEIUM. 139 
 
 one of the noblest collects of the Prayer-Book, and ia 
 destined, no doubt, to fill a more and more important 
 place in the Christianity of the future. But mean- 
 while, almost as signal as the essentialness of this 
 characteristic idea in St. Paul's teaching, is the com- 
 pleteness with which the worshippers of St. Paul's 
 words as an absolute final expression of saving truth 
 have lost it, and have substituted for the apostle's 
 living and near conception of a resurrection now, their 
 mechanical and remote conception of a resurrection 
 hereafter. 
 
 In short, so fatal is the notion of possessing, even 
 in the most precious words or standards, the one 
 thing needful, of having in them, once for all, a full 
 and sufScient measure of light to guide us, and of 
 there being no duty left for us except to make our 
 practice square exactly with them, — so fatal, I say, is 
 this notion to the right knowledge and comprehension 
 of the very words or standards we thus adopt, and to 
 such strange distortions and perversions of them does 
 it inevitably lead, that whenever we hear that common- 
 place which Hebraism, if we venture to inquire what 
 a man knows, is so apt to bring out against us, in 
 disparagement of what we call culture, and in praise 
 of a man's sticking to the one thing needful, — he 
 knows, says Hebraism, Ms Bible 1 — whenever we hear 
 this said, we may, without any elaborate defence 
 of culture, content ourselves with answering simply : 
 " No man, who knows nothing else, knows even his 
 Bible." 
 
 Now the force which we have so much neglected, 
 
140 CULTURE AND ANAECHY. [cHAP. 
 
 Hellenism, may be liable to fail in moral strength 
 and earnestness, but by the law of its nature, — the 
 very same law which makes it sometimes deficient in 
 intensity when intensity is required, — it opposes 
 itself to the notion of cutting our being in two, of 
 attributing to one part the dignity of dealing with 
 the one thing needful, and leaving the other part to 
 take its chance, which is the bane of Hebraism. 
 Essential in HeUenism is the impulse to the develop- 
 ment of the whole man, to connecting and harmonis- 
 ing aU parts of him, perfecting all, leaving none to 
 take their chance. 
 
 The characteristic bent of Hellenism, as has been 
 said, is to find the intelligible law of things, to see 
 them in their true nature and as they reaUy are. 
 But many things are not seen in their true nature 
 and as they really are, unless they are seen as beauti- 
 ful. Behaviour is not intelligible, does not account 
 for itself to the mind and show the reason for its 
 existing, unless it is beautiful The same with dis- 
 course, the same with song, the same with worship, 
 all of them modes in which man proves his activity 
 and expresses himself. To think that when one pro- 
 duces in these what is mean, or vulgar, or hideous, 
 one can be permitted to plead that one has that 
 within which passes show ; to suppose that the pos- 
 session of what benefits and satisfies one part of our 
 being can make allowable either discourse like Mr. 
 Murphy's, or poetry hke the hymns we all hear, or 
 places of worship like the chapels we all see, — this it 
 is abhorrent to the nature of HeUenism to concede. 
 
v.] POEEO UNUM EST NECESSAEITJM. 141 
 
 And to be, like our honoured and justly honoured 
 Faraday, a great natural philosopher with one side of 
 his being and a Sandemanian with the other, would to 
 Archimedes have been impossible. 
 
 It is evident to what a many-sided perfecting of 
 man's powers and activities this demand of Hellenism 
 for satisfaction to be given to the mind by everything 
 which we do, is calculated to impel our race. It has 
 its dangers, as has been fully granted. The notion 
 of this sort of equipoUency in man's modes of activity 
 may lead to moral relaxation ] what we do not make 
 our one thing needful, we may come to treat not 
 enough as if it were needful, though it is indeed very 
 needful and at the same time very hard. Still, what 
 side in us has not its dangers, and which of our 
 impulses can be a talisman to give us perfection out- 
 right, and not merely a help to bring us towards it 1 
 Has not Hebraism, as we have shown, its dangers as 
 well as Hellenism for have we used so excessively 
 the tendencies in ourselves to which Hellenism makes 
 appeal, that we are now suffering from it ? Are we 
 not, on the contrary, now suffering because we have 
 not enough used these tendencies as a help towards 
 perfection 'i 
 
 For we see whither it has brought us, the long 
 exclusive predominance of Hebraism, — the insisting 
 on perfection in one part of our nature and not in 
 all; the singling out the moral side, the side of 
 obedience and action, for such intent regard ; making 
 strictness of the moral conscience so far the principal 
 thing, and putting off for hereafter and for another 
 
142 CULTURE AND ANAECHT. [cHAP 
 
 world the care for being complete at all points, the 
 full and harmonious development of our humanity. 
 Instead of watching and following on its ways tha 
 desire which, as Plato says, " for ever through all the 
 universe tends towards that which is lovely," we 
 think that the world has settled its accounts with 
 this desire, knows what this desire wants of it, and 
 that all the impulses of our ordinary self which do 
 not conflict with the terms of this settlement, in our 
 narrow view of it, we may foUow unrestrainedly, 
 under the sanction of some such text as " Not sloth- 
 ful in business," or, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth 
 to do, do it with all thy might," or something else of 
 the same kind. And to any of these impulses we 
 soon come to give that same character of a mechanical, 
 absolute law, which we give to our religion; we 
 regard it, as we do our religion, as an object for 
 strictness of conscience, not for spontaneity of con- 
 sciousness; for unremitting adherence on its own 
 account, not for going back upon, viewing in its con- 
 nection with other things, and adjusting to a number 
 of changing circumstances. We treat it, in short, 
 just as we treat our religion, — as machinery. It is 
 in this way that the Barbarians treat their bodily 
 exercises, the Philistines their business, Mr. Spurgeon 
 his voluntarjrism, Mr. Bright the assertion of personal 
 liberty, Mr. Beales the right of meeting in Hyde 
 Park. In all those cases what is needed is a freer 
 play of consciousness upon the object of pursuit ; and 
 in all of them Hebraism, the valuitig staunchness and 
 earnestness more than this free play, the entire sub- 
 
r.i POKEO TTNUM EST NECESSAEIUM. 143 
 
 ordination of thinking to doing, has led to a mistaken 
 and misleading treatment of things. 
 
 The newspapers a short time ago contained an 
 account of the suicide of a Mr. Smith, secretary to 
 some insurance company, who, it was said, " laboured 
 under the apprehension that he would come to 
 poverty, and that he was eternally lost." And when 
 I read these words, it occurred to me that the poor 
 man who came to such a mournful end was, in truth,* 
 a kind of type, — by the selection of his two grand 
 objects of concern, by their isolation from everything 
 else, and their juxtaposition to one another, — of all 
 the strongest, most respectable, and most representa- 
 tive part of our nation. "He laboured under the 
 apprehension that he would come to poverty, and 
 that he was eternally lost." The whole middle class 
 have a conception of things, — a conception which 
 makes us call them Philistines, — just like that of this 
 poor man ; though we are seldom, of course, shocked 
 by seeing it take the distressing, violently morbid, 
 and fatal turn, which it took with him. But how 
 generally, with how many of us, are the main con- 
 cerns of life limited to these two : the concern for 
 making money, and the concern for saving our souls ! 
 And how entirely does the narrow and mechanical 
 conception of our secular business proceed from a 
 narrow and mechanical conception of our religious 
 business ! What havoc do the united conceptions 
 make of our lives ! It is because the second-named 
 of these two master-concerns presents to us the one 
 thing needful in so fixed, narrow, and mechanical a 
 
144 CULTURE AND AITAEGHY. [OHAP 
 
 way, that so ignoble a fellow master-concern to it as 
 the first-named becomes possible; and, having been 
 once admitted, takes the same rigid and absolute 
 character as the other. 
 
 Poor Mr. Smith had sincerely the nobler master- 
 concern as well as the meaner, — the concern for saving 
 his soul (according to the narrow and mechanical con- 
 ception which Puritanism has of what the salvation 
 of the soul is), as well as the concern for making 
 money. But let us remark how many people there 
 are, especially outside the limits of the serious xind 
 conscientious middle class to which Mr. Smith be- 
 longed, who take up with a meaner master-concern, — 
 whether it be pleasure, or field-sports, or bodily 
 exercises, or business, or popular agitation, — who 
 take up with one of these exclusively, and neglect 
 Mr. Smith's nobler master-concern, because of the 
 mechanical form which Hebraism has given to this 
 noble master-concern. Hebraism makes it stand, as 
 we have said, as something talismanic, isolated, and 
 all-sufficient, justifying our giving our ordinary selves 
 free play in bodily exercises, or business, or popular 
 agitation, if we have made our accounts square with 
 this master-concern ; and, if we have not, rendering 
 other things indifiierent, and our ordinary self all we 
 have to follow, and to follow with all the energy that 
 is in us, till we do. Whereas the idea of perfection 
 at all points, the encouraging in ourselves spontaneity 
 of consciousness, and letting a free play of thought 
 live and flow around all our activity, the indisposition 
 to allow one side of our activity to stand as so all- 
 
v.] POEEO UNUM EST NECESSAEIUM. 145 
 
 important and all-sufficing that it makes other sides 
 indifferent, — this bent of mind in us may not only- 
 check us in following unreservedly a mean master- 
 concern of any kind, but may even, also, bring new 
 life and movement into that side of us with which 
 alone Hebraism concerns itself, and awaken a 
 healthier and less mechanical activity there. Hellen- 
 ism may thus actually serve to further the designs of 
 Hebraism. 
 
 Undoubtedly it thus served in the first days of 
 Christianity. Christianity, as has been said, occupied 
 itself, like Hebraism, with the moral side of man 
 exclusively, with his moral affections and moral con- 
 duct; and so far it was but a continuation of Hebraism. 
 But it transformed and renewed Hebraism by 
 criticising a fixed rule, which had become mechanical, 
 and had thus lost its vital motive power ; by letting 
 the thought play freely around this old rule, and 
 perceive its inadequacy ; by developing a new motive 
 power, which men's moral consciousness could take 
 living hold of, and could move in sympathy with. 
 What was this but an importation of Hellenism, as 
 we have defined it, into Hebraism? St. Paul used 
 the contradiction between the Jew's profession and 
 practice, his shortcomings on that very side of moral 
 affection and moral conduct which the Jew and St. 
 Paul, both of them, regarded as all in all ("Thou 
 that sayest a man should not steal, dost thou steal 1 
 thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, 
 dost thou commit adultery"!"), for a proof of the 
 inadequacy of the old rule of life in the Jew's 
 
 VOL. III. L 
 
146 CULTUEE AOT) ANAECHY. [oHAP, 
 
 mechaiiioal conception of it ; and tried to rescue him 
 by making his consciousness play freely around thia 
 rule, — that is, by a so far Hellenic treatment of it. 
 Even so we, too, when we hear so much said of the 
 growth of commercial immorality in our serious 
 middle class, of the melting away of habits of strict 
 probity before the temptation to get quickly rich and 
 to cut a figure in the world; when we see, at any 
 rate, so much confusion of thought and of practice 
 in this great representative class of our nation, — may 
 we not be disposed to say, that this confusion shows 
 that his new motive-power of grace and imputed right- 
 eousness has become to the Puritan as mechanical, 
 and with as ineffective a hold upon his practice, as the 
 old motive-power of the law was to the Jew ] and 
 that the remedy is the same as that which St. Paul 
 employed, — an importation of what we have called Hel- 
 lenism into his Hebraism, a making his consciousness 
 flow freely round his petrified rule of life and renew 
 it 1 Only with this difference : that whereas St. 
 Paul imported Hellenism within the limits of our 
 moral part only, this part being stiU treated by him 
 as all in all ; and whereas he weU-nigh exhausted, 
 one may say, and used to the very uttermost, the 
 possibilities of fruitfully importing it on that side 
 exclusively ; we ought to try and import it, — guiding 
 ourselves by the ideal of a human nature harmoniously 
 perfect in all points, — into all the lines of our activity. 
 Only by so doing can we rightly quicken, refresh, 
 and renew those very instincts, now so much bafiled, 
 to which Hebraism makes appeal 
 
v.] POREO UNUM EST NECESSAEIITM. 147 
 
 But if we will not be warned by the confusion 
 visible enough at present in our thinking and acting, 
 that we are in a false line in having developed our 
 Hebrew side so exclusively, and our Hellenic side so 
 feebly and at random, in loving fixed rules of action 
 80 much more than the intelligible law of things, let 
 us listen to a remarkable testimony which the opinion 
 of the world around us ofi'ers. All the world now 
 sets great and increasing value on three objects which 
 have long been very dear to us, and pursues them in 
 its own way, or tries to pursue them. These three 
 objects are industrial enterprise, bodily exercises, and 
 freedom. Certainly we have, before and beyond our 
 neighbours, given ourselves to these three things 
 with ardent passion and with high success. And 
 this our neighbours cannot but acknowledge ; and 
 they must needs, when they themselves turn to these 
 things, have an eye to our example, and take some- 
 thing of our practice. 
 
 Now, generally, when people are interested in an 
 object of pursuit, they cannot help feeling an 
 enthusiasm for those who have already laboured 
 successfully at it, and for their success. Not only do 
 they study them, they also love and admire them. In 
 this way a man who is interested in the art of war 
 not only acquaints himself with the performance of 
 great generals, but he has an admiration and 
 enthusiasm for them. So, too, one who wants to be 
 a painter or a poet cannot help loving and admiring 
 the great painters or poets, who have gone before 
 him and shown him the way. 
 
148 CULTURE AND ANAECHT. [OHAP. 
 
 But it is strange with how little of love, admiration, 
 or enthusiasm, the world regards us and our freedom, 
 our bodily exercises, and our industrial prowess, 
 much as these things themselves are beginning to 
 interest it. And is not the reason because we follow 
 each of these things in a mechanical manner, as an 
 end in and for itself, and not in reference to a general 
 end of human perfection ; and this makes the pursuit 
 of them uninteresting to humanity, and not what the 
 world truly wants ? It seems to them mere machinery 
 that we can, knowingly, teach them to worship, — a 
 mere fetish. British freedom, British industry, 
 British muscularity, we work for each of these three 
 things blindly, with no notion of giving each its due 
 proportion and prominence, because we have no ideal 
 of harmonious human perfection before our minds, to 
 set our work in motion, and to guide it. So the rest 
 of the world, desiring industry, or freedom, or bodily 
 strength, yet desiring these not, as we do, absolutely, 
 but as means to something else, imitate, indeed, of 
 our practice what seems useful for them, but us, 
 whose practice they imitate, they seem to entertain 
 neither love nor admiration for. 
 
 Let us observe, on the other hand, the love and 
 enthusiasm excited by others who have laboured for 
 these very things. Perhaps of what we call industrial 
 enterprise it is not easy to find examples in former 
 times ; but let us consider how Greek freedom and 
 Greek gymnastics have attracted the love and praise 
 of mankind, who give so little love and praise to ours. 
 And what can be the reason of this difierence ? 
 
v.] POERO UNUM EST NECESSAEIUM. 149 
 
 Surely because the Greeks pursued freedom and 
 pursued gymnastics not mechanically, but with con- 
 stant reference to some ideal of complete human 
 perfection and happiness. And therefore, in spite oi 
 faults and failures, they interest and delight by their 
 pursuit of them all the rest of mankind, who instinc- 
 tively feel that only as things are pursued with 
 reference to this ideal are they valuable. 
 
 Here again, therefore, as in the confusion into 
 which the thought and action of even the steadiest 
 class amongst us is beginning to fall, we seem to 
 have an admonition that we have fostered our 
 Hebraising instincts, our preference of earnestness of 
 doing to delicacy and flexibility of thinking, too 
 exclusively, and have been landed by them in a 
 mechanical and unfruitful routine. And again we 
 seem taught that the development of our Hellenising 
 instincts, seeking ardently the intelligible law of 
 things, and making a stream of fresh thought play 
 freely about our stock notions and habits, is what 
 is most wanted by us at present. 
 
 Well, then, from all sides, the more we go into the 
 matter, the currents seem to converge, and together to 
 bear us along towards culture. If we look at the 
 world outside us we find a disquieting absence of sure 
 authority. We discover that only in right reason can 
 we get a source of sure authority ; and culture brings 
 us towards right reason. If we look at our own inner 
 world, we find all manner of confusion arising out of 
 the habits of unintelligent routine and one-sided 
 growth, to which a too exclusive worship of fire, 
 
150 CULTUEB AND ANARCHY. [OHAI 
 
 strength, earnestness, and action, has brought us. 
 What we want is a fuller harmonious development of 
 our humanity, a free play of thought upon our routine 
 notions, spontaneity of consciousness, sweetness and 
 light ; and these are just what culture generates and 
 fosters. We wiU not stickle for a name, and the 
 name of culture one might easily give up, if only 
 those who decry the frivolous and pedantic sort of 
 culture, but wish at bottom for the same things as we 
 do, would be careful on their part, not, in disparaging 
 and discrediting the false culture, to unwittingly dis- 
 parage and discredit, among a people with little 
 natural reverence for it, the true also. But what we 
 are concerned for is the thing, not the name ; and the 
 thing, call it by what name we will, is simply the 
 enabling ourselves, by getting to know, whether 
 through reading, observing, or thinking, the best that 
 can at present be known in the world, to come as near 
 as we can to the firm intelligible law of things, and 
 thus to get a basis for a less confused action and a 
 more complete perfection than we have at present. 
 
 And now, therefore, when we are accused of 
 preaching up a spirit of cultivated inaction, of pro- 
 voking the earnest lovers of action, of refusing to lend 
 a hand at uprooting certain definite evils, of despairing 
 to find any lasting truth to minister to the diseased 
 spirit of our time, we shall not be so much confounded 
 and embarrassed what to answer for ourselves. We 
 shall say boldly that we do not at all despair of finding 
 some lasting truth to minister to the diseased spirit 
 of our time ; but that we have discovered the best 
 
v.] POKEO UNUM EST NECESSARIUM. 151 
 
 way of finding this to be not so much by lending a 
 hand to our friends and countrymen in their actual 
 operations for the removal of certain definite evils, 
 but rather in getting our friends and countrymen to 
 seek culture, to let their consciousness play freely 
 round their present operations and the stock notions 
 on which they are founded, show what these are like, 
 and how related to the intelligible law of things, and 
 auxiliary to true human perfection. 
 
CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 OUR LIBKUAL PRACTITIONERS. 
 
 But an unpretending writer, without a philosophy 
 based on inter-dependent, subordinate, and coherent 
 principles, must not presume to indulge himself too 
 much in generalities. He must keep close to the 
 level ground of common fact, the only safe ground 
 for understandings without a scientific equipment. 
 Therefore, since I have spoken so slightingly of the 
 practical operations in which my friends and country- 
 men are at this moment engaged for the removal of 
 certain definite evils, I am bound to take, before 
 concluding, some of those operations, and to make 
 them, if I can, show the truth of what I have 
 advanced. 
 
 Probably I could hardly give a greater proof of my 
 confessed inexpertness in reasoning and arguing, than 
 by taking, for my first example of an operation of 
 this kind, the proceedings for the disestablishment of 
 the Irish Church, which we are now witnessing.^ It 
 seems so clear that this is surely one of those opera- 
 tions for the uprooting of a certain definite evil in 
 1 Written in 1869. 
 
CHAP. VI.] OUR LIBERAL PRiCTITIONBES. 153 
 
 which one's Liberal friends engage, and have a right 
 to complain, and to get impatient, and to reproach 
 one with delicate Conservative scepticism and culti- 
 vated inaction, if one does not lend a hand to help 
 thenL This does, indeed, seem evident ; and yet this 
 operation comes so prominently before us at this 
 moment,^ — it so challenges everybody's regard, — that 
 one seems cowardly in blinking it. So let us venture 
 to try and see whether this conspicuous operation is 
 one of those round which we need to let our con- 
 sciousness play freely and reveal what manner of 
 spirit we are of in doing it; or whether it is one 
 which by no means admits the application of this 
 doctrine of ours, and one to which we ought to lend 
 a hand immediately. 
 
 Now it seems plain that the present Church- 
 establishment in Ireland is contrary to reason and 
 justice, in so far as the Church of a very small 
 minority of the people there takes for itself all the 
 Church-property of the Irish people. And one would 
 think, that property, assigned for the purpose of pro- 
 viding for a people's religious worship when that 
 worship was one, the State should, when that worship 
 is split into several forms, apportion between those 
 several forms. But the apportionment should be 
 made with due regard to circumstances, taking account 
 only of great differences, which are likely to be last- 
 ing, and of considerable communions, which are likely 
 » 1869. 
 
154 CULTURE AND ANAECHY. [OHAP. 
 
 to represent profound and widespread religious charac- 
 teristics. It should overlook petty differences, which 
 have no serious reason for lasting, and inconsiderable 
 communions, which can hardly be taken to express 
 any broad and necessary religious lineaments of our 
 common nature. This is just in accordance with that 
 maxim about the State which we have more than 
 once used : The State is of the religion of ail its dtizens, 
 vnthout the fanaticism of any of them. Those who deny 
 this, either think so poorly of the State that they do 
 not like to see religion condescend to touch the State, 
 or they think so poorly of religion that they do not 
 like to see the State condescend to touch religion. 
 But no good statesman will easily think thus un- 
 worthily either of the State or of religion. 
 
 Our statesmen of both parties were inclined, one 
 may say, to follow the natural line of the State's duty, 
 and to make in Ireland some fair apportionment of 
 Church-property between large and radically divided 
 religious communions in that country. But then it 
 was discovered that in Great Britain the national 
 mind, as it is called, is grown averse to endowments 
 for religion and will make no new ones ; and though 
 this in itself looks general and solemn enough, yet 
 there were found political philosophers to give it a 
 look of more generality and more solemnity still, and 
 to elevate, by their dexterous command of powerful 
 and beautiful language, this supposed edict of the 
 British national mind into a sort of formula for ex- 
 pressing a great law of religious transition and progress 
 for all the world. 
 
w.] OUR LIBERAL PRACTITIONERS. 155 
 
 But we, wlio, having no coherent philosophy, must 
 not let ourselves philosophise, only see that the Eng- 
 lish and Scotch Nonconformists have a great horror 
 of establishments and endowments for religion, which, 
 they assert, were forbidden by Jesus Christ when he 
 said : " My kingdom is not of this world ; " and that 
 the Nonconformists will be delighted to aid statesmen 
 in disestablishing any church, but will suffer none to 
 be established or endowed if they can help it. Then 
 we see that the Nonconformists make the strength of 
 the Liberal Majority in the House of Commons ; and 
 that, therefore, the leading Liberal statesmen, to get 
 the support of the Nonconformists, forsake the notion 
 of fairly apportioning Church -property in Ireland 
 among the chief religious communions, declare that 
 the national mind has decided against new endow- 
 ments, and propose simply to disestablish and dis- 
 endow the present establishment in Ireland without 
 establishing or endowing any other. The actual 
 power, in short, by virtue of which the Liberal party 
 in the House of Commons is now trying to disestablish 
 the Irish Church, is not the power of reason and 
 justice, it is the power of the Nonconformists' anti- 
 pathy to Church establishments. 
 
 Clearly it is this ; because Liberal statesmen, re- 
 lying on the power of reason and justice to help them, 
 proposed something quite different from what they 
 now propose ; and they proposed what they now 
 propose, and talked of the decision of the national 
 mind, because they had to rely on the English and 
 Scotch Nonconformists. And clearly the Noncon- 
 
156 CXJLTUEE AND ANAECHY. [oHAP 
 
 formists are actuated by antipathy to establishments, 
 not by antipathy to the injustice and irrationality of 
 the present appropriation of Church-property in Ire- 
 land; because Mr. Spurgeon, in his eloquent and 
 memorable letter, expressly avowed that he would 
 sooner leave things as they are in Ireland, that is, 
 he would sooner let the injustice and irrationality of 
 the present appropriation continue, than do anything 
 to set up the Eoman image, — that is, than give the 
 Catholics their fair and reasonable share of Church- 
 property. Most indisputably, therefore, we may affirm 
 that the real moving power by which the Liberal party 
 are now operating the overthrow of the Irish estab- 
 lishment is the antipathy of the Nonconformists to 
 Church-establishments, and not the sense of reason 
 or justice, except so far as reason and justice may be 
 contained in this antipathy. And thus the matter 
 stands at present. 
 
 Now surely we must all see many inconveniences 
 in performing the operation of uprooting this evil, the 
 Irish Church -establishment, in this particular way. 
 As was said about industry and freedom and gymnas- 
 tics, we shall never awaken love and gratitude by this 
 mode of operation ; for it is pursued, not in view of 
 reason and justice and human perfection and aU that 
 enkindles the enthusiasm of men, but it is pursued in 
 view of a certain stock notion, or fetish, of the Non- 
 conformists, which proscribes Church-establishments. 
 And yet, evidently, one of the main benefits to be got 
 by operating on the Irish Church is to win the affec- 
 tions of the Irish people. Besides this, an operation 
 
V-l.] OUE LIBERAL PEACTITIONEES. 157 
 
 performed in virtue of a mechanical rule, or fetish, 
 like the supposed decision of the English national 
 mind against new endowments, does not easily inspire 
 respect in its adversaries, and make their opposition 
 feeble and hardly to be persisted in, as an operation 
 evidently done in virtue of reason and justice might. 
 For reason and justice have in them something per- 
 suasive and irresistible; but a fetish or mechanical 
 maxim, like this of the Nonconformists, has in it 
 nothing at all to conciliate either the affections or the 
 understanding. Nay, it provokes the counter-employ- 
 ment of other fetishes or mechanical maxims on the 
 opposite side, by which the confusion and hostility 
 already prevalent are heightened. Only in this way 
 can be explained the apparition of such fetishes as 
 are beginning to be set up on the Conservative side 
 against the fetish of the Nonconformists : — The Con- 
 stUution m danger/ The bulwark of British freedom 
 menaced/ The lamp of the Reformation put out / No 
 Pope/ry / — and so on. To elevate these against an 
 operation relying on reason and justice to back it, is 
 not so easy, or so tempting to human infirmity, as to 
 elevate them against an operation relying on the 
 Nonconformists' antipathy to Church-establishments 
 to back it. For after all, No Popery/ is a ralljdng 
 cry which touches the human spirit quite as vitally 
 as No Church-establishments/ — that is to say, neither 
 the one nor the other, in themselves, touch the 
 human spirit vitally at all. 
 
 Ought the believers in action, then, to be so im- 
 patient with us, if we say, that even for the sake of 
 
158 CULTURE AND ANAECHT. [ohap. 
 
 this operation of theirs itself and its satisfactory 
 accomplishment, it is more important to make qui 
 consciousness play freely round the stock notion oi 
 habit on which their operation relies for aid, than to 
 lend a hand to it straight away ? Clearly they ought 
 not ; because nothing is so effectual for operating as 
 reason and justice, and a free play of thought will 
 either disengage the reason and justice lying hid in the 
 Nonconformist fetish, and make them effectual, or else 
 it will help to get this fetish out of the way, and to let 
 statesmen go freely where reason and justice take them. 
 So, suppose we take this absolute rule, this me- 
 chanical maxim of Mr. Spurgeon and the Nonconfor- 
 mists, that Church - establishments are bad things 
 because Jesus Christ said : " My kingdom is not of 
 this world." Suppose we try and make our con- 
 sciousness bathe and float this piece of petrifaction, — 
 for such it now is, — and bring it within the stream 
 of the vital movement of our thought, and into relar 
 tion with the whole intelligible law of things. An 
 enemy and a disputant might probably say that much 
 of the machinery which Nonconformists themselves 
 employ, — the Liberation Society which exists already, 
 and the Nonconformist Union which Mr. Spurgeon 
 desires to see existing, — come within the scope of 
 Christ's words as well as Church - establishments 
 This, however, is merely a negative and contentious 
 way of dealing with the Nonconformist maxim; 
 whereas what we desire is to bring this maxim 
 within the positive and vital movement of our 
 thought. We say, therefore, that Jesus Christ's 
 
Ti.] OUE LIBERAL PRACTITIONERS. 159 
 
 words mean that his religion is a force of inward 
 persuasion acting on the soul, and not a force of out- 
 ward constraint acting on the body; and if the 
 Nonconformist maxim against Church-establishments 
 and Church-endowments has warrant given to it from 
 what Christ thus meant, then their maxim is good, 
 even though their own practice in the matter of the 
 Liberation Society may be at variance with it. 
 
 And here we cannot but remember what we have 
 formerly said about religion, Miss Cobbe, and the 
 British College -of Health in the New Eoad. In 
 religion there are two parts, the part of thought and 
 speculation, and the part of worship and devotion. 
 Jesus Christ certainly meant his religion, as a force 
 of inward persuasion acting on the soul, to employ 
 both parts as perfectly as possible. Now thought and 
 speculation is eminently an individual matter, and 
 worship and devotion is eminently a collective matter. 
 It does not help me to think a thing more clearly that 
 thousands of other people are thinking the same; but 
 it does help me to worship with more emotion that 
 thousands of other people are worshipping with me. 
 The consecration of common consent, antiquity, pubhc 
 establishment, long -used rites, national edifices, is 
 everything for religious worship. " Just what makes 
 worship impressive," says Joubert, " is its publicity, 
 its external manifestation, its sound, its splendour, 
 its observance universally and visibly holding its 
 sway through all the details both of our outward and 
 of our inward life." Worship, therefore, should have 
 in it as little as possible of what divides us, and should 
 
160 CULTURE AND ANARCHY. [chap, 
 
 be as much as possible a common and public act ; as 
 Joubert says again : " The best prayers are those 
 which have nothing distinct about them, and which 
 are thus of the nature of simple adoration." For, 
 "the same devotion," as he says in another place, 
 "unites men far more than the same thought and 
 knowledge. " Thought and knowledge, as we have said 
 before, is eminently something individual, and of our 
 own; the more we possess it as strictly of our own, the 
 more power it has on us. Man worships best, there- 
 fore, with the community; he philosophises best alone. 
 So it seems that whoever would truly give effect 
 to Jesus Christ's declaration that his religion is a force 
 of inward persuasion acting on the soul, would leave 
 our thought on the intellectual aspects of Christianity 
 as individual as possible, but would make Christian 
 worship as collective as possible. Worship, then, 
 appears to be eminently a matter for public and 
 national establishment ; for even Mr. Bright, who, 
 when he stands in Mr. Spurgeon's great Tabernacle, 
 is so ravished with admiration, will hardly say that 
 the great Tabernacle and its worship are in them- 
 selves, as a temple and service of religion, so impres- 
 sive and affecting as the public and national West- 
 minster Abbey, or Notre Dame, with their worship. 
 And when, immediately after the great Tabernacle, 
 one comes plump down to the mass of private and 
 individual establishments of religious worship, estab- 
 lishments falling, like the British College of Health 
 in the New Eoad, conspicuously short of what a 
 public and national establishment might be, then one 
 
VI.] OUE LIBEEAL PRACTITIONEES. 161 
 
 cannot but feel that Jesus Christ's command to make 
 his religion a force of persuasion to the soul, is, so far 
 as one main source of persuasion is concerned, alto- 
 gether set at nought. 
 
 But perhaps the Nonconformists worship so unim- 
 pressively because they philosophise so keenly ; and 
 one part of religion, the part of public national wor- 
 ship, they have subordinated to the other part, the 
 part of individual thought and knowledge? This, 
 however, their organisation in congregations forbids 
 us to admit. They are members of- congregations, 
 not isolated thinkers ; and a free play of individual 
 thought is at least as much impeded by membership 
 of a small congregation as by membership of a great 
 Church. Thinking by batches of fifties is to the full 
 as fatal to free thought as thinking by batches of 
 thousands. Accordingly, we have had occasion al- 
 ready to notice that Nonconformity does not at all 
 differ from the Established Church by hating worthier 
 or more philosophical ideas about God, and the order- 
 ing of the world, than the Established Church has. 
 It has very much the same ideas about these as the 
 Established Church has, but it differs from the Estab- 
 lished Church in that its worship is a much less col- 
 lective and national affair. 
 
 So Mr. Spurgeon and the Nonconformists seem to 
 have misapprehended the true meaning of Christ's 
 words. My kingdom is not of this world. Because, by 
 these words, Christ meant that his religion was to 
 work on the soul. And of the two parts of the soul 
 on which religion works, — the thinking and specu- 
 
 VOL. III. M 
 
162 CULTTJEE AND ANARCHY. [OHAP 
 
 lative part, and the feeling and imaginative part, — 
 Nonconformity satisfies the first no better than the 
 Established Churches, which Christ by these words 
 is supposed to have condemned, satisfy it ; and the 
 second part it satisfies even worse than the Estab- 
 lished Churches. And thus the balance of advantage 
 seems to rest with the Established Churches; and 
 they seem to have apprehended and applied Christ's 
 words, if not with perfect adequacy, at least less 
 inadequately than the Nonconformists. 
 
 Might it not, then, be urged with great force that 
 the way to do good, in presence of this operation for 
 uprooting the Church-estabHshment in Ireland by the 
 power of the Nonconformists' antipathy to publicly 
 establishing or endowing religious worship, is not by 
 lending a hand straight away to the operation, and 
 Hebraising, — that is, in this case, taking an uncritical 
 interpretation of certain Bible words as our absolute 
 rule of conduct, — with the Nonconformists ? It may 
 be very well for born Hebraisers, like Mr. Spurgeon, 
 to Hebraise ; but for Liberal statesmen to Hebraise 
 is surely unsafe, and to see poor old Liberal hacks 
 Hebraising, whose real self belongs to a kind of 
 negative Hellenism, — a state of moral indifferency 
 without intellectual ardour, — is even painful. And 
 when, by our Hebraising, we neither do what the 
 better mind of statesmen prompted them to do, nor 
 win the affections of the people we want to conciliate, 
 nor yet reduce the opposition of our adversaries but 
 rather heighten it, surely it may not be unreasonable 
 to HeUenise a little, to let our thought and conscious- 
 
VI.] OTJK LIBEEAL PRACTITIONERS. 163 
 
 ness play freely about our proposed operation and its 
 motives, dissolve these motives if they are unsound, 
 — which certainly they have some appearance, at any 
 rate, of being, — and create in their stead, if they are, 
 a set of sounder and more persuasive motives con- 
 ducting to a more solid operation. May not the man 
 who promotes this be giving the best help towards 
 finding some lasting truth to minister to the diseased 
 spirit of his time, and does he really deserve that the 
 believers in action should grow impatient with him ? 
 
 II. 
 
 But now to take another operation which does 
 not at this moment so excite people's feelings as 
 the disestablishment of the Irish Church, but which, 
 I suppose, would also be called exactly one of those 
 operations of simple, practical, common-sense reform, 
 aiming at the removal of some particular abuse, and 
 rigidly restricted to that object, to which a Liberal 
 ought to lend a hand, and deserves that other Libe- 
 rals should grow impatient with him if he does not. 
 This operation I had the great advantage of with 
 my own ears hearing discussed in the House of 
 Commons, and recommended by a powerful speech 
 from that famous speaker, Mr. Bright. So that the 
 effeminate horror which, it is alleged, I have of prac- 
 tical reforms of this kind, was put to a searching 
 test; and if it survived, it must have, one would 
 think, some reason or other to support it, and can 
 hardly quite merit the stigma of its present name. 
 
164 CULTURE AND ANAEOHY. [OHAP. 
 
 The operation I mean was that which the Real 
 Estate Intestacy Bill 'aimed at accomplishing, and 
 the discussion on this bill I heard in the House of 
 Commons. The bill proposed, as every one knows, 
 to prevent the land of a man who dies intestate from 
 going, as it goes now, to his eldest son, and was 
 thought, by its friends and by its enemies, to be a 
 step towards abating the now almost exclusive pos- 
 session of the land of this country by the people 
 whom we call the Barbarians. Mr. Bright, and 
 other speakers on his side, seemed to hold that 
 there is a kind of natural law or fitness of things 
 which assigns to all a man's children a right to 
 equal shares in the enjoyment of his property 
 after his death; and that if, without depriving a 
 man of an Englishman's prime privilege of doing 
 what he likes by making what will he chooses, you 
 proAdde that when he makes none his land shall be 
 divided among his family, then you give the sanction 
 of the law to the natural fitness of things, and inflict 
 a sort of check on the present violation of this by the 
 Barbarians. 
 
 It occurred to me, when I saw Mr. Bright and 
 his friends proceeding in this way, to ask myself a 
 question. If the almost exclusive possession of the 
 land of this country by the Barbarians is a bad 
 thing, is this practical operation of the Liberals, 
 and the stock notion, on which it seems to rest, 
 about the natural right of children to share equally 
 in the enjojnnent of their father's property after his 
 death, the best and most efi'ective means of dealing 
 
VI.] OUE LIBERAL PKACTITIONEKS. 165 
 
 with' it? Or is it best dealt with by letting one's 
 thought and consciousness play freely and naturally 
 upon the Barbarians, this Liberal operation, and the 
 stock notion at the bottom of it, and trying to get 
 as near as we can to the intelligible law of things 
 as to each of them 1 
 
 Now does any one, if he simply and naturally 
 reads his consciousness, discover that he has any 
 rights at all ? For my part, the deeper I go in my 
 own consciousness, and the more simply I abandon 
 myself to it, the more it seems to tell me that I 
 have no rights at all, only duties; and that men 
 get this notion of rights from a process of abstract 
 reasoning, inferring that the obligations they are 
 conscious of towards others, others must be con- 
 scious of towards them, and not from any direct 
 witness of consciousness at alL But it is obvious 
 that the notion of a right, arrived at in this way, 
 is likely to stand as a formal and petrified thing, 
 deceiving and misleading us; and that the notions 
 got directly from our consciousness ought to be 
 brought to bear upon it, and to control it. So it is 
 unsafe and misleading to say that our children have 
 rights against us ; what is true and safe to say is, 
 that we have duties towards our children. But who 
 will find among these natural duties, set forth to us 
 by our consciousness, the obligation to leave to all 
 our children an equal share in the enjoyment of our 
 property! Or, though consciousness tells us we 
 ought to provide for our children's welfare, whose 
 consciousness tells him that the enjoyment of pro 
 
16G CULTURE AND ANARCHY. [OHAP 
 
 perty is in itself welfare^ Whether our children's 
 welfare is best served by their aU sharing equally in 
 our property, depends on circumstances and on the 
 state of the community in which we Uve. With 
 this equal sharing, society could not, for example, 
 have organised itself afresh out of the chaos left by 
 the fall of the Eoman Empire; and to have an 
 organised society to live in is more for a child's 
 welfare than to have an equal share of his father's 
 property. 
 
 So we see how little convincing force the stock 
 notion on which the Real Estate Intestacy BUI was 
 based, — the notion that in the nature and fitness of 
 things all a man's children have a right to an equal 
 share in the enjoyment of what he leaves, — really 
 has ; and how powerless, therefore, it must of neces- 
 sity be to persuade and win any one who has habits 
 and interests which disincline him to it. On the 
 other hand, the practical operation proposed rehes 
 entirely, if it is to be effectual in altering the present 
 practice of the Barbarians, on the power of truth and 
 persuasiveness in the notion which it seeks to conse- 
 crate ; for it leaves to the Barbarians full liberty to 
 continue their present practice, to which all their 
 habits and interests incline them, unless the pro- 
 mulgation of a notion, which we have seen to have 
 no vital efl&cacy and hold upon our consciousness 
 shall hinder them. 
 
