knew as "the equator letters," which both Clough and Palgrave thought remarkable, and which, were they published now in extenso, would certainly deserve a place in the spiritual history of that rich time. The letters were addressed to J. C. Shairp, afterward the well-known principal of St. Andrews, but they were meant for the whole circle of friends, -the "CloughoMatthean circle," as the writer of them somewhere calls it, and were intended to justify the step which the young enthusiast had taken. His modest and retiring nature made it difficult for him to talk of himself; so he threw the story into the third person, that he might handle it with more freedom and perhaps, in the long, monotonous hours on board ship, give it a more literary turn-" talk," in fact, "like a book," as Philip Hewson was wont to do.

Together with the "Fragments of a Novel," written some years later, the letters give a fairly complete account of his changes of thought and belief. The first deals with his childhood at Rugby, in the happy home of which his illustrious father made the joy and shelter; with his evangelical training, and that moment of ardent youth when he personally and joyously appropriated the religion he had been taught; then with the waverings and doubts of Oxford, as in the passage already quoted, caused by the reading of writers like Carlyle, who were not Christian in the sense he had been trained to give to the word; and, lastly, with the inrush of new and poetic ideals largely determined by George Sand.

It is to these ideals that the second letter is devoted, and there can be no doubt that he expresses in it the feelings of the more reflective and romantic type of colonist, the "Warings" of the hour, who were then making their adventurous way to England's new lands across the ocean. It will be remembered that he is throughout speaking of himself in the third person:

You can easily understand that, for many years before the time of which I am speaking, the condition of the poor in England had been to him, as to every thoughtful person, the subject of many painful and anxious thoughts. It had been so with his father, and how could it but be so with him? . . . In all classes he saw selfishness increasing, and in the class of capitalists in particular he saw it systematised with all that energy and practical ability which is characteristic of the Englishman.

And seeing how everywhere religious feeling and faith were decaying, while Industrialism, as the French call it, was advancing by such rapid strides, he could not help feeling, like

his father before him, his own utter powerlessness, and the futility of all individual efforts to stem the stream. But there was a time

during which, as I have before mentioned, he took a deep interest in all the measures of social and material reform which were proposed from time to time in Parliament or elsewhere. There was a time when he believed that those great changes for the better which every good man in England and throughout Europe waits and hopes for could be effected through organisations already existing; by the agency of actual governments, and by the help of a public opinion increasingly powerful and enlightened.

But when he came up to reside in London, and was thus brought into daily contact with the extremity of human suffering and degradation, and forced to behold our common human nature prostrate and debased, "not struggling but sunk," all other subjects seemed to fade into insignificance beside this one, all other evils to be as nothing compared with this monstrous and unutterable woe.

He took up residence in London, he writes later, in 1847, "almost with the feelings of a Sister of Mercy," and began to visit the poor. But this first practical contact with the courts and alleys of an unregenerate London produced only, as he has told us, "an utter hopelessness." What could the individual do in this old corrupt and cumbered land?

Take but one step in submission, and all the rest is easy persuade yourself that your reluctance to subscribe to Articles which you do not believe is a foolish scruple, and then you may take orders and marry, and be happy; satisfy yourself that you may honestly defend an unrighteous cause, and then you may go to the Bar, and become distinguished, and perhaps in the end sway the counsels of the State; prove to yourself, by the soundest arguments which political economy can furnish, that you may lawfully keep several hundred men, women, and children at work for twelve hours a day in your unwholesome factory, and then you may become wealthy and influential, and erect public baths and patronise artists. this is then open to you; while if you refuse to tamper in a single point with the integrity of your conscience, isolation awaits you, and unhappy love, and the contempt of men; and amidst the general bustle and movement of the world you will be stricken with a kind of impotence, and your arm will seem to be par

All

alysed, and there will be moments when you will almost doubt whether truth indeed exists, or, at least, whether it is fitted for man. Yet in your loneliness you will be visited by consolations which the world knows not of; and you will feel that, if renunciation has separated you from the men of your own generation, it has united you to the great company of just men throughout all past time; nay, that even now there is a little band of Renunciants scattered over the world, of whom you are one, whose you are, and who are yours for ever.

