124 INDOOR STUDIES 



admiration and enjoyment, but his ideas do not 

 fasten upon one, and ferment and grow in his mind, 

 and influence his judgments and feelings. It is not 

 a question of abstraction or of disinterestedness, 

 but of seriousness of purpose. Emerson is more 

 abstract, more given up to ideal and transcendental 

 valuations, than Landor; but Emerson is a power, 

 because he partakes of a great spiritual and intellec- 

 tual movement of his times; he is unequivocally of 

 to-day and of New England. So with Arnold, he 

 is unequivocally of to-day; he is unequivocally an 

 Englishman, but an Englishman thoroughly imbued 

 with the spirit of Greek art and culture. The sur- 

 prise in reading Arnold is never the novelty of his 

 thought or expression, or the force with which his 

 ideas are projected, but in the clearness and nearness 

 of the point of view, and the steadiness and consist- 

 ency with which the point of view is maintained. 

 He is as free from the diseases of subtlety and over- 

 refinement of thought or expression, and from any- 

 thing exaggerated or fanciful, as any of the antique 

 authors. His distinguishing trait is a kind of finer 

 common-sense. One remembers his acknowledgment 

 of his indebtedness to the sanity and clear sense of 

 Franklin. It is here the two minds meet; the lead- 

 ing trait of each is this same sanity and clear sense, 

 this reliance upon the simple palpable reason. 



Arnold's reliance u.pon the near and obvious rea- 

 son, and his distrust of metaphysical subtleties and 

 curious refinements, are so constant that he has been 

 accused of parading the commonplace. But the 