 Are we really to adorn an operation of this kind, 
 merely because it proposes to do something, with 
 all the favourable epithets of simple, practical, 
 
71.] OUR LIBEEAL PRACTITIONBKS. 167 
 
 common-sense, definite; to enlist on its side all the 
 zeal of the believers in action, and to call indiffer- 
 ence to it an effeminate horror of useful reforms 1 
 It seems to me quite easy to show that a free dis- 
 interested play of thought on the Barbarians and 
 their land-holding is a thousand times more really 
 practical, a thousand times more likely to lead to 
 some effective result, than an operation such as that 
 of which we have been now speaking. For if, cast- 
 ing aside the impediments of stock notions and 
 mechanical action, we try to find the intelligible 
 law of things respecting a great land-owning class 
 such as we have in this country, does not our con- 
 sciousness readily tell us that whether the perpetua- 
 tion of such a class is for its own real good and for 
 the real good of the community, depends on the 
 actual circumstances of this class and of the com- 
 munity; Does it not readily tell us that wealth, 
 power, and consideration are, — and above all when 
 inherited and not earned, — in themselves trying and 
 dangerous things? as Bishop Wilson excellently 
 says : " Eiches are almost always abused without a 
 very extraordinary grace." But this extraordinary 
 grace was in great measure supplied by the circum- 
 stances of the feudal epoch, out of which our land- 
 holding class, with its rules of inheritance, sprang. 
 The labour and contentions of a rude, nascent, and 
 struggling society supplied it. These perpetually 
 were trying, chastising, and forming the class whose 
 predominance was then needed by society to give it 
 points of cohesion, and was not so harmful to them- 
 
168 CULTTJEE AND ANARCHY. [oHAP 
 
 selves because they were thus sharply tried and 
 exercised. But in a luxurious, settled and easy 
 society, where wealth offers the means of enjoyment 
 a thousand times more, and the temptation to abuse 
 them is thus made a thousand times greater, the 
 exercising discipline is at the same time taJsen away, 
 and the feudal class is left exposed to the fuU opera- 
 tion of the natural law well put by the French 
 moralist : Pouvoir sans savoir est fort dangereiKC. And, 
 for my part, when I regard the young people of this 
 class, it is above all by the trial and shipwreck made 
 of their own welfare by the circumstances in which 
 they live that I am struck. How far better it would 
 have been for nine out of every ten among them, if 
 they had had their own way to make in the world, 
 and not been tried by a condition for which they had 
 not the extraordinary grace requisite ! 
 
 This, I say, seems to be what a man's conscious- 
 ness, simply consulted, would tell him about the 
 actual welfare of our Barbarians themselves. Then, 
 as to the effect upon the welfare of the community, 
 how can that be salutary, if a class which, by the 
 very possession of wealth, power and consideration, 
 becomes a kind of ideal or standard for the rest of 
 the community, is tried by ease and pleasure more 
 than it can well bear, and almost irresistibly carried 
 away from excellence and strenuous virtue? This 
 must certainly be what Solomon meant when he 
 said : " As he who putteth a stone in a sling, so is 
 he that giveth honour to a fooL" 
 
 For any one can perceive how this honouring of a 
 
VI.] OUR LIBERAL PRACTITIONERS. 169 
 
 false ideal, not of intelligence and strenuous virtue, 
 but of wealth and station, pleasure and ease, is as a 
 stone from a sUng to kill in our great middle class, 
 in us who are caJled Philistines, the desire before 
 spoken of, which by nature for ever carries all men 
 towards that which is lovely; and to leave instead 
 of it only a blind deteriorating pursuit, for ourselves 
 also, of the false ideal. And in those among us 
 Philistines whom the desire does not wholly abandon, 
 yet, having no excellent ideal set forth to nourish 
 and to steady it, it meets with that natural bent for 
 the bathos which together with this desire itself is 
 implanted at birth in the breast of man, and is by 
 that force twisted awry, and borne at random hither 
 and thither, and at last flung upon those grotesque 
 and hideous forms of popular religion which the more 
 respectable part among us PhiHstines mistake for the 
 true goal of man's desire after all that is lovely. And 
 for the Populace this false idea is a stone which kills 
 the desire before it can even arise ; so impossible and 
 unattainable for them do the conditions of that which 
 is lovely appear according to this ideal to be made, 
 so necessary to the reaching of them by the few 
 seems the faUing short of them by the many. So 
 that, perhaps, of the actual vulgarity of our Philis- 
 tines and brutality of our Populace, the Barbarians 
 and their feudal habits of succession, enduring out 
 of their due time and place, are involimtarily the 
 cause in a great degree ; and they hurt the welfare 
 of the rest of the community at the same time that, 
 as we have seen, they hurt their own. 
 
170 CULTURE AND ANAKCHr. [chap, 
 
 But must not, now, the working in our minds ol 
 considerations like these, to which culture, that is, 
 the disinterested and active use of reading, reflection, 
 and observation, in the endeavour to know the best 
 that can be known, carries us, be reaUy much more 
 effectual to the dissolution of feudal habits and rules 
 of succession in land than an operation like the Eeal 
 Estate Intestacy Bill, and a stock notion Uke that of 
 the natural right of all a man's children to an equal 
 share in the enjoyment of his property; since we have 
 seen that this mechanical maxim is unsound, and 
 that, if it is unsound, the operation relying upon it 
 cannot possibly be effective? If truth and reason 
 have, as we believe, any natural, irresistible effect on 
 the mind of man, it must. These considerations, 
 when culture has called them forth and given them 
 free course in our minds, will live and work. They 
 will work gradually, no doubt, and wiU not bring us 
 ourselves to the front to sit in high place and put 
 them into effect ; but so they will be all the more 
 beneficial. Everything teaches us how gradually 
 nature would have all profound changes brought 
 about ; and we can even see, too, where the absolute 
 abrupt stoppage of feudal habits has worked harm. 
 And appealing to the sense of truth and reason, these 
 considerations will, without doubt, touch and move 
 all those of even the Barbarians themselves, who are 
 (as are some of us Philistines also, and some of the 
 Popidace) beyond their fellows quick of feeling for 
 truth and reason. For indeed this is just one of the 
 advantages of sweetness and light over fire and 
 
n.] OUK LIBERAL PEACTITIONEES. 171 
 
 strength, that sweetness and light make a feudal class 
 quietly and gradually drop its feudal habits because 
 it sees them at variance ■with truth and reason, while 
 fire and strength are for tearing them passionately 
 off, because this class applauded Mr. Lowe when he 
 called, or was supposed to call, the working class 
 drunken and venaL 
 
 III. 
 
 But when once we have begun to recount the 
 practical operations by which our Liberal friends 
 work for the removal of definite evils, and in which 
 if we do not join them they are apt to grow impatient 
 with us, how can we pass over that very interesting 
 operation, — the attempt to enable a man to marry 
 his deceased wife's sister ? This operation, too, like 
 that for abating the feudal customs of succession in 
 land, I have had the advantage of myself seeing and 
 hearing my Liberal friends labour at. 
 
 I was lucky enough to be present when Mr. 
 Chambers brought forward in the House of Commons 
 his bill for enabling a man to marry his deceased 
 wife's sister, and I heard the speech which Mr. 
 Chambers then made in support of his bill. His 
 first point was that God's law, — the name he always 
 gave to the Book of Leviticus, — did not really forbid 
 a man to marry his deceased wife's sister. God's law 
 not forbidding it, the Liberal maxim, that a man's 
 prime right and happiness is to do as he likes, ought 
 at once to come into force, and to annul any such 
 check upon the assertion of personetl liberty as the 
 
172 CULTURE AND ANAKCHT. [cHAP. 
 
 prohibition to many one's deceased wife's sister. A 
 distinguished Liberal supporter of Mr. Chambers, in 
 the debate which followed the introduction of the 
 bill, produced a formula of much beauty and neatness 
 for convejdng in brief the Liberal notions on this 
 head : "Liberty," said he, "is the law of human life." 
 And, therefore, the moment it is ascertained that 
 God's law, the Book of Leviticus, does not stop the 
 way, man's law, the law of liberty, asserts its right, and 
 makes us free to marry our deceased wife's sister. 
 
 And this exactly falls in with what Mr. Hepworth 
 Dixon, who may almost be called the Colenso of love 
 and marriage, — such a revolution does he make in 
 our ideas on these matters, just as Dr. Colenso does 
 in our ideas on religion, — tells us of the notions and 
 proceediugs of our kinsmen in America. With that 
 affinity of genius to the Hebrew genius which we have 
 already noticed, and with the strong belief of our 
 race that liberty is the law of human life, so far as 
 that fixed, perfect, and paramount rule of conscience, 
 the Bible, does not expressly control it, our American 
 kinsmen go again, Mr. Hepworth Dixon tells us, to 
 their Bible, the Mormons to the patriarchs and the 
 Old Testament, Brother Noyes to St. Paul and the 
 New, and having never before read anything else but 
 their Bible, they now read their Bible over again, and 
 make all manner of great discoveries there. AD 
 these discoveries are favourable to liberty, and in 
 this way is satisfied that double craving so character- 
 istic of our Philistine, and so eminently exemplified 
 in that crowned Philistine, Henry the Eighth, — the 
 
VI.] OUE LIBERAL PEAOTITIONEES. 173 
 
 craving for forbidden fruit and the craving for 
 legality. 
 
 Mr. Hepworth Dixon's eloquent writings give cur- 
 rency, over here, to these important discoveries ; so 
 that now, as regards love and marriage, we seem to 
 be entering, with all our sails spread, upon what Mr. 
 Hepworth Dixon, its apostle and evangelist, calls a 
 Gothic Revival, but what one of the many news- 
 papers that so greatly admire Mr. Hepworth Dixon's 
 lithe and sinewy style and form their own style upon 
 it, calls, by a yet bolder and more striking figure, " a 
 great sexual insurrection of our Anglo-Teutonic race.'' 
 For this end we have to avert our eyes from every- 
 thing Hellenic and fanciful, and to keep them steadily 
 fixed upon the two cardinal points of the Bible and 
 liberty. And one of those practical operations in 
 which the Liberal party engage, and in which we are 
 summoned to join them, directs itself entirely, as we 
 have seen, to these cardinal points, and may almost 
 be regarded, perhaps, as a kind of first instalment, or 
 public and parUamentary pledge, of the great sexual 
 insurrection of our Anglo-Teutonic race. 
 
 But here, as elsewhere, what we seek is the Philis- 
 tine's perfection, the development of his best self, not 
 mere liberty for his ordinary self. And we no more 
 allow absolute validity to his stock maxim. Liberty is 
 the law of humcm life, than we allow it to the opposite 
 maxim, which is just as true, Benouncement is the law 
 of human life. For we know that the only perfect 
 freedom is, as our rehgion says, a service; not a 
 service, to any stock maxim, but an elevation of our 
 
174 OULTUEB AND ANARCHY. [OHAP. 
 
 best self, and a harmonising in subordination to this, 
 and to the idea of a perfected humanity, all the multi- 
 tudinous, turbulent, and blind impulses of our ordi- 
 nary selves. Now, the Philistine's great defect being 
 a defect in delicacy of perception, to cultivate in him 
 this delicacy, to render it independent of external 
 and mechanical rule, and a law to itself, is what 
 seems to make most for his perfection, his true 
 humanity. And his true humanity, and therefore 
 his happiness, appears to lie much more, so far as the 
 relations of love and marriage are concerned, in be- 
 coming alive to the finer shades of feeling which arise 
 within these relations, in being able to enter with 
 tact and sjrmpathy into the subtle instinctive pro- 
 pensions and repugnances of the person with whose 
 life his own life is bound up, to make them his own, 
 to direct and govfem in harmony with them the 
 arbitrary range of his personal action, and thus to 
 enlarge his spiritual and intellectual life and liberty, 
 than in remaining insensible to these finer shades of 
 feeling and this delicate sympathy, in giving un- 
 checked range, so far as he can, to his mere personal 
 action, in allowing no limits or government to this 
 except such as a mechanical external law imposes, 
 and in thus really narrowing, for the satisfaction of 
 his ordinary self, his spiritual and intellectual life and 
 liberty. 
 
 Still more must this be so when his fixed eternal 
 rule, his God's law, is supplied to him from a source 
 which is less fit, perhaps, to supply final and absolute 
 instructions on this particular topic of love and mar- 
 
n.] OUR LIBERAL PRACTITIONERS. 175 
 
 riage than on any other relation of human life. Bishop 
 Wilaon, who is full of examples of that fruitful Hellen- 
 ising within the limits of Hebraism itself, of that 
 renewing of the stiff and stark notions of Hebraism 
 by turning upon them a stream of fresh thought and 
 consciousness, which we have already noticed in St. 
 Paul, — Bishop Wilson gives an admirable lesson to 
 rigid Hebraisers, like Mr. Chambers, asking them- 
 selves : Does God's law (that is, the Book of Leviticus) 
 forbid us to marry our wife's sister ? — Does God's law 
 (that is, again, the Book of Leviticus) allow us to 
 marry our wife's sister 1 — when he says : " Christian 
 duties are founded on reason, not on the sovereign 
 authority of God commanding what He pleases ; God 
 cannot command us what is not fit to be believed or 
 done, all his commands being founded in the neces- 
 sities of our nature." And, immense as is our debt 
 to the Hebrew race and its genius, incomparable as is 
 its authority on certain profoundly important sides 
 of our human nature, worthy as it is to be described 
 as having uttered, for those sides, the voice of the 
 deepest necessities of our nature, the statutes of the 
 divine and eternal order of things, the law of God, — 
 who, that is not manacled and hoodwinked by his 
 Hebraism, can believe that, as to love and marriage, 
 our reason and the necessities of our humanity have 
 their true, sufficient, and divine law expressed for 
 them by the voice of any Oriental and polygamous 
 nation like the Hebrews 1 Who, I say, wiU believe, 
 when he really considers the matter, that where the 
 feminine nature, the feminine ideal, and our relations 
 
176 CULTURE AND AITAECHY. foHAP. 
 
 to them, are brought into question, the delicate and 
 apprehensive genius of the Indo-European race, the 
 race which invented the Muses, and chivaky, and the 
 Madonna, is to find its last word on this question in 
 the institutions of a Semitic people, whose wisest 
 king had seven hundred wives and three hundred 
 concubines t 
 
 rv. 
 
 If here again, therefore, we minister better to the 
 diseased spirit of our time by leading it to think 
 about the operation our Liberal friends have iu hand, 
 than by lending a hand to this operation ourselves, 
 let us see, before we dismiss from our view the prac- 
 tical operations of our Liberal friends, whether the 
 same thing does not hold good as to their celebrated 
 industrial and economical laboiu's also. Their great 
 work of this kind is, of course, their free-trade policy. 
 This policy, as having enabled the poor man to eat 
 untaxed bread, and as having wonderfully augmented 
 trade, we are accustomed to speak of with a kind of 
 thankful solemnity. It is chiefly on their haying been 
 our leaders in this policy that Mr. Bright founds for 
 himself and his friends the claim, so often asserted by 
 him, to be considered guides of the blind, teachers 
 of the ignorant, benefactors slowly and laboriously 
 developing in the Conservative party and in the 
 country that which Mr. Bright is fond of calling the 
 growth of intelligence, — the object, as is well known, of 
 all the friends of culture also, and the great end and 
 aim of the culture that we preach. 
 
TI.] OUR LIBERAL PRACTITIONERS. 177 
 
 Now, having first saluted free-trade and its doctors 
 with all respect, let us see whether even here, too, our 
 Liberal friends do not pursue their operations in a 
 mechanical way, without reference to any firm intel- 
 ligible law of things, to human life as a whole, and 
 human happiness ; and whether it is not more for our 
 good, at this particular moment at any rate, if, instead 
 of worshipping free-trade with them Hebraistically, as 
 a kind of fetish, and helping them to pursue it as an 
 end in and for itself, we turn the free stream of our 
 thought upon their treatment of it, and see how this 
 is related to the intelligible law of human life, and to 
 national well-being and happiness. In short, suppose 
 we Hellenise a little with free-trade, as we Hellenised 
 with the Real Estate Intestacy Bill, and with the dis- 
 establishment of the Irish Church by the power of 
 the Nonconformists' antipathy to religious establish- 
 ments, and see whether what our reprovers beautifully 
 call ministering to the diseased spirit of our time is 
 best done by the Hellenising method of proceeding, 
 or by the other. 
 
 But first let us understand how the policy of free- 
 trade really shapes itself for our Liberal friends, and 
 how they practically employ it as an instrument of 
 national happiness and salvation. For as we said 
 that it seemed clearly right to prevent the Church- 
 property of Ireland from being all taken for the 
 benefit of the Church of a small minority, so it seems 
 clearly right that the poor man should eat untaxed 
 bread, and, generally, that restrictions and regulations 
 which, for the supposed benefit of some particular 
 
 VOL. in. N 
 
178 CULTURE AND ANAECHY. [CHAP. 
 
 person or class of persons, make the price of things 
 artificially high here, or artificially low there, and in- 
 terfere with the natural flow of trade and commerce, 
 should be done away with. But in the policy of our 
 Liberal friends free-trade means more than this, and 
 is specially valued as a stimulant to the produc- 
 tion of wealth, as they call it, and to the increase of 
 the trade, business, and popxilation of the country. 
 We have already seen how these things, — trade, busi- 
 ness, and population, — are mechanically pursued by 
 us as ends precious in themselves, and are worshipped 
 as what we call fetishes; and Mr. Bright, I have 
 already said, when he wishes to give the working class 
 a true sense of what makes glory and greatness, tells 
 it to look at the cities it has built, the railroads it has 
 made, the manufactures it has produced. So to this 
 idea of glory and greatness the free-trade which our 
 Liberal friends extol so solemnly and devoutly, has 
 served, — to the increase of trade, business, and popu- 
 lation ; and for this it is prized. Therefore, the 
 taxing of the poor man's bread has, with this view of 
 national happiness, been used not so much to make 
 the existing poor man's bread cheaper or more abun- 
 dant, but rather to create more poor men to eat it ; so 
 that we cannot precisely say that we have fewer poor 
 men than we had before free-trade, but we can say 
 with truth that we have many more centres of in- 
 dustry, as they are called, and much more business, 
 population, and manufactures. And if we are some- 
 times a little troubled by our multitude of poor 
 men, yet we know the increase of manufactures and 
 
VI.] OUE LIBEEAL PEACTITIONEES. 17S 
 
 population to be such a salutary thing in itself, 
 and our free-trade policy begets such an admirable 
 movement, creating fresh centres of industry and 
 fresh poor men here, while we were thinking about 
 our poor men there, that we are quite dazzled and 
 borne away, and more and more industrial move- 
 ment is called for, and our social progress seems to 
 become one triumphant and enjoyable course of 
 what is sometimes called, vulgarly, outrunning the 
 constable. 
 
 If, however, taking some other criterion of man's 
 well-being than the cities he has built and the manu- 
 factures he has produced, we persist in thinking that 
 our social progress woiild be happier if there were 
 not so many of us so very poor, and in busying our- 
 selves with notions of in some way or other adjusting 
 the poor man and business one to the other, and not 
 multiplying the one and the other mechanically and 
 blindly, then our Liberal friends, the appointed doctors 
 of free-trade, take us up very sharply. " Art is long,'' 
 says the Times, " and life is short j for the most part 
 we settle things first and understand them afterwards. 
 Let us have as few theories as possible ; what is 
 wanted is not the light of speculation. If nothing 
 worked well of which the theory was not perfectly 
 understood, we should be in sad confusioa The 
 relations of labour and capital, we are told, are not 
 understood, yet trade and commerce, on the whole, 
 work satisfactorily." I quote from the Times of 
 only the other day.-' But thoughts like these, aa 
 » Written in 1869. 
 
180 CTJLTUEE AND ANAEOHY. [chap. 
 
 I have often pointed out, are thorougUy British 
 thoughts, and we have been familiar with them for 
 years. 
 
 Or, if we want more of a philosophy of the matter 
 than this, our free-trade friends have two axioms 
 for us, axioms laid down by their justly esteemed 
 doctors, which they think ought to satisfy us entirely. 
 One is, that, other things being equal, tlie more popu- 
 lation increases, the more does production increase to 
 keep pace with it ; because men by their numbers and 
 contact call forth all manner of activities and resources 
 in one another and in nature, which, when men are 
 few and sparse, are never developed. The other is, 
 that, although population always tends to equal the 
 means of subsistence, yet people's notions of what 
 subsistence is enlarge as civilisation advances, and 
 take in a number of things beyond the bare 
 necessaries of life; and thus, therefore, is supplied 
 whatever check on population is needed. But the 
 error of our friends is precisely, perhaps, that they 
 apply axioms of this sort as if they were self-acting 
 laws which will put themselves into operation without 
 trouble or planning on our part, if we will only pursue 
 free -trade, business, and population zealously and 
 staimchly. "Whereas the real truth is, that, however 
 the case might be under other circumstances, yet in 
 fact, as we now manage the matter, the enlarged 
 conception of what is included in subsistence does not 
 operate to prevent the bringing into the world of 
 numbers of people who but just attain to the barest 
 necessaries of life or who even fail to attain to them ; 
 
VI.] OUR LIBERAL PEACTITIONEES. 181 
 
 while, again, though production may increase as popu- 
 lation increases, yet it seems that the production may 
 be of such a kind, and so related, or rather non- 
 related, to population, that the population may be 
 little the better for it. 
 
 For instance, with the increase of population since 
 Queen Elizabeth's time the production of silk- 
 stockings has wonderfully increased, and silk- 
 stockings have become much cheaper, and procurable 
 in greater abundance by many more people, and tend 
 perhaps, as population and manufactures increase, 
 to get cheaper and cheaper, and at last to become, 
 according to Bastiat's favourite image, a common free 
 property of the human race, like light and air. But 
 bread and bacon have not become much cheaper 
 with the increase of population since Queen Eliza- 
 beth's time, nor procurable in much greater abundance 
 by many more people ; neither do they seem at all 
 to promise to become, like light and air, a common 
 free property of the human race. And if bread and 
 bacon have not kept pace with our population, and 
 we have many more people in want of them now 
 than in Queen Elizabeth's time, it seems vain to tell 
 us that silk-stockings have kept pace with our popu- 
 lation, or even more than kept pace with it, and that 
 we are to get our comfort out of that. 
 
 In short, it turns out that our pursuit of free-trade, 
 as of so many other things, has been too mechanical. 
 We fix upon some object, which in this case is the 
 production of wealth, and the increase of manufac- 
 tures, population, and commerce through free trade, 
 
182 CULTURE AND ANARCHY. [char 
 
 as a kind of one thing needful, or end in itself ; and 
 then we pursue it staunchly and mechanically, and 
 say that it is our duty to pursue it staunchly and 
 mechanically, not to see how it is related to the whole 
 intelligible law of things and to full human perfec- 
 tion, or to treat it as the piece of machinery, of 
 varying value as its relations to the intelligible law of 
 things vary, which it really is. 
 
 So it is of no use to say to the Times, and to our 
 Liberal friends rejoicing in the possession of their 
 talisman of free-trade, that about one in nineteen of 
 our population is a pauper,'' and that, this being so, 
 trade and commerce can hardly be said to prove by 
 their satisfactory working that it matters nothing 
 whether the relations between labour and capital are 
 understood or not ; nay, that we can hardly be said 
 not to be in sad confusion. For here our faith in the 
 staunch mechanical pursuit of a fixed object comes in, 
 and covers itself with that imposing and colossal neces- 
 sitarianism of the Times which we have before noticed. 
 And this necessitarianism, taking for granted that an 
 increase in trade and population is a good in itself, 
 one of the chiefest of goods, tells us that disturbances 
 of human happiness caused by ebbs and flows in the 
 tide of trade and business, which, on the whole, 
 steadily mounts, are inevitable and not to be quar- 
 relled with. This firm philosophy I seek to call to 
 mind when I am in the East of London, whither my 
 avocations often lead me; and, indeed, to fortify 
 myself against the depressing sights which on these 
 ' This was in 1869. 
 
VI.] OUR LIBERAL PEACTITIONERg. 183 
 
 occasions assail us, I have transcribed from the Times 
 one strain of this kind, full of the finest economical 
 doctrine, and always carry it about with me. The 
 passage is this : — 
 
 " The East End is the most commercial, the most 
 industrial, the most fluctuating region of the 
 metropolis. It is always the first to sufier ; for it is 
 the creature of prosperity, and falls to the ground the 
 instant there is no wind to bear it up. The whole of 
 that region is covered with huge docks, shipyards, 
 manufactories, and a wilderness of small houses, all 
 full of Ufe and happiness in brisk times, but in dull 
 times withered and lifeless, like the deserts we read of 
 in the East. Now their brief spring is over. There 
 is no one to blame for this ; it is the result of Nature's 
 simplest laws ! " We must all agree that it is impos- 
 sible that anything can be firmer than this, or show a 
 surer faith in the working of free-trade, as our Liberal 
 friends understand and employ it. 
 
 But, if we still at all doubt whether the indefinite 
 multiplication of manufactories and small houses can 
 be such an absolute good in itself as to counter- 
 balance the indefinite multiplication of poor people, 
 we shall learn that this multiplication of poor people, 
 too, is an absolute good in itself, and the result of 
 divine and beautiful laws. This is indeed a favourite 
 thesis with our Philistine friends, and I have already 
 noticed the pride and gratitude with which they 
 receive certain articles in the Times, dilating in 
 thankful and solemn language on the majestic growth 
 of our population. But I prefer to quote now, on 
 
184 CULTUEE AND ANARCHY. [chap 
 
 this topic, the -words of an ingenious young Scotch 
 writer, Mr. Eobert Buchanan, because he invests with 
 so much imagination and poetry this current idea of 
 the blessed and even divine character which the 
 multiplying of population is supposed in itself to have. 
 "We move to multiplicity," says Mr. Eobert Buchanan. 
 " If there is one quality which seems God's, and his 
 exclusively, it seems that divine philoprogenitiveness, 
 that passionate love of distribution and expansion into 
 living forms. Every animal added seems a new 
 ecstasy to the Maker; every life added, a new 
 embodiment of his love. He would swwrm the earth 
 with beings. There .are never enough. Life, life, 
 life, — faces gleaming, hearts beating, must fill every 
 cranny. Not a corner is suffered to remain empty. 
 The whole earth breeds, and God glories." 
 
 It is a little unjust, perhaps, to attribute to the 
 Divinity exclusively this philoprogenitiveness, which 
 the British Philistine, and the poorer class of Irishj 
 may certainly claim to share with him; yet how 
 inspiriting is here the whole strain of thought ! and 
 these beautiful words, too, I carry about with me in 
 the East of London, and often read them there. They 
 are quite in agreement with the popular language one 
 is accustomed to hear about children and large 
 families, which describes children as sent. And a line 
 of poetry, which Mr. Eobert Buchanan throws in 
 presently after the poetical prose I have quoted, — 
 
 " 'Tis the old story of the fig-leaf time "— 
 this fine line, too, naturally connects itself, when one 
 is in the East of London, with the idea of God's desire 
 
VI.] OUK LIBERAL PKACTITIONEES. 185 
 
 to swarm the earth with beings; because the swarming 
 of the earth with beings does indeed, in the East of 
 London, so seem to revive the old story of the fig-leaj 
 time, such a number of the people one meets there 
 having hardly a rag to cover them ; and the more the 
 swarming goes on, the more it promises to revive this 
 old story. And when the story is perfectly revived, 
 the swaiming quite completed, and every cranny 
 choke-full, then, too, no doubt, the faces in the East 
 of London will be gleaming faces, which Mr. Eobert 
 Buchanan says it is God's desire they should be, and 
 which every one must perceive they are not at present, 
 but, on the contrary, very miserable. 
 
 But to prevent all this philosophy and poetry from 
 quite running away with us, and making us think 
 with the Times, and our practical Liberal free-traders, 
 and the British Philistines generally, that the increase 
 of houses and manufactories, or the increase of popu- 
 lation, are absolute goods in themselves, to be 
 mechanically pursued, and to be worshipped like 
 fetishes, — to prevent this, we have got that notion 
 of ours immovably fixed, of which I have long ago 
 spoken, the notion that culture, or the study of per- 
 fection, leads us to conceive of no perfection as being 
 real which is not a general perfection, embracing all 
 our fellow-men with whom we have to do. Such is 
 the sympathy which binds humanity together, that 
 we are, indeed, as our religion says, members of one 
 body, and if one member suffer, all the members 
 Buffer with it. Individual perfection is impossible so 
 long as the rest of mankind are not perfected along 
 
186 CULTURE AND ANAECHY. [oHAP. 
 
 with US. " The multitvde of the wise is the welfare 
 of the world," says the wise man. And to this effect 
 that excellent and often-quoted guide of ours, Bishop 
 Wilson, has some striking words : — " It is not," says 
 he, " so much our neighhour's interest as our own 
 that we love him." And again he says : " Our salva- 
 tion does in some measure depend upon that of 
 others." And the author of the Imitaion puts the 
 same thing admirably when he says : — " Obscurior etiam 
 via ad cmlum videbaiwr quando tarn pauci regnwm codorum 
 qumrere owrabant ; the fewer there are who follow the 
 way to perfection, the harder that way is to find." 
 So all our fellow -men, in the East of London and 
 elsewhere, we must take along with us in the progress 
 towards perfection, if we ourselves really, as we pro- 
 fess, want to be perfect; and we must not let the 
 worship of any fetish, any machinery, such as manu- 
 factures or population, — which are not, Uke perfection, 
 absolute goods in themselves, though we think them 
 so, — create for us such a multitude of miserable, 
 sunken, and ignorant human beings, that to carry 
 them all along with us is impossible, and perforce 
 they must for the most part be left by us in their 
 degradation and wretchedness. But evidently the 
 conception of free-trade, on which our liberal friends 
 vaunt themselves, and in which they think they have 
 found the secret of national prosperity, — evidently, I 
 say, the mere unfettered pursuit of the production of 
 wealth, and the mere mechanical multiplying, for 
 this end, of manufactures and population, threatens 
 to create for us, if it has not created already, those 
 
VI.] OUB LIBERAL PEACTITIONEKS. 187 
 
 vast, miserable, unmanageable masses of sunken 
 people, to the existence of which we axe, as we have 
 seen, absolutely forbidden to reconcile ourselves, in 
 spite of all that the philosophy of the Times and the 
 poetry of Mr. Robert Buchanan may say to persuade 
 us. 
 
 Hebraism in general seems powerless, almost as 
 powerless as our free-trading Liberal friends, to deal 
 efficaciously with our ever -accumulating masses of 
 pauperism, and to prevent their accumulating still 
 more. Hebraism builds churches, indeed, for these 
 masses, and sends missionaries among them; above 
 all, it sets itself against the social necessitarianism of 
 the Times, and refuses to accept their degradation as 
 inevitable. But with regard to their ever-increasing 
 accumulation, it seems to be led to the very same 
 conclusions, though from a point of view of its own, 
 as our free-trading Liberal friends. Hebraism, with 
 that mechanical and misleading use of the letter of 
 Scripture on which we have already commented, is 
 governed by such texts as : Be frvUful and multiply, 
 the edict of God's law, as Mr. Chambers would say ; 
 or by the declaration of what he would call God's 
 word in the Psalms, that the man who has a great 
 number of children is thereby made happy. And in 
 conjunction with such texts as these, Hebraism is apt 
 to place another text : The poor shall never cease out oj 
 the la/nd. Thus Hebraism is conducted to nearly the 
 same notion as the popular mind and as Mr. Eobert 
 Buchanan, that children are sent, and that the divine 
 nature takes a delight in swarming the East End of 
 
188 CULTURE AND AJfAKCHY. [oha? 
 
 London with paupers. Only, when they are perish- 
 mg in their helplessness and wretchedness, it asserts 
 the Christian duty of succouring them, instead of 
 saying, like the Times: "Now their brief spring is 
 over ; there is nobody to blame for this ; it is the 
 result of Nature's simplest laws ! " But, like the 
 Times, Hebraism despairs of any help from knowledge 
 and says that " what is wanted is not the light of 
 speculation." 
 
 I remember, only the other day, a good man look- 
 ing with me upon a multitude of children who were 
 gathered before us in one of the most miserable regions 
 of London, — children eaten up with disease, half -sized, 
 half-fed, half-clothed, neglected by their parents, with- 
 out health, without home, without hope, — said to me : 
 " The one thing really needful is to teach these little 
 ones to succour one another, if only with a cup of 
 cold water ; but now, from one end of the country to 
 the other, one hears nothing but the cry for know- 
 ledge, knowledge, knowledge ! " And yet surely, so 
 long as these children are there in these festering 
 masses, without health, without home, without hope, 
 and so long as their multitude is perpetually swelling, 
 charged with misery they must still be for themselves, 
 charged with misery they must stUl be for us, whether 
 they help one another with a cup of cold water or 
 no ; and the knowledge how to prevent their accumu- 
 lating is necessary, even to give their moral life and 
 growth a fair chance ! 
 
 May we not, therefore, say, that neither the true 
 Hebraism of this good man, willing to spend and bfl 
 
VI.] OTJE LIBERAL PEACTITIONEES. 189 
 
 spent for these sunken multitudes, nor what I may 
 call the spurious Hehraism of our free-trading Liheral 
 friends, — mechanically worshipping their fetish of the 
 production of wealth and of the increase of manufac- 
 tures and population, and looking neither to the right 
 nor left so long as this increase goes on, — avail us 
 much here ; and that here, again, what we want is 
 Hellenism, the letting our consciousness play freely 
 and simply upon the facts hefore us, and listening to 
 what it tells us of the intelligible law of things as 
 concerns them 1 And surely what it tells us is, that 
 a man's children are not really sent, any more than 
 the pictures upon his wall, or the horses in his stable 
 are sent; and that to bring people into the world, 
 when one cannot afford to keep them and oneself 
 decently and not too precariously, or to bring more of 
 them into the world than one can afford to keep thus, 
 is, whatever the Times and Mr. Robert Buchanan may 
 say, by no means an accomplishment of the divine 
 will or a fulfilment of Nature's simplest laws, but is 
 just as wrong, just as contrary to reason and the will 
 of God, as for a man to have horses, or carriages, or 
 pictures, when he cannot afford them, or to have 
 more of them than he can afford ; and that, in the 
 one case as in the other, the larger scale on which the 
 violation of reason's law is practised, and the longer 
 it is persisted in, the greater must be the confusion 
 and final trouble. Surely no laudations of free-trade, 
 no meetings of bishops and clergy in the East End of 
 London, no reading of papers and reports, can tell us 
 anything about our social condition which it more 
 
190 CULTURE AND ANAECHT. [chap. 
 
 concerns us to know than that ! and not only to 
 know, but habitually to have the knowledge present, 
 and to act upon it as one acts upon the knowledge 
 that water wets and fire bums ! And not only the 
 sunken populace of our great cities are concerned to 
 know it, and the pauper twentieth of our population ; 
 we Philistines of the middle class, too, are concerned 
 to know it, and all who have to set themselves to 
 make progress in perfection. 
 
 But we all know it already ! some one will say ; it 
 is the simplest law of prudence. But how little 
 reality must there be in our knowledge of it ; how 
 little can we be putting it in practice ; how little is it 
 likely to penetrate among the poor and struggling 
 masses of our population, and to better our condition, 
 so long as an umnteUigent Hebraism of one sort 
 keeps repeating as an absolute eternal word of God 
 the psalm-verse which says that the man who has a 
 great many children is happy; or an unintelligent 
 Hebraism of another sort, — that is to say, a blind 
 following of certain stock notions as infallible, — 
 keeps assigning as an absolute proof of national pro- 
 sperity the multiplying of manufactures and popula- 
 tion ! Surely, the one set of Hebraisers have to learn 
 that their psalm-verse was composed at the resettle- 
 ment of Jerusalem after the Captivity, when the 
 Jews of Jerusalem were a handful, an undermanned 
 garrison, and every child was a blessing; and that 
 the word of God, or the voice of the divine order of 
 things, declares the possession of a great many 
 children to be a blessing only when it really is so ! 
 
n.] OUR LIBERAL PRACTITIONERS. 191 
 
 And the other set of Hebraisers, have they not to 
 learn that if they call their private acquaintances 
 imprudent or unlucky, when, with no means of sup- 
 port for them or with precarious means, they have a 
 large family of children, then they ought not to call 
 the State well managed and prosperous merely be- 
 cause its manufactures and its citizens multiply, if 
 the manufactures, which bring new citizens into 
 existence just as much as if they had actually be- 
 gotten them, bring more of them into existence than 
 they can maintain, or are too precarious to go on 
 maintaining those whom for a while they main- 
 tained ? 
 
 Hellenism, surely, or the habit of fixing our mind 
 upon the intelligible law of things, is most salutary if 
 it makes us see that the only absolute good, the only 
 absolute and eternal object prescribed to us by God's 
 law, or the divine order of things, is the progress 
 towards perfection, — our own progress towards it 
 and the progress of humanity. And therefore, for 
 every individual man, and for every society of men, 
 the possession and multiplication of children, like the 
 possession and multiplication of horses and pictures, 
 is to be accounted good or bad, not in itself, but with 
 reference to this object and the progress towards it. 
 And as no man is to be excused in having horses or 
 pictures, if his having them hinders his own or others' 
 progress towards perfection and makes them lead a 
 servile and ignoble life, so is no man to be excused 
 for having children if his having them makes him or 
 others lead this. Plain thouarhts of this kind are 
 
192 CULTURE AND ANARCHY. [oHAP, 
 
 surely the spontaneous product of our consciousness, 
 when it is allowed to play freely and disinterestedly 
 upon the actual facts of our social condition, and 
 upon our stock notions and stock habits in respect to 
 it. Firmly grasped and simply uttered, they are 
 more likely, one cannot but think, to better that 
 condition, than is the mechanical pursuit of free-trade 
 by our Liberal friends. 
 
 V. 
 
 So that, here as elsewhere, the practical operations 
 of our Liberal friends, by which they set so much 
 store, and in which they invite us to join them and 
 to show what Mr. Bright calls a commendable interest, 
 do not seem to us so practical for real good as they 
 think J and our Liberal friends seem to us themselves 
 to need to Hellenise, as we say, a little, — that is, to 
 examine into the nature of real good, and to listen to 
 what their consciousness tells them about it, — ^rather 
 than to pursue with such heat and confidence their 
 present practical operations. And it is clear that 
 they have no just cause, so far as regards several 
 operations of theirs which we have canvassed, to 
 reproach us with delicate Conservative scepticism, 
 For often by Hellenising we seem to subvert stock 
 Conservative notions and usages more effectually than 
 they subvert them by Hebraising. But, in truth, the 
 free spontaneous play of consciousness with which 
 culture tries to float our stock habits of thinking and 
 acting, is by its very nature, as has been said, dis- 
 interested. Sometimes the result of floating them 
 
VI.] OUK LIBEEAL PEACTITIONERS. 193 
 
 may be agreeable to this party, sometimes to that ; 
 now it may be unwelcome to our so-called Liberals, 
 now to our so-caUed Conservatives ; but what culture 
 seeks is, above all, to float them, to prevent their 
 being stiff and stark pieces of petrifaction any longer. 
 It is mere Hebraising, if we stop short, and refuse to 
 let our consciousness play freely, whenever we or our 
 friends do not happen to like what it discovers to us. 
 This is to make the Liberal party, or the Conservative 
 party, our one thing needful, instead of human per- 
 fection ; and we have seen what mischief arises from 
 making an even greater thing than the Liberal or the 
 Conservative party, — the predominance of the moral 
 side in man, — our one thing needful. But wherever 
 the free play of our consciousness leads us, we shall 
 follow ; believing that in this way we shaU tend to 
 make good at all points what is wanting to us, and 
 so shall be brought nearer to our complete human 
 perfection. 
 
 Everything, in short, confirms us in the doctrine, 
 so unpalatable to the believers in action, that our 
 main business at the present moment is not so much 
 to work away at certain crude reforms of which we 
 have already the scheme in our own mind, as to 
 create, through the help of that culture which at the 
 very outset we began by praising and recommending, 
 a frame of mind out of which the schemes of really 
 fruitful reforms may with time grow. At any rate, 
 we ourselves must put up with our friends' impa- 
 tience, and with their reproaches against cultivated 
 inaction, and must still decline to lend a hand to their 
 
 VOL. III. 
 
194 CULTURE AND ANARCHY. [OHAP. VL 
 
 practical operations, until we, for our own part, at 
 least, have grown a little clearer about the nature of 
 real good, and have arrived nearer to a condition of 
 mind out of which really fruitful and solid operations 
 may spring. 
 