Approached in this spirit, the social question assumed a different aspect, and meanwhile the novels of George Sand took hold upon him with enchanting and reviving power:

Gradually, thanks be to God and to George Sand, the interpreter of His truth, I found that this misery, which I had been so anxious to alleviate on the assumption that it could not but exist, was altogether an outrage and an offence in the sight of God. I found that it was not God who had destined the greater part of mankind to a life of ignorance and wretchedness, but that man had done it, by force of iniquitous laws and social customs, but chiefly through the absence of the spirit of Love. With inexpressible joy I read and pondered upon the sacred symbol, "Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood." And then I looked upon society as it was, and the eyes of my enlightened Spirit pierced through the outward show, the dazzling pomp and glitter with which the rich enliven their life, and saw the falsehood, the injustice, the inequality, which are the only props of that unstable fabric which we call modern society. . . .

Who will not recognize in this passage the voice of Clough's Philip, as Clough describes him with a touch of tender humor?

Philip Hewson, a poet, Hewson a Radical hot, hating lords and scorning ladies,

Silent mostly, but often reviling in fire and fury Feudal tenures, mercantile lords, competition and Bishops,

Liveries, armorial bearings, amongst other matters, the game-laws.

Philip, indeed, had but come to London to

give the old gentility stage-play One little look, to leave it with all the more satisfaction.

I am one of this rich class [he continues with passion]. I have servants to wait upon

me; I am fed and clothed by the labour of the poor, and do nothing for them in return. The life that I lead is an outrage and a wrong to humanity. That glorious future of which we dream comports not with such a life as mine. I will leave it; I will cast it from me altogether; I will come to my God; I will cast myself into the lap of Nature; and through their strength and fulness, I shall enter before I die into new and pure relations with Man.

What shall I do then? Shall I herd amongst those suffering wretches, whose condition is, on my own showing, contrary to the will of God and the desires of Nature? Shall I clothe myself in rags, forget all that I have read and dreamed of the beautiful and true, and become, like them, ignorant and brutish? God forbid that error were almost worse than the first.

Resolved at all costs to descend amongst those who labour, and labour with them, I yet found upon consideration that if I remained in England there would be insuperable obstacles to my leading the life that I contemplated. England is now a land for the rich, not for the poor. . . . In brief, I saw no way of so effectually obeying the call of duty, and translating faith into actions, as by emigrating to some colony where these difficulties would not exist.

There it would be possible to live the life close to nature, the life of thinking and doing, the life of the tiller of the soil who is yet in contact with knowledge and with poetry, under easier and simpler conditions. Is it not the voice of Brook Farm? and will not Americans recognize in it their own Hawthorne and Emerson?

Before committing himself to so momentous a decision, however, the son of a father who had been deeply loved, and was now faithfully remembered, could not but ask himself what his father would have thought of him:

And now, before I conclude, I wish to answer an objection, or rather a reflection, which will naturally present itself to some of those who read these letters. "How strange and sad that the son should depart thus widely from the father's faith, and seek to undo the father's work!" Oh, if it were so indeed, it would be truly sad; a sadder and more unnatural sight could not be witnessed upon earth. But it is my comfort to believe that at bottom it is not so, but the very contrary. If thou, my father, from thy place of rest, couldst still behold the scenes of thy pilgrimage and look into thy son's inmost heart, do I not believe that thou wouldst bless me, and bless also the work which I have chosen? Is not thy

spirit with me? Do I not, like thee, hate injustice and falsehood with a perfect hatred? like thee, await and hope for the establishment of that "glorious Church," that divine Society, which shall unite men together in a common faith and in mutual love? . . . The form, the outward vesture of thy faith-it is only this which I cannot accept.

