7 i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the Attorney-General that the English are not a scientific nation. Re- 

 cently the Times, commenting on a speech of Mr. Gladstone, said : 

 "There is truth, however, in the assertion that we are backward in 

 appreciating and pursuing abstract knowledge." ' Such statements 

 exhibit the bias of anti-patriotism creating a belief that is wholly inde- 

 fensible. As we shall presently see, they are flatly contradicted by 

 facts, and can be accounted for only by supposing that those who make 

 them have had a culture exclusively literary. 



A convenient way of dealing with this bias of anti-patriotism will 

 be to take an individual example of it. More than any other, Mr. 

 Matthew Arnold has of late made himself an exponent of the feeling. 

 His motive cannot be too highly respected, and for much that he has 

 said in reproof of the vainglorious, entire approval may rightly be felt. 

 Many grave defects in our social state, many absurdities in our modes 

 of action, many errors in our estimates of ourselves, are to be pointed 

 out, and dwelt upon, and great good is done by a writer who efficiently 

 executes the task of making us feel our shortcomings. In his condem- 

 nation of the ascetic view of life which still prevails here, one may en- 

 tirely agree. The undue estimation of material prosperity common 

 with us is a fault justly insisted on by him. And the overweening- 

 confidence so often shown in a divine favor gained by our greater na- 

 tional piety, is also an attitude of mind deservedly to be reprobated. 

 But, by reaction, Mr. Arnold is, I think carried too far in the direction 

 of anti-patriotism, and weakens the effect of his criticism by generating 

 a re-reaction. Let us glance at some of his views : 



The mode of procedure generally followed by Mr. Arnold is not 

 that of judicially balancing the evidence, but that of meeting the ex- 

 pression of self-satisfied patriotism by some few facts calculated to 

 cause dissatisfaction : not considering what is their quantitative value. 

 To reprove a piece of national self-laudation uttered by Mr. Roebuck, 

 he comments on the murder of an illegitimate child by its mother, re- 

 ported in the same paper. Now this would be effective if infanticide 

 were peculiar to England, or if he could show a larger proportion of 

 infanticide here than elsewhere ; but his criticism is at once cancelled 

 on calling to mind the developed system of baby-farming round Paris, 

 and the extensive getting-rid of infants to which it is instrumental. By 

 following Mr. Arnold's method, it would be easy to dispose of his con- 

 clusions. Suppose, for instance, that I were to set down the many 

 murders committed in England by foreigners, within our own memo- 

 ries, including those by Courvoisier, by Mrs. Manning, by Barthelemi, 

 near Fitzroy Square, by a Frenchman, in Foley Place (about 1854-'o7), 

 that by Mtiller, that by Kohl, in the Essex marshes, that by Lani, in a 

 brothel near the Haymarket, that by Marguerite Diblanc, the tragedy 

 of the two young Germans (Mai and Nagel), at Chelsea, ending with 



1 Times, December 23, 18*72. 



