l College. Arnold's name, like
Thomas Gray's, is associated with university life.

From 1847 to 1851, Arnold was private secretary to Lord Lansdowne. In
1851 he married the daughter of Justice Wightman. After relinquishing
his secretaryship, Arnold accepted a position that took him again into
educational fields. He was made lay inspector of schools, a position
which he held to within two years of his death. This office called for
much study in methods of education, and he visited the continent three
times to investigate the systems in use there. In addition, he held
the chair of poetry at Oxford for ten years, between 1857 and 1867.
One of the most scholarly courses of lectures that he delivered there
was _On Translating Homer_. From this time until his death, in 1888,
he was a distinguished figure in English educational and literary
circles.

Poetical Works.--Matthew Arnold's poetry belongs to the middle of
the century, that season of doubt, perplexity, and unrest, when the
strife between the church and science was bitterest and each
threatened to overthrow the other. In his home, Arnold was taught a
devout faith in revealed religion, and at college he was thrown upon a
world of inquiring doubt. Both influences were strong. His feelings
yearned after the early faith, and his intellect sternly demanded
scientific proof and explanation. He was, therefore, torn by a
conflict between his emotions and reason, and he was thus eminently
fitted to be the poetic exponent of what he calls--

"...this strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,
Its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts."[12]

Arnold felt that there were too much hurry and excitement in the age.
In the midst of opposing factions, theories, and beliefs, he cries out
for rest and peace. We rush from shadow to shadow--

"And never once possess our soul
Before we die."[13]

Again, in the _Stanzas in Memory of the Author of "Obermann"_, he
voices the unrest of the age--

"What shelter to grow ripe is ours?
What leisure to grow wise?
Like children bathing on the shore,
Buried a wave beneath,
The second wave succeeds, before
We have had time to breathe."

But Arnold is not the seer to tell us how to enter the vale of rest,
how to answer the voice of doubt. He passes through life a lonely
figure--

"Wandering between two worlds, one dead,
The other powerless to be born." [14]

The only creed that he offe