132 INDOOE STUDIES 



passages of Arnold's lecture were in a strain of such 

 noble and impressive eloquence that I must indulge 

 myself in transcribing some of them here. 



"Forty years ago," he began, "when I was an 

 undergraduate at Oxford, voices were in the air then 

 which haunt my memory still. Happy the man 

 who in that susceptible season of youth hears such 

 voices! they are a possession to him forever. No 

 such voices as those we heard in our youth at Ox- 

 ford are sounding there now. Oxford has more crit- 

 icism now, more knowledge, more light; but such 

 voices as those of our youth it has no longer. The 

 name of Cardinal Newman is a great name to the 

 imagination still; his genius and his style are still 

 things of power. But he is over eighty years old; 

 he is in the Oratory at Birmingham ; he has adopted 

 for the doubts and difficulties which beset men's 

 minds to-day a solution which, to speak frankly, is 

 impossible." . . . "But there were other voices 

 sounding in our ears besides Newman's. There was 

 the puissant voice of Carlyle, so sorely strained, 

 overused, and misused since, but then fresh, com- 

 paratively sound, and reaching our hearts with true 

 pathetic eloquence. " . . . "A greater voice still — 

 the greatest voice of the century — came to us in 

 those youthful years through Carlyle: the voice of 

 Goethe." . . . " And beside those voices there came 

 to us in that old Oxford time a voice also from this 

 side of the Atlantic, — a clear and pure voice, which, 

 for my ear at any rate, brought a strain as new, and 

 moving, and unforgettable as the strain of Newman 