 In the meanwhile, since our Liberal friends keep 
 loudly and resolutely assuring us that their actual 
 operations at present are fruitful and solid, let us in 
 each case keep testing these operations in the simple 
 way we have indicated, by letting the natural stream 
 of our consciousness flow over them freely; and if 
 they stand this test successfully, then let us give them 
 our interest, but not else. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 And so we bring to an end what we had to say in 
 praise of culture, and in evidence of its special utility 
 for the circumstances in which we find ourselves, and 
 the confusion which environs us. Through culture 
 seems to lie our way, not only to perfection, but even 
 to safety. Kesolutely refusing to lend a hand to the 
 imperfect operations of oux Liberal friends, disregard- 
 ing their impatience, taunts, and reproaches, firmly 
 bent on trying to find in the intelligible laws of 
 things a firmer and sounder basis for future practice 
 than any which we have at present, and believing 
 this search and discovery to be, for our generation 
 and circumstances, of yet more vital and pressing im- 
 portance than practice itself, we nevertheless may do 
 more, perhaps, we poor disparaged followers of cul- 
 ture, to make the actual present, and the frame of 
 society in which we live, soUd and seaworthy, than 
 all which our bustling politicians can do. 
 
 For we have seen how much of our disorders and 
 perplexities is due to the disbelief, among the classes 
 and combinations of men. Barbarian or Philistine, 
 which have hitherto governed our society, in right 
 
196 CULTUKE AND AITARCHY. 
 
 reason, in a paramount best self; to the inevitable 
 decay and break-up of the organisations by which, 
 asserting and expressing in these organisations their 
 ordinary self only, they have so long ruled us ; and 
 to their irresolution, when the society, which their 
 conscience tells them they have made and stiU manage 
 not with right reason but with their ordinary self, ia 
 rudely shaken, in offering resistance to its subverters. 
 But for us, — ^who believe in right reason, in the duty 
 and possibility of extricating and elevating our best 
 self, in the progress of humanity towards perfection, 
 — for us the framework of society, that theatre on 
 which this august drama has to unroU itself, is 
 sacred ; and whoever administers it, and however we 
 may seek to remove them from their tenure of ad- 
 ministration, yet, while they administer, we steadily 
 and with undivided heart support them in repressing 
 anarchy and disorder ; because without order there 
 can be no society, and without society there can be 
 no human perfection. 
 
 And this opinion of the intolerableness of anarchy 
 we can never forsake, however our Liberal friends 
 may think a little rioting, and what they caU popular 
 demonstrations, useful sometimes to their own in- 
 terests and to the interests of the valuable practical 
 operations they have in hand, and however they may 
 preach the right of an Englishman to be left to do as 
 far as possible what he likes, and the duty of his 
 government to indulge him and connive as much as 
 possible and abstain from all harshness of repression. 
 And even when they artfully show us operations 
 
CONCLUSION. 197 
 
 which are undoubtedly precious, such as the abolition 
 of the slave-trade, and ask us if, for their sake, foolish 
 and obstinate governments may not wholesomely be 
 frightened by a little disturbance, the good design in 
 view and the difficulty of overcoming opposition to 
 it being considered, — still we say no, and that monster- 
 processions in the streets and forcible irruptions into 
 the parks, even in professed support of this good de- 
 sign, ought to be unflinchingly forbidden and re- 
 pressed ; and that far more is lost than is gained by 
 permitting them. Because a State in which law is 
 authoritative and sovereign, a firm and settled course 
 of public order, is requisite if man is to bring to 
 maturity anything precious and lasting now, or to 
 found anything precious and lasting for the future. 
 
 Thus, in our eyes, the very framework and ex- 
 terior order of the State, whoever may administer the 
 State, is sacred; and culture is the most resolute 
 enemy of anarchy, because of the great hopes and 
 designs for the State which culture teaches us to 
 nourish. But as, believing in right reason, and hav- 
 ing faith in the progress of humanity towards perfec- 
 tion, and ever labouring for this end, we grow to 
 have clearer sight of the ideas of right reason, and of 
 the elements and helps of perfection, and come 
 gradually to fill the framework of the State with 
 them, to fashion its internal composition and all its 
 laws and institutions conformably to them, and to 
 make the State more and more the expression, as we 
 say, of our best self, which is not manifold, and 
 vulgar, and unstable, and contentious, and ever-vary- 
 
198 CULTUEB AND ANARCHY. 
 
 ing, but one, and noble, and secure, and peaceful, and 
 the same for all mankind, — with what aversion shall 
 we not then regard anarchy, with what firmness shall 
 we not check it, when there is so much that is so 
 precious which it will endanger ! 
 
 So that, for the sake of the present, but far more 
 for the sake of the future, the lovers of culture are 
 unswervingly and with a good conscience the opposers 
 of anarchy. And not as the Barbarians and Philis- 
 tines, whose honesty and whose sense of humour 
 make them shrink, as we have seen, from treating the 
 State as too serious a thing, and from giving it too 
 much power ; — for indeed the only State they know 
 of, and think they administer, is the expression of 
 their ordinary self. And though the headstrong and 
 violent extreme among them might gladly arm this 
 with full authority, yet their virtuous mean is, as we 
 have said, pricked in conscience at doing this ; and as 
 our Barbarian Secretaries of State let the Park rail- 
 ings be broken down, and our Philistine Alderman- 
 Colonels let the London roughs rob and beat the 
 bystanders. But we, beholding in the State no ex- 
 pression of our ordinary self, but even already, as it 
 were, the appointed frame and prepared vessel of our 
 best self, and, for the future, our best self's powerful, 
 beneficent, and sacred expression and organ, — we 
 are willing and resolved, even now, to strengthen 
 against anarchy the trembling hands of our Barbarian 
 Home Secretaries, and the feeble knees of our Philis- 
 tine Alderman-Colonels ; and to tell them, that it is 
 not really in behaJf of their own ordinary self that 
 
CONCLUSION. 199 
 
 they are called to protect the Park railings, and to 
 suppress the London roughs, but in behalf of the best 
 self both of themselves and of all of us in the future. 
 
 Nevertheless, though for resisting anarchy the 
 lovers of culture may prize and employ fire and 
 strength, yet they must, at the same time, bear con- 
 stantly in mind that it is not at this moment true, 
 what the majority of people tell us, that the world 
 wants fire and strength more than sweetness and 
 light, and that things are for the most part to be 
 settled first and understood afterwards. We have 
 seen how much of our present perplexities and con- 
 fusion this untrue notion of the majority of people 
 amongst us has caused, and tends to perpetuate. 
 Therefore the true business of the friends of culture 
 now is, to dissipate this false notion, to spread the 
 belief in right reason and in a firm intelligible law 
 of things, and to get men to try, in preference to 
 staunchly acting with imperfect knowledge, to obtain 
 some sounder basis of knowledge on which to act 
 This is what the friends and lovers of culture have 
 to do, however the believers in action may grow im- 
 patient with us for saying so, and may insist on our 
 lending a hand to their practical operations and show- 
 ing a commendable interest in them. 
 
 To this insistence we must indeed turn a deaf ear. 
 But neither, on the other hand, must the friends of 
 culture expect to take the believers in action by 
 storm, or to be visibly and speedily important, and to 
 rule and cut a figure in the world. Aristotle says 
 that those for whom alone ideas and the pursuit of 
 
200 CULTUKB AND ANARCHY. 
 
 the intelligible law of things can, in general, have 
 much attraction, are principally the young, filled with 
 generous spirit and with a passion for perfection ; 
 but the mass of mankind, he says, follow seeming 
 goods for real, bestowing hardly a thought upon true 
 sweetness and light; — "and to fhdr lives," he adds 
 mournfully, "who can give another and a better 
 rhythm ? " But, although those chiefly attracted by 
 sweetness and light will probably always be the 
 young and enthusiastic, and culture must not hope to 
 take the mass of mankind by storm, yet we will not 
 therefore, for our own day and for our own people, 
 admit and rest in the desponding sentence of Aris- 
 totle. For is not this the right crown of the long 
 discipline of Hebraism, and the due fruit of man- 
 kind's centuries of painful schooling in self-conquest, 
 and the just reward, above all, of the strenuous 
 energy of our own nation and kindred in dealing 
 honestly with itself and walking steadfastly accord- 
 ing to the best light it knows, — that when in the 
 fulness of time it has reason and beauty offered to 
 it, and the law of things as they really are, it should 
 at last walk by this true light with the same staunch- 
 ness and zeal with which it formerly walked by its 
 imperfect light ! And thus man's two great natural 
 forces, Hebraism and Hellenism, will no longer be 
 dissociated and rival, but will be a joint force of right 
 thinking and strong doing to carry him on towards 
 perfection. This is what the lovers of culture may 
 perhaps dare to augur for such a nation as ours. 
 Therefore, however great the changes to be accom' 
 
CONCLUSION. 201 
 
 plished, and however dense the array of Barbarians, 
 Philistines, and Populace, we will neither despair- on 
 the one hand, nor, on the other, threaten violent 
 revolution and change. But we will look forward 
 cheerfully and hopefully to "a revolution," as the 
 Duke of Wellington said, " by due course of law ; " 
 though not exactly such laws as our Liberal friends 
 are now, with their actual lights, fond of ofifering 
 to us. 
 
 But if despondency and violence are both of them 
 forbidden to the believer in culture, yet neither, on 
 the other hand, is public life and direct political action 
 much permitted to him. For it is his business, as we 
 have seen, to get the present believers in action, and 
 lovers of political talking and doing, to make a return 
 upon their own minds, scrutinise their stock notions 
 and habits much more, value their present talking 
 and doing much less; in order that, by learning to 
 think more clearly, they may come at last to act less 
 confusedly. But how shall we persuade our Barbarian 
 to hold lightly to his feudal usages ; how shall we 
 persuade our Nonconformist that his time spent in 
 agitating for the abolition of church- establishments 
 would have been better spent in getting worthier 
 ideas of God and the ordering of the world, or his 
 time spent in battling for voluntaryism in education 
 better spent in learning to value and found a public 
 and national culture ; how shall we persuade, finally, 
 our Alderman-Colonel not to be content with sitting 
 in the haU of judgment or marching at the head of 
 his men of war, without some knowledge how to per- 
 
202 CULTURE AND ANARCHY 
 
 form judgment and how to direct men of war, — how, 
 I say, shall we persuade all these of this, if oui 
 Alderman-Colonel sees that we want to get his lead- 
 ing-staff and his scales of justice for our own hands ; 
 or the Nonconformist, that we want for ourselves his 
 platform; or the Barbarian, that we want for our- 
 selves his pre-emineney and f imction 1 Certainly they 
 will be less slow to believe, as we want them to be- 
 lieve, that the intelligible law of things has in itself 
 something desirable and precious, and that all place, 
 function, and bustle are hollow goods without it, if 
 they see that we ourselves can content ourselves with 
 this law, and find in it our satisfaction, without 
 making it an instrument to give us for ourselves 
 place, function, and bustle. 
 
 And although Mr. Sidgwick says that social use- 
 fulness really means "losing oneself in a mass of 
 disagreeable, hard, mechanical details," and though 
 all the believers in action are fond of asserting the 
 same thing, yet, as to lose ourselves is not what we 
 want, but to find ourselves through finding the intel- 
 ligible law of things, this assertion too we shall not 
 blindly accept, but shall sift and try it a little first. 
 And if we see that because the believers in action, 
 forgetting Goethe's maxim, " to act is easy, to think 
 is hard," imagine there is some wonderful virtue in 
 losing oneself in a mass of mechanical details, there- 
 fore they excuse themselves from much thought about 
 the clear ideas which ought to govern these details, 
 then we shall give our chief care and pains to seeking 
 out those ideas and to setting them forth ; being per 
 
CONCLUSION. 203 
 
 Euaded that if we have the ideas firm and clear, the 
 mechanical details for their execution will come a great 
 deal more simply and easily than we now suppose. 
 
 At this exciting juncture, then, while so many of 
 the lovers of new ideas, somewhat weary, as we too 
 are, of the stock performances of our Liberal friends 
 upon the political stage, are disposed to rush valiantly 
 upon this public stage themselves, we cannot at all 
 think that for a wise lover of new ideas this stage is 
 the right one. Plenty of people there will be without 
 us, — country gentlemen in search of a club, dema- 
 gogues in search of a tub, lawyers in search of a 
 place, industrialists in search of gentility, — who wiU 
 come from the east and from the west, and will sit 
 down at that Thyestean banquet of clap-trap which 
 English public life for these many years past has been. 
 And, so long as those old organisations, of which we 
 have seen the insufficiency, — those expressions of our 
 ordinary self. Barbarian or Philistine, — have force 
 anywhere, they will have force in Parliament There, 
 the man whom the Barbarians send, cannot but be 
 impelled to please the Barbarians' ordinary self, and 
 their natural taste for the bathos: and the man whom 
 the Philistines send, cannot but be impelled to please 
 those of the Philistines. Parliamentary Conservatism 
 wiQ and must long mean this, that the Barbarians 
 should keep their heritage ; ' and Parliamentary Liber- 
 alism, that the Barbarians should pass away, as they 
 wUl pass away, and that into their heritage the Phil- 
 istines should enter. This seems, indeed, to be the 
 true and authentic promise of which our Liberal 
 
204 CULTUEB AND ANAECHY. 
 
 friends and Mr. Bright believe themselves the heira, 
 and the goal of that great man's labours. Presently, 
 perhaps, Mr. Odger and Mr. Bradlaugh will be there 
 with their mission to oust both Barbarians and Philis- 
 tines, and to get the heritage for the Populace. 
 
 We, on the other hand, are for giving the heritage 
 neither to the Barbarians nor to the Philistines, nor 
 yet to the Populace ; but we are for the transforma- 
 tion of each and all of these according to the law of 
 perfection. Through the length and breadth of our 
 nation a sense, — ^vague and obscure as yet, — of weari- 
 ness with the old organisations, of desire for this 
 transformation, works and grows. In the House of 
 Commons the old organisations must inevitably be 
 most enduring and strongest, the transformation must 
 inevitably be longest in showing itself ; and it may 
 truly be averred, therefore, that at the present juncture 
 the centre of movement is not in the House of Com- 
 mons. It is in the fermenting mind of the nation ; 
 and his is for the next twenty years the real influence 
 who can address himself to this. 
 
 Pericles was perhaps the most perfect public speaker 
 who ever lived, for he was the man who most per- 
 fectly combined thought and wisdom with feeling and 
 eloquence. Yet Plato brings in Alcibiades declaring, 
 that men went away from the oratory of Pericles, 
 sajdng it was very fine, it was very good, and after- 
 wards thinking no more about it; but they went 
 away from hearing Socrates talk, he says, with the 
 point of what he had said sticking fast in their minds, 
 and they could not get rid of it. Socrates has drunk 
 
CONCLUSION. 205 
 
 his hemlock and is dead ; but in his own breast does 
 not every man carry about with him a possible 
 Socrates, in that power of a disinterested play of 
 consciousness upon his stock notions and habits, of 
 which this wise and admirable man gave all through 
 his lifetime the great example, and which was the 
 secret of his incomparable influence? And he who 
 leads men to call forth and exercise in themselves this 
 power, and who busily calls it forth and exercises it 
 in himself, is at the present moment, perhaps, as 
 Socrates was in his time, more in concert with the 
 vital working of men's minds, and more effectually 
 significant, than any House of Commons' orator, or 
 practical operator in politics. 
 
 Every one is now boasting of what he has done to 
 educate men's minds and to give things the course 
 they are taking. Mr. Disraeli educates, Mr. Bright 
 educates, Mr. Beales educates. We, indeed, pretend 
 to educate no one, for we are still engaged in trying 
 to clear and educate ourselves. But we are sure that 
 the endeavour to reach, through culture, the firm in- 
 telligible law of things, we are sure that the detaching 
 ourselves from our stock notions and habits, that a 
 more free play of consciousness, an increased desire 
 for sweetness and light, and all the bent which we 
 caU HeUenising, is the master impulse even now of 
 the life of our nation and of humanity, — somewhat 
 obscurely perhaps for this actual moment, but deci- 
 sively and certainly for the immediate future; and 
 that those who work for this are the sovereign edu- 
 cators. 
 
206 CULTUEE AND ANARCHY. 
 
 Docile echoes of the eternal voice, pliant organs oi 
 the infinite will, such workers are going along with 
 the essential movement of the world ; and this is their 
 strength, and their happy and divine fortune. For if 
 the believers in action, who are so impatient with us 
 and call us effeminate, had had the same good fortune, 
 they would, no douht, have surpassed us in this sphere 
 of vital influence by all the superiority of their genius 
 and energy over ours. But now we go the way the 
 human race is going, while they abolish the Irish 
 Church by the power of the Nonconformists' antipathy 
 to establishments, or they enable a man to marry his 
 deceased wife's sister. 
 
FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND 
 
Tfianibus date lilia. pUniSt 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 FAQE 
 
 Dbdicatoet Lettbk . . 211 
 
 LETTER I. 
 I introduce Arminius and ' ' Geist " to the British Public 221 
 
 LETTER IL 
 Arminius appears as his own Interpreter . . . 229 
 
 LETTER IIL 
 
 I expostulate with Arminius on his revolutionary sen- 
 timents ...... 236 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 Arminius assails the British Press for its free and inde- 
 pendent comments on foreign politics . , . 242 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 1 communicate a valuable exposition, by Arminius, of 
 
 the system of tenant-right in Prussia . . . 249 
 
 LETTER VL 
 
 I become entrusted with the views of Arminius on 
 
 compulsory education . . . . 256 
 
 VOL. III. P 
 
210 CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 More about compulsory education . . 266 
 
 LETTER Vm. 
 
 Under a playful signature, my Mend Leo, of the Daily 
 Telegraph, advocates an important Liberal measure, 
 and, in so doing, gives news of Anninius . 274 
 
 LETTER IX. 
 
 Arminius, starting for the Continent to take part in 
 the War between France and Prussia, addresses a 
 disrespectful farewell to our people and institutions . 283 
 
 LETTER X. 
 
 Arminius, writing from the German camp before Paris, 
 comments, in his old unappreciative spirit, on the 
 attitude of our beloved country in the Black Sea 
 question ..... 292 
 
 LETTER XL 
 I take up the cudgels for our beloved country , . 301 
 
 LETTER XIL 
 " Life," as Mr. G. A. Sala says, a " Dream !" . 309 
 
 My Counteymen . ... 317 
 
 a cotteteous explanation . . . ,358 
 
DEDICATOEY LETTER. 
 
 Gettb Stkebt, Candlemas Day, 1871. 
 
 My dear Leo, — 
 Shall I ever forget the evening, at the end of last 
 November, when your feeling letter describing the 
 death of our friend first met my eyes 1 I was alone 
 in my garret ; it was just dark ; my landlady opened 
 the door and threw a paper on the table. Selfish 
 creatures that we are ! my first thought was : It is a 
 communication from the Literary Fund ! The straits 
 to which I am reduced by my long warfare with the 
 Philistines, have at last, I said to myself, become 
 known ; they have excited sympathy ; this is no 
 doubt a letter from Mr. Octavian Blewitt, enclosing 
 half-a-crown, the promise of my dinner at Christmas, 
 and the kind wishes of Lord Stanhope for my better 
 success in authorship. HastUy I hghted my lamp, 
 and saw the Pall Mall Gazette. You know, Leo, how, 
 after vainly knocking at the door of the Daily Tele- 
 graph, I carried to Northumberland Street my records 
 of the conversations of Arminius. I love to think 
 that the success of the " Workhouse Casual " had dis- 
 posed the Editor's heart to be friendly towards Pariahs; 
 
212 friendship's garland. 
 
 my communication was aflFably accepted, and from 
 that day to this the PaU MaM Gazette, whenever there 
 is any mention in it of Arminius, reaches me in Grub 
 Street gratis. I took the paper, I opened it; your 
 playful signature caught my eye. I read your letter 
 through to the end, and then . . . 
 
 Suffer me, Leo, to draw a veil over those first days 
 of grief. In the tumult of feeling plans were then 
 formed to which I have not energy to give effect. 
 I nourished the design of laying before the public 
 a complete account of Arminius von Thunder-ten- 
 Tronckh, and of the group which was gathered round 
 him. The history of his family has been written by 
 the famous Voltaire in his Oandide; but I doubt 
 whether an honest man can in conscience send the 
 British public to even the historical works of that 
 dangerous author. Yet a singular fortune brought 
 together in our set the descendants of a number of 
 the personages of Gandide. Von Thunder-ten-Tronckh 
 is, perhaps, sufficiently made known by the following 
 letters ; his curious delusion about the living repre- 
 sentative of Pangloss is also fully noticed there. But 
 not a glimpse, alas, do these records give of our poor 
 friend Martin (de Mabille), who has just been shut 
 up in Paris eating rats, the cynical descendant of that 
 great foe of Pangloss's optimism, the Martin of Gan- 
 dide. Hardly a glimpse is given of the Marquis 
 Pompeo Pococurante, little Pompey with the soft eyes 
 and dark hair, whose acquaintance you made at Turin 
 under the portigues du P6, and whom you brought to 
 London in the hope of curing, by the spectacle of the 
 
DEDICATORY LETTER. 213 
 
 Daily Telegraph, his hereditary indiiference and ennui. 
 Of our English friends, too, the public would, doubt- 
 less, be glad to hear more. Mr. Bottles himself fiUs, 
 in the following letters, by no means that space to 
 which his importance entitles him; the excellent 
 Baptist minister, for whom Mr. Bottles has so high 
 a regard, the Eev. Josiah Jupp, appears far too un- 
 frequently; your Mary Jane, Leo, is a name and 
 nothing more ; hardly more than names are my good 
 and kind patroness, the late lamented Mrs. Bottles, 
 and her sister and successor, Miss Hannah. It is a 
 small matter, perhaps ; but I should have liked, too, 
 the public to know something of my faithful landlady 
 here in Grub Street, Kitty Crone, on whom, after my 
 vain conflict with the Philistines is ended, will prob- 
 ably devolve the pious duty of closing my eyes. 
 
 I had imagined a memorial of Arminius, in which 
 all these would have found their place; but my spirits 
 broke down in the attempt to execute my design. 
 AH, therefore, that I have done is to collect the stray 
 records of Arminius which have already been pub- 
 lished, to illustrate them with notes so far as appeared 
 necessary, and to give myself the melancholy pleasure 
 of dedicating to you, Leo, a collection which owes to 
 your brilliant and facile pen some of its best orna- 
 ments. 
 
 Our friend had an odd way of showing it, but 
 certainly Arminius had a love for this country. Do 
 you remember, Leo, that conversation in the summer 
 of last year, the last we spent together in his company! 
 It was in the arbour of the garden of the " Bald-Faced 
 
214 FEIENDSHIP'S GARLAND. 
 
 Stag " at Finchley. We had all been to t^ie gallery 
 of the House of Commons to hear Mr. Vemon Har- 
 court develop a system of unsectarian religion from 
 the Life of Mr. Pickwick; but from some obstacle 
 or other the expected treat did not come off. We 
 adjourned to Finchley, and there, you remember, 
 Arminius began with a discourse on religious educa/- 
 tion. He exacted from me, as you know, the promise 
 not, as he harshly phrased it, to " make a hash of his 
 ideas " by reporting them to the public ; and the pro- 
 mises of friendship are sacred. But afterwards the 
 conversation became general It then took a wider 
 range; and I remember Mr. Frederic Harrison be- 
 ginning to harangue, with his usual fiery eloquence, 
 on the enervation of England, and on the malignancy 
 of all the brute mass of us who are not Comtists. 
 Arminius checked him. " Enervation ! " — said he ; 
 " depend upon it, yours is still the most fighting people 
 in the whole world. Malignancy ! — the best character 
 of the English people ever yet given, friendly as the 
 character is, is still this of Burke's : " The ancient and 
 inbred integrity, piety, good nature, and good humour 
 of the people of England." Your nation is sound 
 enough, if only it can be taught that being able to do 
 what one Ukes, and say what one likes, is not suffi- 
 cient for salvation. Its dangers are from a surfeit of 
 clap -trap, due to the false notion that liberty and 
 publicity are not only valuable for the use to be 
 made of them, but are goods in themselves, nay, are 
 the smmmvm honvm !" 
 
 To the same effect he wrote to me from before 
 
DEDICATOKY LETTER. 215 
 
 Paris, a week or two before his death. " You know 
 I do not join in the common dislike of your nation, 
 or in the belief in its certain decay. But no nation 
 can, without danger, go on stuffing its mind with such 
 nonsense as is talked by the newspapers which you 
 are stupid (sic) enough to quote with admiration. 
 'The Germans, forsooth,' says your precious Tele- 
 graph, 'cannot too soon begin the lesson, of which 
 England has been the special teacher, that national 
 greatness and wealth are to be prized only in so far 
 as they ensure the freedota of the individual citizen, 
 and the right of all to join in free debate. Without 
 that liberty, a German Empire will be only a gilded 
 despotism, politically weak in spite of its military 
 power, barbaric in spite of its schools and universi- 
 ties.' ' The fall,' says your Daily News, ' of the late 
 Government of France is history's reassertion of the 
 principle of political liberty.' Do you not see that, 
 if France, without political liberty, has signally lost, 
 and Germany, without political liberty, has signally 
 won, it is absurd to make the presence or absence of 
 political liberty in themselves the ground of the fall 
 or success of nations? Of the fall or success of 
 nations, certain virtues are the ground ; political, ay, 
 and social liberty, are, if you Uke, favourable to those 
 virtues, where a root of them already exists ; there- 
 fore I am a Republican; — but they by no means 
 ensure them. If you have not these virtues, and 
 imagine that your political liberty will pull you 
 through without them, you will be ruined in spite of 
 your political liberty. I admire England because she 
 
a 16 friendship's gaelakd. 
 
 has such a root in her of these virtues ; not because 
 they have given her, among other good things, poli- 
 tical liberty. Your fetish-worship of inere liberty is, 
 on the contrary, just now the gravest danger to you. 
 Your newspapers are every day solemnly saying that 
 the great lesson to be learned from the present wai 
 is so and so, — always something which it is not 
 There are many lessons to be learned from the pre- 
 sent war ; I will tell you what is for you the great 
 lesson to be learned from it : — obedience. That, instead 
 of every man airing his self-consequence, thinking it 
 bliss to talk at random about things, and to put his 
 finger in every pie, you should seriously understand 
 that there is a right way of doing things, and that the 
 bliss is, without thinking of one's self-consequence, to 
 do them in that way, or to forward their being done, 
 — this is the great lesson your British public, as you 
 call it, has to learn, and may learn, in some degree, 
 from the Germans in this war ! Englishmen were 
 once famous for the power of holding their tongues 
 and doing their business, and, therefore, I admire 
 your nation. The business now to be done in the 
 world is harder than ever, and needs far more than 
 has been ever yet needed of thought, study, and seri- 
 ousness: miscarry you must, if you let your daily 
 doses of clap-trap make you imagine that liberty and 
 publicity can be any substitute for these." 
 
 I doubt whether this is sound, Leo, and, at any 
 rate, the D. T. should have been more respectfully 
 mentioned ; but it shows that the feeling of Arminiua 
 towards this country was at bottom tender. My own 
 
DEDIOATOHY LETTER. 217 
 
 patriotism, as you know, never wavered, even while 
 I made myself, in a manner, the mouthpiece of 
 Arminius, and submitted to the predominance which 
 his intellect, I own, exercised over me. My affection 
 for him remains as strong as ever, but now that his 
 life is ended, and his predominance withdrawn, I feel 
 that a new destiny is probably opening for me. My 
 patriotic feelings will henceforth have free play ; the 
 iron hand of Arminius will no longer press them 
 down. Your counsels, Leo, the study of our news- 
 papers, the spectacle of our grandeur, will work with 
 these my natural feelings; I shall earn the public 
 approbation, I shall not be always an Ishmael. I 
 shall ally myself to some of those great Liberal move- 
 ments which, — however Arminius might choose to 
 call them petty aimless activities, bustle without any 
 Ernst der ins Gwnze geht, — seem to me admirably 
 suited to the genius of our national life, and highly 
 productive of enjoyable excitement and honourable 
 importance to their promoters. 
 
 We are now on the point of commencing what 
 Arminius, with his fatally carping spirit, called our 
 "Thyestean banquet of clap-trap;" — we are on the 
 eve of the meeting of Parliament. Mr. T. Chambers 
 will again introduce that enfranchising measure, 
 against which I have had some prejudices, but which 
 you, Leo, have so eloquently upheld, — the bill for 
 enabling a man to marry his deceased wife's sister. 
 Mr. Miall, that Israelite, indeed, will resume, on a 
 more stupendous scale than ever, his labours for 
 making all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and 
 
218 FKIENDSHIP'S GAELAHl). 
 
 clamour, and evil-speaking be put away from us, with 
 all malice ; and for our enjoyment of the pure milk 
 of Christianity. The devoted adversaries of the Con- 
 tagious Diseases Act will spread through the length 
 and breadth of the land a salutary discussion of this 
 equivocal measure and of all matters connected with 
 it ; and will thus, at the same time that they oppose 
 immorality, ebable the followers of even the very 
 straitest sects of Puritanism to see life. Some of 
 these workers will doubtless suffer me to put my hand 
 to their plough. Like the tailor to the poet Cowper, 
 to some one or other of them I may be allowed to 
 make my modest appeal : — 
 
 " Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, 
 Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale ! " 
 
 If not on the hustings or the platform, at least I may 
 do something in the closet, with the pen ! My mind 
 fuU of this new thought, as I passed down Eegent 
 Street yesterday, and saw in a shop window, in the 
 frontispiece to one of Mr. Hepworth Dixon's numerous 
 but well-merited editions, the manly and animated 
 features of the author of the immortal Qviide to Mor- 
 rrumism, I could not help exclaiming with pride : " I, 
 too, am an author ! " 
 
 And then, Leo, comes the reaction. I look up 
 and see Arminius's vacant stool; I sniff, and my 
 nostrils no longer catch the scent of his tobacco. 
 The dreams of excitement and ambition fly away ; I 
 am left solitary with the remembrance of the past, 
 and with those consolations of piety and religion, 
 
DEDICATORY LETTEE. 219 
 
 which you, Leo, have outgrown. Yet how can I do 
 you such an injustice? — ^when at this very moment 
 my chief consolation, under our heavy bereavement, 
 is in repeating to myself that glorious passage you 
 read to me the other day from one of your unpub- 
 lished articles for the D. T. :^" In the Garden of the 
 Hesperides, the inscrutable- eyed Sphinx whispers, toith 
 half-parted lips, Mysteries more thorn Eleusinian of the 
 Happy Dead I " 
 
 Believe me, my dear Leo, 
 Your faithful admirer, 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 To Adolescens Leo, Esq. 
 etc. etc. etc. 
 
 (The acquaintance of the ever-to-be-Iamented 
 Arminius was made by the present Editor on the 
 Continent in the year 1865. The early history of 
 the noble family of Von-Thunder-ten-Tronckh, to 
 which Arminius belonged, their establishment in 
 Westphalia, the sack of their castle in the middle of 
 &e last century by the Bulgarians, the fate of their 
 principal dependents (among ^whom was the famous 
 optimist philosopher. Dr. Pangloss), the adventures 
 of Arminius's grandfather and his deportation to the 
 Jesuits at Eome, are recorded in a well-known treatise 
 of Voltaire. Additional information is supplied in 
 several of the following letters. 
 
 Arminius came to England in 1866, and the corre- 
 
230 FEIENDSHIP'S GAELAND. 
 
 spondence now given in a collected form to the 
 public commenced in the summer of that year, at the 
 outbreak of the war between Prussia and Austria, 
 Many will yet remember the thrill with which they 
 originally received, through the unworthy ministry of 
 the present Editor, the communication of the great 
 doctrine of " Geist." What, then, must it have been 
 to hear that doctrine in its first newness from the 
 Ups of Arminius himself ! Yet it wiU, I hope, be 
 admitted, that even in this position of exceptional 
 privilege, the present Editor succeeded in preserving 
 his coolness, his independent judgment, and his pro- 
 per feelings as a Briton.) — Ed. 
 
LETTER 1 
 
 I INTRODUCE ARMINIUS AND "GEIST" TO THE 
 BRITISH PUBLIC. 
 
 gjjj Grttb Street, July 19, 1866. 
 
 A. Prussian acquaintance of mine, one of the party 
 of foreigners who so offensively criticised my country- 
 men to me when I was abroad last year, has been 
 over here just now, and for the last week or so he 
 has been favouring me with his remarks on all he 
 hears us say about the present crisis in Germany. 
 In confidence I will own to you that he makes him- 
 self intensely disagreeable. He has the harsh, arro- 
 gant, Prussian way of turning up his nose at things 
 and laying down the law about them ; and though, 
 as a lover of intellect, I admire him, and, as a seeker 
 of truth, I value his frankness, yet, as an Englishman, 
 and a member of what the BwHy Tdegraiph calls " the 
 Imperial race," I feel so uncomfortable under it, that 
 I want, through your Idnduess, to caU to my aid the 
 great British public, which never loses heart and has 
 always a bold front and a rough word ready for its 
 assailants. 
 
 My Prussian friend got a little mortification at the 
 
222 friendship's garland. [LErrBB 
 
 beginning of his visit, and as it is my belief this 
 mortification set him wrong from the first, I shall 
 relate what it was. I took him with me down to 
 Eeigate by the railroad, and in the carriage was one 
 of our representative industrial men (something in 
 the bottle way), a famous specimen of that great 
 middle class whose energy and self-reliance make 
 England what it is, and who give the tone to our 
 Parliament and to our policy. News had just come 
 of the first bloodshed between the Austiians and 
 Prussians now at war together in Germany. "So 
 they've begun fighting," cried my countryman ; " what 
 fools they both are ! " And he handed us Pwnch with 
 that masterly picture in it of " Denmark avenged ; " 
 that scathing satire which represents the King oi 
 Denmark sitting with his glass of grog and his cigar, 
 to gloat over the terrible retribution falling upon his 
 great enemy Prussia for her misdeeds towards him. 
 My Prussian glared at the striking moral lesson thus 
 brought to his notice, but rage and contempt made 
 him speechless. I hastened, with a few sentences 
 taken from Mr. Gladstone's recent advice to the 
 Boumanians, to pay my homage to the great prin- 
 ciples of peaceful, industrial development which 
 were invoked by my countryman. "Yes; war," I 
 said, "interrupts business, and brings intolerable 
 inconvenience with it; whereas people have only 
 to persist steadily in the manufacture of bottles, 
 railways, banks, and finance companies, and all good 
 things will come to them of their own accord." 
 Before I had finished we reached Eeigate, and I 
 
t.] I INTRODUCE AEMINITJS AND "GEIST." 223 
 
 got my still speechless Prussian quickly out of the 
 train. 
 
 But never shall I forget the flood when speech 
 came at last: "The dolt! the dunderhead! His 
 ignorance of the situation, his ignorance of Germany, 
 his ignorance of what makes nations great, his ignor- 
 ance of what makes life worth living, his ignorance 
 of everything except hottles, — those infernal bottles !" 
 I heard so much of all this that I am glad to forget 
 it without going through it again with the British 
 public. I only mention it to make the rudeness 
 of expression in what follows less unaccountable. 
 
 The day before yesterday the Daily News published 
 that powerful letter from Mr. Goldwin Smith, pro- 
 nouncing in favour of the Prussian alliance. In great 
 excitement I ran with it to my friend. " At last I 
 have got something," I cried, " which will please you ; 
 a declaration by one of our best writers, in one of our 
 best newspapers, for a united Germany under Prussian 
 headship. She and we are thereupon to combine to 
 curb France. Wherever I go, I hear people admiring 
 the letter and approving the idea." A sardonic smile, 
 such as Alexander von Humboldt used to have when 
 he contemplated the late King of Prussia's missionary 
 deaconesses, came over my Berliner's harsh counte- 
 nance. "Good God!" said he, "the miracles that 
 needle-gun is working ! It is only a year ago you 
 were threatening Prussia with France, and suggest- 
 ing to that great and sagacious ruler, as you called 
 him, the French Emperor, to take the Ehine Pro- 
 vince from us ; it is not six weeks since I saw him 
 
224 FEIENDSHIP'S GARLAND. [leitee 
 
 styled in this very newspaper, with the dignity usual 
 in Englishmen at present, 'the arbiter of Europe.' 
 He has done nothing in the meantime to injure you ; 
 he has done his best to keep well with you. How 
 charmed he will be with his friends ! But the de- 
 claration you are all so pleased at, who is it by?" 
 " Mr. Goldwin Smith," I answered. " I know him," 
 he said ; " a good writer, but a fanatic." " Oh, no, 
 no," said I ; " a man of genius and virtue." 
 
 Without answering, my Berliner took the news- 
 paper and read the letter. " He should have served 
 under Nelson," he said, as he finished it ; " he hates 
 a Frenchman as he does the devU. However, it is 
 true that a preponderance in the world such as the 
 French, thanks to your stupidity, were fast getting, 
 is enough to make any human being, let alone a 
 Frenchman, unbearable; and it is a good thing to 
 have a great Germany in the world as well as a great 
 France. It would be a good thing to have a great 
 England too, if you would let us. But pray what 
 is to unite Germany and England against France I 
 What is to be the ground of sympathy between 
 actual England and actual Germany?" "You are 
 a strong Liberal," said I, "so I can easily answer 
 you. You are drawn towards England because of 
 her liberalism, and away from the French Emperor 
 because of his despotism." "Liberalism and despot- 
 ism!" cried the Prussian; "let us get beyond these 
 forms and words. What unites and separates people 
 now is Geist." 
 
 I had not the slightest idea what he meant, and 
 
I.] I INTRODUCE AEMINIUS AND " GEIST." 223 
 
 my looks told my bewilderment. "I thought you 
 had read Mr. Grant Duif's chapters on Germany," 
 said he. "But Mr. Grant Duff knows what he 
 writes about, so I suppose you have not. Your 
 great Lord Palmerston used to call Germany 'that 
 
 country of d d professors;' and the English 
 
 pubKc, which supposes professors to be people who 
 know something, and hates anybody who knows 
 anything, has always kept its mind as clear of my 
 unfortunate country as it could. But I advise you, 
 for the sake of the events now passing, to read Mr. 
 Grant Duff's book. There you will find that in 
 Berlin we oppose ' Geist,' — mtelligence, as you or the 
 French might say,^to 'Ungeist.' The victory of 
 'Geist' over 'Ungeist' we think the great matter 
 in the world. The same idea is at the bottom of 
 democracy ; the victory of reason and intelligence 
 over blind custom and prejudice. So we German 
 Liberals who believe in 'Geist' have a sympathy 
 with France and its governors, so far as they are 
 believers in democracy. We have no sjTnpathy 
 with English liberalism, whose centre is in the 
 'Ungeist' of such people as your wiseacre in the 
 Eeigate train." 
 
 "But then you play," cried I, "the game of the 
 Tories; for listen to Mr. Goldwin Smith: 'The 
 Tories in Europe, with the sure instinct of a party, 
 recognise the great patron of reaction in the Em- 
 peror of the FrencL' You and we are to unite, 
 in order to defeat the Tories and the Emperor of 
 the FrencL" 
 
 VOL. III. Q 
 
226 friendship's GAELAND. [lettbb 
 
 The Prussian answered: "Mr. Goldwin Smith 
 blinds himself with the passions, as the Emperor 
 of the French himself would say, of another age. 
 The Tories of Europe have no real lore for the 
 Emperor of the French j they may admire and envy 
 his absolutism and strength, but they hate his funda- 
 mental principles : they can have no real sympathy 
 with the Sovereign who says boldly that he detests 
 the actual public law of Europe, and who teUs the 
 people that it is among the people he finds the true 
 genius of France, and breathes freely. Such a man 
 works for ' Geist ' in his way ; ^ not, perhaps, through 
 a DaMy Tdegra/ph, or monster meetings in Trafalgar 
 Square, or a Coles's Truss Manufactory standing 
 where it ought not, a glorious monument of indi- 
 vidualism and industrialism, to adorn the ' finest site 
 in Europe;' but by malting the common people feel 
 they are alive and have a human spirit in them. We 
 North-Germans have worked for ' Geist ' in our way, 
 by loving knowledge, by having the best- educated 
 middle and lower class in the world. You see what 
 this has just done for us. France has 'Geist' in 
 her democracy, and Prussia in her education. Where 
 have you got it 1 — got it as a force, I mean, and not 
 only in a few scattered individuals. Your common 
 people is barbarous ; in your middle class 'Ungeist' 
 is rampant; and as for your aristocracy, you know 
 
 ' The indulgence of Arminius for this execrable and unsuc- 
 cessful tyrant was unworthy of a member of our great Teutonic 
 family. Probably, after Sedan, he changed his opinion of him. 
 — E», 
 
I.] I INTRODUCE AEMINIUS AND " GEIST." 227 
 
 ' G-eist ' is forbidden by nature to flourish in an ari* 
 tocracy. 
 
