MATTHEW ARNOLD 291 



you, * The Larkspur listens I hear, I hear ! And the Lily 

 whispers I wait.' Sesame and Lilies. (Of Queen's Gardens.) 



' The English Sainte Beuve,' who, with George Meredith and Walter Pater, MATTHEW 

 forms the Triad of '* puissant voices' in the literature of the passing generation, ARNOLD 

 as he himself called Carlyle, Emerson and Newman, of his own earlier day. 102 



THE College (Marlborough) was the old inn, but I did not 

 know that this inn was the old home of the Hertford 

 family, a house built by Inigo Jones, and in a style I particularly 

 like and admire. The old garden, bowling-green, sward, and yew- 

 trees still subsist, and give an air to the place of age and of style 

 beyond anything that Harrow or Rugby can show. 1 Letter to his 

 mother ) November 12, 1871. 



Cobham, Surrey, will find me. The cottage we have got there 

 is called Pain's Hill Cottage. The country is beautiful more 

 beautiful even than the Chilterns, because it has heather and 

 pines, while the trees of other kinds, in the valley of the Mole, 

 where we are, are really magnificent. We are planting and im- 

 proving about our cottage, as if it were our own, and we had a 

 hundred years to live there; its great merit is that it must have 

 had nearly one hundred years of life already and is surrounded 

 by great old trees not the raw new sort of villa one has generally 

 to take if one wants a small house near London. 



It is a hoar frost, and you should see the squirrels scampering 

 about the lawn for the nuts we strew there. We have also a 

 jackdaw who visits us and is becoming very tame. But my 

 delight at present is in the blackbirds and thrushes, who abound, 



1 Arnold makes no mention of the Mound situated in ' the wilderness ' 

 perhaps the largest of its kind in England. ' Such a mound (as at Wressel, 

 mentioned by Leland) still exists at the Castle Inn at Marlborough, not 

 ascended by steps or degrees, but by a winding path, covered with ancient 

 yew-trees. ' London. 



