MATTHEW ARNOLD. 353 



tors accustomed to more mere rhetorical excellence. In private inter- 

 course he made many warm friends, who were glad to welcome him 

 again on a second visit to this country in 1886. In the interval between 

 his two visits, and after his final return to England, he published sev- 

 eral articles on America, embodying the results of his personal observa- 

 tions. They were as frank and independent as the criticisms of his own 

 people had been from the beginning of his career. The same poetic 

 sensibility of nature, the same breadth of cosmopolitan culture, which 

 had made him susceptible to the clumsiness, the coarseness, the unintel- 

 ligence, of the masses of the English people, — faults which he exposed 

 and condemned with an essentially good-humored flow of wit, irony, 

 and keen good-sense, — made him equally susceptible to the narrow- 

 ness, materialism, and vulgarity of many of the aspects of American 

 civilization. ' But his censorship was in both cases based on a large and 

 truthful appreciation of the soul of excellence that exists beneath the 

 unattractive shows and evil tendencies of the actual social order. His 

 wounds are sharp, but they are the salutary wounds of a friend. His 

 last words touching the matter, spoken two months before his death, 

 are: "The English race overspreads the world, and at the same time 

 the ideal of an excellence the most high and the most rare abides with 

 it forever." 



Still in the fresh enjoyment of life, still preserving the spirit of youth, 

 death came suddenly to him on the 14th of April last. It was caused 

 by inherited disease of the heart. The death of his father had been of 

 like suddenness, from the same cause. 



The great service of Arnold has been his steady assertion of the su- 

 premacy of the spiritual element in life, and his constant appeal to the 

 higher intelligence. He has fulfilled the great function of the poet and 

 of the critic, — the endeavor to interpret human life afresh in terms 

 appropriate to the actual generation, and to supply it with the spiritual 

 basis it requires. 



To those who knew him intimately, Arnold was one of the most lov- 

 able of men. He was a delightful companion, — simple, cordial, cheer- 

 ful, with great variety of interest in men and things. His tastes were 

 those of an Englishman of letters, who finds culture as well as pleasure 

 not only in books, but also in out-door things. His sympathies with 

 dumb animals were deep. He had a tender and affectionate heart, 

 and a pure soul. " The happiness at which we all aim," he said, " is 

 dependent on righteousness." He had much happiness in life. 



vol. xxiii. (n. s. xv.) 23 