 " So do not," he continued, " suffer yourself to be 
 deceived by parallels drawn from times before ' Geist.' 
 What has won this Austrian battle for Prussia is 
 'Geist;' 'Geist' has used the King, and Bismarck, 
 and the Junkers, and 'Ungeist in uniform,' all for 
 its own ends; and 'Geist' will continue so to use 
 them till it has triumphed.^ It will ally itself with 
 ' Geist ' where it finds it, because there it has a ground 
 for mutual respect and understanding; and where 
 there is no ' Geist,' it has none. 
 
 " And now," this odious man went on, " now, my 
 dear friend, I shall soon be leaving you, so one word 
 more. You have lately been writing about the Celts 
 and the Germans, and in the course of your remarks 
 on the Germans you have said, among many imperti- 
 nences, one thing which is true. You have said that 
 the strength of North Germany lay in this, that the 
 idea of science governed every department of human 
 activity there. You, my dear friend, live in a country 
 where at present the idea of clap-trap governs every 
 department of human activity. Great events are 
 happening in the world, and Mr. Goldwin Smith 
 tells you that ' England wUl be compelled to speak 
 
 ^ I am unwilling to triumpli over Aiiniiiius in his grave ; 
 but I cannot help remarking that "Ungeist in uniform," aa 
 Mr. Bottles observes to me, has just given a pretty good 
 account of the "Geist" in French democracy; and I have a 
 shrewd suspicion it will give an equally good account of the 
 ' Geist " of Arminius's educated and liberal friends in Prussia. 
 Perhaps Armlnius was taken away from the evil to come! — Ed 
 
22fi FEIENDSHIP'S GARLAND. [letter i. 
 
 at last.' It would be truly sad if, when she does 
 speak, she should talk nonsense. To prevent such 
 a disaster, I will give you this piece of advice, with 
 which I take my leave : ' Get GeisL' " 
 
 Thank God, this d d professor (to speak as 
 
 Lord Palmerston) is now gone back to his own 
 Tntelligeng-Staat. I half hope there may next come 
 a smashing defeat of the Prussians before Vienna, 
 and make my ghostly friend laugh on the wrong 
 side of his mouth. Meanwhile, I shall take care 
 that he hears whatever answers he gets. I know 
 that they will be conclusive, and 1 hope that they 
 will be speedy, and in this hope, 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Matthew Aknold. 
 
 To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
LETTEE II. 
 
 AKMINIUS APPEAKS AS HIS OWN INTERPEETER. 
 
 gjj, Beelin, July 31, 1866. 
 
 An English friend of mine, Mr. Matthew Arnold, 
 seems to have rushed into print with an idea or two 
 he picked up from me when I was in England, and to 
 have made rather a mess of it ; at least, he sends me 
 some newspapers which have answered him, and 
 writes me a helpless sort of a letter at the same time, 
 asking me how he is to parry this, and what he is 
 to say in reply to that. Now, I have a regard for 
 this Mr. Matthew Arnold, but I have taken his 
 measure, and know him to be, as a disputant, rather 
 a poor creature. Again and again I have seen him 
 anxiously ruminating over what his adversary has 
 happened to say against his ideas ; and when I tell 
 him (if the ideas were mine) that his adversary is a 
 dv/mmhopf, and that he must stand up to him firm and 
 square, he begins to smile, and tells me that what is 
 probably passing through his adversary's mind is so 
 and so.^ 
 
 ' A very ill-natured and exaggerated description of my (I 
 hope) not unamiaUe candour. — Ed. 
 
230 FKIENDSHIP'S GAELAND. [lbttbb 
 
 I see your hideous truss manufactory in Trafalgar 
 Square comes up in this controversy, and that very 
 manufactory brings to my mind a ridiculous instance 
 of my poor friend's weakness. I had been running 
 over ■with him a few of the principal violations of 
 ffisthetic laws in London, illustrating the lesson by 
 reference to the stucco palaces of my beautiful Berlin. 
 After despatching the Duke of Wellington's statue 
 and the black dome and gray pepper-boxes of your 
 National Gallery, I came to Coles's manufactory. 
 " Can anything be more atrocious ? " I asked. " It is 
 bad," answered my poor friend ; " and yet," he went 
 on, " and yet, Arminius, I have a tenderness for that 
 manufactory. That manufactory, with other things 
 in London like it, is one of my favourite arguments 
 for the immortality of the souL" " What folly have 
 you got in your head now ? " said I. " Remember," 
 said he, " what is told us of the statue of the Olym- 
 pian Zeus by Phidias. It was life enough to have 
 seen it ; felicity had then reached its consummation ; 
 the spirit could grasp no more, and the man might 
 end. And what therefore, I ask, must not be in 
 store for the British ratepayer, who in his life has 
 only seen the Duke of Wellington's statue and Coles's 
 truss manufactory ? His felicity must surely be yet 
 to come. Somewhere, beyond the grave "... and 
 for a good twenty minutes my simple friend went on 
 with stuflf like this, which I wiU not weary yon with 
 any more of. 
 
 I, Sir, as a true Prussian, have a passion for what 
 is imsenschaftUch (I do not say " scientific," because 
 
II.] AEMINIUS HIS OWN INTEKPKETEK. 231 
 
 then you English will think I mean I have an interest 
 in the sea-bear, or in the blue lights and smells of a 
 chemical lecture). I am, I say, vnssenschaftUch ; I 
 love to proceed with the stringency of a philosopher, 
 and Mr. Matthew Arnold with his shillyshallying spoils 
 the ideas I confide to him. Therefore I write to you 
 myself, to tell you (since I like your nation for the 
 sake of the great men it has formerly produced, and 
 of its brave -hearted, industrious people) where the 
 pinch of the matter for you really lies. 
 
 It lies here — there is in you " kdn Ernst, der i/ns 
 Gcmze gehi." You peck at the mere outside of pro- 
 blems ; you have not got your mind at work upon 
 them ; you fancy they will solve themselves without 
 mind, if only you keep making bottles, and letting 
 every one do what is right in his own eyes, and con- 
 gratulating yourselves at the top of your voices on 
 your own success. " Individualism and industrialism 
 wiU in time replace Coles by a worthier edifice," says 
 one of your prophets. Not without an "Ernst der 
 ins Gauze geht," I answer. Not without " Geist " and 
 faith in " Geist ; " and this is just what your indi- 
 vidualism and industriahsm has not got. "A self- 
 administering community is surely an ideal." — That 
 depends entirely on what the self -administering 
 community is like. If it has " Geist," and faith in 
 "Geist," yes; if it has not, no. Then another of 
 your prophets asks : " Why should ' Geist ' care about 
 democracy ? Democracy is government by the masses, 
 by the light of their own vulgar tastes." — Your 
 democracy perhaps, but this is just what makes 
 
232 lEIENDSHIP'S GAELANB. [lbttee 
 
 your weakness ; you have no demos, no people, but 
 " masses with vulgar tastes." The top part of them 
 are in training to be Philistines like your middle 
 class ; the lower part is a rabble. Your democracy 
 has not yet reached even the idea of country ; the 
 friends of your northern workmen tell us they read 
 American newspapers, and care more for America 
 than for England. No wonder ; they have never been 
 quickened by an " JEmst d&r ins Ga/nze geht," the only 
 baptism that makes masses into a people ; they have 
 never been in contact with " Geist," only with clap- 
 trap. To abate feudalism by providing that in one 
 insignificant case out of one million land shall not 
 follow the feudal law of descent ; to abolish English 
 church-rates because the English Dissenters are strong, 
 and to spare the Irish Church Establishment because 
 the Irish Catholics are weak -^ to give a man leave to 
 marry his deceased wife's sister ; to give a man who 
 lives in a particular kind of house a vote for members 
 of Parliament — that is the pabulum by which the 
 leaders of your people seek to develop "Geist" in 
 it, and to awaken an " Ernst der ins Gwnze geU." If 
 this is not spiritual enough, as a final resource there 
 is rioting in the parks, and a despotism of your penny 
 newspapers tempered by the tears of your executive, 
 to hasten the growth of English democracy in dignity 
 and intelligence. 
 
 ^ No doubt this remark of Arminius had some share in pro- 
 ducing that great measure which has since abolished the Irish 
 Church by the power of the English Dissenters' enmity to 
 Church establishments. — Ed. 
 
II.] ARMINIUS HIS OWN INTERPRETER. 233 
 
 The French are not solid enough for my taste; 
 but, Gott in JSimmel I that people has had a fire bap- 
 tism, and the democracy which is bom of a fire 
 baptism like theirs, "Geist " cannot help caring about 
 They were unripe for the task they in '89 set them- 
 selves to do; and yet, by the strength of " Geist '' 
 and their faith in " Geist," this " mere viper brood of 
 canting egotists " did so much that they left their trace 
 in haK the beneficial reforms through Europe ; and if 
 you ask how, at Naples, a convent became a school, 
 or in Ticino an intolerable oligarchy ceased to govern, 
 or in Prussia Stein was able to carry his land-reforms, 
 you get one answer : the, French / Till modem society 
 is finally formed, French democracy will still be a 
 power in Europe, and it will manage to have efiective 
 leaders at the Tuileries, and not only in Cayenne. It 
 wUl live, though the classes above it may rot ; because 
 it has faith in " Geist," and does not think that people 
 can do without " Geist " by dint of holding monster 
 meetings, and having their Star^ and Telegra/ph every 
 morning, and paying no church-rates, and marrying 
 their deceased wife's sister. 
 
 We Prussians, Sir, have, as a people, no great love 
 for the French, because we were blown into the air 
 by the explosion of their " Geist '' some sixty years 
 ago, and much quarrelling and ill-blood followed. 
 
 ■• The Star, like Arminius himself, has passed from amongst 
 us ; but may we not say that its work was done when it had 
 once laid the basis of that admirable and fruitful alliance be- 
 tween Mialism and Millism, which the course of our politics is 
 now every day consolidating ? — Ed. 
 
234 FRIENDSHIP'S GAELAND. [lbttisb 
 
 But we saw then what a power the " Geist " in their 
 democracy gave them ; and we set to work to make 
 ourselves strong, not by a sort of wild fire-baptism of 
 the mass, but in our steady German way, by culture, 
 by forming our faculties of all kinds, by every man 
 doing the very best he could with himself, by trusting, 
 with an " Ernst der ims Game geM," to mind and not 
 to clap -trap. Your " earnest Liberal " in England 
 thinks culture all moonshine ; he is for the spiritual 
 development of your democracy by rioting in the 
 parks, aboUshing church-rates, and marrying a de- 
 ceased wife's sister ; and for leaving your narrow and 
 vulgar middle class (of which I saw an incomparable 
 specimen in a Eeigate train when I was over in 
 England) just as it is. On the other hand, Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold writes me word that a club has 
 just been formed among you to do honour to the 
 memory of that great man, Richard Cobden; that 
 this club has taken for its motto, " Peace, Eetrench- 
 ment, and Eeform ; " and that these words, by a 
 special command from Mr. Cobden's ghost, are to 
 bear the following interpretation : — " Peace to our 
 nonsense, retrenchment of our profligate expenditure 
 of clap-trap, and reform of ourselves." Whether this 
 is true, or merely a stroke of my poor friend's so-called 
 playfulness (Heaven save the mark !), I do not feel 
 quite sure ; I hope for your sakes it is true, as this is 
 the very thing you want, and nothing else can save 
 you from certain decline. 
 
 Do not be astonished at the aristocratic prefix to 
 
II.] ABMINIXTS HIS OWN INTEEPRETEK. 235 
 
 my name ; I come of a family which has for three 
 generations rubhed shoulders with philosophy. 
 Your humble servant, 
 
 Von Thunder-ten-Tkonceh. 
 
 To the Editor of the Paix Mall Gazette. 
 
LETTER IIL 
 
 I EXPOSTULATE WITH AKMINIUS ON HIS 
 EEVOLUTIONAEY SENTIMENTS. 
 
 « Grub Street, August 6, 1866. 
 
 I THOUGHT it was Very odd I got no answer from 
 Arminius von Thunder-ten-Tronckh (he was chris- 
 tened Hermann, but I call him Arminius, because 
 it is more in the grand style), when I so particularly 
 begged him to write soon, and save what rags he 
 could of his tissue of nonsense about " G-eist," after 
 my countrymen had riddled it, as I knew they were 
 sure to do. I supposed he had taken service, like the 
 rest of the German Liberals, under Bismarck, and 
 was too busy pillaging the poor Frankfort people to 
 think of intellectual matters; but I now see he has 
 been writing direct to you, and wants to leave me 
 out in the cold altogether. I do not in the least care 
 for his coarse Prussian sneers, but I must say it is 
 rather good that he should not be above sponging on 
 me week after week in Grub Street, swilUng beer 
 (none of your Bavarian wash, but sound English Bass) 
 at my expense, filling my garret (for I don't smoke 
 myself) with the smell of his execrable tobacco, 
 
LETTBE III.] I EXPOSTULATE WITH AEMINIUS. 237 
 
 getting the daily benefit of my Star and Telegraph (I 
 take the Star for wisdom and charity, and the Tele- 
 graph for taste and style), and keeping me up yawn- 
 ing till two o'clock every morning to listen to his 
 rubbishy transcendentalism, and yet be too fine a 
 gentleman to make me the depositary of his ideas for 
 transmission to the English public. But Arminiua 
 has the ridiculous pride of his grandfather, who, 
 though the family estate had all gone to the dogs, 
 and he was ruined and turned priest, chose to set his 
 stiff German face against Candide's marriage with his 
 sister. He got shipped off to the Jesuits at Rome, as 
 every one knows ; but what is not so well known is,'' 
 that when the French Eevolution came, this precious 
 priest, like Talleyrand, married, and my Arminius ia 
 his grandson. Arminius came over here to make 
 acquaintance with Mr. Lowe, who he has found out 
 is in some odd way descended from the philosopher 
 Pangloss,* a great friend of the Von Thunder-ten- 
 Tronckh family ; but ever since the sack of their 
 chateau by the Bulgarians, the Von Thunder-ten- 
 Tronckhs have not had a sixpence in the world ex- 
 cept what they could get by their " Geist," and what 
 Arminius gets by his is such beggar's allowance that 
 
 ' It was necessarily unknown to Voltaire, who wrote the 
 history of the Von T. family.— Ed. 
 
 2 It is my firm belief that this relationship, which had 
 become a fixed idea with Arminius, never really existed. The 
 optimism of Mr. Lowe's estimate of the British middle class 
 and its House of Commons, in his celebrated speech on Reform, 
 had, in my opinion, struck Arminius's fancy, and made him 
 imagine a kinship in the flesh where there was in truth only a 
 kinship in the spirit. — Ed. 
 
238 FEIENDSHIP'S GAKLAND. [lbttke 
 
 he is hardly presentable ; well enough for Grub 
 Street, but, as I told him, not at all the sort of com- 
 pany Mr. Lowe keeps. 
 
 I don't think Arminius has gained much by being 
 his own expounder, for more vague declamatory trash 
 than his letter I never read. The truth is, he cannot 
 rise to an Englishman's conception of liberty, and 
 understand how liberty, like virtue, is its own re- 
 ward. "We go for self-government," I am always 
 saying to him. " AH right," he says, "if it is govern- 
 ment by your better self." "Fiddlesticks about our 
 better self ! " answer L " Who is to be the judge 1 
 No, the self every man chooses." " And what is the 
 self the mass of mankind wiQ choose," cries he, 
 " when they are not told there is a better and a worse 
 self, and shown what the better is like 1 " " They 
 will choose the worse, very likely," say I, "but that 
 is just liberty." " And what is to bring good out of 
 such liberty as that?" he asks. "The glorious and 
 sanative qualities of our matchless Constitution," I 
 reply ; and that is always a stopper for hiio. 
 
 But what I grieve most to observe in Arminius's 
 letter, and what wiU lead to my breaking with him 
 in the long run, in spite of my love for intellect, is 
 the bad revolutionary leaven which I see works 
 stronger and stronger in him, and which he no doubt 
 got from the worthless French company his grand- 
 father kept.^ I noticed an instance of it while he 
 
 * This partially explains, no doubt, though it cannot alto- 
 gether excuse, the weak indulgence always cropping out in 
 Arminius for France and its immoral people. — Ed. 
 
Iii.l I EXPOSTULATE WITH AEMINIUS. 239 
 
 was over here, and I have had another instance, 
 besides his letter to you, since he went away. The 
 instance while he was over here was this. I had 
 taken him down to Wimbledon to see the shooting ; 
 and there, walking up and down before the grand 
 tent, was Lord Elcho. Everybody knows Lord 
 Elcho's appearance, and how admirably he looks the 
 part of our governing classes ; to my mind, indeed, 
 the mere cock of his lordship's hat is one of the 
 finest and most aristocratic things we have. So of 
 course I pointed Iiord Elcho out to Arminius. Ar- 
 minius eyed him with a Jacobinical sort of a smile, 
 and then: "Cedar of Lebanon which God has not 
 yet broken ! " sneered he. I was pleased at Arminius 
 knowing his St. Augustine, for the Prussians are in 
 general thought to be much tainted with irreUgion j 
 but I felt at the time, and I feel stUl, that this was 
 not by any means the proper way of speaking of a 
 dashing nobleman like Lord Elcho. 
 
 The other instance is worse still. Besides writing 
 Arminius long letters, I keep him regularly supplied 
 with the Star, sending him my own copy after I have 
 read it through twice. I particularly begged him to 
 study the number for last Wednesday week, in which 
 there was the most beautiful account of " An Aristo- 
 cratic Eeformer.'' The other papers had not got it. 
 It related how the Honourable Charles Clifford, a 
 gentleman of strikingly handsome appearance, ad- 
 dressed the crowd in Hyde Park from the foot-board 
 of a hansom. He told them he cared nothing for 
 the Walpoles or Pakingtons, who were for putting 
 
240 friendship's GAELANI*. [lbtteb 
 
 down the voice of the people, for, said he, he was 
 higher in social position than they. He was the son 
 of a peer, his son-in-law was a peer, and all his family 
 belonged to the aristocratic classes. This announce- 
 ment was received with enthusiastic applause by the 
 street-Hampdens present. "May I ask you, right 
 honourable sir,'' cried one of them, " why, as you are 
 such a big man, you do not open the Park gates to 
 us poor people ? " Mr. C. said he wished he had the 
 keys of the Park in his pocket. But he delivered 
 himself of the great principle that it is the duty of 
 the aristocratic classes to protect and promote the 
 interests of the working men, and then he drove oflf in 
 his hansom amidst redoubled applause. 
 
 Now nothing. Sir, gives me such pride and 
 pleasure as traits of this kind, which show that we 
 have, as Lord Macaiilay finely says, the most popular 
 aristocracy and the most aristocratic people in the 
 world. I thought it would do Arminius good to 
 study the incident, and I wrote him word to that 
 effect. Would you believe it. Sir? Mr. "Geist" 
 cannot condescend to write me a letter, but he sends 
 me back my Star with a vile sketch, or rather carica- 
 ture, of this touching incident; and opposite Mr. 
 C.'s gentlemanly figure he has written "Esel," and 
 opposite the crowd "Lumpenpack," which a friend 
 who knows German better than I do tells me are 
 words of disrespect, and even contempt. This is a 
 spirit which I hate and abhor, and I tell Arminius 
 plainly through your columns (since he chooses to 
 adopt this way of corresponding) that unless he can 
 
HI.] I EXPOSTULATE WITH AEMINIUS. 241 
 
 break himself of it all is ended between him and me, 
 and when next he comes to England he will find the 
 garret-door in Grub Street bolted against him. 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 VOL. III. E 
 
LETTER IV. 
 
 ARMINIUS ASSAILS THE BRITISH PRESS FOR ITS FREE 
 AND INDEPENDENT COMMENTS ON FOREIGN POLITICS. 
 
 a.„ Beklin, August 11, 1866. 
 
 For Heaven's sake try and prevail upon your country- 
 men, -who are so very anxious for peace for themselves, 
 not to go on biting first the French Emperor's tail 
 and then ours, merely for the fun of the thing 
 apparently, and to have the pleasure of at least seeing 
 a fight between other people, if they cannot have 
 one of their own. You know that Michelet, 
 the French historian, all through his history, 
 familiarly talks of your people as ce dogue; "upon 
 this, ce dogue mordit such a one ; " " upon that ce 
 dogue dichira such another." According to him, 
 you must always be rrwrdre-ing or dichirer-mg some 
 one, at home or abroad, such is your instinct of 
 savageness ; and you have, — undoubtedly you have, — 
 a strong share of pugnacity. When I was over in. 
 England the other day, my poor friend Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold insisted, with his usual blind adoration ol 
 everything English, on taking me down to admire 
 one of your great public schools; precious institutions, 
 
IV.] AEMINIUS ASSAILS THE BRITISH PRESS. 243 
 
 where, as I tell him, for £250 sterling a year your 
 boys leam gentlemanly deportment and cricket 
 Well, down we went, and in the playing-fields (which 
 with you are the school) : " I declare," says Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold, "if there isn't the son of that 
 man you quarrelled with in the Eeigate train ! And 
 there, close by him, is a son of one of our greatest 
 famiUes, a Plantagenet ! It is only in England, 
 Arminius, that this beautiful salutary intermixture of 
 classes takes place. Look at the bottle-merchant's son 
 and the Plantagenet being brought up side by side; 
 none of your absurd separations and seventy-two 
 quarterings here. Very hkely young Bottles will 
 end by being a lord himself." I was going to point 
 out to Mr. Matthew Arnold that what a middle class 
 wants is ideas, and ideas an aristocracy has nothing 
 to do with; so that that vulgar dog. Bottles the 
 father, in sending his son to leam only cricket 
 and a gentlemanly deportment, like the aristocracy, 
 had done quite the wrong thing with him. But 
 just at this moment our attention was attracted by 
 what was parsing between the boys themselves. 
 First, a boy goes up to Bottles, and says : " Bottles, 
 Plantagenet says he could lick you with one hand ; 
 you are as big as he is, — you wouldn't take a licking 
 from him, would you 1" " No ! " answered poor 
 Bottles, rather hesitatingly. Upon this another boy 
 rushes to Plantagenet. "Plantagenet,'' cries he, 
 " that brute Bottles says he wouldn't take a licking 
 from you." " Does he, the beast ! " thunders Planta- 
 genet, and, flying at Bottles, hits him full on the 
 
■244 FEIENDSIIIP'S GAELAOT). [lettek 
 
 nose; and as Bottles's blood streamed out, and I 
 turned away in disgust, I heard the exulting cries of 
 your young " dogues " making the aiTangements for 
 a systematic encounter. 
 
 Now really, Sir, since I have been back in Germany 
 your newspapers are perpetually bringing to my mind 
 Michelet's " dogue " and what I saw in your playing- 
 fields. First you go to the French Emperor, and 
 say : " Ha, tyrant, we hope humble-pie agrees with 
 you ! We hope your tail between your legs is not 
 productive of much inconvenience. Just as the 
 intellectual Emperor was overmatched by an Italian 
 statesman, he now finds himself outdone by a 
 German statesman ; a most agreeable thing for an 
 intellectual Emperor — ha ! ha ! The intellectual 
 Emperor distinctly intimated there must be no dis- 
 turbing the European equilibrium, else he should 
 interpose. Now the map has been altered enor- 
 mously to the profit of Prussia, so what is the 
 intellectual Emperor to do ? Acknowledge himself 
 outwitted by Count Bismarck, just as he was out- 
 witted by Count Cavour ? — ^ha, ha ! Humble-pie ! 
 Humble-pie ! " — With the greatest alacrity the mal- 
 contents in France, the old Constitutional party, take 
 up your parable : " France is eating humble-pie ! " 
 they scream out ; " the tyrant is making France 
 eat humble-pie ! France is humiliated ! France is 
 sufibcating ! " France is not difficult to stir up, 
 and the French Emperor has already had to ask 
 for the frontier of 1814. If you go on at this 
 rate I expect he will have to ask for the Mark of 
 
IV.] AEMINI0S ASSAUiS THE BKITISH PRESS. 245 
 
 Brandenburg next week Then you will come to 
 Bismarck and say: "Bismarck, the tyrant is stretching 
 his greedy fist over German soil. Will you let him 
 have it ? Think of the prodigious strength you have 
 just shown, of the glory you have just won. Think 
 of French insolence, think of 1813, think of German 
 honour, think of sauer-kraut, think of the moral 
 support of England. Not an inch of German soil 
 for the French tyrant ! " And so, while you your- 
 selves, — the new man in you, that is, — teach the 
 nations, as Lord Stanley says, how to live, by 
 peacefully developing your bottle-man in the Keigate 
 train, your half -naked starvelings selling matches 
 in St. James's Park, your truss manufactories in 
 Trafalgar Square, and your Daily Telegraph saying in 
 spite of all powers human and divine what it likes, 
 you at the same time want to throw a bone to the 
 old " dogue '' in you, in the shape of a very pretty 
 quarrel of your getting up between other people. 
 
 Do, Sir, let other people also have a chance of 
 teaching the nations how to live, and emulating your 
 bottle-man and your Daily Telegraph. For my part, 
 I have the greatest aversion, and so have all the 
 clearest -headed Germans of my acquaintance, to a 
 quarrel with France. We, as genuine Liberals, know 
 that French democracy is our natural ally. You 
 will observe it is the Constitutionalists in France 
 who are crying out so loudly for more territory to 
 make their strength keep pace with ours. And then 
 think of our poor delicate constitutionalism at home, 
 and of the cruelty of leaving it' with its work to dc 
 
24e FRIENDSHIP'S GAELAND. [lbttek 
 
 in the face of a war with France, and Bismarck 
 made stronger than ever by such a war ! I know our 
 German constitutionalism pretty welL It comes up 
 to the throne, "With fullest heart- devotion we 
 approach Prussia's King, reverently beseeching him to 
 turn away his unconstitutional ministers.'' Prussia's 
 gracious King gives a grunt, and administers a sound 
 kick to his petitioner's behind, who then departs, 
 singing in fervent tones : " Hoch for Bang and 
 fatherland ! " 
 
 No, Sir ; peace, the growth of a republican spirit 
 all through Europe, and a mutual support between 
 all those who share this spirit, are what I wish for. 
 The French are vain ; they have been spoilt ; we 
 have been going very fast ; and you and the Orlean- 
 ists keep telling them they are humiliated if they do 
 not get something. No doubt people have a right 
 to go to war for the balance of power if they believe 
 in it ; you have gone to war for it often enough when 
 it suited your turn. So the Emperor of the French, 
 as you will not let him have a chance of being wise 
 and of seeing that here is a new spiritual force he 
 had not reckoned on, which yet he may perfectly 
 make friends of and live happily with, thinks he 
 must do something for the balance of power, must ask 
 for some rectification or other of frontier. I only hope 
 he will ask for something moderate, and that we shall 
 be moderate when he asks for it. Pray, Sir, pray do 
 not you play the "dogue" and make moderation 
 harder both for the Emperor and for us. 
 
 I assure you a war with France would be a curse 
 
nrj ARMINIUS ASSAILS THE BRITISH PKESS. 247 
 
 to US which even the blessing of your moral sup- 
 port would hardly compensate. And supposing (for 
 certainly you do hate the French pretty strongly) in 
 a year or two you determined to give us your active 
 support,^ and to send, with infinite crying out, an 
 expedition of fifteen thousand men to the coast of 
 Gothland or some such place, I am afraid. Sir, with 
 the vast armaments and rapid operations of modem 
 warfare, even this active support of yours would not 
 do us any great good. 
 
 Your humble servant. 
 
 Von Thunder-ten-Tronckh. 
 
 To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 P.S. — By the way, I read poor Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold's letter to you the other day. You see just 
 what he is; the discursiveness, the incapacity for 
 arguing, the artlessness, the not very delicate allusions 
 to my private circumstances and his own. It is 
 impossible to enter into any serious discussion with 
 him. But on one point of fact I will set him right. 
 I saw Mr. Lowe and found him very affable ; even 
 
 ' This is puerile. War between France and Prussia has since 
 happened. We have not been able to give our undivided 
 moral support to either combatant ; of our active support, 
 therefore, there could be no question. But it may be fearlessly 
 asserted, that the well-balanced alternations of our moral sup- 
 port, the wise and steady advice given by our newspapers, and, 
 in fact, our attitude generally in regard to this war, have raised 
 Great Britain to a height even more conspicuous than she has 
 ever yet occupied, in the esteem and admiration of foreign 
 countries. — Ed. 
 
248 friendship's OAKLAND. [letter iv 
 
 more like his ancestor Pangloss than I should have 
 thought possible. " The best of all possible worlds " 
 was always on his lips ; " a system of such tried and 
 tested efficiency ; " " what can we want more 1 " " the 
 grumbler fails to suggest even one grievance." I 
 told him of that bottle barbarian in the Eeigate train, 
 and he said that on men of this kind rested " the 
 mighty fabric of English prosperity." I could not 
 help saying that in my opinion no country could long 
 stand being ruled by the spirit (or rather matter) of 
 men like that- that a discontent with the present 
 state of things was growing up, and that to-morrow 
 even, or next day, we might see a chajige. Upon 
 this, Mr. Lowe threw himself into a theatrical atti- 
 tude, and with the most enthusiastic vehemence 
 exclaimed : — 
 
 " To-morrow ? 
 
 Oh, spare it, spare it I 
 
 It ought not so to die." ' 
 
 In a man like poor Mr. Matthew Arnold, this infatua^ 
 tion about everything English is conceivable enough, 
 but in a man of Mr. Lowe's parts I own I cannot 
 quite make it out, notwithstanding his descent from 
 Pangloss. Von T. 
 
 1 As the sentiments here attributed to Mr. Lowe, together 
 with this very remarkable and splendid passage of poetry with 
 which he concludes, are all taken from Mr. Lowe's printed 
 speeches, and may have been read by Arminlus in the Tinies, 
 I stiU retain my doubts whether his interview with Mr. Lowe 
 had ever any existence except in his own fertile imaginatioa 
 —Ed. 
 
LETTER V. 
 
 r COMMUNICATE A VALUABLE EXPOSITION, BY AR- 
 MINIUS, OF THE SYSTEM OF TENANT-RIGHT IN 
 PRUSSIA, 
 
 glK Geub Stkbbt, November 8, 1866. 
 
 My love for intellect has made me seek a reconcilia- 
 tion with Arminius, in spite of all I had to complain 
 of in him, and any one who had looked in here to- 
 night might have seen him puffing away at his pipe, 
 and laying down the law just in his old style. He 
 was so immensely tickled at the Daily Telegraph call- 
 ing his poor friend, — artless and obscure garretteer 
 that he knows him to be, — " a high priest of the kid- 
 glove persuasion,"'' that he has been in a good humour 
 ever since, and to-night he has been giving me some 
 information which I do think, notwithstanding the 
 horrid animus he betrays in delivering it, is highly 
 curious and interesting, and therefore I hasten to 
 communicate it to you. 
 
 It is about the Prussian land reforms, and this ia 
 
 ' Besides all I had to endure from Arminius himself, oni 
 leading newspapers persisted in holding me answerable for everj 
 paradox uttered by him. — Ed. 
 
250 FRIENDSHIP'S OAKLAND. [lettbb 
 
 how I got it out of him. " You made me look rather 
 a fool, Arminius," I began, "by what you primed me 
 with in Germany last year about Stein settling your 
 land question." " I dare say you looked a fool," says 
 my Prussian boor, "but what did I tell youl" 
 "Why," says I, "you told me Stein had settled a 
 land question like the Irish land question, and I said 
 so in the Cornhill Magazine, and now the matter has 
 come up again by Mr. Bright talking at Dublin of what 
 Stein did, and it turns out he settled nothing like 
 the Irish land question at all, but only a sort of tithe- 
 commutation afifair." "Who says that?" asked Ar- 
 minius. "A very able writer in the Times," I replied. 
 
 I don't know that I have ever described Arminius's 
 personal appearance. He has the true square Teu- 
 tonic head, a blond and disorderly mass of tow-like 
 hair, a podgy and sanguine countenance, shaven 
 cheeks, and a whity- brown moustache. He wears 
 a rough pilot-coat, and generally smokes away with 
 his hands in the pockets of it, and his light blue 
 eyes fixed on his interlocutor's face. When he 
 takes his hands out of his pockets, his pipe out of 
 his mouth, and his eyes off his friend's face, it is a 
 sign that he is deeply moved. He did all this on 
 the present occasion, and passing his short thick 
 fingers two or three times through his blond hair : 
 "That astonishing paper !" muttered he. 
 
 Then he began as solemn as if he was in a pulpit. 
 " My dear friend," says he, " of the British species of 
 the great genus Philistine there are three main varie- 
 ties. There is the religious Philistine, the well-to-do 
 
T.] AltMINIUS ON PRUSSIAN TENANT-RIGHT. 251 
 
 Philistine, and the rowdy Philistine. The religious 
 
 Philistine is represented by " " Stop, Anninius," 
 
 said I, "you will oblige me by letting religion alone !" 
 " As you please," answered he ; " well, then, the rowdy 
 Philistine is represented by the Daily Telegraph, and 
 the well-to-do Philistine by the Times. The well-to- 
 do Philistine looks to get his own view of the British 
 world, — that it is the best of all possible worlds as it 
 is, because he has prospered in it, — preached back to 
 him ore rokmdo in the columns of the Times. There 
 must be no uncertain sound in his oracle, no faltering, 
 nothing to excite misgivings or doubts ; like his own 
 bosom, everything his oracle utters must be positive, 
 pleasant, and comfortable. So of course about the 
 great first article of his creed, the sacro-sanctity of 
 property, there must in the Times be no trifling. But 
 what amuses me is that his oracle must not even 
 admit, if these matters come to be talked of, that 
 Stein trifled with it in another country. The ark is 
 80 sacred, the example so abominable, and the devotee 
 so sensitive. And therefore Stein's reforms become 
 in the Times, for the reassurance of the well-to-do 
 British Philistine, a sort of tithe-commutation affair, 
 — nothing in the world more ! nothing in the world 
 more !" 
 
 " Don't go on in that absurd way, Arminius," said 
 I J " I don't tell you it was a tithe-commutation, but 
 a commutation like the tithe-commutation. It was 
 simply, the Times says, the conversion of serf-tenures 
 into produce-rents. I hope that gives you a perfectly 
 clear notion of what the whole thing was, for it doesn't 
 
252 friendship's GAELAND. [lbttbb 
 
 me. But I make out from the Times that the leibeir 
 
 gener " "Eubbish about the leibeigener," cries 
 
 Arminius, in a rage, " and all this jargon to keep 
 your stupid mind in a mist ; do you want to know 
 what really happened ? " " Yes, I do," said I, quietly, 
 my love for knowledge making me take no notice of 
 his impertinence. " Yes, I do, and particularly this : 
 In the first place, was the land, before Stein's reforms, 
 the landlord's or the tenant's?" "The landlord's," 
 says Arminius. " You mean," said I, " that the land- 
 lord could and did really eject his tenant from it if 
 he chose." " Yes, I do," says Arminius. " Well, 
 then, what did Stein do t" asked I. " He did this," 
 Arminius answered. "In these estates, where the 
 landlord had his property -right on the one hand, 
 and the tenant his tenant-right on the other, he 
 made a compromise. In the first place he assigned, 
 say, two-fifths of the estate to the landlord in absolute 
 property, without any further claim of tenant-right 
 upon it thenceforth for ever. But the remaining 
 three-fifths he compelled the landlord to sell to the 
 tenant at eighteen years' purchase, so that this part 
 should become the tenant's absolute property thence- 
 forth for ever. You wiU ask, where could the tenant 
 find money to buy t Stein opened rent-banks in all 
 the provincial chief towns, to lend the tenant the 
 purchase -money required, for which the State thus 
 became his creditor, not the landlord. He had to 
 repay this loan in a certain number of years. To 
 free his land from this State mortgage on it and 
 make it his own clear property, he had every induce- 
 
v.] AEMINIUS ON PEUSSIAN TENANT-EIGHT. 253 
 
 ment to work hard, and he did work hard; and 
 this was the grand source of the frugality, industry, 
 and thrivingness of the Prussian peasant. It waa 
 the grand source, too, of his attachment to the State." 
 "It was rotten bad political economy, though," ex- 
 claimed I. "Now I see what the Times meant by 
 saying in its leading article yesterday that Ireland is 
 incomparably better governed than the United States, 
 France, Germany, or Italy, because the excellence of 
 government consists in keeping obstacles out of the 
 way of individual energy, and you throw obstacles 
 in the way of your great proprietors' energy, and we 
 throw none in the way of ours. Talk of a commuta- 
 tion like the tithe -commutation, indeed ! Why it 
 was downright spoliation; it was just what Lord 
 Clanricarde says some people are driving at in Ireland, 
 a system of confiscation." "Well," says Arminius, 
 calmly, "that is exactly what the Prussian junkers 
 called it. They did not call it commutation, they 
 called it confiscation. They will tell you to this day 
 that Stein confiscated their estates. But you will be 
 shocked to hear that the Prussian Government had, 
 even before Stein's time, this sad habit of playing 
 tricks with political economy. To prevent the 
 absorption of small proprietors by a great landed 
 aristocracy, the Prussian Government made a rule 
 that a bauer-gut, — a peasant property, — could not, 
 even if the owner sold it, be bought up by the 
 Lord Clanricarde of the neighbourhood ; it must 
 remain a bauer-gvi still. I believe you in England 
 are for improving small proprietors off the face oi 
 
254 friendship's GAELAND. [uErrEB 
 
 the earth, but I assure you in Prussia we are very 
 proud of ours, and think them the strength of the 
 nation. Of late years the Hohenzollems have taken 
 up with the junkers, but for a long time their policy 
 was to uphold the baiier class against the jimJcer class ; 
 and, if you want to know the secret of the hold which 
 the house of Hohenzollem has upon the heait of the 
 Prussian people, it is not in Frederick the Great's 
 victories that you wiU find it, it is in this policy of 
 their domestic government.'' " My dear Arminius," 
 said I, "you make me perfectly sick Government 
 here, government there ! We English are for self- 
 government. What business has any Mr. Stein to 
 settle that this or that estate is too large for Lord 
 Olanricarde's virtues to expand ini Let each class 
 settle its own affairs, and don't let us have Govern- 
 ments and Hohenzollems pretending to be more 
 enlightened than other people, and cutting and carv- 
 ing for what they call the general interest, and God 
 knows what nonsense of that kind. If the landed 
 class with us has got the magistracy and settled 
 estates and game laws, has not the middle class got 
 the vestries, and business, and civil and religious 
 liberty "i I remember when the late Sir George Corn- 
 wall Lewis wanted to get some statistics about the 
 religious denominations, your friend Bottles, who is 
 now a millionaire and a Churchman, was then a 
 Particular Baptist. 'No,' says Bottles, 'here I put 
 down my foot. No Government on earth shall ask 
 me whether I am a Particular Baptist or a Muggle- 
 tonian.' And Bottles beat the Government, becausa 
 
y.} ARMINIUS ON PRUSSIAN TENANT-RIGHT. 255 
 
 of the thorough understanding the upper and middle 
 classes in this country have with one another that 
 each is to go its own way, and Government is not 
 to he thrusting its nose into the concerns of either. 
 There is a cordial alliance hetween them oix this 
 basis." "Yes, yes, I know," Arminius sneeringly 
 answered ; " Herod and Pontius Pilate have shaken 
 hands." 
 