The long voyage went prosperously, and early in 1848 Tom Arnold landed in New Zealand, and found himself in possession of a small quantity of land near Wellington, which had been purchased by his father some years before. Meanwhile a few extracts from his family letters will show that, exile though he was, he was by no means cast out, and that the old influences and affections were still alive and strong. His mother was a constant correspondent; so were at least two of his sisters; and his brother Matthew, who wrote regularly to no one but his mother, wrote from time to time. That a beloved son should throw up a promising career and expatriate himself on pantisocratic principles must have been a little trying even to the most tolerant of mothers, and the sweetness and open-mindedness with which she took it are really wonderful.

The weeks wear away [she writes in 1848], and surely we shall soon hear from you. If not before, I fancy that on the 21st of August, your mother's birthday,- her fifty-seventh birthday,—she may be cheered by the most joyful sight of your handwriting. What a change of times for her, since she used to go round to your little beds at night to kiss and bless you, and be careful over every little trouble of body or mind!-while now the battle of life has begun and is in progress with you all, for it must begin with all when the consciousness of its awfulness and responsibilities awakens. Instead of watching over you, I have not even heard of you, my son, since your January letter, written some 28° S. Lat., nor of Willy since an April letter from Calcutta, nor of Walter since he again left England with the squadron.

Instead, indeed, of reproaching him, she writes with no less sympathy than wisdom:

Many can adapt themselves to circumstances. It was very expedient for you that you should see and try various circumstances, and this you have done, and it would be my joy to think that the result would be, not an

acquiescence in what you think wrong,-God forbid,-but an equal mind, seeing in our own country and in our own institutions what is good as well as what is evil, and in other countries what is evil as well as what is good. Your great danger, my beloved son, seems to me to be that of exaggeration, and yet you know that your mother loves enthusiasm with all her heart; but fairness and justice, and even the Truth, which is God's own attribute, seem sacrificed when all on one side is set down as bad, and destruction is rather desired than reform. You must not suspect me of having grown a Conservative-no, dear Tom;

that I think I can never be.

Some interesting references to Matthew's early poems may be collected from the young colonist's letters, and from those of Matt" himself, either to his brother or to others of his family, who in due course forwarded them to the exile. Here is the first mention of the "Poems by A.," in a letter from Tom to his eldest sister, afterward Mrs. W. E. Forster:

So dearest Matt was to publish the volume of poems in February. I cannot and will not believe that he would forget to send a copy to me, than whom no human being in the world will read them with a deeper interest; but if he does, do you, my dear K., have them sent to me, that's a darling. Let him not mind what the rascally reviewers say: the circle which finally awards the wreath of Fame is very small, as he well knows, and always approfondit before it criticises. Emerson says that there are but about a dozen persons in a generation who can understand Plato, but that for these dozen his works come down from age to age as regularly as clockwork. I have only had a few lines from Matt this time, but these few, though rather wicked, delighted me, they were so entirely Mattish. In them he spoke of his feelings about Clough. The last sentence might be worthily placed among the Apophthegms of Goethe; shows indeed, I think, that the German sage has made a great impression on our Matt, and no wonder: "He who has no energy grows stupid-unless he is born with finesse."

Or again, August 27, 1849:

I have said nothing as yet about "The Strayed Reveller" or Ambarvalia or "The Bothie," though, as you may imagine, I have read them all through. I must write to dear old Matt himself. It was very pleasant to recognise old friends, especially the "New Sirens." Does Fausta mean K. [the writer's eldest sister], and is the walk "ten years ago,"

alluded to in "Resignation,” that which we took over Wythburn Fells to Keswick with Captain Hamilton? Or was no particular walk intended? "The Bothie" greatly surpasses my expectations. It is, on the whole, a noble poem, well held together, clear, full of purpose and full of promise. With joy I see the old fellow bestirring himself, "awakening like a strong man out of sleep, and shaking his invincible locks," and if he remains true and works, I think there is nothing too high and great to be expected from him.

