MATTHEW AENOLB'S CRITICISM 113 



monument, and has coupled itself with the almanac, 

 that no court can be held, no field plowed, no horse 

 shod, without some leave from the church." 



It appeals to Arnold by reason of these things, 

 and it appeals to him by reason of its great names, 

 its poets, artists, statesmen, preachers, scholars; 

 its imposing ritual, its splendid architecture, its cul- 

 ture. It has been the conserver of letters. For 

 centuries the priests were the only scholars, and its 

 ceremonial is a kind of petrified literature. Ar- 

 nold clearly speaks for himself, or from his own bias, 

 when he says that "the man of imagination, nay, 

 and the philosopher, too, in spite of her propensity 

 to burn him, will always have a weakness for the 

 Catholic Church ; " " it is because of the rich treas- 

 ures of human life which have been stored within 

 her pale." Indeed, there is a distinct flavor of Ca- 

 tholicism about nearly all of Matthew Arnold's writ- 

 ings. One cannot always put his finger on it : it is 

 in the air, it is in that cool, haughty impersonalism, 

 that ex cathedra tone, that contempt for dissenters, 

 that genius for form, that spirit of organization. 

 His mental tone and temper ally him to Cardinal 

 Newman, who seems to have exerted a marked in- 

 fluence upon him, and who is still, he says, a great 

 name to the imagination. Yet he says Newman 

 "has adopted, for the doubts and difficulties which 

 beset men's minds to-day, a solution, which, to 

 speak frankly, is impossible." What, therefore, re- 

 pels Arnold in Catholicism, and keeps him without 

 its fold, is its " ultramontanism, sacerdotalism, and 