 " But I wlU show you, Arminius," I pursued, " on 
 plain grounds of political economy " "Not to- 
 night," interrupted Arminius, yawning ; " I am going 
 home tohed." Andoflfhe went, descending the garret 
 stairs three at a time, and leaving me to burn the mid- 
 night oil in order to send you. Sir, what is really, I 
 flatter myself, an interesting, and I may even say a 
 valuable communication. 
 
 Your humble servant, 
 
 Matthew Abnou). 
 
 To the Editor of the Paxl Mall Gazette. 
 
LETTER VL 
 
 I BKCOME INTRUSTED WITH THE VIEWS OF AEMINIUS 
 ON COMPULSORY EDUCATION. 
 
 gjj> Grub Street, April 20, 1867. 
 
 It is a long while since you have heard anything of 
 Arminius and me, though I do hope yoii have some- 
 times given a thought to us both. The truth is we 
 have been in the country. You may imagine how 
 horribly disagreeable Arminius made himself during 
 the famous snow in London at the beginning of this 
 year. About the state of the streets he was bad 
 enough, but about the poor frozen-out working men 
 who went singing without let or hindrance before our 
 houses, he quite made my blood creep. " The dirge 
 of a society qui s'en va," he used to call their pathetic 
 songs. It is true I had always an answer for him — 
 " Thank God, we are not Hausmannised yet ! " and 
 if that was not enough, and he wanted the philosophy 
 of the thing, why I turned to a sort of constitutional 
 common-place book, or true Englishman's vade mecum, 
 which I have been these many years forming for my 
 own use by potting extracts from the Times, and which 
 I hope one day to give to the world, and I read him 
 
n.] AEMINIUS ON COMPULSOEY EBUCATION. 257 
 
 this golden aphorism : " Administrative, military, and 
 clerical tyranny are unknown in this country, because 
 the educated class discharges all the corresponding 
 functions through committees of its own body." 
 "Well, then," Arminius would answer, "show me 
 your administrative committee for ridding us of these 
 cursed frozen-out impostors." "My dear Arminius," 
 was my quiet reply, " voluntary organisations are not 
 to be dealt with in this peremptory manner. The 
 administrative committee you ask for will develop 
 itself in good time ; its future members are probably 
 now at nurse. In England we like our improvements 
 to grow, not to be manufactured." 
 
 However the mental strain, day after day, of this 
 line of high constitutional argument was so wearing, 
 that I gladly acceded to a proposal made by Arminius 
 in one of his fits of grumbling to go with him for a 
 httle while into the country. So into the country we 
 went, and there, under his able guidance, I have been 
 assiduously pursuing the study of German philosophy. 
 As a rule, I attend to nothing else just now; but 
 when we were taking one of our walks abroad the 
 other morning, an incident happened which led us to 
 discuss the subject of compulsory education, and, as 
 this subject is beginning to awaken deep interest in 
 the public mind, I think you may be glad to have an 
 account of the incident, and of the valuable remarks 
 on compulsory education which were drawn from 
 Arminius by it. 
 
 We were going out the other morning on one of 
 our walks, as I said, when we saw a crowd before the 
 
 VOL. III. s 
 
258 friendship's garland. [lettek 
 
 inn of the country town where we have been stayingi 
 It was the magistrates' day for sitting, and I was glad 
 of an opportimity to show off our local self-govern- 
 ment to a bureaucracy-ridden Prussian like Arminius. 
 So I stopped in the crowd, and there we saw an old 
 fellow in a smock-frock, with a white head, a low 
 forehead, a red nose, and a foxy expression of coun- 
 tenance, being taken along to the justice-room. Seeing 
 among the bystanders a contributor to the Daily 
 Tdegraph,^ whom I formerly knew well enough, — for 
 he had the drawing-room floor underneath me in 
 Grub Street, but the magnificent circulation of that 
 journal has long since carried him, like the course of 
 empire, westward, — I asked him if he could teU me 
 what the prisoner was charged with. I foimd it was 
 a hardened old poacher, called Diggs, — Zephaniab 
 Diggs, — and that he was had up for snaring a hare, 
 — probably his ten-thousandtk The worst of the 
 story, to my mind, was that the old rogue had a heap 
 of young children by a second wife whom he had 
 married late in life, and that not one of these children 
 would he send to school, but persisted in letting them 
 all run wild, and grow up in utter barbarism. 
 
 I hastened to tell Arminius that it was a poaching 
 case ; and I added that it was not always, perhaps, in 
 poaching cases that our local self-government appeared 
 to the best advantage. "In the present case, how- 
 ever, there is," said I, "no danger; for a representa- 
 
 1 Do you recognise yourself, Leo? Is it presumptuous in 
 me, upon giving this volume to the world, to bid you too, my 
 friend, say with the poet : Non omnis moriar t — Ed. 
 
VI.] AKMINIUS ON COMPULSORY EDUCATION. 259 
 
 tive of the Daily Telegraph is do-wn here, to be on the 
 look-out for justices' justice, and to prevent oppres- 
 sion. " Immediately afterwards I was sorry I had said 
 this, for there are unfortunately several things which 
 operate on Arminius like scarlet on a bull, making 
 him vicious the moment he comes across them ; and 
 the Daily Telegraph is one of these things. He declares 
 it foments our worst faults ; and he is fond of apply- 
 ing to it Dryden's dictum on Elkanah Settle, that its 
 style is boisterous and its prose incorrigibly lewd. 
 Though I do certainly think its prose a little fuU- 
 bodied, yet I cannot bear to hear Arminius apply such 
 a term to it as "incorrigibly lewd;'' and I always 
 remonstrate with him. "No, Arminius," I always 
 say, "I hope not incorrigibly; I should be sorry to 
 think that of a publication which is forming the 
 imagination and taste of millions of Englishmen." 
 "Pleasant news," was Arminius's answer, the last 
 time I urged this to him, " pleasant news ; the next 
 batch of you, then, will be even more charming than 
 the present ! " 
 
 I trouble you with all this. Sir, to account for the 
 acerbity of tone in some of Arminius's subsequent 
 conversation ; an acerbity he too often manifests, and 
 which tends, as I teU him, to detract from the influ- 
 ence which his talents and acquirements would other- 
 wise give him. On the present occasion he took no 
 direct notice of my mention of the Daily Telegraph, 
 but seemed quite taken up with scrutinising old 
 Diggs. " Such a peasant as that wretched old crea- 
 ture," he said at last, " is peculiar, my dear friend, to 
 
260 FEIENDSHIP'S GAELAND. [letteb 
 
 yova country. Only look at that countenance ! 
 Centuries of feudalism have effaced in it every gleam 
 of humane life." . . . "Centuries of fiddlesticks!" 
 interrupted I (for I assxu-e you. Sir, I can stand up to 
 Arminius well enough on a proper occasion). " My 
 dear Arminius, how can you allow yourself to talk 
 such rubbish 1 Gleam of humane life, indeed ! do 
 but look at the twinkle in the old rogue's eye. He 
 has plenty of life and wits about him, has old Digga, 
 I can assure you ; you just try and come round him 
 about a pot of beer ! " " The mere cunning of an 
 animal ! " retorted Arminius. " For my part," pur- 
 sued I, " it is his children I think most about ; I am 
 told not one of them has ever seen the inside of a 
 school. Do you know, Arminius, I begin to think, 
 and many people in this country begin to think, that 
 the time has almost come for taking a leaf out of your 
 Prussian book, and appljdng, in the education of 
 children of this class, what the great Kant calls the 
 categorical imperative. The gap between them and 
 our educated and intelligent classes is reaUy too 
 frightful" "Your educated and intelligent classes ! " 
 sneered Arminius, in his very most offensive manner ; 
 " where are they t I should like to see them." 
 
 I was not going to stand and hear our aristocracy 
 and middle class set down in this way ; so, treating 
 Arminius's ebullition of spite as beneath my notice, 
 I pushed my way through the crowd to the inn- 
 door. I asked the policeman there what magistrates 
 were on the bench to-day. " Viscount Lumpington," 
 says the man, " Eeverend Esau Hittall, and Bottles, 
 
VI. J AEMINITJS ON OOMPULSOEY EDtTCATIOlT. 261 
 
 Esquire." "Good heavens!" I exclaimed, turning 
 round to Arminius, who had followed me, and forget- 
 ting, in my excitement, my just cause of offence with 
 him, — " Good heavens, Arminius, if Bottles hasn't got 
 himself made a county magistrate ! SicUur ad astro." 
 "Yes," says Arminius, with a smile, "one of your 
 educated and intelligent classes, I suppose. And I 
 dare say the other two are to match. Your magis- 
 trates are a sort of judges, I know ; just the people 
 who are drawn from the educated and intelligent 
 classes. Now, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for 
 the gander; if you put a pressure on one class to 
 make it train itself properly, you must put a pressure 
 on others to the same end. That is what we do in 
 Prussia, if you are going to take a leaf out of our 
 book. I want to hear what steps you take to put this 
 pressure on people above old Diggs there, and then I 
 will talk to you about putting it on old Diggs. Take 
 his judges who are going to try him to-day; how 
 about them 1 What training have you made them 
 give themselves, and what are their qualifications V 
 
 I luckily happen to know Lord Lumpington and 
 HittaU pretty well, having been at college with them 
 in former days, when I little thought the Philistines 
 would have brought my gray hairs to a garret in 
 Grub Street; and I have made the acquaintance of 
 Mr. Bottles since, and know all about him. So I 
 was able to satisfy Arminius's curiosity, and I had 
 great pleasure in making him remark, as I did so, 
 the rich diversity of our English life, the healthy 
 natural play of our free institutions, and the happy 
 
262 friendship's GAELAND. [letteb 
 
 blending of classes and characters which this pro- 
 motes. " The three magistrates in that inn," said I, 
 " are not three Government functionaries all cut out 
 of one block ; they embody our whole national life ; — 
 the land, religion, commerce, are all represented by 
 them. Lord Lumpington is a peer of old family and 
 great estate ; Esau Hittall is a clergyman ; Mr. Bottles 
 is one of our self-made middle -class men. Their 
 politics are not all of one colour, and that colour the 
 Government's. Lumpington is a Constitutional Whig ; 
 Hittall is a benighted old Tory. As for Mr. Bottles, 
 he is a Eadical of the purest water ; quite one of the 
 Manchester school He was one of the earliest free- 
 traders ; he has always gone as straight as an arrow 
 about Eeform; he is an ardent voluntary in every 
 possible line, opposed the Ten Hours' Bill, was one 
 of the leaders of the Dissenting opposition out of 
 Parliament which smashed up the education clauses 
 of Sir James Graham's Factory Act ; and he paid the 
 whole expenses of a most important church-rate con- 
 test out of his own pocket. And, finally, he looks 
 forward to marrying his deceased wife's sister. Table, 
 as my friend Mr. Grant Duff says, the whole Liberal 
 creed, and in not a single point of it wiU you find 
 Bottles tripping ! " 
 
 "That is all very well as to their politics," said 
 Arminius, "but I want to hear about their education 
 and intelligence." " There, too, I can satisfy you," I 
 answered. " Lumpington was at Eton. Hittall was 
 on the foundation at Charterhouse, placed there by 
 his uncle, a distinguished prelate, who was one oi 
 
Ti.] AEMINIUS ON COMPULSOKT EDTJCATION. 263 
 
 the trustees. You know we English have no notion 
 of your bureaucratic tyranny of treating the appoint- 
 ments to these great foundations as public patronage, 
 and vesting them in a responsible minister ; we vest 
 them in independent magnates, who relieve the State 
 of all work and responsibility, and never take a 
 shilling of salary for their trouble. Hittall was the 
 last pi six nephews nominated to the Charterhouse 
 by his uncle, this good prelate, who had thoroughly 
 learnt the divine lesson that charity begins at home." 
 " But I want to know what his nephew learnt," in- 
 terrupted Arminius, "and what Lord Lumpington 
 learnt at Eton." "They followed," said I, "the 
 grand, old, fortifying, classical curriculum." "Did 
 they know anything when they left t" asked Arminius. 
 "I have seen some longs and shorts of Hittall's," 
 said I, " about the Calydonian Boar, which were not 
 bad. But you surely don't need me to tell you, 
 Arminius, that it is rather in training and bracing 
 the mind for future acqiusition, — a course of mental 
 gymnastics we call it, — than in teaching any set 
 thing, that the classical curriculum is so valuable." 
 " Were the minds of Lord Lumpington and Mr. Hittall 
 much braced by their mental gjonnastics '! " inquired 
 Arminius. "Well," I answered, "during their three 
 years at Oxford they were so much occupied with 
 Bullingdon and hunting that there was no great 
 opportunity to judge. But for my part I have 
 always thought that their both getting their degree 
 at last with flying colours, after three weeks of a 
 famous coach for fast men, four nights without going 
 
264 FKIENDSHIP'S GAELAND. [lettej 
 
 to bed, and an incredible consumption of wet towels, 
 strong cigars, and brandy-and-water, was one of the 
 most astonishing feats of mental gymnastics I ever 
 heard of." 
 
 " That will do for the land and the Church," said 
 Arminius. "And now let us hear about commerce." 
 " You mean how was Bottles educated 1 " answered I. 
 " Here we get into another line altogether, but a very 
 good line in its way, too. Mr. Bottles was brought 
 up at the Lycurgus House Academy, Peckham. 
 You are not to suppose from the name of Lycurgus 
 that any Latin and Greek was taught in the establish- 
 ment ; the name only indicates the moral discipline, 
 and the strenuous earnest character, imparted there. 
 As to the instruction, the thoughtful educator who 
 was principal of the Lycurgus House Academy, — 
 Archimedes Silverpump, Ph.D., you must have heard 
 of him in Germany 1 — had modem views. ' We must 
 be men of our age,' he used to say. ' Useful know- 
 ledge, living languages, and the forming of the mind 
 through observation and experiment, these are the 
 fundamental articles of my educational creed.' Or, 
 as I have heard his pupil Bottles put it in his expan- 
 sive moments after dinner (Bottles used to ask me to 
 dinner till that affair of yours with him in the Eei- 
 gate train) : ' Original man, Silverpump ! fine mind ! 
 fine system ! None of your antiquated rubbish — all 
 practical work — latest discoveries in science — mind 
 constantly kept excited — ^lots of interesting experi- 
 ments — ^lights of all colours — fizz ! fizz ! bang ! bang I 
 That's what I call forming a man.' " 
 
W.] AEMimUS ON COMPULSOET EDUCATION. 265 
 
 "And pray," cried Arminius, impatiently, "what 
 sort of man do you suppose this infernal quack really 
 formed in your precious friend Mr. Bottles ?" "Well," 
 I replied, " I hardly know how to answer that ques- 
 tion. Bottles has certainly made an immense fortime; 
 but as to Silverpump's efifect on his mind, whether it 
 was from any fault in the Lycurgus House system, 
 whether it was that with a sturdy self-reliance 
 thoroughly English, Bottles, ever since he quitted 
 SUverpump, left his mind wholly to itself, his daily 
 newspaper, and the Particular Baptist minister under 
 whom he sate, or from whatever cause it was, certainly 
 
 his mind, qud mind " "You need not go on," 
 
 interrupted Arminius, with a magnificent wave of 
 his hand, " I know what that man's mind, qitd mind, 
 is, well enough." 
 
 But, Sir, the midnight oil is beginning to run very 
 low ; I hope, therefore, you will permit me to post- 
 pone the rest of Arminius's discourse till to-morrow. 
 And meanwhile, Sir, I am, with all respect, 
 Your humble servant, 
 
 Matthew Arnolb 
 
 To the Editor of the Pall Mall GAZEira 
 
LETTEE VII. 
 
 MORE ABOUT COMPULSORY EDUCATION. 
 a „ Gettb Stkeet, April 21, 1867. 
 
 I TAKE up the thread of the interesting and important 
 discussion on compulsory education between Axminius 
 and me where I left it last night. 
 
 " But," continued Arminius, " you were talking of 
 compulsory education, and your common people's 
 want of it. Now, my dear friend, I want you to 
 understand what this principle of compulsory educa- 
 tion really means. It means that to ensure, as far 
 as you can, every man's being fit for his business in 
 life, you put education as a bar, or condition, between 
 him and what he aims at. The principle is just aa 
 good for one class as another, and it is only by 
 appl3dng it impartially that you save its application 
 from being insolent and invidious. Our Prussian 
 peasant stands our compelling him to instruct himself 
 before he may go about his calling, because he sees 
 we believe in instruction, and compel our own 
 class, too, in a way to make it really feel the pressure, 
 to instruct itself before it may go about its calling. 
 Now, you propose to make old Diggs's boys instruct 
 
VII.] MOKE ABOUT COMPULSOEY EDUCATION. 267 
 
 themselves before they may go bird-scaring or sheep 
 tending. I want to know what you do to make those 
 three worthies in that justice-room instruct them- 
 selves before they may go acting as magistrates and 
 judges." " Do 1 " said I ; " why, just look what they 
 have done all of themselves. Lumpington and Hittall 
 have had a public-school and university education j 
 Bottles has had Dr. Silverpump's, and the practical 
 training of business. What on earth would you have 
 us make them do more 1" " Qualify themselves for 
 administrative or judicial functions, if they exercise 
 them,'' said Arminius. " That is what really answers, 
 in their case, to the compulsion you propose to apply 
 to Diggs's boys. Sending Lord Lumpington and Mr, 
 Hittall to school is nothing ; the natural course of 
 things takes them there. Don't suppose that, by 
 doing this, you are applying the principle of com- 
 pulsory education fairly, and as you apply it to Diggs's 
 boys. You are not interposing, for the rich, education 
 as a bar or condition between them and that which 
 they aim at. But interpose it, as we do, between the 
 rich and things they aim at, and I wiU say something 
 to you. I should like to know what has made Lord 
 Lumpington a magistrate?" "Made Lord Lump- 
 ington a magistrate?" said I; "why, the Lumping- 
 ton estate, to be sure." "And the Eeverend Esau 
 Hittall ? " continued Arminius. " Why, the Lump- 
 ington living, of course,'' said L "And that man 
 Bottles?" he went on. "His English energy and 
 self-reliance," I answered very stiffly, for Arminius'a 
 incessant carping began to put me in a huff; "those 
 
268 friendship's garland, [lettbe 
 
 same incomparable and truly British qualities which 
 have just triumphed over every obstacle and given 
 us the Atlantic telegraph ! — and let me tell you, Von 
 T., in my opinion it will be a long time before the 
 ' Geist ' of any pedant of a Prussian professor gives 
 us anything half so valuable as that." " Pshaw ! " 
 replied Arminius, contemptuously ; " that great rope, 
 with a Philistine at each end of it talking inutilities ! 
 "But in my country,'' he went on, "we should 
 have begun to put a pressure on these future magis- 
 trates at school. Before we allowed Lord Lmnpington 
 and Mr. Hittall to go to the university at all, we 
 should have examined them, and we should not have 
 trusted the keepers of that absurd cockpit you took 
 me down to see, to examine them as they chose, and 
 send them jogging comfortably off to the university 
 on their lame longs and shorts. No; there would 
 have been some Mr. Grote as School Board Commis- 
 sary, pitching into them questions about history, and 
 some Mr. Lowe, as Crown Patronage Commissary, 
 pitching into them questions about English literature; 
 and these young men would have been kept from the 
 university, as Diggs's boys are kept from their bird- 
 scaring, till they instructed themselves. Then, if, 
 after three years of their university, they wanted to 
 be magistrates, another pressure ! — a great Civil 
 Service examination before a board of experts, an 
 examination in English law, Eoman law, English 
 
 history, history of jurisprudence " "A most 
 
 abominable liberty to take with Lumpington and 
 Hittall ! " exclaimed L " Then your compulsory 
 
711.] MORE ABOUT COMPULSOKY EDUCATION. 269 
 
 education is a most abominable liberty to take with 
 Diggs's boys," retorted Axminius. "But, good gracious ! 
 my dear Arminius," expostulated I, "do you really 
 mean to maintain tbat a man can't put old Diggs 
 in quod for snaring a hare without all this elaborate 
 apparatus of Eoman law and history of jurispru- 
 dence 1 " " And do you really mean to maintain," 
 returned Arminius, "that a man can't go bird- 
 scaring or sheep-tending without all this elaborate 
 apparatus of a compulsory school?" "Oh, but," I 
 answered, " to live at all, even at the lowest stage of 
 human life, a man needs instruction." " Well," 
 returned Arminius, " and to administer at all, even 
 at the lowest stage of public administration, a man 
 needs instruction." "We have never found it so," 
 said I. 
 
 Arminius shrugged his shoulders and was silent. 
 By this time the proceedings in the justice-room were 
 drawn to an end, the majesty of the law had been 
 vindicated against old Diggs, and the magistrates 
 were coming out. I never saw a finer spectacle than 
 my friend Arminius presented, as he stood by to gaze 
 on the august trio as they passed. His pilot-coat 
 was tightly buttoned round his stout form, his light 
 blue eye shone, his sanguine cheeks were ruddier than 
 ever with the cold morning and the excitement of 
 discourse, his fell of tow was blown about by the 
 March wind, and volumes of tobacco -smoke issued 
 from his lips. So in old days stood, I imagine, hia 
 great namesake by the banks of the Lippe, glaring on 
 the Eoman legions before their destruction. 
 
270 FRIENDSHIP'a GAELAND. [lettej 
 
 Lord Lumpington was the first who came out. 
 His lordship good-naturedly recognised me with a 
 nod, and then eyeing Arminius with surprise and 
 curiosity : " Whom on earth have you got there ? " 
 he whispered. "A very distinguished young Prussian 
 scmwnt," replied I; and then dropping my voice, in 
 my most impressive undertones I added : " And a 
 young man of very good family, besides, my lord." 
 Lord Lumpington looked at Arminius again ; smiled, 
 shook his head, and then, turning away, and half 
 aloud : " Can't compliment you on your friend," 
 says he. 
 
 As for that centaur HittaU, who thinks on nothing 
 on earth but field-sports, and in the performance of 
 his sacred duties never warms up except when he 
 lights on some passage about hunting or fowling, he 
 always, whenever he meets me, remembers that in 
 my unregenerate days, before Arminius inoculated 
 me with a passion for intellect, I was rather fond of 
 shooting, and not quite such a successful shot as 
 Hittall himself. So, the moment he catches sight of 
 me : " How d'ye do, old fellow ? " he blurts out ; 
 " well, been shooting any straighter this year than 
 you used to, eh ? " 
 
 I turned from him in pity, and then I noticed 
 Arminius, who had unluckily heard Lord Lumping- 
 ton's unfavourable comment on him, absolutely purple 
 with rage and blowing hke a turkey-cock. " Never 
 mind, Arminius," said I soothingly; "run after 
 Lumpington, and ask him the square root of thirty- 
 six." But now it was my turn to be a little annoyed, 
 
vni.] MOEE ABOUT COMPULSORY EDUCATION. 271 
 
 for at the same instant Mr. Bottles stepped into his 
 brougham, which was waiting for him, and observing 
 Arminius, his old enemy of the Eeigate train, he 
 took no notice whatever of me who stood there, 
 with my hat in my hand, practising all the airs and 
 graces I have learnt on the Continent ; but, with that 
 want of amenity I so often have to deplore in my 
 countrymen, he pulled up the glass on our side with a 
 grunt and a jerk, and drove off like the wind, leaving 
 Arminius in a very bad temper indeed, and me, I 
 confess, a good deal shocked and mortified. 
 
 However, both Arminius and I got over it, and 
 have now returned to London, where I hope we shall 
 before long have another good talk about educational 
 matters. Whatever Arminius may say, I am still for 
 going straight, with all our heart and soul, at com- 
 pulsory education for the lower orders. Why, good 
 heavens ! Sir, with our present squeezable Ministry, 
 we are evidently drifting fast to household suffrage, 
 pure and simple ; and I observe, moreover, a Jacob- 
 inical spirit growing up in some quarters which gives 
 me more alarm than even household suffrage. My 
 elevated position in Grub Street, Sir, where I sit 
 commercing with the stars, commands a view of a 
 certain spacious and secluded back yard ; and in that 
 back yard. Sir, I tell you confidentially that I saw 
 the other day with my own eyes that powerful young 
 publicist, Mr. Frederic Harrison, in full evening cos- 
 tume, furbishing up a guillotine. These things are 
 very serious ; and I say, if the masses are to have 
 power, let them be instructed, and don't swamp with 
 
272 FRIENDSHIP'S GAKLAND. [lbtteb 
 
 ignorance and unreason the education and intelligence 
 which now bear rule amongst us. For my part, when 
 I think of Lumpington's estate, family, and connec- 
 tions, when I think of Hittall's shooting, and of the 
 energy and self-reliance of Bottles, and when I see 
 the unexampled pitch of splendour and security to 
 which these have conducted us, I am bent, I own, on 
 trying to make the new elements of our political system 
 worthy of the old ; and I say kindly, but firmly, to 
 the compound householder in the French poet's 
 beautiful words,^ slightly altered : " Be great, O 
 working class, for the middle and upper class are 
 great!" 
 
 I am. Sir, 
 
 Your humble servant, 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 (From the autumn of this year (1867) dates one of 
 the most painful memories of my life. I have men- 
 tioned in the last letter but one how in the spring I 
 was commencing the study of German philosophy 
 with Arminius. In the autumn of that year the 
 celebrated yoixng Comtist, Mr. Frederic Harrison, 
 resenting some supposed irreverence of mine towards 
 his master, permitted himself, in a squib, brilliant 
 indeed, but unjustifiably severe, to make game of my 
 inaptitude for philosophical pursuits. It was on this 
 ' " Et tSehez d'etre grand, car le peuple grandit" 
 
vn.] MOEB ABOUT OOMPULSOEY EDUCATION. 273 
 
 occasion he launched the damning sentence : " We 
 seek vainly in Mr. A. a system of philosophy with 
 principles coherent, interdependent, subordinate, and 
 derivative." The blow came at an unlucky moment 
 for me. I was studying, as I have said, German 
 philosophy with Arminius ; we were then engaged 
 on Hegel's " Phenomenology of Geist," and it was 
 my habit to develop to Arminius, at great length, 
 my views of the meaning of his great but difficult 
 countryman. One morning I had, perhaps, been a 
 httle fuller than usual over a very profound chapter. 
 Arminius was suffering from dyspepsia (brought on, 
 as I believe, by incessant smoking) ; his temper, 
 always irritable, seemed suddenly to burst from all 
 control, — he flung the Phimomenologie to the other end 
 of the room, exclaiming : " That smart young fellow 
 is quite right ! it is impossible to make a silk purse 
 out of a sow's ear ! " This led to a rupture, in which 
 I think I may fairly say that the chief blame was 
 not on my side. But two invaluable years were 
 thus lost ; Arminius abandoned me for Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison, who must certainly have many memoranda 
 of his later conversations, but has never given them, 
 as I always did mine' of his earlier ones, to the world. 
 A melancholy occasion brought Arminius and me 
 together again in 1869; the sparkling pen of my 
 friend Leo has luckily preserved the record of what 
 then passed.) — Ed. 
 
 VOL. III. 
 
LETTER VIII 
 
 UNDER A PLAYTUL SIGNATUSE, MY FRIEND LEO, OP 
 THE "DAILY TELEGRAPH," ADVOCATES AN IM- 
 PORTANT LIBERAL MEASURE, AND, IN SO DOING, 
 GIVES NEWS OF ARMINIUS. 
 
 a St. James's Place, Jwne 8, 1869. 
 
 For the sake of my health it is my custom at this 
 full-hlooded time of the year to submit myself to a 
 lowering course of medical treatment, which causes 
 me for a few days to be voted below par for Fleet 
 Street ; so I have bethought myself of utilising my 
 leisure, while universal humanity does not claim me, 
 and while my style is reduced nearer the pitch of the 
 Pail Mall Gazette, by writing to you on a subject in 
 which I am strongly interested, and on which your 
 ideas are, I am sorry to see, far from sound. I mean 
 that great subject of which a fragment will be brought 
 under discussion to-night, by the House of Commons 
 going into Committee on Mr. Chambers's admirable 
 bill for enabling a woman to marry her sister's 
 husband. 
 
 My ideas on this subject have been stiiTed into 
 lively activity by a visit I have just been making. I 
 
VIII.] LEO ADVOCATES A LIBERAL MEASUEE. 275 
 
 believe my name has been once or twice mentioned 
 in your columns in connection with the Bottles family 
 near Reigate, and with a group of friends gathered 
 round them. Poor Mrs. Bottles, I grieve to say, is 
 not long for this world. She and her family showed 
 an interest in me while I was rising to name and 
 fame, and I trust I have never forgotten it. She 
 sate, as Curran says, by my cradle, and I intend to 
 follow her hearse. Meanwhile, with our Paris corre- 
 spondent, who happens to be over here for a few days, 
 I have been down to Reigate to inquire after her. 
 The accounts were unhappily as bad as possible ; but 
 what I saw awakened a train of ideas and suggestions 
 which I am going to communicate to you. 
 
 I found a good many people assembled, of whom 
 several had come on the same errand as I. There 
 was that broken-down acquaintance of my early 
 youth, Mr. Matthew Arnold, who has had many a 
 dinner from Mrs. Bottles (for she was kind to litera- 
 ture even in its humblest manifestations), snivelling 
 and crying in a corner. There was that offensive 
 young Prussian of his, who seems to have dropped 
 him entirely, and to have taken up with a much 
 younger man than my poor old acquaintance, and a 
 much better-dressed man, with whom he is pursuing 
 researches concerning labour and capital, which are 
 hardly, as our Paris correspondent says, palpitating 
 with actuality. There was a Baptist minister who 
 had been the shepherd of the Bottles family in the 
 old days when they were Dissenters, and who has 
 never quite lost his hold upon Mrs. Bottles. There 
 
276 friendship's GAELAND. [lbttbb 
 
 was her sister Hannah, just about the same age aa 
 poor Sarah who married Bottles, and the very image 
 of her. There was Job Bottles, Bottles's brother, who 
 is on the Stock Exchange ; a man with black hair at 
 the sides of his head, a bald crown, dark eyes, and a 
 fleshy nose, and a camellia in his button-hole. Finally, 
 there was that handsome niece of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Bottles, Mary Jane. Mwry Jams I I never pronounce 
 the name without emotion ; in season and out of 
 season it keeps rising to my lips.^ But the life we 
 live in Fleet Street is devouring, and I have sacrificed 
 to it all thought of marriage. Our Paris correspond- 
 ent comforts me by saying that, even with the 
 domestic affections suppressed, existence turns out to 
 be a much more tolerable affair than humdrum people 
 fancy. 
 
 Presently the members of the family left the room, 
 and as the Baptist minister took the Noncmfwmist out 
 of his pocket and began to read it, as the Prussian 
 savant was quite absorbed with his new young man, 
 and as Mr. Matthew Arnold counts for nothing, I was 
 left to the conversation of our Paris correspondent, 
 whom we call Nick because of the diabolical salt 
 which sparkles in his deliverances. " They say," I 
 began, "that if Mr. T. Chambers's excellent bill, 
 which the Liberal party are carrying with such de- 
 cisive majorities, becomes law, the place of poor Mrs. 
 Bottles will be taken by her sister Hannah, whom 
 
 1 Leo here alludes, I imagine, to what the world has doubtless 
 noticed, — the frequent introduction of Mary Jane into his 
 ajticles for the D. T.— Ed. 
 
Vin.] LEO ADVOCATES A LIBERAL MEASURE. 277 
 
 you have just seen. Nothing could be more proper _; 
 Mrs. Bottles wishes it, Miss Hannah wishes it, this 
 reverend friend of the family, who has himself made 
 a marriage of the same kind, wishes it, everybody 
 wishes it.'' " Everybody but old Bottles himself, I 
 should think," retorted my friend : " don't envy him 
 at all ! — shouldn't so much mind if it were the younger 
 one, thougL'' 
 
 These light words of my friend, Sir, seemed to 
 touch a spring in me. Instantly I felt myself visited 
 by a shower of ideas, full of import for the Liberal 
 party and for the future, and which impel me to 
 address to you the present letter. " And why not 
 the younger one, Nick 1 " said I, gently : " why not 1 
 Either as a successor to Miss Hannah or in lieu of 
 Miss Hannah, why not 1 Let us apply John Bright's 
 crucial tests. Is she his first cousin ? Could there 
 be a more natural companion for Selina and the other 
 Bottles girls? Or, — to take the moral ground so 
 touchingly and irresistibly chosen by our great 
 popular tribune, — if legislation on this subject were 
 impeded by the party of bigotry, if they chose not to 
 wait for it, if they got married without it, and if you 
 were to meet them on the boulevard at Paris during 
 their wedding tour, should you go up to Bottles and 
 say : Mr. Bottles, you are a profligate man 1 " " Oh 
 dear, no," said Nick ; " I should never dream of it." 
 "And if you met them a year later on the same spot," I 
 continued, "with a Normandy nurse behind them carry- 
 ing a baby, should you cry out to the poor little thing : 
 Bastard ! " " Nothing of the kind," he answered. 
 
278 friendship's GAELAKU. [lbttbb 
 
 I noticed that my friend accompanied each of these 
 assurances with a slight rapid droop of one eyelid. 
 "Let us have no flippancy, Nick," I said. "You 
 mean that you hardly feel yourself in a position 
 to take high moral ground of this kind." "Well," 
 said he, " I suppose that even our great tribune, John 
 Bright himself, does not very often address people as 
 bastards and profligates, whatever he thinks of them. 
 At least, I should imagine the offender must almost 
 be a bishop or some other high-placed Anglican eccle- 
 siastic to provoke him to do so." "A fig for your fine 
 distinctions," cried I. " Secretly or openly, will any 
 one dare call Bottles, if he contracts a marriage of 
 this kind, a profligate man ? " 
 
 Poor Mr. Matthew Arnold, upon this, emerged 
 suddenly from his corner, and asked hesitatingly : 
 " But will any one dare call him a man of delicacy ? " 
 The question was so utterly unpractical that I took 
 no notice of it whatever, and should not have men- 
 tioned it if it had not led, by its extraordinary effect 
 upon our Paris correspondent, to the introduction 
 and criticism of a literary star of the first magnitude. 
 My friend Nick, who has all the sensitive tempera- 
 ment of genius, seemed inexplicably struck by this 
 word delicacy, which he kept repeating to himself. 
 " Delicacy," said he, " delicacy, — surely I have heard 
 that word before ! Yes, in other days," he went on 
 dreamily, " in my fresh, enthusiastic youth ; before I 
 knew SaJa, before I wrote for that inferral paper, 
 before I called Dixon's style lithe and sinewy " 
 
 " Collect yourself, my friend," said I, laying my 
 
Till.] LEO ADVOCATES A LIBERAL MEASURE. 279 
 
 hand on his shoulder ; " you are unmanned. But in 
 mentioning Dixon you redouble my strength ; for 
 you bring to my mind the great sexual insurrection 
 of the Anglo -Teutonic race, and the master-spirit 
 which guides it. This illustrious man who has in- 
 vented a new style " 
 
 "He has, indeed," says Mr. Arminius the Prussian, 
 turning towards us for the first time ; "he has, in- 
 deed, and its right name is middle-class Macaulayese." 
 
 Now, I detest this German lecturer and his oracles, 
 but as I am, above everything, a man of letters my- 
 self, I never refuse to listen to a remark upon style, 
 "Explain yourself," said I; "why do you call Mr. 
 Hepworth Dixon's style middle-class Macaulayese!" 
 " I call it Macaulayese," says the pedant, " because it 
 has the same internal and external characteristics as 
 Macaulay's style ; the external characteristic being a 
 hard metallic movement with nothing of the soft 
 play of life, and the internal characteristic being a 
 perpetual semblance of hitting the right nail on the 
 head without the reality. And I call it middle-class 
 Macaulayese, because it has these faults without the 
 compensation of great studies and of conversance 
 with great afiairs, by which Macaulay partly re- 
 deemed them." 
 
 I turned away in pity. "Let us leave the 
 envious," said I to Nick, "to break their teeth on 
 this magnificent file, the countlessness of whose 
 editions has something analogous to the world-wide 
 circulation of the Daily Telegraph. Let us pursue his 
 fine regenerating idea of sexual insurrection. Let 
 
280 friendship's GAELAND. . [lbtteb 
 
 US deal with this question as a whole. Why, after 
 Mr. Chambers has succeeded at his one single point 
 to - night, are we to have to begin afresh at other 
 points to-morrow? We have established, I hope, 
 that no man may presume to call Bottles profligate 
 for marrying either his sister-in-law Hannah or his 
 niece Mary Jane. But this is not enough. A com- 
 plication, Uke the complications of Greek tragedy, 
 suggests itself to my mind. You noticed Mr. Job 
 Bottles. You must have seen his gaze resting on 
 Mary Jane. But what with his cigars, his claret, his 
 camellias, and the state of the money-market, Mr. 
 Job Bottles is not a marrying man just at this 
 moment. His brother is; but his brother cannot 
 last for ever. Job, on the other hand, is full of 
 vigour and vitality. We have heard of the patience 
 of Job; how natural, if his brother marries Mary 
 Jane now, that Job, with his habits tempered, his 
 view of life calmed, and the state of the money- 
 market different, may wish, when she is a widow 
 some five years hence, to marry her himseK. And 
 we have arrangements which make this illegal ! At 
 such arrangements I hurl, with scorn and disgust, 
 the burning words of our great leader : — ^Ecclesiasti- 
 cal rubbish ! 
 
 ' I thank thee, Friend 1 for teaching me that word." 
 
 Why, I ask, is Mr. Job Bottles's liberty, his Christian 
 liberty, as my reverend friend yonder would say, to 
 be abridged in this manner ? And why is Protestant 
 Dissent to be diverted from its great task of abolish- 
 ing State Churches for the purpose of removing 
 
VIII.] LEO ADVOCATES A LIBERAL MEASUEB. 281 
 
 obstacles to the sexual insurrection of our racel 
 Why are its more devoted ministers to be driven to 
 contract, in the interests of Christian liberty, illegal 
 unions of this kind themselves, pour encourager les 
 autres? Why is the earnest liberalism and non- 
 conformity of Lancashire and Yorkshire to be agi- 
 tated on this question by hope deferred 1 Why is it 
 to be put incessantly to the inconvenience of going to 
 be married in Germany or in the United States, that 
 greater and better Britain 
 
 ' Which gives us manners, freedom, virtue, power.' 
 
 Why must ideas on this topic have to be incubated 
 for years in that nest of spicery, as the divine Shak- 
 speare says, the mind of Mr. T. Chambers, before they 
 can rule the world! For my part, my resolve is 
 formed. This great question shall henceforth be 
 seriously taken up in Fleet Street. As a sop to 
 those toothless old Cerberuses, the bishops, who 
 impotently exhibit still the passions, as Nick's French 
 friends say, of another age, we will accord the con- 
 tinuance of the prohibition which forbids a man to 
 marry his grandmother. But in other directions 
 there shall be freedom. Mr. Chambers's admirable 
 bill for enabling a woman to marry her sister's hus- 
 band will doubtless pass triumphantly through Com- 
 mittee to-night, amidst the cheers of the ladies' 
 gallery. The Liberal party must supplement that 
 bUl by two others : one enabling people to marry 
 their brothers' and sisters' children, the other enab- 
 ling a man to marry his brother's wife. 
 
 But this glorious prospect iills me with an afflatus 
 
282 friendship's garland. [lbttee VIIL 
 
 which can find its fit employment only in fleet Street, 
 and I am forced to subscrihe myself, 
 
 Yours in haste, 
 
 A Young Lion. 
 