Meanwhile Matthew himself had been writing to the absent brother, in the great tempest year of 1848, and in the very midst of the Revolution of February. The letter is dated February 28, 1848, from Lansdowne House, where he was occupied as private secretary to Lord Lansdowne. One of the "still-faced, white-robed babies" was no doubt the present Foreign Secretary.

Lansdowne House, Feb. 28, 1848. MY DEAR TOM: Here I sit opposite a marble group of Romulus, Remus and the Wolf, the two children fighting like mad, and the limp-uddered she-wolf affectionately snarling at the little demons struggling on her back. Above it a great picture, the Jewish

Exiles, which would do for Consuelo and Albert resting in one of their wanderings, worn out, upon a wild stony heath, sloping to the Baltic,-she leaning over her two children, who sleep in their torn rags at her feet. Behind me a most musical clock, marking now 24 minutes past I P.M. On my left two great windows looking down on the court in front of the house, through one of which, slightly

1 It would be easy to multiply quotations from Matthew Arnold's letters to my father, none of which appear in Mr. G. W. E. Russell's collection, printed in 1895. Most of those letters, however, belong to my father's later life, and so are outside the scope of this sketch. But I must make an exception for this brief remark on Goethe, mainly because, to quote from an already published letter of Matthew Arnold's, "Considering how much I have read of Goethe, I have said in my life very little about him." It is so, surprisingly little, in view of the immensity of Goethe's influence upon him, whether at first hand or filtered through Sainte-Beuve. In 1866 he wrote to my father, "to tell you how much I liked your Macmillan paper [on "Wilhelm Meister"]-though perhaps Wilhelm Meister' does not seem to me to deserve, as a novel, so much praise as you give it; it is as a repository of thoughts and observations that it is so valuable. Except in Faust,' Goethe could never quite get what was in him into an adequate poetical form, and that is the truth. Unlike in this respect to Shakespeare, in whom the poet is commensurate with the thinker; but the time and circumstances made the difference." In a previous letter (1858),

opened, comes in by gushes the soft damp breath with a tone of spring life in it, which the close of an English February sometimes brings-so different from a November mildness. The green lawn which occupies nearly half the court is studded over with crocuses of all colours, growing out of the grass, for there are no flower-beds,-delightful for the large, still-faced, white-robed babies whom their nurses carry up and down on the gravel court where it skirts the green. And from the square and the neighbouring streets, through the open door, whereat the civil porter moves to and fro, come sounds of vehicles and men in all gradations, some from near and some from far, but mellowed by the time they reach this back-standing, lordly mansion. But above all cries comes one, whereat every stone in this and other lordly mansions may totter and quake for fear: "Se-c-ond Edition of the Morning Herald-La-a-test News from Paris: Arrival of the King of the French."-I have gone out and bought the said portentous Herald, and send it herewith, that you may read and know.1

But when the poems came out, "Matt" was remiss about writing to New Zealand; so the mother endeavored to make amends

by sending on the letters written to herself by the young poet. Here is one dealing with a criticism made by Bonamy Price, an old friend of the family, to the effect, evidently, that the volume is too melancholy, and that it is a duty "to write cheerfully":

Are we our own masters [asks Matthew] to write cheerfully or not? though no doubt we

contrasting the poetry of "our" generation with that of Pope, he had written that "Pope's poetry was adequate (to use a term I am always using) to Pope's age. that is, it reflected completely the best general culture and intelligence of that age; therefore the cultivated and intelligent men of that time all found something of themselves in it. But it was a poor time, after all-so the poetry is not and cannot be a first-class one. On the other hand, our time is a first-class one-an infinitely fuller, richer age than Pope's; but our poetry is not adequate to it; it interests therefore only a small body of sectaries; hundreds of cultivated and intelligent men find nothing that speaks to them in it. But it is a hard thing to make poetry adequate to a firstclass epoch. The eternal greatness of the literature of the Greece of Pericles is that it is the adequate expression of a first-class epoch. Shakespeare again is the infinitely more than adequate expres. sion of a second-class epoch. It is the immense distinction of Voltaire and Goethe, with all their shortcomings, that they approach near to being adequate exponents of first-class epochs." Are the two views of Goethe's epoch consistent? That I must leave to the discernment of the reader.

are not to write sulkily. But I must say that these letters [in praise of the book] may well be a profound satisfaction to me; and as to praise and appreciation, though one's vanity desire instant trumpet-blowings in all the newspapers, yet when one considers the slow growth of the reputation of those poets who composed before the invention of printing, and how little outward acceptance they found (except perhaps in extreme old age), owing to their poetry, one may rest well contented with all these kind letters within a month after publication, and when one is but twenty-six years old. And one would wish to justify these people's kindness by going on to do something well; to which reviewing will not help one by

any means.

Ah, how beautiful the daffodils must be in this mild weather: if they are not over, that is, and the double ones are not. Price talks about cheerfulness and elasticity; their place is in the country.

Or again:

I do not hear much of my book to tell you. I don't think, whatever Fellowes says, it sells much. Anonymousness, miscellaneousness, and the weariness of modern poetry felt generally, are all against it. There is a destiny in these things,-I mean a set of circumstances against which a merit twenty times greater than mine would be quite in vain. Sooner or later perhaps but who can say how much good or promising fragmentary poetry time has swallowed? though not perhaps, since the invention of printing, any great poems. Sometimes feel disheartened by the universal indifference and sometimes I think it good for me. However, time will shew.

But let us return to the colonist, who was thus, in the intervals of digging and house-building, looking out for news of the "Poems by A." or "The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich." Alas! his own poor venture was going ill. He brought to it much cheerfulness and gallantry. At the beginning of his New Zealand life, when he, the Oxford scholar, was trying with his own hands to raise his little house and clear his plot of ground near Wellington, Sir George Grey, the governor, came riding by. He stopped, sent his aide-de-camp to bring Arnold's son to him, talked, and made inquiries. Immediately afterward, in a kindly pity for the lad's quixotism and admiration for his pluck, the governor offered him his private secretaryship. But he would not be beaten so soon; and besides, he had Radical scruples as to the way

LXVI.-17

the colony was being governed. So he refused, and the struggle went on. But the land, the stubborn land, has a way of revenging herself on those not meant to tame her. Soon the little money brought from home was almost spent, and the fail-' ure of this part of the scheme was visible even to "Philip." Then some teaching offered, and he took it at once, still full of hope and determination.

But meanwhile the tide of feeling which had carried him to New Zealand was ebbing beneath him. What seemed to him the great and universal failure of the revolutionary movements of 1848 weighed upon his spirits and gradually altered his point. of view. Society in the colonies, moreover, was still English society, with many of its abuses. Inherited beliefs began to resume their sway, and regret for the traditions, the antiquity, the ripened beauty, and the friendships of the Old World, which such a nature was sure in time to feel, strengthened within him. He was not pusillanimous; he did not shrink from hardships; his whole after life was to be one long scene of patient and continuous labor, but it was to be the life of the scholar, the mystic, the recluse, in touch with the academical and learned life which was his natural environment.

Let him, however, speak for himself. In the "Fragments of a Novel," composed in Tasmania, and dealing, naturally enough, with his own circumstances, he wrote of his New Zealand time:

Even had all my notions been sound, I could not have realised them, for this simple reason: I was alone, had no one to co-operate or even sympathise with me. A communist without a community is like a general without soldiers or an organist without an organ. And however I might theorise, I saw that social life in the colony went on upon precisely the same principles, and those even more undisguised than in the old country, and I had common sense enough to do at Rome as the Romans do. Or rather it is probable that I am not of the stuff of which innovators and reformers are made, and have not the requisite degree of insensibility to ridicule and censure to enable me to carry out a novel principle into practice in the teeth of all gainsayers.

In 1851 he wrote to his mother:

It is collision that kindles the sparks of thought, and in the eye of a dear and true friend one sees a whole world of possibilities