 (After our meeting at Laburnum House, — have I 
 ever mentioned that the mansion of Mr. Bottles at 
 Eeigate is called Laburnum House 1 — intercourse was 
 renewed between Arminius and me, but alas ! not the 
 close intimacy of old days. Perhaps, had I foreseen 
 his approaching end, I shoiJd have made more strenu- 
 ous efforts to regain his confidence. But it was not 
 to be ; and the following letter will show the cruel 
 injustice with which Arminius, misled, I am sure, by 
 Mr. Frederic Harrison and the party with whom that 
 gentleman generally acts, could bring himself to speak 
 of the man who has done so much to popularise his 
 uame and ideas.) 
 
LETTEE IX. 
 
 ABMINIUS, STARTING FOR THE CONTINENT TO TAKE 
 PART IN THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND 
 PRUSSIA, ADDRESSES A DISRESPECTFUL FARE- 
 WELL TO OUR PEOPLE AND INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 Sir Cheqtjek Alley,' August 9, 1870. 
 
 I AM off to-night for the Continent to join the Prus- 
 sian army; if it had not been for an accidental 
 circumstance with which I need not trouble you,^ I 
 should have been off a fortnight ago. I have no love 
 for the preaching old drill-sergeant who is called King 
 of Prussia, or for the audacious conspirator who pulls 
 his wires ; this conspirator and his rival conspirator, 
 Louis Bonaparte, stand in my affections pretty much 
 on a par. Both play their own game, and are ob- 
 stacles to better things. I am a republican, I desire 
 a republic for every country in Europe. I believe no 
 country of Europe is so fitted to be a repubhc as 
 Germany; I beheve her difficidties are from her 
 
 ' After our rupture, Arminius removed from my immediate 
 neighbourhood in Grub Street and established himself in 
 Chequer Alley. I love to think that pilgrims will one day 
 seek out his lodging there ! — Ed. 
 
 " His debts, alas !— Ed. 
 
284 friendship's Oakland. [lettbh 
 
 Hohenisollems and Hapsburgs, and nothing else. I 
 believe she will end by getting rid of these gentry ; 
 and that till that time conies the world will never 
 know of what real greatness she is capable. But the 
 present war, though we are led by the old drill- 
 sergeant and his wire-puller, is a war of Germany 
 against France. I must go and take part in it. 
 
 Before I go, I am moved to send you a few fare- 
 well remarks on your country and its position, about 
 which you seem (and I am sure I do not wonder at 
 it) to be much concerned and embarrassed just now. 
 I have a great esteem for your nation, its genius, and 
 its past history ; and your present stage of develop- 
 ment has been a subject of constant study and 
 thought with me during the years I have lived here. 
 Formerly I have more than once communicated my 
 ideas to you, as occasion arose, through Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold. But experience has shovm me that, though 
 willing and inquisitive, he has hardly brain enough 
 for my purpose ; besides, he has of late been plunged 
 over head and ears in some dispute of Greeks of the 
 Lower Empire with your foolish and impracticable 
 Dissenters.^ 
 
 Finding him unserviceable, therefore, I address 
 you piyself; but I shall use some of the phrasea 
 with which he has familiarised you, because they 
 save circumlocution ; and as he learnt them all from 
 
 ' I make no comment on the tone and spirit of this ; but I 
 cannot forbear remarking that with the removal of Arminiua 
 and his influence the main obstacle to my reconciliation witb 
 the Dissenters is withdrawn. — Ed. 
 
IX.] AEMINiaS TAKES HIS LEAYE OF ENGLAND. 285 
 
 me in the first instance, I see no reason why I should 
 not take back my own property when I want it. 
 
 You are horrified and astounded at this war; 
 horrified and astounded at the projects for altering 
 the face of Europe which have been going on under 
 your nose without your knowledge; horrified and 
 astounded at the coolness with which foreign nations 
 seem to leave you out of their account, or to estimate 
 the chances and character of your intervention. They 
 put you aside as if you were of no consequence ; and 
 this to you, who won the last great European war, 
 and made the treaties of Vienna! The time, you 
 think, has clearly come when you must make a 
 demonstration. Your popular veteran. Lord Eussell, 
 declares amid universal applause that " it is only the 
 doubt that has long prevailed as to the course which 
 England would take, which has encouraged and fos- 
 tered all these projects of treaty, these combinations 
 and intrigues." You have but to speak plainly, and 
 all wUl be welL Your great organ, the Times, not 
 satisfied with itself conveying to other Powers in the 
 most magnificent manner (a duty, to say the truth, 
 it always fulfils) " what England believes to be due 
 from and to her," keeps exhorting your Government 
 to do the same, to speak some brave words, and to 
 speak them "with promptitude and energy.'' 
 
 I suppose your Government will do so. But for- 
 give me if I teU you that to us disrespectful foreigners 
 it makes very little difference in our estimate of you 
 and of the future whether your Government does so 
 or not. What gives the sense and significance to a 
 
286 friendship's GAELAWD. [lbtteb 
 
 Government's declarations is the power which is 
 behind the Government. And what is the power 
 which is behind the Government of England at the 
 present epoch 1 The Philistines. 
 
 Simply and solely the Philistines, my dear friend, 
 take my word for it ! No, you will say, it is the 
 nation. Pardon me, you have no nation. France is 
 fused into one nation by the military spirit, and by 
 her democracy, the great legacy of 1789, and subsist- 
 ing even amidst her present corruption. Germany is 
 fused into one nation by her idea of union and of the 
 elevation of her whole people through culture. You 
 are made up, as I have often told you through my 
 poor disciple whom you so well know, of three dis- 
 tinct and unfused bodies, — Barbarians, Philistines, 
 Populace. You call them aristocracy, middle, and 
 lower class. One of these three must be predomi- 
 nant and lead. Your lower class counts as yet for 
 little or nothing. There is among them a small body 
 of workmen with modem ideas, ideas of organisation, 
 who may be a nucleus for the future ; there are more 
 of them Philistines in a small way, Philistines in 
 embryo ; but most of them are mere populace, or, to 
 use your own kindly term, residuv/m. Such a class 
 does not lead. Formerly your aristocracy led; it 
 commanded the politics of the country; it had an 
 aristocracy's ideas, — ^limited enough, but the idea of 
 the country's grandeur and dignity was among them ; 
 — it took your middle and lower class along with it, 
 and used them in its own way, and it made the great 
 war which the battle of Waterloo crowned. But 
 
IX.] ARMINIUS TAKES HIS LEAVE OF ENGLAND. 287 
 
 countries must outgrow a feudal organisation, and 
 the political command of an aristocracy ; your country 
 has outgrown it Your aristocracy tells upon Eng- 
 land socially ; by all the power of example of a class 
 high-placed, rich, idle, self-indulgent, without mental 
 life, it teaches your Philistines how to live fast. But 
 it no longer rules ; at most it but administers ; the 
 Philistines rule. That makes the difference between 
 Lord Grenville and Lord Granville. When Lord 
 Grenville had to speak to Europe in 1793, he had 
 behind him your aristocracy, not, indeed, fused with 
 your middle and lower class, but wielding them and 
 using their force ; and all the world knew what your 
 aristocracy meant, for they knew it themselves. But 
 Lord Granville has behind him, when he speaks to 
 Europe in 1870, your Philistines or middle class ,- 
 and how should the world know, or much care, what 
 your middle class meani for they do not know it 
 themselves. 
 
 You may be mortified, but such is the truth. To 
 be consequent and powerful, men must be bottomed 
 on some vital idea or sentiment, which lends strength 
 and certainty to their action. Your aristocracy of 
 seventy years ago had the sentiment of the greatness 
 of the old aristocratical England, and that sentiment 
 gave them force to endure labours, anxiety, danger, 
 disappointment, loss, restrictions of liberty. Your 
 ruling middle class has no such foundation; hence 
 its imbecility. It would tell you it believes in indus- 
 trial development and liberty. Examine what it 
 means by these, and you find it means getting rich 
 
288 FRIENDSHIP'S GAELAJTD. [letter 
 
 and not being meddled with. And these it imagines 
 to be seK-acting powers for good, and agents of great- 
 ness ; so that if more trade is done in England than 
 an3rsrhere else, if your personal independence is with- 
 out a check, and your newspaper publicity unbounded, 
 your Philistines think they are by the nature of things 
 great, powerful, and admirable, and that their England 
 has only to speak " with promptitude and energy " in 
 order to prevail. 
 
 My dear friend, do not hold your notions in this 
 mechanical fashion, and do not be misled by that 
 magnificent Times of yours ; it is not the failing to 
 speak " with promptitude and energy " which injures 
 you, it is the having nothing wise or consistent to say. 
 Your ruling middle class have no great, seriously and 
 truly conceived end ; — therefore no greatness of soul 
 or mind; — therefore no steadfastness and power in 
 great affairs. While you are thus, in great affairs 
 you do and must fumble. You imagine that your 
 words must have weight with us because you are 
 very rich and have unbounded liberty and publicity ; 
 you wiU find yourselves mistaken, and you wiU be 
 bewildered. Then you may get involved in war, and 
 you imagine that you cannot but make war weU by 
 dint of being so very rich ; that you wiU juft add a 
 penny or two to your income-tax, change none of 
 your ways, have clap-trap everywhere, as at present, 
 unrestricted independence, legions of newspaper corre- 
 spondents, boundless publicity ; and thus, at a grand 
 high pressure of expenditure, bustle, and excitement, 
 arrive at a happy and triumphant result. But autho 
 
IX.] AEMINIUS TAKES HIS LEAVE OF ENGLAND. 289 
 
 rity and victory over people who are in earnest means 
 being in earnest oneself, and your Philistines are not 
 in earnest ; they have no idea great enough to make 
 them so. They want to be important and authorita- 
 tive ; they want to enfprce peace and curb the am- 
 bitious; they want to drive a roaring trade; they 
 want to kaow and criticise all that is being done; 
 they want no restrictions on their personal liberty, no 
 interference with their usual way of going on ; they 
 want all these incompatible things equally and at 
 once, because they have no idea deep and strong 
 enough to subordinate everything else to itself. A 
 correspondent of your own Times wrote from Berlin 
 the other day, " The complete control of this people 
 by the State is most striking.'' How would your 
 Philistines like that 1 Not at alL But it is by sacri- 
 fices of this kind that success in great affairs is achieved; 
 and when your Philistines find this out, or find that a 
 raised income-tax, torrents of clap -trap, everybody 
 saying what he likes and doing what he likes,. news- 
 paper correspondents everywhere, and a generally 
 animated state of the public mind, are not enough 
 to command success, they will be stiU more be- 
 wildered. 
 
 And this is the power which Lord Granville has 
 behind him, and which is to give the force and mean- 
 ing to his words. Poor Lord Granville ! I imagine 
 he is under no illusions. He knows the British 
 Philistine, with his likes and dislikes, his effusion 
 and confusion, his hot and cold fits, his want of 
 dignity and of the steadfastness which comes from 
 
 VOt- III u 
 
290 lEIENDSHIP'S OAKLAND. [lbtteb 
 
 dignity, his want of ideas and of the steadfastness 
 which comes from ideas ; — he has seen him at work 
 akeady. He has seen the Eussian war and the 
 Russian peace ; a war and peace your aristocracy did 
 not make and never would have made, — ^the British 
 Philistine and his newspapers have the whole merit 
 of it. In your social gatherings I know you have 
 the habit of assuring one another that in some mys- 
 terious way the Eussian war did you good in the 
 eyes of Europe. Undeceive yourselves; it did you 
 nothing but harm, and Lord G-ranviUe is far too clever 
 a man not to know it Then, in the Denmark 
 quarrel, your Philistines did not make war, indeed, 
 but they threatened it. Surely in the Denmark case 
 there was no want of brave words; no failure to 
 speak out "with promptitude and energy." And we 
 all know what came of it. Unique British Philistine ! 
 Is he most to be revered when he makes his wars or 
 when he threatens them? And at the prompting 
 of this great backer Lord Granville is now to speak ! 
 Probably he will have, as the French say, to execute 
 himself ; only do not suppose that we are under any 
 delusion as to the sort of force he has behind him. 
 
 My dear friend, I think I am perhaps writing to 
 you for the last time, and by the love I bear to the 
 England of your past literature and history, I do 
 exhort your PhiUstine middle class, which is now 
 England, to get, as I say, "Geist;" to search and 
 not rest till it sees things more as they really are, 
 and how little of a power over things as they really 
 are is its money-making, or its unrestricted independ- 
 
ti.] AEMnflTTS TAKES HIS LEAVE OF ENGLAND. 291 
 
 ence, or its newspaper publicity, or its Dissent, or 
 any of the things with which it is now most taken ; 
 and how its newspapers deceive it when they tell it 
 night and day that, being what it is, and having 
 the objects it has, it commands the envy and defer- 
 ence of the world, and is on the sure road to great- 
 ness and happiness, if indeed it be not already arrived 
 there. My dear friend, I have told you our German 
 programme, — the elevation of a whole people through 
 culture. That need not be your English programme, 
 but surely you may have some better programme 
 than this your present one, — the beatification of a 
 whole people through dap-trap. 
 
 And now, my dear friend, it is time for me to go, 
 and to what fate I go I know not ; but this I know, 
 that your country, where I have Uved so long and 
 seen so much, is on its way either to a great transfor- 
 mation or to a great disaster. 
 
 Your sincere well-wisher. 
 
 Von Thunder-ten-Tkonokh. 
 
 To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
LETTER X. 
 
 AKMmroS, WRITING FROM THE GERMAN CAMP BEFORE 
 PARIS, COMMENTS, IN HIS OLD UNAPPREGIATIVE 
 SPIRIT, ON THE ATTITUDE OF 0T3R BELOVED 
 COUNTRY IN THE BLACK SEA QUESTION. 
 
 guj Befobb Pahis, Novernher 21, 1870. 
 
 Another call "to speak with promptitude and 
 energy ! " We had aU been full of the Eussian note, 
 and here is your magnificent Tvtms to tell me what 
 the great heart of my dear English friends is thinking 
 of it. You have not forgotten, of course, that sen- 
 tence of Mr. Lowe (a descendant of Pangloss, and a 
 sort of hereditary connection of my family, though 
 he took scant notice of me when I was in England) : 
 "The destiny of England is in the great heart of 
 England." So, having a sincere regard for you, I 
 always listen when your great heart speaks, that I 
 may see what sort of a destiny it is about to create 
 for you. And I find that it is now speaking very 
 loud indeed, even louder than when I wrote to you 
 in August last, and that it is bent on telling Russia 
 "with promptitude and energy," in your own fine, 
 full-mouthed fashion, "what England beUeves to be 
 
LET. X.] ARMINIUS ON THE BLACK SEA QUESTION. 293 
 
 due from and to her." But even at such a crisis you 
 do not forget to improve the occasion, and to indulge 
 in the peculiar strain of moral reflection whence you 
 get, your oracles teU us, " that moral weight which 
 your action, if conducted with tolerable judgment, 
 is sure to command" (see, in the last Edinburgh 
 Eemew, "Germany, France, and England," p. 591). 
 It is not so much the matter of the Eussian incident 
 as its manner that pains you. "We protest," says 
 your magnificent Times, " that our sharpest feeling at 
 the moment is pain at the apparent faithlessness of 
 the Czar, and at the rudeness with which he has 
 denounced the treaty." 
 
 My dear friend, the weather is abominable, and 
 the supply of tobacco, to me at any rate, short and 
 bad ; but I cannot resist sitting down without a pipe, 
 in the mud, to write to you, when I see your great 
 heart beating in this manner. 
 
 How like you, — ^how like the British Philistine in 
 one of his hot fits, when he is moved to speak to 
 Europe " with promptitude and energy ! " Of history, 
 the future, the inevitable drive of events, not an 
 inkUng ! A moral criticism of Russia and a wounded 
 self-consequence, — that is all you are full of. The 
 British Philistine aU over 1 
 
 At your present stage of development, as I have 
 often remarked to you, this beneficent being is the 
 depositary of your force, the mover of your policy. 
 Your Government is, in and by itself, nothing. You 
 are a self-governing people, you are represented by 
 your " strong middle part," your Philistine : and this 
 
294 FEIENDSHIP'S GAJRLAND. [lbttek 
 
 is what youi Government must watch ; this is what 
 it must take its cue from. 
 
 Here, then, is your situation, that your Govern- 
 ment does not and cannot really govern, but at pre- 
 sent is and must be the mouthpiece of your Philistines; 
 and that foreign Governments know this very well, 
 know it to their cost. Nothing the best of them 
 would like better than to deal with England seriously 
 and respectfully, — the England of their traditions, 
 the England of history; nothing, even, they would 
 like better than to deal with the English Government, 
 — as at any time it may happen to stand, composed 
 of a dozen men more or less eminent, — seriously and 
 respectfully. But, good God! it is not with these 
 dozen men in their natural state that a foreign 
 Government finds it has to deal; it is with these 
 dozen men sitting in devout expectation to see 
 how the cat will Jump, — and that cat the British 
 Philistine .! 
 
 What statesman can deal seriously and respectfully 
 when he finds that he is not dealing mind to mind 
 with an intelligent equal, but that he is dealing with 
 a tumult of likes and dislikes, hopes, panics, intrigues, 
 stock-jobbing, quidnuncs, newspapers, — dealing with 
 ignorance in short, for that one word contains it all, — 
 behind his intelligent equal ? Whatever he says to a 
 British Minister, however convincing he may be, a 
 foreign statesman knows that he has only half his 
 hearer's attention, that only one of the British 
 Minister's eyes is turned his way ; the other eye is 
 turned anxiously back on the home Philistines and 
 
X.] AEMINIUS ON THE BLACK SEA QUESTION. 295 
 
 the homo press, and according as these finally go the 
 British Minister must go too. This sort of thing 
 demoralises your Ministers themselves in the end, 
 even your able and honest ones, and makes them 
 impossible to deal with. God forgive me if I do him 
 wrong ! — but I always suspect that your sly old Sir 
 Hamilton Seymour, in his conversations with the 
 Emperor Nicholas before the Crimean war, had at 
 last your Philistines and your press, and their unmis- 
 takable bent, in his eye, and did not lead the poor 
 Czar quite straight. If ever there was a man who 
 respected England, and would have gone cordially 
 and easUy with a capable British minister, that man 
 was Nicholas. England, Eussia, and Austria are the 
 Powers with a real interest in the Eastern question, 
 and it ought to be settled fairly between them. 
 Nicholas wished nothing better. Even if you would 
 not thus settle the question, he would have forborne 
 to any extent sooner than go to war with you, if he 
 could only have known what you were really at. To 
 be sure, as you did not know this yourselves, you 
 could not possibly tell him, poor man ! Louis 
 Napoleon, meanwhile, had his prestige to make. 
 France pulled the wires right and left ; your Philis- 
 tines had a passion for that old acrobat Lord Palmer- 
 Bton, who, clever as he was, had an aristocrat's 
 inaptitude for ideas, and believed in upholding and 
 renovating the Grand Turk; Lord Aberdeen knew 
 better, but his eye was nervously fixed on the British 
 Philistine and the British press. The British Philis- 
 tine learnt that he was being treated with rudenesi 
 
296 friendship's GAELAND. [letTBB 
 
 and must make his voice heard "with promptitude 
 and energy." There was the usual explosion of 
 passions, prejudices, stock-jobbing, newspaper articles^ 
 chatter, and general ignorance, and the Czar found 
 he must either submit to have capital made out of 
 him by French vanity and Bonapartist necessities, or 
 enter into the Crimean war. He entered into the 
 Crimean war, and it broke his heart. France came 
 out of the Crimean war the first Power in Europe, 
 with French vanity and Bonapartist necessities fully 
 served. You came out of it with the British Philis- 
 tine's rdle in European aifairs for the first time 
 thoroughly recognised and appreciated. 
 
 Now for the "faithlessness" and "rudeness" of 
 Russia's present proceeding. It has been known for 
 the last half-dozen years in every chancery of Europe 
 that Eussia declared her position in the Black Sea to 
 be intolerable, and was resolved to get it altered. 
 France and Bonaparte, driven by the French fed as 
 you are driven by the British Philistine, — and the 
 French fat has proved a yet more fatal driver than 
 yours, being debauched and immoral, as well as 
 ignorant, — came to grief. I suppose Russia was not 
 bound to wait till they were in a position to make 
 capital out of her again. "But with us, at any rate," 
 you will say, "she might have dealt seriously and 
 respectfully, instead of being faithless and rude.'' 
 Again, I believe Russia would have wished nothing 
 better than to deal seriously with you, and to settle 
 with you, not only the question of the Black Sea, but 
 the whole Eastern question, which begins to press 
 
X.] ASMINIUS ON THE BLACK SEA QUESTION. 297 
 
 for settlement; — but it was impossible. It waa 
 impossible, because you offer nobody with whom a 
 serious statesman can deal seriously. You offer a 
 Government, with men in it eminent and able no 
 doubt, but they do not make your policy ; and their 
 eye is always turning back to the power behind them 
 which does make it. That power is the British 
 Philistine. Was Eussia, at a critical moment, to 
 lose precious time waiting for the chance medley of 
 accidents, intrigues, hot and cold fits, stock-jobbing, 
 newspaper-articles, conversations on the railway, con- 
 versations on the omnibus, out of which grows the 
 foreign policy of a self-governing people, when that 
 self is the British Philistine? Eussia thought not, 
 and passed on to its object. 
 
 For my part, I cannot call this faithless, though I 
 admit it may be called rude. But it was a rudeness 
 which Governments with a serious object before them 
 cannot well help committing when they are dealing 
 with you. The question is : Will you at all better 
 yourselves by having now one of your hot fits, 
 speaking "with promptitude and energy," and, in fact, 
 going to war with Eussia for what she has donel 
 Alas, my dear friend, this would be throwing the 
 handle after the blade with a vengeance ! Because 
 your governing part, your Philistine middle class, is 
 ignorant and impracticable, Eussia has unceremoni- 
 ously taken a step in the Eastern question without 
 you. And what does your going to war with Eussia 
 in the present posture of affairs mean? It means 
 backing up the Forte to show fight ; going in, in 
 
§98 FfitElsnbsmp's gaelanI). tLBiTEs 
 
 Lord Palmerston's old line, for upholding and reno- 
 vating the Grand Turk ; — ^it means fighting against 
 nature. This is how the ignorant and impracticable 
 get punished; they are made to smart for being 
 ignorant and impracticable, and they can only resent 
 being made to smart by showing themselves more 
 ignorant and impracticable stilL Do not do so, my 
 dear friend ! Russia has no wish to quarrel with 
 you ; she had a serious object to gain, and, as time 
 pressed, she did what she had to do without entering 
 into an interminable and possibly fruitless conversa- 
 tion with your "young man from the country." But 
 she does not mean more than her avowed object, 
 which was really indispensable to her; she wUl try 
 to make things now as pleasant as she can (con- 
 sistently with getting her object) for your young 
 man from the country ; and the moment the young 
 man has clear ideas she will ask nothing better than 
 to deal with him seriously and respectfully. 
 
 All turns upon that, my dear friend ! — the im- 
 proving your young man and giving him clear ideas. 
 At present he is vulgar, ignorant, and consequential ; 
 and because he is vulgar, he is ignoble ; because he is 
 ignorant, he is unstable ; because he is consequential, 
 he is on the look-out for affronts and apt to fly into 
 a heat. With these qualities he cannot but bring 
 mortifications upon you and himself, so long as he 
 governs or tries to govern. All nations have their 
 young man of this sort, but with you alone he governs, 
 and hence the European importance of him and his 
 failings. You know how I dislike the Junkerism 
 
X.] AEMINIUS ON Tflfi SLACK SEA QtESTlON. 2^9 
 
 and militarism of my own Prussian country and its 
 government; all I say is, that the self-government 
 of your Philistines is as bad, or even worse. There 
 is nothing like it anywhere ; for America, which in 
 some respects resembles you, has not your necessary 
 relations with Europe; and besides, her Philistines, 
 if they govern, administer also, and get the training 
 which great aflFairs give. With you the Barbarians 
 administer, the Philistines govern; between them your 
 policy is made. One class contributes its want of 
 ideas, the other its want of dignity; — an unlucky 
 mixture for you, my dear friend, it must be 
 confessed. 
 
 The worst of it is, I do not see how things are to 
 get better with yon at present. The Philistines rule 
 and rule abominably, but for the moment there is no 
 remedy. Bismarck would say, "Muzzle them;" but 
 I know well this cannot, nay, should not be. I say, 
 " Improve them ; " but for this time is needed. Youi 
 Government might, no doubt, do something to speed 
 the improvement, if it cared a little more, in serving 
 the Philistines, for what might do them good, and a 
 little less for what might please them ; but perhaps 
 this is too much to expect from your Government. 
 So you must needs have, my dear friend, I am afraid, 
 what these poor wretched people here call a mauvais 
 quart d'heure, in which you wiU be peculiarly liable to 
 mistakes, mortifications, and troubles. While thia 
 period lasts, yow strength, forgive me for saying so, 
 is to sit still. What your friends (of whom I am one) 
 must wish for you is that you may keep as quiet as 
 
300 FEIENDSHIP'S GAELAND. [letter x 
 
 possible ; that the British Philistine may not be 
 moved much to speak to Europe " with promptitude 
 and energy ; " that he may get out of his hot fits 
 always as soon as possible. And perhaps you art 
 getting out of your recent hot fit already ; perhaps, 
 even while I write, you have got into one of your 
 cold fits, and are all for pacific solutions and moral 
 suasion. I say, Heaven grant it ! with all my heart. 
 
 And, meanwhile, how are my friends in England f 
 I think I see Bottles by the Eoyal Exchange at 
 this moment, holding forth, with the Times in his 
 hand, on "the perfect unanimity of opinion among 
 the mercantile community of the City of London ! " 
 I think I hear poor Mr. Matthew Arnold's plati- 
 tudes about "the two great conquests of English 
 energy, — Ul^y and publicity/" Liberty, my dear 
 friend, to make fools of yourselves, and publicity 
 to tell all the world you are doing so. 
 
 Forgive my ur-deutsch frankness, and believe mo, 
 your sincere friend. 
 
 Von Thunder-ten-Tkonokh, 
 
 To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
LETTEE XI 
 
 I TAKE UP THE CUDGELS FOR OUE BELOVED COUNTRY. 
 
 gjjl Gktjb SteebTj November 25, 1870. 
 
 I KNOW by experience how hard it is to get my bald, 
 disjointed chat, as Aiminius calls it, into the news- 
 papers in these stirring times, and that was why I 
 did not attempt to complain of that extraordinary 
 effusion of his which you pubhshed in August last. 
 He must have written that letter, with its unhand- 
 some remarks at my expense, just after I had parted 
 with him at his lodgings in Chequer Alley, with 
 expressions of the tenderest concern, before he went 
 off to the war. Since then, I have discovered that 
 he had referred nearly all his tradespeople to me for 
 payment ; I am daily besieged in my garret by his 
 tobacconist, and when I get out, the street is made 
 quite intolerable to me by the violence of his washer- 
 woman, though I am sure Arminius, like all foreigners, 
 always gave his washerwoman as little trouble as 
 possible. These things have nettled me a good deal; 
 and now there comes this new letter of his from Paris, 
 in which, besides totally uncalled-for sneers at Mr. 
 Bottles and me, Arminius indulges in an outrageous 
 
302 friendship's GARLAND. [lettbe 
 
 attack on my country and her behaviour in this 
 Russian business. I have kept silence for a few 
 days to make sure of being perfectly cool; but novr, 
 Sir, I do hope you will give me space for a few lines 
 in reply to him. 
 
 About the Eussian note I disagree with Arminiua 
 m toto. I go thoroughly along with Lord Shaftesbury, 
 whose admirable letter to the Times proves, what I 
 have always thought, how unjust Arminius is in 
 denying ideas to the British aristocracy. A treaty 
 is a promise, — so I read Lord Shaftesbury's argu- 
 ment ; men should keep their promises ; if bad men 
 will not, good men must compel them. 
 
 It is singular, Sir, but in my immediate neighbour- 
 hood here in Cripplegate we have lately had a case 
 which exactly illustrates the Eussian dif&culty, and 
 bears out Lord Shaftesbury's argument. We all do 
 our marketing in Whitecross Street ; and in White- 
 cross Street is a famous tripe-shop which I always 
 visit before entertaining Arminius, who, like all 
 North Germans, and hke our own celebrated Dr. 
 Johnson, is a very gross feeder. Two powerful 
 labourers, who lodge like Arminius in Chequer Alley, 
 and who never could abide one another, used to meet 
 at this tripe-shop and quarrel till it became manifest 
 that the shop could not stand two such customers to- 
 gether, and that one of the couple must give up going 
 there. The fellows' names were Mike and Dennis ; 
 it was generally thought the chief blame in the 
 quarrel lay with Mike, who was at any rate much the 
 less plausible man of lihe two, besides being greatly 
 
XI.] I TAKE UP THE CUDGELS FOE OUE COUNTRY. 303 
 
 the bigger. However that may be, the excellent 
 City Missionary in this quarter, the Eev. J-hm, B-ll (I 
 forbear to write his name at length for fear of bring- 
 ing a blush to his worthy cheek), took Dennis's part 
 in the matter. He and Dennis set both together upon 
 Mike, and got the best of him. It was Dennis who 
 appeared to do the most in the set-to ; at all events, 
 he got the whole credit, although I have heard the 
 Eev. /-An. B-ll (who was undoubtedly a formidable 
 fellow in his old unregenerate days) describe at tea 
 in the Mission Eoom how he got his stick between 
 Mike's legs at all the critical moments ; how he felt 
 fresher and stronger when the fight ended than when 
 it began ; and how his behaviour had somehow the 
 efiect of leaving on the bystanders' minds an impres- 
 sion immensely to his advantage. What is quite 
 certain is, that not only did our reverend friend take 
 part in the engagement, but that also, before, during, 
 and after the struggle, his exhortations and admoni- 
 tions to Mike, Dennis, the bystanders, and himself, 
 never ceased, and were most edifying. Mike finally, 
 as I said, had to give in, and he was obliged to make 
 a solemn promise to Dennis and the City Missionary 
 that he would use the tripe-shop no more. On this 
 condition a treaty was patched up, and peace reigned 
 in Cripplegate. 
 
 And now. Sir, comes the startling point of resem- 
 blance to the present Eussian difficulty. A great big 
 hulking German, called Fritz, has been for some time 
 taking a lead in our neighbourhood, and carr3ring his 
 head a great deal higher in Whitecross Street Market 
 
304 friendship's GABLAND. ' [lettbh 
 
 than Dennis likei At last Dennis could stand it no 
 longer ; he picked a quarrel with Fritz, and they had 
 a battle-royal to prove which was master. In this 
 encounter our City Missionary took no part, though 
 he bestowed, as usual, on both sides good advice and 
 beautiful sentiments in abundance. Dennis had no 
 luck this time j he got horribly belaboured, and now 
 lies confined to his bed at his lodgings, almost past 
 praying for. But what do you think has been Mike's 
 conduct at this juncture! Seeing Dennis disabled, 
 he addressed to the City Missionary an indecent 
 scrawl, couched in language with which I will not 
 sully your pages, to the effect that the tripe-shop lay 
 handy to his door (which is true enough) ; and that 
 use it he needs must, and use it he would, in spite of 
 all the Eev. J-hm, B-ll might say or do to stop him. 
 
 The feelings. Sir, of the worthy Missionary at this 
 communication may be easier imagined than described. 
 He launched at Mike the most indignant moral re- 
 buke ; the brute put his thumb to his nose. To get 
 Mike out of the tripe-shop there is nothing left but 
 physical force. Yet how is our estimable friend to 
 proceed! Years of outpouring, since he has been 
 engaged in mission-work, have somewhat damaged his 
 wind; the hospitalities of the more serious-minded 
 citizens of Cripplegate to a man in his position have 
 been, I hope, what they should be ; there are appre- 
 hensions, if violent exercise is taken, of gout in the 
 stomacL Dennis can do nothing; what is worse 
 Fritz has been seen to wink his eye at Mike in a way 
 to beget grave suspicion that the ruffians have a secret 
 
XI.] I TAKE UP THE CUDGELS FOE OUE COUNTKY. 305 
 
 compact together. The general feeling in Cripplegate 
 is that nothing much can be done, and that Mike must 
 be allowed to resort again to the tripe-shop. 
 
 But I ask you, Sir, is this morally defensible 1 Is 
 it right 1 Is it honest 1 Has not Lord Shaftesbury's 
 English heart (if it is not presumptuous in me to 
 speak thus of a person in his lordship's position) 
 guided him true in the precisely similar case of 
 Eussia ? A treaty is a promise, and we have a moral 
 right to demand that promises shall be kept. If Mike 
 wanted to use the tripe-shop, he should have waited 
 till Dennis was about again and could talk things 
 over with the City Missionary, and then, perhaps, 
 the two might have been found willing to absolve 
 Mike from his promise. His present conduct is in- 
 excusable ; the only comfort is that the Rev. J-hn B-ll 
 has a faithful press still to back him, and that Mike 
 is being subjected to a fearful daily castigation in the 
 columns of the Bajid of Hope Beview. 
 
 Therefore, Sir, as to Eussia, I emphatically think 
 Arminius wrong. His sneers at my zeal for the grand 
 principles of liberty and publicity I have hardly left 
 myself space to notice. But, Sir, I do believe, with 
 Mr. Bright, that the great function committed by 
 Providence to our English-speaking race is " the as- 
 sertion of personal liberty." If this be an error, I 
 would rather, I own, err with Mr. Bright than be 
 right with Von Thunder-ten-Tronckh. I know Von 
 T. maintains that we so intently pursue liberty and 
 publicity as quite to neglect wisdom and virtue ; 
 for which alone, he says, liberty and publicity 
 
 VOli. IIL X 
 
306 FRIENDSHIP'S GAELASD. [lbtteb 
 
 are worth having. But I will ask him, Sir, have 
 we ever given liberty and publicity a full trial) 
 Take liberty. The Lord Chancellor has, indeed, 
 provided for Mr. Beales, and it is whispered that 
 Colonel Dickson will have a high command in the 
 approaching Eussian war ; — hvi why is Mr. Bradlaugh 
 not yet a Dean f These, Sir, are the omissions, these 
 the failures to carry into full effect our own great 
 principles, which drive earnest Liberals to despair ! 
 
 Again, take the principle of publicity. Arminius 
 (who, as an observer of manners, attended the pro- 
 ceedings in the Mordaunt case, and again in the Park 
 !,nd Boulton case, with unflagging assiduity) has said 
 to me scores of times : " By shooting all this garbage 
 on your public, you are preparing and assuring for 
 your English people an immorality as deep and wide 
 as that which destroys the Latin nations." What is 
 my reply ! That we have never yet given publicity 
 a fair trial. It is true, when a member of Parliament 
 wanted to abridge the publicity given to the Mordaunt 
 case, the Government earnestly reminded him that it 
 had been the solemn decision of the House of Com- 
 mons that all the proceedings of the Divorce Court 
 should be open as the day. It is true, when there 
 was a suggestion to hear the Boulton and Park case 
 in private, the upright magistrate who was appealed 
 to said firmly that he could never trifle with the 
 public mind in that manner. All this was as it should 
 be; so far, so good. But was the publicity thus 
 secured for these cases perfectly fuU and entire 'i 
 Were there not some places which the details did not 
 
XI.] I TAKE UP THE CUDGELS FOR OUR COUNTRY. 307 
 
 reach ? There were few, but there were some. And 
 this while the Government has an organ of its own, 
 the London Gazette, dull, high-priced, and of compara- 
 tively limited circulation. I say, make the price of 
 the London Gazette a haKpenny ; change its name to 
 the London Gazette and Divorce InielKgencer ; let it 
 include, besides divorce news, all cases whatever that 
 have an interest of the same nature for the public 
 mind; distribute it gratis to mechanics' institutes, 
 workmen's halls, seminaries for the young (these 
 latter more especially) ; and then you will be giving 
 the principle of publicity a full trial. This is what I 
 often say to Arminius ; and, when he looks astounded, 
 I reassure him with a sentence which, I know very 
 well, the moment I make it public, wiU be stolen by 
 all the Liberal newspapers. But it is getting near 
 Christmas-time, and I do not mind making them a 
 present of it It is this : — The spear of freedom, like 
 that of Achilles, has the power to heal the wovmds which 
 itself makes ! 
 
 This Arminius can never answer ; and, badly as 
 he has treated me, my heart relents to think of the 
 stupefied face I have often seen him with at hearing 
 it. Poor Arminius ! I wonder what he is doing now t 
 If the Prussians keep sticking in the mud before 
 Paris, how will he continue to bear the wet weather, 
 the winter nights, the exposure 1 And may not his 
 prolonged requisitions for tobacco and sausages 
 (merciless I know they will be !) prove too much at 
 last for the patience of even some down-trodden worm 
 of a French bowgeois t Or, again, this is the hour for 
 
308 friendship's GAKLAMD. [lbttee XL 
 
 a sortie, and Arminius is as brave as a lidn. I go to 
 my garret-window j it is just midniglit ; how gloomy 
 is Grub Street at this hour ! I look towards the 
 familiar regions of Whitecross Street Market and 
 Chequer Alley; the venerable pile of Cripplegate 
 Church, which I could never get Arminius to enter, 
 rises darkly and sadly before me. Dismal presenti- 
 ments begin to crowd upon my soul, and I sign 
 myself, 
 
 Sir, your uneasy servant, 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette 
 
LETTER XIL 
 
 " LIFE," AS ME. G. A. SALA SAYS, " A DREAM ! " 
 
 MoN Cher Versailles, November 26, 1870. 
 
 An event has just happened which I confess franHy 
 will afflict others more than it does me, but which 
 you ought to be informed of. 
 
 Early this morning I was passing between Eueil 
 and Bougival, opposite Mont Valdrien. How came I 
 in that place at that hourl Mm cher, forgive my 
 folly ! You have read Borneo amd Juliet, you have 
 seen me at Cremorne, and though Mars has just now 
 this lelle France in his gripe, yet you remember, I 
 hope, enough of your classics to know that, where 
 Mars is, Venus is never very far off. Early this 
 morning, then, I was between Kueil and Bougival, 
 with Mont Val6rien in grim proximity. On a bank 
 by a poplar-tree at the roadside I saw a knot of 
 German soldiers, gathered evidently round a wounded 
 man. I approached and frankly tendered my help, 
 in the name of British humanity. What answer I 
 may have got I do not know ; for, petrified with 
 astonishment, I recognised in the wounded man our 
 familiar acquaintance, Arminius von Thunder-ten< 
 
310 friendship's GAELAWD. [lettbk 
 
 Tronckh. A Prussian helmet was stuck on his head, 
 but there was the old hassock of whity-brown hair, — 
 there was the old square face, — there was the old 
 blue pilot coat ! He was shot through the chest, and 
 evidently near his end. He had been on outpost 
 duty ; — the night had been quiet, but a few random 
 shots had been fired. One of these had struck 
 Arminius in the breast, and gone right through his 
 body. By this stray bullet, without glory, without a 
 battle, without even a foe in sight, had fallen the last 
 of the Von Thunder-ten-Tronckhs ! 
 
 He knew me, and with a nod, "Ah," said he, "the 
 rowdy Philistine ! " You know his turn, mdri in my 
 opinion, for flinging nicknames right and left. The 
 present, however, was not a moment for resentment. 
 The Germans saw that their comrade was in friendly 
 hands, and gladly left him with me. He had evi- 
 dently but a few minutes to live. I sate down on 
 the bank by him, and asked him if I could do any- 
 thing to relieve him. He shook his head. Any 
 message to his friends in England ? He nodded. I 
 ran over the most prominent names which occurred 
 to me of the old set. First, our Amphitryon, Mr. 
 Bottles. "Say to Bottles from me," said Arminius 
 coldly, " that I hope he will be comfortable with his 
 dead wife's sister." Next, Mr. Frederic Harrison. 
 " Tell him," says Arminius, " to do more in literature, 
 — ^he has a talent for it ; and to avoid Carlylese as he 
 would the devil." Then I mentioned a personage to 
 whom Arminius had taken a great fancy last spring, 
 and of whose witty ivritings some people had, absurdly 
 
»!■] " LIFE A DEBAM ! " 311 
 
 enough, given Mr. Matthew Arnold the credit,— 
 Azamat-Batuk. Both writers are simple ; but Aza- 
 mat's is the simplicity of shrewdness, the other's of 
 helplessness. At hearing the clever Turk's name, 
 "Tell him only," whispers Arminius, "when he 
 writes about the sex, not to show such a turn for 
 sailing so very near the wind ! " Lastly, I mentioned 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold. I hope I rate this poor soul's 
 feeble and rambling performances at their proper 
 value j but I am bound to say that at the mention 
 of his name Arminius showed signs of tenderness. 
 "Poor fellow ! " sighed he ; "he had a soft head, but 
 I valued his heart. Tell him I leave him my ideas, 
 — the easier ones ; and advise him from me," he 
 added, with a faint smile, " to let his Dissenters go 
 to the devil their own way ! " 
 
 At this instant there was a movement on the road 
 at a little distance from where we were, — some 
 of the Prussian Princes, I believe, passing; at any 
 rate, we heard the honest German soldiers EochAng, 
 hurrahing, and God -blessing, in their true-hearted 
 but somewhat rococo manner. A flush passed over 
 Von Thunder-ten-Tronckh's face. "God bless Ger- 
 many," he murmured, " and confound all her kings and 
 princelings ! " These were his last coherent words. 
 His eyes closed and he seemed to become unconscious. 
 I stooped over him and inquired if he had any wishes 
 about his interment. " Pangloss — Mr. Lowe — mauso- 
 leum — Caterham," was all that, in broken words, 1 
 could gather from him. His breath came with more 
 and more difBculty, his fingers felt instinctively 
 
313 friendship's GAELAND. [letTBB 
 
 for his tobacco-pouch, his lips twitched ; — he was 
 gone. 
 
 So died, man cher, an arrant Eepublican, and, to 
 speak my real mind, a most unpleasant companion. 
 His great name and lineage imposed on the Bottles 
 family, and authors who had never succeeded with 
 the British public took pleasure in his disparaging 
 criticisms on our free and noble country; but. for my 
 part I always thought him an overrated man. 
 
 Meanwhile I was alone with his remains. His 
 notion of their being transported to Caterham was of 
 course impracticable. Still, I did not like to leave 
 an old acquaintance to the crows, and I looked round 
 in perplexity. Fortune in the most unexpected 
 manner befriended me. The grounds of a hand- 
 some villa came down to the road close to where I 
 was ; at the end of the grounds and overhanging the 
 road was a summer-house. Its shutters had been 
 closed when I first discovered Arminius ; but while I 
 was occupied with him they had been opened, and a 
 gay trio was visible within the summer-house at 
 breakfast. I could scarcely believe my eyes for 
 satisfaction. Three Enghsh members of Parliament, 
 celebrated for their ardent charity and advanced 
 Liberalism, were sitting before me adorned with a 
 red cross and eating a Strasburg pie ! I approached 
 them and requested their aid to bury Arminius. My 
 request seemed to occasion them painful embarrass- 
 ment ; they muttered something about " a breach of 
 the understanding,'' and went on with their breakfast 
 I insisted, however ; and at length, having stipulated 
 
XU.] "LIFE A DKEAM!" 313 
 
 that what they were about to do should on no 
 account be drawn into a precedent, they left their 
 breakfast, and together we buried Arminius under 
 the poplar-tree. It was a hurried business, for my 
 friends had an engagement to lunch at Versailles at 
 nooa Poor Von Thunder-ten-Tronckh, the earth 
 lies light on him, indeed ! I could see, as I left him, 
 the blue of his pilot coat and the whity-brown of his 
 hair through the mould we had scattered over him. 
 
 My benevolent helpers and I then made our way 
 together to Versailles. As I parted from them at the 
 H6tel des Reservoirs I met Sala. Little as I liked 
 Arminius, the melancholy scene I had just gone 
 through had shaken me, and I needed sympathy. I 
 told Sala what had happened. "The old story," 
 says Sala; "life a dream/ Take a glass of brandy." 
 He then inquired who my friends were. "Three 
 admirable members of Parliament," I cried, "who, 
 donning the cross of charity " " I know," inter- 
 rupted Sala ; " the cleverest thing out ! " 
 
 But the emotions of this agitating day were not 
 yet over. While Sala was speaking, a group had 
 formed before the hotel near us, and our attention 
 was drawn to its central figure. Dr. EusseU, of the 
 Times, was preparing to mount his war-horse. You 
 know the sort of thing, — he has described it himself 
 over and over again. Bismarck at his horse's head, 
 the Crown Prince holding his stirrup, and the old 
 King of Prussia hoisting EusseU into the saddle. 
 When he was there, the distinguished public servant i 
 waved his hand in acknowledgment, and rode slowly:' 
 
314 FKIENDSHIP'S GARLAND. [lettbb 
 
 down the street, accompanied by the gamins of Ver- 
 . sailles, who even in their present dejection could not 
 forbear a few involuntary cries of " Qud homme 1 " 
 Always unassuming, he alighted at the lodgings of 
 the Grand Duke of Oldenburg, a potentate of the 
 second or even the third order, who had beckoned to 
 him from the window. 
 
 The agitation of this scene for me, however (may 
 I not add, mon cher, for you also, and for the whole 
 British press?), lay in a suggestion which it called 
 forth from Sala. "It is all very well," said Sala, 
 "but old Eussell's guns are getting a little honey- 
 combed ; anybody can perceive that. He will have 
 to be pensioned off, and why should not you succeed 
 him ? " We passed the afternoon in talking the thing 
 over, and I think I may assure you that a train has 
 been laid of which you wiU see the effects shortly. 
 
 For my part, I can afford to, wait tiU the pear is 
 ripe; yet I cannot, without a thrill of excitement, 
 think of inoculating the respectable but somewhat 
 ponderous Times and its readers with the divine 
 madness of our new style, — the style we have formed 
 upon Sala. The world, mon cher, knows that man 
 but imperfectly. I do not class him with the great 
 masters of human thought and human literature, 
 — Plato, Shakspeare, Confucius, Charles Dickens. 
 Sala, like us his disciples, has studied in the book of 
 the world even more than in the world of books. 
 But his career and genius have given him somehow 
 the secret of a literary mixture novel and fascinating 
 in the last degree : he blends the airy epicureanism 
 
Hl-I " LITE A DREAM ! " 315 
 
 of the salons of Augustus with the full-bodied gaiety 
 of our English Cider-cellar. With our people and 
 country, mm cher, this mixture, you may rely upon 
 it. is now the very thing to go down ; there arises 
 every day a larger public for it; and we, SaJa's 
 disciples, may be trusted not willingly to let it die. — 
 Tmii b, vous, A Young Lion.^ 
 
 To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gtazette. 
 
 (I HAVE thought that the memorial raised to Amunius 
 would not be complete without the following essay, 
 in which, though his name is not actually mentioned, 
 he will be at once recognised as the leading spirit of 
 the foreigners whose conversation is quoted. 
 
 Much as I owe to his intellect, I cannot help some- 
 times regretting that the spirit of youthful paradox 
 which led me originally to question the perfections 
 of my countrymen, should have been, as it were, 
 
 ' I am bound to say that in attempting to verify Leo's graphic 
 description of Dr. Buasell's mounting on horseback, from the 
 latter's own excellent correspondence, to which Leo refers us, I 
 have been unsuccessful. Bepeatedly I have seemed to be on 
 the trace of what my friend meant, but the particular descrip- 
 tion he alludes to I have never been lucky enough to light 
 upon. 
 
 I may add that, in spite of what Leo says of the train he and 
 Mr. Sala have laid, of Dr. Russell's approaching retirement, of 
 Leo's prospect of succeeding him, of the charm of the leonine 
 style, and of the disposition o^ the public mind to be fascinated 
 by it, — I cannot myself believe that either the public, or the 
 proprietors of the Times, are yet ripe for a change so revolu- 
 tionary. But Leo was always sanguine. — Ed. 
 
316 FEIENDSHIP'S GABLAHD. [lbttbe xii. 
 
 prevented from dying out by my meeting, six years 
 ago, with Arminius. The Saiurdwy Beview, in an 
 article called " Mr. Matthew Arnold and his Country- 
 men," had taken my correction in hand, and I was 
 in a fair way of amendment, when the intervention 
 of Arminius stopped the cure, and turned me, as has 
 been often said, into a mere mouthpiece of this 
 dogmatic yoimg Prussian. It was not that I did 
 not often dislike his spirit and boldly stand up to 
 him; but, on the whole, my intellect was (there 
 is no use denying it) overmatched by his. The 
 following essay, which appeared at the beginning of 
 1866, was the first proof of this fatal predominance, 
 which has in many ways cost me so dear.) — ^Ed. 
 
MY COUNTRYMEN. 
 
 About a year ago the Saturday Remew published an 
 article which gave me, as its articles often do give me, 
 much food for reflection. The article was about the 
 unjust estimate which, says the Saturday Beview, I 
 form of my countrymen, and about the indecency of 
 talking of "British Philistines." It appears that I 
 assume the truth of the transcendental system of 
 philosophy,^ and then lecture my wiser countrymen 
 because they will not join me in recognising as eternal 
 truths a set of platitudes which may be proved to be 
 false. "Now there is in England a school of philo- 
 sophy which thoroughly understands, and, on theo- 
 retical grounds, deliberately rejects, the philosophical 
 theory which Mr. Arnold accuses the English nation 
 of neglecting ; and the practical efforts of the English 
 people, especially their practical efforts in the way of 
 criticism, are for the most part strictly in accordance 
 with the principles of that philosophy." 
 
 I do not quite know what to say about the trans- 
 cendental system of philosophy, for I am a mere 
 dabbler in these great matters, and to grasp and hold 
 * Philosophy has always been bringing me into trouble, — Ej). 
 
318 friendship's gaeland. 
 
 a system of philosophy is a feat much beyond my 
 strength; but I certainly did talk about British 
 Philistines, and to call people Philistines when they 
 are doing just what the wisest men in the country 
 have settled to be quite right, does seem unreason- 
 able, not to say indecent. Being really the most 
 teachable man alive, I could not help making, after I 
 had read the article in the Saturday Review, a serious 
 return, as the French say, upon myself; and I resolved 
 never to call my countrymen Philistines again till I 
 had thought more about it, and could be quite sure I 
 was not committing an indecency. 
 
 I was very much fortified in this good resolution 
 by something else which happened about the same 
 time. Every one knows that the heart of the English 
 nation is its middle class ; there had been a good deal 
 of talk, a year ago, about the education of this class, 
 and I, among others, had imagined it was not good, 
 and that the middle class suffered by its not being 
 better. But Mr. Bazley,^ the member for Manchester, 
 who is a kind of representative of this class, made 
 a speech last, year at Manchester, the middle-class 
 metropolis, which shook me a good deaL "During 
 the last few months," said Mr. Bazley, " there had 
 been a cry that middle-class education ought to receive 
 more attention. He confessed himself very much sur- 
 prised by the clamour that was raised. He did not 
 think that class need excite the sympathy either of 
 the legislature or the public." Much to the same 
 effect spoke Mr. MiaU, another middle-class leader, 
 * Now Sir Thomas Bazley, Bart. — Ed. 
 
MY COUNTKYMEN. 319 
 
 in the Nonconformist : " Middle-class education seems 
 to be the favourite topic of the hour, and we must 
 confess to a feeling of shame at the nonsense which is 
 being uttered on the subject. It might be thought 
 from what is said, that this section of the community, 
 which has done everything else so well, — ^which has 
 astonished the world by its energy, enterprise, and 
 self-reliance, which is continually striking out new 
 paths of industry and subduing the forces of nature, 
 — cannot, from some mysterious reason, get their 
 children properly educated." Still more strong were 
 the words of the Daily News (I love to range aU the 
 evidence in black and white before me, though it 
 tends to my own discomfiture) about the blunder 
 some of us were making : " All the world knows that 
 the great middle class of this country supplies the 
 mind, the will, and the power for aU the great and 
 good thiDgs that have to be done, and it is not likely 
 that that class should surrender its powers and privi- 
 leges in the one case of the training of its own 
 children. How the idea of such a scheme can have 
 occurred to anybody, how it can have been imagined 
 that parents and schoolmasters in the most independent, 
 and active, and enlightened class of Enghsh society,^ 
 how it can have been supposed that the class which 
 has done all the great things that have been done in 
 all departments, will beg the Government to send 
 
 * How very fine and striking ia this language ! Eloquent as 
 is the homage which our newspapers still pay in the same 
 quarter, it seems as if, in 1866, their eulogy had n ring and 
 fulness which it has since in some measure lost. — Ed^ 
 
820 FEIENDSHIP'S GABLaND. 
 
 inspectors through its schools, when it can itself com- 
 mand whatever advantages exist, might seem unin- 
 telligible but for two or three considerations." These 
 considerations do not much matter just now ; but it 
 is clear how perfectly Mr. Bazley's stand was a stand 
 such as it becomes a representative man like Mr. 
 Bazley to make, and how well the Daily Telegraph 
 might say of the speech : " It was at once grand, 
 genial, national, and distinct ; " and the Morning Star 
 of the speaker : " He talked to his constituents as 
 Manchester people hke to be talked to, in the lan- 
 guage of clear, manly intelligence, which penetrates 
 through sophisms, ignores commonplaces, and gives 
 to conventional illusions their true value. His speech 
 was thoroughly instinct with that earnest good sense 
 which characterises Manchester, and which, indeed, 
 may be fairly set down as the general characteristic 
 of England and Englishmen everywhere." 
 
 Of course if Philistinism is characteristic of the 
 British nation just now, it must in a special way be 
 characteristic of the representative part of the British 
 nation, the part by which the British nation is what 
 it is, and does all its best things, the middle class. 
 And the newspapers, who have so many more means 
 than I of knowing the truth, and who have that 
 trenchant authoritative style for communicating it 
 which makes so great an impression, say that the 
 British middle class is characterised, not by Philistin- 
 ism, but by enlightenment ; by a passion for penetrat- 
 ing through sophisms, ignoring commonplaces, and 
 giving to conventional illusions their true value. 
 
MY COUNTRYMEN. 321 
 
 Evidently it is nonsense, as the DaUy News says, to 
 think that this great middle class which supplies the 
 mind, the will, and the power for all the great and 
 good things that have to be done, should want its 
 schools, the nurseries of its admirable intelligence, 
 meddled with. It may easily be imagined that all 
 this, coming on the top of the Satwday Bevieu/s rebuke 
 of me for indecency, was enough to set me meditating; 
 and after a long and painful self-examination, I saw 
 that I had been making a great mistake. Instead of 
 confining myself to what alone I had any business 
 with, — ^the slow and obscure work of trying to under- 
 stand things, to see them as they are, — I had been 
 meddling with practice, proposing this and that, say- 
 ing how it might be if we established this or that. 
 So I was suffering deservedly in being taunted with 
 hawking about my nostrums of State schools for a 
 class much too wise to want them, and of an Academy 
 for people who have an inimitable style already. To 
 be sure, I had said that schools ought to be things of 
 local, not State, institution and management, and that 
 we ought not to have an Academy ; but that makes 
 no difference. I saw what danger I had been run- 
 ning by thus intruding into a sphere where I have 
 no business, and I resolved to offend in this way no 
 more. 
 
 This I say as a sincere penitent ; but I do not see 
 that there is any harm in my still trying to know and 
 understand things, if I keep humbly to that, and do 
 not meddle with greater matters, which are out of my 
 reach. So, having once got into my head this notion 
 
 VOL. ra. Y 
 
322 FEIENDSfflP'S OAKLAND. 
 
 of British Philistinism and of the want of clear and 
 large intelligence in our middle class, I do not con- 
 sider myself bound at once to put away and crush 
 such a notion, as people are told to do with their 
 religious doubts ; nor, when the Saturday Review teUa 
 me that no nation in the world is so logical as the 
 English nation, and the Morning Star, that our grand 
 national characteristic is a clear intelhgence which 
 penetrates through sophisms, ignores commonplaces, 
 and gives to conventional illusions their true value, 
 do I feel myself compelled to receive these proposi- 
 tions with absolute submission as articles of faith, 
 transcending reason; indeed, this would be trans- 
 cendentalism, which the Saturday Beview condemns, 
 Canvass them, then, as mere matters of speculation, 
 I may ; and having lately had occasion to travel on 
 the Continent for many months, during which I was 
 thrown in company with a great variety of people, I 
 remembered what Burns says of the profitableness of 
 trying to see ourselves as others see us, and I kept 
 on the watch for anything to confirm or contradict 
 my old notion, in which, without absolutely giving it 
 up, I had begun certainly to be much shaken and 
 staggered. 
 
 I must say that the foreign opinion about us is not 
 at aU like that of the Saturday Beview and the Morning 
 Star I know how madly the foreigners envy us, and 
 that this must warp their judgment; I know, too, 
 that this test of foreign opinion can never be decisive; 
 I only take it for what it is worth, and as a contribu- 
 tion to our study of the matter in q^uestion. But I 
 
MY COUNTRYMEN. 323 
 
 do really think that the admirers of our great middle 
 class, which has, as its friends and enemies both agree, 
 risen into such preponderating importance of late years, 
 and now returns the House of Commons, dictates the 
 policy of Ministers, makes the newspapers speak with 
 its voice, and in short governs the country, — I do 
 think, I say, the admirers of this great class would be 
 astounded if they could hear how cavalierly a foreigner 
 treats this country of their making and managing. 
 " It is not so much that we dislike England," a Prus- 
 sian official,^ with the graceful tact of his nation, said 
 to me the other day, "as that we think little of her." 
 The Cologne Gazette, perhaps the chief newspaper of 
 Germany, published in the summer a series of letters, 
 much esteemed, I believe, by military men, on the 
 armies of the leading Continental powers. The writer 
 was a German officer, but not a Prussian. Speaking 
 of the false military system followed by the Emperor 
 Nicholas, whose great aim was to turn his soldiers 
 into perfectly drilled machines, and contrastiag this 
 with the free play left to the individual soldier in the 
 French system : " In consequence of their purely 
 mechanical training," says this writer, " the Russians, 
 in spite of their splendid courage, were in the Crimean 
 war constantly beaten by the French, nay, decidedly 
 beaten even hy the English and the Twks."^ Hardly a 
 German newspaper can discuss territorial changes in 
 Europe but it will add, after its remarks on the prob- 
 
 ' Not Arminius.— Ed. 
 
 ' " Ja, aelbat von den Englandem und Tiirkern entschieden 
 
324 friendship's GARLAND, 
 
 able policy of France in this or that event : " England 
 will probably make a fuss, but what England thinks 
 is of no importance." I believe the German news- 
 papers must keep a phrase of that kind stereotyped, 
 they use it so often. France is our very good friend 
 just now, but at bottom our " clear intelligence pene- 
 trating through sophisms," and so on, is not held in 
 much more esteem there than in Germany. One of the 
 gravest and most moderate of French newspapers, — 
 a newspaper, too, our very good friend, like France 
 herself, into the bargain, — broke out lately, when 
 some jealousy of the proposed Cholera Commission 
 in the East was shown on this side the water, in 
 terms which, though less rough than the " great fool" 
 of the Saiwday Review, were still far from flattering. 
 "Let us speak to these English the only language 
 they can comprehend. England lives for her trade ; 
 Cholera interrupts trade ; therefore it is for England's 
 interest to join in precautions against Cholera." ^ 
 
 Compliments of this sort are displeasing to remem- 
 ber, displeasing to repeat; but their abundance strikes 
 the attention ; and then the happy unconsciousness of 
 those at whom they are aimed, their state of imper- 
 turbable self-satisfaction, strikes the attention too, 
 and makes an mquisitive mind quite eager to see its 
 way clearly in this apparent game of cross purposes. 
 For never, surely, was there such a game of cross 
 purposes played. It came to its height when Lord 
 
 ' Poor France ! As Mr. Bottles says, neither her favourable 
 nor her unfavourable criticisms are of much consequence just 
 now. — Ed. 
 
MY COTJNTKYMBN. 325 
 
 Palmerston died the other day. Lord Palmerston 
 was England ; " the best type of our age and country," 
 the Times ■well called him ; he was " a great represen- 
 tative man, emphatically the English Minister;" the 
 interpreter of the wishes of that great middle class of 
 this country which supplies the mind, the will, and 
 the power requisite for all the great and good things 
 that have to be done, and therefore " acknowledged 
 by a whole people as their best impersonation." 
 Monsieur Thiers says of Pitt, that though he used 
 and abused the strength of England, she was the 
 second country in the w&rld at the time of his death, 
 and the first eight years afterwards. That was after 
 Waterloo and the triumphs of Wellington. And that 
 era of primacy and triumphs. Lord Palmerston, say 
 the English newspapers, has carried on to this hour. 
 "What Wellington was as a soldier, that was Pal- 
 merston as a statesman." When I read these words 
 in some foreign city or other, I could not help rubbing 
 my eyes and asking myself if I was dreaming. Why, 
 taking Lord Palmerston's career from 1830 (when he 
 first became Foreign Secretary) to his death, there 
 cannot be a shadow of doubt, for any one with eyes 
 and ears in his head, that he found England the first 
 Power in the world's estimation, and that he leaves 
 her the third, after France ^ and the United States. 
 I am no politician ; I mean no disparagement at all 
 to Lord Palmerston, to whose talents and qualities I 
 hope I can do justice; and indeed it is not Lord 
 Palmerston's policy, or any minister's policy, that is 
 ' Heu incredibiles humanamm rerum mutationes I — ^Ed. 
 
326 FEIBNDSHIP'S GAELAITD. 
 
 in question here, it is the policy of all of us, it is the 
 policy of England ; for in a government such as ours 
 is at present, it is only, as we are so often reminded, 
 by interpreting public opinion, by being "the best 
 type of his age and country," that a minister governs; 
 and Lord Palmerston's greatness lay precisely in our 
 all " acknowledging him as our best impersonation." 
 Well, then, to this our logic, our practical efforts in 
 the way of criticism, our clear manly intelligence 
 penetrating through sophisms and ignoring common- 
 places, and above all, our redoubtable phalanx pos- 
 sessing these advantages in the highest degree, our 
 great middle class, which makes Parliament, and which 
 supplies the mind, the will, and the power requisite for 
 all the great and good things that have to be done, 
 have brought us ; to the third place in the world's 
 estimation, instead of the first. He who disbelieves 
 it, let him go round to every embassy in Europe and 
 ask if it is not true. 
 
 The foreigners, indeed, are in no doubt as to the 
 real authors of the policy of modem England ; they 
 know that ours is no longer a policy of Pitts and 
 aristocracies, 1 disposing of every movement of the 
 hoodwinked nation to whom they dictate it; they 
 know that our policy is now dictated by the strong 
 middle part of England, — England happy, as Mr. 
 Lowe, quoting Aristotle, says, in having her middle 
 part strong and her extremes weak ; and that, though 
 we are administered by one of our weak extremes, 
 
 1 Aiminius ; he Bays it over again in his last letter but 
 one. — Ed. 
 
MY COUNTRYMEN. 327 
 
 the aristocracy, these managers administer us, as a 
 weak extreme naturally must, with a nervous atten- 
 tion to the wishes of the strong middle part, whose 
 agents they are. It was not the aristocracy which 
 made the Crimean war ; it was the strong middle 
 part — the constituencies. It was the strong middle 
 part which showered abuse and threats on Germany 
 for mishandling Denmark ; and when Germany gruffly 
 answered. Come and stop us, slapped its pockets, and 
 vowed that it had never had the slightest notion of 
 pushing matters as far as this. It was the strong 
 middle part which, by the voice of its favourite news- 
 papers, kept threatening Germany, after she had 
 snapped her fingers at us, with a future chastisement 
 from France, just as a smarting schoolboy threatens 
 his bully with a drubbing to come from some big boy 
 in the background. It was the strong middle part, 
 speaking through the same newspapers, which was 
 full of coldness, slights, and sermons for the American 
 Federals during their late struggle ; and as soon as 
 they had succeeded, discovered that it had always 
 wished them well, and that nothing was so much to 
 be desired as that the United States, and we, should 
 be the fastest friends possible. Some people will say 
 that the aristocracy was an equal offender in this 
 respect : very likely : but the behaviour of the strong 
 middle part makes more impression than the be- 
 haviour of a weak extreme ; and the more so, because 
 from the middle class, their fellows in numberless 
 ways, the Americans expected sympathy, while from 
 the aristocracy they expected none. And, in gene- 
 
328 FEIENDSHIP'S GAELA2TD. 
 
 ral, the faults with which foreigners reproach us in 
 the matters named, — rash engagement, intemperate 
 threatening, undignified retreat, ill-timed cordiality, — 
 are not the faults of an aristocracy, by nature in such 
 concerns prudent, reticent, dignified, sensitive on the 
 point of honour ; they are rather the faults of a rich 
 middle class, — testy, absolute, ill -acquainted with 
 foreign matters, a little ignoble, very dull to perceive 
 when it is making itself ridiculous. 
 
 I know the answer one gets at home when one 
 says that England is not very highly considered just 
 now on the Continent. There is first of all the envy 
 to account for it,^ — that of course ; and then our clear 
 intelligence is making a radical change in our way of 
 dealing with the Continent; the old, bad, aristocratical 
 policy of incessantly intermeddling with the affairs of 
 the Continent, — this it is getting rid of ; it is leaving 
 the miserable foreigners to themselves, to their wars, 
 despotisms, bureaucracy, and hatred of free, prosper- 
 ous England. A few inconveniences may arise before 
 the transition from our old policy to our new is fairly 
 accomplished, and we quite leave off the habit of 
 meddling where our own interests are not at stake. 
 We may be exposed to a Httle mortification in the 
 passage, but our clear intelligence wiU discern any 
 occasion where our interests are really at stake. Then 
 we shall come forward and prove ourselves as strong 
 as ever; and the foreigners, in spite of their envy, 
 know it. But what strikes me so much in all which 
 these foreigners say is, that it is just this clear in- 
 telligence of ours that they appear at the present 
 
MY COUNTEYMEN. 329 
 
 moment to hold cheap. Englishmen are often heard 
 complaining of the little gratitude foreign nations 
 show them for their sympathy, their good-wilL The 
 reason is, that the foreigners think that an English- 
 man's good-will to a foreign cause, or dislike to it, is 
 never grounded in a perception of its real merits and 
 bearings, but in some chance circumstance. They 
 say the Englishman never, in these cases, really com- 
 prehends the situation, and so they can never feel 
 him to be in living sympathy with them. I have got 
 into much trouble for calling my countrymen Philis- 
 tines, and all through these remarks I am determined 
 never to use that word ; but I wonder if there can 
 be anything offensive in calling one's countryman a 
 young man from the country. I hope not; and if 
 not, I should say, for the benefit of those who have 
 seen Mr. John Parry's amusing entertainment, that 
 England and Englishmen, holding forth on some great 
 crisis in a foreign country, — Poland, say, or Italy, — 
 are apt to have on foreigners very much the effect of 
 the young man from the country who talks to the 
 nursemaid after she has upset the perambulator. 
 There is a terrible crisis, and the discourse of the 
 young man from the country, excellent in itself, is 
 felt not to touch the crisis vitally. Nevertheless, on 
 he goes; the perambulator lies a wreck, the child 
 screams, the nursemaid wrings her hands, the old 
 gentleman storms, the policeman gesticulates, the 
 crowd thickens; still, that astonishing young man 
 talks on, serenely unconscious that he is not at the 
 centre of the situation. 
 
330 FRIENDSHIP'S GAELAITD. 
 
 Happening to be much thrown with certain 
 foreigners, who criticised England in this sort of way, 
 I used often to think what a short and ready way one 
 of our hard-hitting English newspapers would take 
 with these scomers, if they fell into its hands. But 
 being myseK a mere seeker for truth, with nothing 
 trenchant or authoritative about me, I could do no 
 more than look shocked and begin to ask questions. 
 "What!"! said, "you hold the England of to-day 
 cheap, and declare that we do not comprehend the 
 situation ; yet you rate the England of 1815 so high, 
 and call our fathers and grandfathers the foremost 
 people in Europe. Did they comprehend the situa- 
 tion better than we ? " " Yes," replied my foreign 
 friends, "the situation as they had it, a great deal 
 better. Their time was a time for energy, and 
 they succeeded in it, perfectly. Our time is a time 
 for intelligence, and you are not succeeding in it 
 at alL" 
 
 Though I could not hear without a shudder this 
 insult to the earnest good sense which, as the Morning 
 Star says, may be fairly set down as the general 
 characteristic of England and Englishmen everyTvhere, 
 yet I pricked up my ears when my companions talked 
 of energy, and England's success in a time for energy, 
 because I have always had a notion myself that 
 energy, — energy with honesty, — is England's great 
 force; a greater force to her, even, than her talent 
 for penetrating through sophisms and ignoring com- 
 monplaces ; so I begged my acquaintances to explain 
 a, little more fully to me what they meant. " Nothing 
 
MY COUNTRYMEN. 331 
 
 can be clearer," they answered. " Your TiTnes was 
 telling you the other day, with the enlightenment it 
 80 often shows at present, that instead of being proud 
 of Waterloo and the great war which was closed by 
 it, it really seemed as if you ought rather to feel 
 embarrassed at the recollection of them, since the 
 policy for which they were fought is grown obsolete ; 
 the world has taken a turn which was not Lord 
 Castlereagh's, and to look back on the great Tory 
 war is to look back upon an endless account of blood 
 and treasure wasted. Now, that is not so at all. 
 What France had in her head, from the Convention, 
 — faithful to the principles of the sovereignty of the 
 people, which will not permit them to acknowledge 
 an3rwhere the institutions militating against it, to 
 Napoleon, with his ' immense projects for assuring to 
 France the empire of the world,' — what she had in 
 "her head, along with many better and sounder notions 
 destined to happier fortune, was supremacy. She had 
 always a vision of a sort of federation of the States 
 of Europe under the primacy of France. Now to 
 this the world, whose progress no doubt lies in the 
 direction of more concert and common purpose among 
 nations, but these nations free, self -impelled, and 
 living each its own life, was not moving. Whoever 
 knocks to pieces a scheme of this sort does the world 
 a service. In antiquity, Roman empire had a scheme 
 of this sort, and much more. The barbarians knocked 
 it to pieces; — honour to the barbarians. In the 
 Middle Ages Frederick the Second had a scheme of 
 this sort. The Papacy knocked it to pieces ; — ^honour 
 
332 friendship's garland. 
 
 to the Papacy. In our own century, France had a 
 scheme of this sort. Your fathers knocked it to 
 pieces; — honour to your fathers. They were just 
 the people to do it. They had a vigorous lower 
 class, a vigorous middle class, and a vigorous aris- 
 tocracy. The lower class worked and fought, the 
 middle class found the money, and the aristocracy 
 wielded the whole. This aristocracy was high-spirited, 
 reticent, firm, despising frothy declamation. It had 
 all the qualities useful for its task and time ; Lord 
 Grenville's words, as early as 1793: 'England will 
 never consent that France shall arrogate the power 
 of annulling at her pleasure, and under the pretence 
 of a pretended natural right, the political system of 
 Europe,' — these few words, with their lofty strength, 
 contain, as one may say, the prophecy of future 
 success ; you hear the very voice of an aristocracy 
 standing on sure ground, and with the stars in its' 
 favour. Well, you succeeded, and in 1815, after 
 Waterloo, you were the first power in Europe. ' These 
 people have a secret,' we all said; 'they have dis- 
 cerned the way the world was going, and therefore 
 they have prevailed; while, on the other hand, the 
 "stars in their courses fought against Sisera.'" We 
 held you in the greatest respect; we tried to copy 
 your constitutional government ; we read your writers. 
 'After the peace,' says George Sand, 'the literature 
 of Great Britain crossed the straits, and came to reign 
 amongst us.' It reigned in Byron and Scott, voices of 
 the great aristocratical spirit which had just won the 
 victory: Scott expressing its robust, genial conser- 
 
MY COUNTRYMEN. 333 
 
 vatism, holding by a thousand roots to the past; 
 Byron its defiant force and indomitable pride. 
 
 "We believed in you for a good while; but 
 gradually it began to dawn upon us that the era for 
 which you had had the secret was over, and that a 
 new era, for which you had not the secret, was be- 
 ginning. The work of the old era was to prevent 
 the formation of a second Eoman empire, and to 
 maintain a store of free, rich, various national lives 
 for the future to work with and bring to harmony. 
 This was a work of force, of energy : it was a work 
 for an aristocratical power, since, as you yourself are 
 always saying, aristocracies, poor in ideas, are rich in 
 energy. You were a great aristocratical power, and 
 did it. But then came an era with another work, a 
 work of which it is the great glory of the French 
 Revolution (pardon us for saying so, we know it 
 makes some of your countrymen angry to hear it), 
 passionately to have embraced the idea : the work of 
 making human life, hampered by a past which it has 
 outgrown, natural and rational. This is a work of 
 intelligence, and in intelligence an aristocratic power, 
 as you know, does not so much shine. Accordingly, 
 since the world has been steadily moving this way, 
 you seem to have lost your secret, and we are gradu- 
 ally ceasing to believe in you. You will say, perhaps, 
 that England is no longer an aristocratical power, but 
 a middle-class power, wielded by an industrial middle 
 class, as the England of your fathers was wielded by 
 a territorial aristocracy. This may be so; and in- 
 deed, as the style, carriage, and policy of England 
 
334 FEIENDSHIP'S GARLAND. 
 
 have of late years been by no means those of an 
 aristocratical power, it probably is so. But whatever 
 class dictates it, your course, allow us to say, has not 
 of late years been intelligent ; has not, at any rate, 
 been successful. And depend upon it, a nation who 
 has the secret of her era, who discerns which way 
 the world is going, is successful, keeps rising. Can 
 you yourselves, with all your powers of self-satisfac- 
 tion, suppose that the Crimean war raised you, or 
 that your Indian mutiny raised you, or that your 
 attitude in the Italian war raised you, as your per- 
 formances at the beginning of the century raised youl 
 Surely you cannot. You held your own, if you will ; 
 you showed tenacity; you saved yourselves from 
 disaster; but you did not raise yourselves, did not 
 advance one jot. Can you, on the other hand, sup- 
 pose that your attitude in the Danish business, in 
 the American business, has not lowered youl You 
 are losing the instinct which tells people how the 
 world is going ; you are beginning to make mistakes ; 
 you are falling out of the front rank. The era of 
 aristocracies is over ; nations must now stand or fall 
 by the intelligence of their middle class and their 
 people. The people with you is still an embryo ; no 
 one can yet quite say what it will come to. You 
 lean, therefore, with your whole weight upon the 
 intelligence of your middle class. And intelligence, 
 in the true sense of the word, your middle class has 
 absolutely none." 
 
 I was aghast. I thought of this great class, every 
 morning and evening extolled for its clear, manly 
 
MY COUNTRYMEN. 335 
 
 intelligence by a hundred vigorous and influential 
 writers; and though the fine enthusiasm of these 
 writers had always seemed to me to be carrying them 
 a little too far, and I had even been guilty of the 
 indecency of now and then calling my countrymen 
 Philistines, these foreign critics struck me as passing 
 all bounds, and quite out-Heroding Herod. Fortun- 
 ately I had just received from England a copy of Mr. 
 Lowe's powerful and much -admired speech against 
 Eeform. I took it out of my pocket. " Now," said 
 I to my envious, carping foreigners, "just listen to 
 me. You say that the early years of this century 
 were a time for energy, and we did well in them ; 
 you say that the last thirty or forty years have been 
 a time for intelligence, and we have done ill in them. 
 Mr. Lowe shall answer you. Here is his reading of 
 our last thirty or forty years' history, as made by our 
 middle-class Parliament, as he calls it; by a Parlia- 
 ment, therefore, filled by the mind and will of this 
 great class whose rule you disparage. Mr. Lowe 
 says : ' The seven Houses of Commons that have sate 
 since the Eeform Bill have performed exploits un- 
 rivalled, not merely in the six centuries during which 
 Parliament has existed, but in the whole history of 
 representative assemblies.' He says: 'Look at the 
 noble work, the heroic work which the House of 
 Commons has performed within these thirty -five 
 years. It has gone through and revised every institu- 
 tion of the country; it has scanned our trade, our 
 colonies, our laws, and our municipal institutions; 
 everything that was complained of, everything that 
 
336 FEIENDSHIP'S 6AELAKD. 
 
 had grown distasteful, has been touched with success 
 and moderation by the amending hand. And to such 
 a point have these amendments been carried, that 
 when gentlemen come to argue this question, and do 
 all in their power to get up a practical grievance, 
 they fail ia suggesting even one.' There is what Mr. 
 Lowe says. You see we have nothing left to desire, 
 absolutely nothing. As Mr. Lowe himself goes on : 
 'With all this continued peace, contentment, happi- 
 ness, and prosperity, — England in its present state of 
 development and civilisation, — the mighty fabric of 
 English prosperity, — what can we want more t ' 
 Evidently nothing ! therefore to propose ' for England 
 to make a step in the direction of democracy is the 
 strangest and wildest proposition ever broached by 
 man.' People talk of America. 'In America the 
 working classes are the masters ; does anybody doubt 
 that 1 ' And compare, Mr. Lowe means, England, as 
 the middle class is making her, with America, as the 
 working classes are making her. How entirely must 
 the comparison turn to the advantage of the English 
 middle class ! Then, finally, as to the figure we cut 
 in the eyes of the world, our grandeur and our future, 
 here is a crowning sentence, worthy of Lord Macaulay 
 himself, whose style Mr. Lowe enthusiastically ad- 
 mires : ' The destiny of Englamd is in the great heart of 
 Englcmd/'" 
 
 Mr. Bright had not then made his famous speech 
 about the misdeeds of the Tories, but, if he had, I 
 should certainly have added that our middle class, 
 by these unrivalled exploits of theirs, had not only 
 
Wi COUNTRYMEN. 337 
 
 raised their country to an unprecedented height of 
 greatness, but had also saved our fooUsh and obstruc- 
 tive aristocracy from being emptied into the Thames. 
 As it was, however, what I had urged, or rather 
 what I had borrowed from Mr. Lowe, seemed to me 
 exceedingly forcible, and I looked anxiously for its 
 effect on my hearers. They did not appear so much 
 disconcerted as I had hoped. "Undoubtedly," they 
 said, " the coming of your middle class to power was 
 a natural, salutary event, to be blessed, not anathe- 
 matised. Aristocracies cannot deal with a time for 
 intelligence ; their sense is for facts, not ideas. The 
 world of ideas is the possible, the future ; the world 
 of aristocracies is the estabhshed, the past, which has 
 made their fortune, and which they hope to prolong. 
 No doubt, too, your middle class found a great deal 
 of commercial and social business waiting to be done, 
 which your aristocratic governments had left undone, 
 and had no talents for doing. Their talents were for 
 other times and tasks j for curbing the power of the 
 Crown when other classes were too inconsiderable to 
 do it ; for managing (if one compares them with other 
 aristocracies) their afiairs and their dependants with 
 vigour, prudence, and moderation, during the feudal 
 and patriarchal stage of society; for wielding the 
 force of their country against foreign powers with 
 energy, firmness, and dignity. But then came the 
 modem spirit, the modem time ; the notion, as we 
 say, of making human life more natural and rational, 
 — or, as your philosophers say, of getting the greatest 
 happiness for the greatest number. Have you suc- 
 
 VOL. III. Z 
 
338 friendship's gaeland. 
 
 ceeded, are you succeeding, in this hour of the many, 
 as your aristocracy succeeded in the hour of the few 1 
 You say you are : you point to ' the nohle work, the 
 heroic work which the House of Commons has per- 
 formed within these last thirty-five years ; everything 
 that was complained of, everything that had grown 
 distasteful, has been touched with success and modera- 
 tion by the amending hand.' Allow us to set clap- 
 trap on one side ; we are not at one of your public 
 meetings. What is the modem problem? to make 
 human life, the life of society, all through, more 
 natural and rational; to have the greatest possible 
 number of one's nation happy. Here is the standard 
 by which we are to try ourselves and one another 
 now, as national grandeur, in the old regal and aristo- 
 cratical conception of it, was the standard formerly. 
 Every nation must have wished to be in England in 
 1815, tried by the old standard : must we aU wish to 
 be England, in 1865, tried by the new standard? 
 Your aristocracy, you say, is as splendid, as fortunate, 
 as enviable as ever : very likely ; but all the world 
 cannot be aristocracy. What do you make of the 
 mass of your society, of its vast middle and lower 
 portion 1 Are we to envy you your common people ; 
 is our common people to wish to change places with 
 yours ; are we to say that you, more than we, have 
 the modem secret here ? Without insisting too much 
 on the stories of misery and degradation which are 
 perpetually reaching us, we will say that no one can 
 mix with a great crowd in your country, no one can 
 walk with his eyes and ears open through the poor 
 
MY COUNTKYMEN. 339 
 
 quarters of your large towns, and not feel that youi 
 common people, as it meets one's eyes, is at present 
 more raw, to say the very least, less enviable-looking, 
 further removed from civilised and humane life, than 
 the common people almost anywhere. Well, then, 
 you are not a success, according to the modem stan- 
 dard, with your common people. Are you a success 
 with your middle class 1 They have the power now ; 
 what have they made of themselves ? what sort of a 
 life is theirs 1 A life more natural, more rational, 
 fuller of happiness, more enviable, therefore, than 
 the life of the middle classes on the Continent? 
 Yes, you wiU say, because the English middle class 
 is the most industrious and the richest. But it is 
 just here that you go a great deal too fast, and so 
 deceive yourselves. What brings about, or rather 
 tends to bring about, a natural, rational life, satis- 
 fying the modem spirit 1 This : the growth of a 
 love of industry, trade, and wealth ; the growth of a 
 love of the things of the mind ; and the growth of 
 a love of beautiful things. There are body, intelli- 
 gence, and soul all taken care of. Of these three 
 factors of modern life, your middle class has no 
 notion of any but one, the first. Their love of 
 industry, trade, and wealth, is certainly prodigious ; 
 and their example has done us a great deal of good ; 
 we, too, are beginning to get this love, and we 
 wanted it. But what notion have they of anything 
 else? Do but look at them, look at their lives. 
 Some of us know your middle class very well; a 
 great deal better than your own upper class in 
 
340 friendship's gaeland. 
 
 general knows them. Your middle class is edu- 
 cated, to begin with, in the worst schools of youi 
 country, and our middle class is educated in the 
 best of ours. What becomes of them after thati 
 The fineness and capacity of a man's spirit is shown 
 by his enjoyments ; your middle class has an enjoy- 
 ment in its business, we admit, and gets on well 
 in business, and makes money ; but beyond that ? 
 Drugged with business, your middle class seems to 
 have its sense blunted for any stimulus besides, 
 except religion j it has a religion, narrow, unintelli- 
 gent, repulsive. All sincere religion does something 
 for the spirit, raises a man out of the bondage of his 
 merely bestial part, and saves him j but the religion 
 of your middle class is the very lowest form of intelli- 
 gential life which one can imagine as saving. What 
 other enjoyments have they? The newspapers, a 
 sort of eating and drinking which are not to our 
 taste, a literature of books almost entirely religious 
 or semi -religious, books utterly unreadable by an 
 educated class anywhere, but which your middle 
 class consumes, they say, by the hundred thousand ; 
 and in their evenings, for a great treat, a lecture on 
 teetotalism or nunneries. Can any life be imagined 
 more hideous, more dismal, more unenviable? Com- 
 pare it with the life of our middle class as you have 
 seen it on the Ehine this summer, or at Lausanne, or 
 Zurich. The world of enjoyment, so liberalising and 
 civilising, belongs to the middle classes there, as well 
 as the world of business ; the whole world is theirs, 
 they possess life ; in England the highest class seems 
 
MY COUNTKYMBN. 341 
 
 to have the monopoly of the world of enjoyment, the 
 middle class enjoys itself, as your Shakspeare would 
 say, in hugger-mugger, and possesses life only by 
 reading in the newspapers, which it does devoutly, 
 the doings of great people. Well, then, we do not 
 at all want to be as your middle class ; we want to 
 learn from it to do business and to get rich, and this 
 we are learning a great deal faster than you think ; 
 but we do not, like your middle class, fix our con- 
 summation here : we have a notion of a whole world 
 besides, not dreamed of in your middle class's philo- 
 sophy ; so they, too, like your common people, seem 
 to us no success. They may be the masters of the 
 modem time with you, but they are not solving its 
 problem. They cannot see the way the world is 
 going, and the future does not belong to them. 
 Talk of the present state of development and civilisa- 
 tion of England, meaning England as they represent it 
 to us ! Why, the capital, pressing danger of England, 
 is the barbarism of her middle class ; the civihsation 
 of her middle class is England's capital, pressing want." 
 
 " Well, but," said I, still catching at Mr. Lowe's 
 powerful help, "the Parliament of this class has 
 performed exploits unrivalled not merely in the six 
 centuries during which Parliament has existed, but 
 in the whole history of representative assemblies. 
 The exploits are there; all the reforms we have 
 made in the last five-and-thirty years." 
 
 "Let us distinguish," replied the envious foreigners, 
 "let us distinguish. We named three poyers, — did 
 we not 1 — which go to spread that rational humane 
 
342 FRIENDSHIP'S GAELAND. 
 
 life which is the aim of modern society : the love of 
 wealth, the love of intelligence, the love of beauty, 
 Your middle class, we agreed, has the first ; its com- 
 mercial legislation, accordingly, has been very good, 
 and in advance of that of foreign countries. Not 
 that free-trade was really brought about by your 
 middle class : it was brought about, as important 
 reforms always are, by two or three great men. 
 However, let your middle class, which had the sense 
 to accept free trade, have the credit of it. But this 
 only brings us a certain way. The legislation of your 
 middle class in all that goes to give human life more 
 intelligence and beauty, is no better than was to be 
 expected from its own want of both. It is nothing 
 to say that its legislation in these respects is an 
 improvement upon what you had before ; that is not 
 the question ; you are holding up its achievements 
 as absolutely admirable, as unrivalled, as a model to 
 us. You may have done, — for you, — much for 
 religious toleration, social improvement, public in- 
 struction, municipal reform, law reform; but the 
 French Eevolution and its consequences have done, 
 upon the Continent, a great deal more. Such a 
 spectacle as your Irish Church Establishment^ you 
 cannot find in France or Germany. Your Irish 
 land-question you hardly dare to face ^ — Stein settled 
 as threatening a land -question in Prussia. Of the 
 schools for your middle class we have already spoken; 
 while these schools are what they are, while the 
 
 ^ It IS gone, thanks to Anti-State-Churoh-ism ! — Eb. 
 ' We have faced it I— Ed. 
 
MY COUNTRYMEN. 343 
 
 schools for your poor are maintained in the expensive, 
 unjust, irrational way they are, England is full of 
 endowments and foundations, capable by themselves, 
 if properly applied, of putting your public education 
 on a much better footing. In France and Germany 
 all similar funds are thus employed, having been 
 brought under public responsible management; in 
 England they are left to private irresponsible manage- 
 ment, and are, in nine cases out of ten, wasted. You 
 talk of municipal reform ; and cities and the manner 
 of life in them have, for the modem business of 
 promoting a more rational and humane life in the 
 great body of the community, incalculable import- 
 ance. Do you suppose we should tolerate in France, 
 Germany, Switzerland, Italy, your London corpora- 
 tion and London vestries, and London as they make 
 it? In your provincial towns you do better; but 
 even there, do the municipalities show a tenth part 
 either of the intelligence or the care for the ends, as 
 we have laid them down, of modem society, that our 
 municipalities show 1 Your middle class man thinks 
 it the highest pitch of development and civilisation 
 when his letters are carried twelve times a day from 
 Islington to Camberwell, and from GamberweU to 
 Islington, and if railway-trains run to and fro between 
 them every quarter of an hour. He thinks it is 
 nothing that the trains only carry him from an 
 illiberal, dismal life at Islington to an illiberal, dismal 
 life at Camberwell; and the letters only tell him 
 that such is the life there. A Swiss burgher takes 
 heaven knows how many hours to go up from Berne 
 
344 FRIENDSHIP'S OAKLAND 
 
 to Geneva, and his trains are very few ; this is an 
 extreme on the other side ; but compare the life the 
 Swiss burgher finds or leaves at Beme or Geneva 
 with the life of the middle class in your English 
 towns. Or else you think to cover everything by 
 saying : ' "We are free ! we are free ! Our newspapers 
 can say what they like ! ' Freedom, like Industry, is 
 a very good horse to ride ; — but to ride somewhere. 
 You seem to think that you have only got to get 
 on the back of your horse Freedom, or your horse 
 Industry, and to ride away as hard as you can, to 
 be sure of coming to the right destination. If your 
 newspapers can say what they like, you think you 
 are sure of being well advised. That comes of your 
 inaptitude for ideas, and aptitude for clap-trap ; you 
 can never see the two sides of a question; never 
 perceive that every human state of things, even a 
 good one, has its inconveniences. We can see the 
 conveniences of your state well enough; and the 
 inconveniences of ours, of newspapers not free, and 
 prefects over-busy ; and there are plenty of us who 
 proclaim them. You eagerly repeat after us all we 
 say that redounds to your honour and glory ; but you 
 never follow our example yourselves. You are full 
 of acuteness to perceive the ill influence of our prefects 
 on us ; but if any one says to you, in your turn : 
 ' The English system of a great landed aristocracy ^ 
 
 ' What a contrast between this Jaoobinismand the noble senti. 
 ments of Barrow : " Men will never be heartily loyal and sub- 
 missive to authority till they become really good ; nor will they 
 ever be very good, till they see their leaders such." I remembEff 
 
MT COUNTKYMEN. 345 
 
 keeps your lower class a lower class for ever, and 
 materialises and vulgarises your whole middle class,' 
 — you stare vacantly at the speaker, you cannot 
 even take in his ideas ; you can only blurt forth, in 
 reply, some clap -trap or other about a 'system of 
 such tried and tested efficiency as no other country 
 was ever happy enough to possess since the world 
 was a world.' " 
 
 I have observed in my travels, that most young 
 gentlemen of our highest class go through Europe, 
 from Calais to Constantinople, with one sentence on 
 their lips, and one idea in their minds, which suffices, 
 apparently, to explain all that they see to them : 
 Foreigners don't viash. No doubt, thought I to myself, 
 my friends have fallen in with some distinguished 
 young Britons of this sort, and had their feelings 
 wounded by them ; hence their rancour against our 
 aristocracy. And as to our middle class, foreigners 
 have no notion how much this class, with us, contains; 
 how many shades and gradations in it there are, and 
 how little what is said of one part of it will apply to 
 another. Something of this sort I could not help 
 urging aloud. " You do not know," I said, " that 
 there is broken off, as one may say, from the top of 
 our middle class, a large fragment, which receive the 
 best education the country can give, the same educa- 
 tion as our aristocracy ; which is perfectly intelligent 
 
 once quoting this passage to Arminius at tlie time when we were 
 all fuU of the Mordaunt trial. "Yes," remarked Arminius, in 
 his thoughtful manner, " that is what makes your Lord Coles 
 so inexpressibly precious ! " But was this an answer ? I say, 
 not.— Ed. 
 
346 FEIENDSHIP'S GARLAND. 
 
 and which enjoys life perfectly. These men do the 
 main part of our intellectual work, write all our best 
 newspapers ; and cleverer people, I assure you, are 
 nowhere to be found." 
 
 " Clever enough," was the answer, " but they show 
 not much intelligence, in the true sense of the word, 
 — not much intelligence of the way the world is 
 going. Whether it is that they must try to hit your 
 current public opinion, which is not intelUgent ; 
 whether it is that, having been, as you say, brought 
 up with your aristocracy, they have been too much 
 influenced by it, have taken, half insensibly, an aris- 
 tocracy's material standard, and do not believe in 
 ideas ; certain it is that their intelligence has no 
 ardour, no plan, leads them nowhere ; it is ineffectual. 
 Your intellect is at this moment, to an almost un- 
 unexampled degree, without influence on the intellect 
 of Europe." 
 
 While this was being said, I noticed an Italian,^ 
 who was one of our party, fumbling with his pocket- 
 book, from whence he presently produced a number 
 of gray newspaper slips, which I could see were 
 English. " Now just hsten to me for a moment," he 
 cried, " and I will show you what makes us say, on 
 the Continent, that you English have no sense for 
 logic, for ideas, and that your praise and blame, 
 having no substantial foundation, are worth very 
 little. You remember the famous French pamphlet 
 before our war began in 1859 : Napoleon the Third and 
 Italy. The pamphlet appealed, in the French way, to 
 ' Little Pompeo Pococurante. Almost all tlie rest is Arminius. 
 
MY CODNTKYMEN. 347 
 
 reason and first principles ; the upshot of it was this : 
 ' The treaties which hind gOYemments would be in- 
 variable only if the world was immoYahle. A power 
 which should intrench itself behind treaties in order 
 to resist modifications demanded by general feeling 
 wotild have doubtless on her side an acquired right, 
 but she would have against her moral right and imi- 
 versal conscience.' You English, on the other hand, 
 took your stand on things as they were : ' If treaties 
 are made,' said your Times, 'they must be respected. 
 Tear one, and all are waste paper.' Very well ; this 
 is a policy, at any rate, an aristocratical policy ; much 
 may be said for it. The Times was full of contempt 
 for the French pamphlet, an essay, as it called it, 
 'conveying the dreams of an agitator expressed in 
 the language of an academician.' It said : 'No one 
 accustomed to the pithy comments with which liberty 
 notices passing history, can read such a production 
 without complacency that he does not live in the 
 country which produces it. To see the heavy ap- 
 paratus of an essay brought out to solve a question 
 on which men have corresponded and talked and 
 speculated in the funds, and acted in the most prac- 
 tical manner possible for a month past, is as strange 
 as if we beheld some spectral review,' and so on. 
 Still very well ; there is the strong practical man 
 despising theories and reveries. 'The sentiment of 
 race is just now threatening to be exceedingly trouble- 
 some. It is to a considerable extent in our days 
 a literary revival.' That is all to the same effect. 
 Then came a hitch in our affairs, and fortune seemed 
 
348 friendship's garland. 
 
 as if she was going to give, as she often does give, 
 the anti-theorists a triumph. ' The Italian plot,' cried 
 the Times, ' has failed. The Emperor and his familiars 
 knew not the moral strength which is still left in 
 the enlightened communities of Europe. To the 
 unanimous and indignant reprobation of English 
 opinion is due the failure of the imperial plots. 
 While silence and fear reign everywhere abroad, the 
 eyes and ears of the Continent are turned continually 
 to these Islands. English opinion has been erected 
 into a kind of Areopagus.' Our business went for- 
 ,ward again, and your English opinion grew very stem 
 indeed. ' Sardinia,' said the Times, ' is told very 
 plainly that she has deserted the course by which 
 alone she could hope either to be happy or great, and 
 abandoned herself to the guidance of fatal delusions, 
 which are luring her on to destruction. By cultivat- 
 ing the arts of peace she would have been solving, in 
 the only possible way, the difficult problem of Italian 
 independence. She has been taught by France to 
 look instead to the acquisition of fresh territory by 
 war and conquest. She has now been told with per- 
 fect truth by the warning voice of the British Parliar 
 ment that she has not a moment to lose in retracing 
 her steps, if indeed her penitence be not too late. 
 Well, to make a long story short, we did not retrace 
 our steps ; we went on, as you know ; we succeeded ; 
 and now let us make a jump from the spring to the 
 autumn. Here is your unanimous English opinion, 
 here is your Areopagus, here is your Times, in Octo- 
 ber : ' It is very irregular (Sardinia's course), it is 
 
MT COUNTRYMEN. 349 
 
 contrary to all diplomatic forms. Francis the Second 
 can show a thousand texts of international law against 
 it. Yes ; but there are extremities beyond all law, 
 and there are laws which existed before even society 
 was formed. There are laws which are implanted in 
 our nature, and w:hich form part of the human mind,' 
 and so on. Why, here you have entirely boxed the 
 compass and come roimd from the aristocratical pro- 
 gramme to the programme of the French pamphlet, 
 ' the dreams of an agitator in the language of an 
 academician ! ' And you approved not only our pre- 
 sent but our past, and kindly took off your ban of 
 reprobation issued in February. ' How great a change 
 has been effected by the wisely courageous poUcy of 
 Sardinia ! The firmness and boldness which have 
 raised Italy from degradation form the enduring 
 character of a ten years' policy. King Victor Em- 
 manuel and his sagacious counsellor have achieved 
 success by remembering that fortune favours the 
 bold.' There you may see why the mind of France 
 influences the Continent so much and the mind ol 
 England so little. France has intelligence enough to 
 perceive the ideas that are moving, or are likely to 
 move, the world ; she believes in them, sticks to them, 
 and shapes her course to suit them. You neither 
 perceive them nor believe in them, but you play with 
 them like counters, taking them up and laying them 
 down at random, and following really some turn of 
 your imagination, some gust of liking or disliking. 
 When I heard some of your countrjrmen complaining 
 of Italy and her ingratitude for English sympathy, I 
 
350 miENDSHIP's GAELAND. 
 
 made, to explain it, the collection of those extracts 
 and of a good many more. They are all at your 
 service ; I have some here from the Satwrday Beview, 
 which you will find exactly follow suit with those 
 from the Times." "No, thank you," I answered. 
 " The Times is enough. My relations with the 
 Satwday Beview are rather tight-stretched, as you say 
 here, already; make me a party to none of your 
 quarrels with them." 
 
 After this my original tormentor ^ once more took 
 up his parable. " You see now what I meant,'' he 
 said, " by saying that you did better in the old time, 
 in the day of aristocracies. Au aristocracy has no 
 ideas, but it has a policy, — to resist change. In this 
 policy it believes, it sticks to it ; when it is beaten in 
 it, it holds its tongue. This is respectable, at any 
 rate. But your great middle class, as you call it, 
 your present governing power, having no policy, ex- 
 cept that of doing a roaring trade, does not know 
 what to be at hi great affairs, — blows hot and cold 
 by turns, makes itself ridiculous, in short. It was a 
 good aristocratical policy to have helped Austria in 
 the Italian war ; it was a good aristocratical policy to 
 have helped the South in the American war. The 
 days of aristocratical policy are over for you; with 
 your new middle -class public opinion you cut, in 
 Italy, the figure our friend here has just shown you ; 
 in America you scold right and left, you get up a 
 monster -memorial to deprecate the further effusion 
 of blood; you lament over the abridgment of civil 
 ' Aiminius, of course. 
 
MY COUNTRYMEN. 351 
 
 liberty by people engaged in a struggle for life and 
 death, and meaning to win : and when they turn a 
 deaf ear to you and win, you say, 'Oh, now let us 
 be one great united Anglo-Saxon family and astonish 
 the world ! ' This is just of a piece with your 
 threatening Germany with the Emperor of the 
 French. Do you not see that all these blunders dis- 
 pose the Americans, who are very shrewd, and who 
 have been succeeding as steadily as you have been 
 failing, to answer : ' We have got the lead, no thanks 
 to you, and we mean to astonish the world without 
 you 1 ' Unless you change, unless your middle class 
 grows more intelligent, you will tell upon the world 
 less and less, and end by being a second Holland. We 
 do not hold you cheap for sajring you will wash your 
 hands of all concerns but your own, that you do not 
 care a rush for influence in Europe ; though this 
 sentence of your Lord Bolingbroke is true : ' The 
 opinion of mankind, which is fame after death, is 
 superior strength and power in life.' We hold you 
 cheap because you show so few signs, except in the 
 one department of industry, of understanding your 
 time and its tendencies, and of exhibiting a modem 
 life which shall be a signal success. And the reaction 
 is the stronger, because, after 1815, we believed in you 
 as nowadays we are coming to believe in America. 
 You had won the last game, and we thought you had 
 your hand full of trumps, and were going to win the 
 next. Now the game has begun to be played, and we 
 have an inkling of what your cards are ; we shrewdly 
 suspect you have scarcely any trumps at alL" 
 
352 FEIENDSHIP'S GAKLASD. 
 
 I am no arguer, as is well known, "and every 
 puny whipster gets my sword."-' So, instead of 
 making bad worse by a lame answer, I held my 
 tongue, consoling myself with the thought that these 
 foreigners get from us, at any rate, plenty of Rolands 
 for any stray Oliver they may have the luck to give 
 us. I have since meditated a good deal on what was 
 then said, but I cannot profess to be yet quite clear 
 about it. However, all due deductions made for 
 envy, exaggeration, and injustice, enough stuck by 
 me of these remarks on our logic, criticism, and love 
 of intelligence, to determine me to go on trying 
 (taking care, of course, to steer clear of indecency) 
 to keep my mind fixed on these, instead of singing 
 hosannahs to our actual state of development and 
 civilisation. The old recipe, to think a little more 
 and bustle a little less, seemed to me still the best 
 recipe to follow. So I take comfort when I find the 
 Guardian reproaching me with having no influence ; 
 for I know what influence means, — a party, practical 
 proposals, action ; and I say to myself : "Even sup- 
 pose I could get some followers, and assemble them, 
 brimming with affectionate enthusiasm, in a com- 
 mittee-room at some inn; what on earth should I 
 say to them ? what resolutions could I propose ? I 
 could only propose the old Socratic commonplace. 
 Know thyself; and how black they would all look at 
 that ! " No j to inquire, perhaps too curiously, what 
 that present state of English development and civUisa- 
 
 ■^ And this is why it was peculiarly unlucky for me to be 
 thrown so much with Arminius, who loved arguing. — En. 
 
MY OOUNTETMEN. 353 
 
 tion is, which according to Mr. Lowe is so perfect 
 that to give votes to the working class is stark mad- 
 ness ; and, on the other hand, to be less sanguine 
 about the divine and saving effect of a vote on its 
 possessor than my friends in the committee-room at 
 the " Spotted Dog," — that is my inevitable portion. 
 To bring things under the light of one's inteUigence, 
 to see how they look there, to accustom oneself simply 
 to regard the Marylebone Vestry, or the Educational 
 Home, or the Irish Church Estabhshment, or our 
 railway management, or our Divorce Court, or our 
 gin-palaces open on Sunday and the Crystal Palace 
 shut, as absurdities, — ^that is, I am sure, invaluable 
 exercise for us just at present. Let all persist in it 
 who can, and steadily set their desires on introducing, 
 with time, a little more soul and spirit into the too, 
 too solid flesh of English society. 
 
 I have a friend who is very sanguine, in spite of 
 the dismal croakings of these foreigners, about the 
 turn things are even now taking amongst us. " Mean 
 and ignoble as our middle class looks," he says, " it 
 has this capital virtue, it has seriousness. With 
 frivolity, cultured or uncultured, you can do nothing; 
 but with seriousness there is always hope. Then, too, 
 the present bent of the world towards amusing itself, 
 so perilous to the highest class, is curative and good 
 for our middle class. A piano in a Quaker's drawing- 
 room is a step for him to more humane life ; nay, 
 perhaps, even the penny gaff of the poor East Lon- 
 doner is a step for him to more humane life ; it is, — 
 what example shall we choose? it is Strathmore, let 
 
 VOL. m. 2 a 
 
354 FEIENDSmP'S GAELAND. 
 
 US say,' — it is the one-pound-eleven-and-sixpenny gafi 
 of the young gentlemen of the clubs and the young 
 ladies of Belgravia, that is for them hut a step in the 
 primrose path to the everlasting bonfire. Besides, 
 say what you like of the idealessness of aristocracies, 
 the vulgarity of our middle class, the immaturity of 
 our lower, and the poor chance which a happy type 
 of modem life has between them, consider this : Of 
 all that makes life liberal and humane, — of light, of 
 ideas, of culture, — every man in every class of society 
 who has a dash of genius in him is the born friend. 
 By his bringiag up, by his habits, by his interest, he 
 may be their enemy; by the primitive, unalterable 
 complexion of his nature, he is their friend. There- 
 fore, the movement of the modern spirit will be more 
 and more felt among us, it will spread, it will prevail. 
 Nay," this enthusiast often continues, getting excited 
 as he goes on, " the Times itself, which so stirs some 
 people's indignation, — what is the Times but a gigantic 
 Sancho Panza, to borrow a phrase of your friend 
 Heine; — a gigantic Sancho Panza, following by an 
 attraction he cannot resist that poor, mad, scorned, 
 suffering, sublime enthusiast, the modern spirit ; fol- 
 lowing it, indeed, with constant grumbling, expostu- 
 lation, and opposition, with airs of protection, of com- 
 passionate superiority, with an incessant byplay of 
 nods, shrugs, and winks addressed to the spectators ; 
 following it, in short, with all the incurable recalci- 
 trancy of a lower nature, but still following iti" 
 When my friend talks thus, I always shake my head, 
 and say that this sounds very like the transcenden 
 
MT COUNTETMEN. 355 
 
 talism which has already brought me into so many 
 scrapes. 
 
 I have another friend again (and I am grown so 
 cowed by all the rebuke my original speculations have 
 drawn upon me that I find myself more and more 
 filling the part of a mere listener), who calls himself 
 Anglo-Saxon rather than English,^ and this is what 
 he says: "We are a small country,'' he says, "and 
 our middle class has, as you say, not much gift for 
 anything but making money. Our freedom and 
 wealth have given us a great start, our capital will 
 give us for a long time an advantage ; but as other 
 countries grow better governed and richer, we must 
 necessarily sink to the position to which our size, and 
 our want of any eminent gift for telling upon the world 
 spiritually, doom us. But look at America ; it is the 
 same race ; whether we are first or they, Anglo-Saxon- 
 ism triumphs. You used to say that they had all the 
 Philistinism of the English middle class from which 
 they spring, and a great many faults of their own 
 besides. But you noticed, too, that, blindly as they 
 seemed following in general the star of their god 
 Buncombe, they showed, at the same time, a feeling 
 for ideas, a vivacity and play of mind, which our 
 middle class has not, and which comes to the Ameri- 
 cans, probably, from their democratic life, with its 
 ardent hope, its forward stride, its gaze fixed on the 
 future. Well, since these great events have lately 
 come to purge and form them, how is this intelligence 
 
 ' Not tte talented author of Oreater Britain, though tha 
 reader might be inclined to suppose so. — Ed. 
 
356 FEDENDSHIP'S 6AELAND. 
 
 of theirs developing itself? Now they are manifesting 
 a quick sense to see how the world is really going, and 
 a sure faith, indispensahle to all nations that are to 
 be great, that greatness is only to be reached by going 
 that way and no other? And then, if you talk of 
 culture, look at the culture their middle, and even 
 their working class is getting, as compared with the 
 culture ours are getting. The trash which circulates 
 by the hundred thousand among our middle class has 
 no readers in America ; our rubbish is for home con- 
 sumption ; aU our best books, books which are read 
 here only by the small educated class, are in America 
 the books of the great reading public. So over there 
 they will advance spiritually as well as materially: 
 and if our race at last flowers to modem life there, 
 and not here, does it so much matter 1" So says my 
 friend, who is, as I premised, a devotee of Anglo- 
 Saxonism ; I, who share his pious frenzy but imper- 
 fectly, do not feel quite satisfied with these plans of 
 vicarious greatness, and have a longing for this old 
 and great country of ours to be always great in her- 
 self, not only in her progeny. So I keep looking at 
 her, and thinking of her ; and as often as I consider 
 how history is a series of waves, coming gradually to 
 a head and then breaking, and that, as the successive 
 waves come up, one nation is seen at the top of this 
 wave, and then another of the next, I ask myself, 
 counting all the waves which have come up with 
 England at the top of them : When the great wave 
 which is now mounting has come up, will she be at the 
 top of it 1 Ilia iMl, nee me gtuarentem vama moraiwJ — 
 
MY COUNTRYMEN. 367 
 
 " Yes, we arraign her ; but she, 
 The weary Titan, with deaf 
 Ears, and labour-dimm'd eyes, 
 Regarding neither to right 
 Nor left, goes passively by. 
 Staggering on to her goal ; 
 Bearing, on shoulders immense, 
 Atlant^an, the load, 
 Wellnigh not to be borne, 
 Of the too vast orb of her fate." 
 
 (A Feenchman signing himself " Horace," — ^not one 
 of our own set, but a person full of intellect, — wrote 
 to the Editor of the Pdl Mall Gazette a sort of elec- 
 tioneering letter from Paris in answer to the foregoing 
 essay, saying what blessings our liberty and publicity 
 were, and how miserable the French middle class was 
 without them. I cannot do better than conclude with 
 the answer I made to him, from which it will appear, 
 I hope, how courteous was always my moderation 
 when I was left to myself, and had not Arminius at 
 my elbow to make me say what he chose. I should 
 premise that " My Countrymen " had been received 
 with such a storm of obloquy, that for several months 
 after its appearance I was in hiding ; — not, indeed, 
 leaving Grub Street, but changing my lodgings there 
 repeatedly. ) — ^Ed. 
 
A COURTEOUS EXPLANATION. 
 
 gjjj Geub Stkebt, March 19, 1866. 
 
 Although I certainly am rather pained to find 
 myself, after my long and arduous labours for the 
 deliverance from Philistinism of this nation in general, 
 and the civilisation and embellishment of our great 
 middle class in particular, an object of aversion and 
 mistrust to my countrymen, when I expected nothing 
 from them but gratitude and love, still I have learnt 
 to try and wrap myself on these occasions in my own 
 virtue, knowing very well that the benefactors of 
 mankind are seldom popular, and that your public 
 favourite is generally some Barabbas. Meanwhile, 
 for posterity's sake, I keep out of harm's way as much 
 as I can ; but as I sit shiveiing in my garret, listening 
 nervously to the voices of indignant Philistines ask- 
 ing the way to Grub Street, a friend brings me the 
 Pdl Mall Gazette with " Horace's " two letters. Per- 
 haps it would be my best way to keep perfectly still, 
 and not to give any sign of life to my enemies ; but 
 such is my inveterate weakness (dear enough it has 
 cost me, this weakness !) for the amiable nation to 
 which " Horace " belongs, that I cannot find it in my 
 heart to leave his letters without a word of acknow- 
 ledgment I write with a bit of coal on the Uning of 
 my hat, and in much perturbation of mind besides ; 
 
A COUETEOUS EXPLANATION. 359 
 
 SO " Horace " will kindly excuse faults in my style, 
 which indeed, as he has observed, even when I am at 
 my best, is far from correct. But what is one to do 1 
 So few people know what it is to be born artless. 
 
 It is very kind of "Horace," and just like his 
 generous nation, to come forward when he sees I am 
 in trouble, to confirm what he thinks I said ; only I 
 did not say it, but the foreigners. " Horace " says 
 that with us mediocrity does make itself heard more 
 loudly and more frequently than the thoughtful part 
 of the nation, through the press and even in Parha- 
 ment ; he says that he is inclined to think the middle 
 classes in Germany and Switzerland enjoy life more 
 than the same classes in England ; he says he is quite 
 of opinion that the conduct of England in the affair 
 of the Duchies lowered her considerably in the eyes 
 of Europe, nor did she gain honour by the Crimean 
 war, or by her attitude in Italian affairs. He adds, 
 indeed, that it is probable some fifty years hence cer- 
 tain episodes of the Indian mutiny, and the heroism 
 and charity displayed during the cotton famine, will 
 be accepted as a set-off for many shortcomings ; and 
 I am sure I devoutly hope they may; but my foreign 
 friends were only talking of the present. 
 
 It was the life of the middle class in Switzerland 
 and Germany that my foreign friends said was more 
 enjoyable than the life of the corresponding class in 
 England, and " Horace " declares my foreign friends 
 were right. But he goes on to draw a frightful 
 picture of the middle class in his own country, France. 
 This is what I so admire in these continental writers, 
 and it is just what my foreign friends claimed for 
 
360 friendship's gaelamd. 
 
 them : " We foreigners can see our own deficiencies 
 well enough, and are not backward in proclaiming 
 them ; you English can see and say nothing but what 
 redounds to your own honour and glory." It makes 
 me blush to think how I winced under what the 
 foreigners said of England, how I longed to be able to 
 answer it, how I rejoiced at hearing from the English 
 press that there was nothing at aU in it, when I see 
 the noble frankness with which these foreigners judge 
 themselves. How " Horace " does give it to his poor 
 countrymen when he thinks they deserve it ! So did 
 Monsieur de Tocqueville, so does Monsieur Renan. I 
 lay up the example for my own edification, and I com- 
 mend it to the editor of the Mommg Stwr for his. 
 
 I have seen very little of the French middle class 
 which "Horace" describes, and I dare say what he 
 says of them is aU true. But what makes me look 
 at France and the French with such inexhaustible 
 curiosity and indulgence is this, — their faults are not 
 ours, so we are not likely to catch them ; their merits 
 are not ours, so we are not likely to become idle and 
 self-sufficient from studying them. It is not that I 
 so envy " Horace " his Paris as it is ; — I no longer 
 dance, nor look well when dressed up as the angel 
 Gabriel, so what should I now do in Paris ! — ^but I 
 find such interest and instruction in considering a 
 city so near London, and yet so unlike it ! It is not 
 that I so envy " Horace " his caf6-haunting, dominoes- 
 playing bowrgeois; but when I go through Saint 
 Pancras, I like to compare our vestry-haunting, resolu- 
 tion-passing howrgem with the Frenchman, and to say 
 to myself: "This, then, is what comes of not fre- 
 
A COTIETEOTJS EXPLANATION. 361 
 
 quenting caf6s nor playing dominoes ! My country 
 men here have got no caf6s, and have never learnt 
 dominoes, and see the mischief Satan has found for 
 their idle hands to do ! " Still, I do not wish them 
 to be the caf6-haunting, dominoes-playing Frenchmen, 
 but rather some third thing, neither the Frenchmen 
 nor their present selves. 
 
 And this brings me to the one little point of 
 difiference (for there is just one) between " Horace " 
 and me. Everything, as he himself says, depends on 
 a man's point of view. Now, his point of view is 
 French, mine Enghsh. He and his friends have, he 
 says, one absorbing desire, — to diflfuse in France the 
 knowledge and love of true political liberty. For 
 this purpose they are obhged to point to other 
 countries, and England is, says " Horace," their " great 
 stand-by." Now, those who speak evil of the English 
 constituencies, of our great middle class, etc., etc., 
 discredit, "Horace" says, English parliamentary 
 government and the power of the press, and tend to 
 damage the great stalking-horsa behind which he and 
 his friends are moving to the attack of the French 
 Emperor, and so spoil their game for them. 
 
 " Horace " and his friends are evidently Orleanists, 
 and I have always observed that the Orleanists are 
 rather sly. They can put their tongue in their cheek 
 as well as anybody at the expense of my dear country, 
 but she is to be an angel of light as long as it serves 
 their turn. So the Mining Star and I are to go on 
 crjring, "We are free! we are free! Our newspapers 
 can say what they like," whether this cry does us 
 good or no, because true political liberty is the one 
 
363 FEJENDSHIP'S GAELAND. 
 
 thing needful for " Horace " and the French. Tha 
 Mornmg Star, I must say, does its duty nobly, and 
 "Horace" ought to be very grateful to it; but 
 because I, thinking only of England, venture to go 
 on a little farther, and to inquire what we do with 
 ourselves when we are free to do just what we like, 
 I give umbrage to " Horace ; " he says I destroy his 
 stalking-horse, and he accuses me of railing at parlia- 
 mentary government and the power of the press. In 
 short, he and his friends have lost their tails, and 
 want to get them back again ; and unless I talk of 
 nothing but tails, and keep always sa3ring that who- 
 ever has a tail is perfect, and whoever has not a tail 
 is not worth twopence, " Horace " is vexed with me. 
 To prevent all such misunderstanding for the future, 
 let me say, in the fullest, frankest, most unreserved 
 manner, that I admit the French have lost their tails, 
 and that I pity them for it. I rejoice that the 
 English have kept theirs. I think our "true political 
 liberty " a beautiful, bushy object, and whoever says 
 I do not think so slanders me. But I do not see the 
 slightest danger of our losing it. Well, then comes 
 the question, whether, to oblige " Horace " and his 
 friends, I am to talk of nothing but this beautiful 
 tail of ours, and our good fortune in having it I 
 should not mind doing this if our human economy 
 took in nothing but tails, if we were all tail ; but 
 ova economy takes in other things as well, — ^hearts, 
 for instance, and heads. In hearts we are (except 
 when we find ourselves in India or Jamaica) very 
 well oS; but in heads there is always room for 
 improvement. Now, I think it was after witnessing 
 
A COURTEOUS EXPLANATION. 363 
 
 a great constitutional stand by the Saint Pancras 
 Board of Guardians, — no, it was after reading the 
 second or third of the Daily Telegraph's funeral 
 orations on Lord Palmerston, — that it struck me 
 there was a danger of our trading too extensively 
 upon our tails, and, in fact, running to tail altogether. 
 I determined to try and preach up the improvement 
 and decoration of our heads. Our highest class, 
 besides having of course true political liberty, — that 
 regulation tail which every Briton of us is blessed 
 with, — is altogether so beautiful and splendid ^ that 
 for my part I hardly presume to inquire what it 
 has or has not in the way of heads. So I turn to 
 my own class, the middle class, which, not being so 
 beautiful and splendid, does not dazzle my eyes so 
 mucL And for this class I want to work out 
 a deliverance from the horrid dilemma in which 
 " Horace " and others try to fix us ; — liberty and 
 Philistinism, or else culture and slavery. 
 
 After this candid explanation on our one point of 
 difference (for the rest of his letters I heartily thank 
 him), I trust that " Horace " will not in future think 
 it his duty, whenever he finds me preaching to my 
 countrymen that with all our political liberty we are 
 still, in many respects, vmprofitable servants, — I trust, 
 I say, that whenever he sees this, he will not now 
 think it his duty to administer to me a sharp pinch 
 and exclaim : "False one, what are you about 1 what 
 have you done with your tail 1 begin brandishing it 
 in our tyrant's face again directly ! " Let him and 
 the French rather themselves get back their lost 
 1 And above aXl, as Mr, Carlyle says, polite, — Ep, 
 
364 friendship's garland. 
 
 tails from their tyrant, who is generally supposed, 
 
 too, to have had, when he talked of " crowning the 
 
 edifice," this appendage in view. 
 
 I do hope. Sir, that the sentiments expressed in 
 
 this letter may be the means of procuring for your 
 
 excellent newspaper that free circulation in the French 
 
 capital which is at present, I am told, denied you ; and 
 
 as my bit of coal is worn to a stump, I sign myself, 
 
 your humble servant, ^^ . 
 
 •' Matthew Aknold. 
 
 To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 (In May of this year (1866) Arminius arrived in 
 London ; an event which I sometimes fancy future 
 ages will parallel with the arrival of Augustine at 
 Canterbury. In July, six weeks later, began what, 
 in talking to Arminius, I loved to call, half-playfully, 
 half-seriously, "the preaching of Geist." In November 
 1870, four short years afterwards, he lay buried 
 under the Bougival poplar-tree ! Shadows, indeed, 
 as Mr. Sala says, we are, and shadows we pursue. 
 
 Farewell, Arminius ! — Thou good soul, thou great 
 intellect, farewell !) — ^Ed. ' ' 
 
 THE END OF VOL. m. 
 
 Printed iy R. & R, ClARK, Limited, Edinburgh. 
 
Cornell University Library 
 HN 3S9.A75 1908 
 
 Culture & anarchy :an essay in political 
 
 3 1924 012 529 768