em had vanished, and nothing was to be seen except the
bishop, the judge, or the minister.

It was not for me to remind them of their former self, and to make
them doubt their own identity, but I often felt the truth of Matthew
Arnold's speeches, who, in social position, never rose beyond that of
inspector of schools, and who often laughed when at great dinners he
found himself surrounded by their Graces, their Excellencies, and my
Lords, recognizing faces that sat below him at school and whose names
in the class lists did not occupy so high a place as his own. Not that
Matthew Arnold was dissatisfied; he knew his worth, but, as he himself
asked for nothing, it is strange that his friends should never have
asked for something for him, which would have shown to the world at
large that he had not been left behind in the race. It strikes one
that while he was at Oxford, few people only detected in Arnold the
poet or the man of remarkable genius. I had many letters from him, but
I never kept them, and I often blame myself now that in his, as in
other cases, I should have thrown away letters as of no importance.
Then suddenly came the time when he returned to Oxford as the poet, as
the Professor of poetry, nay, afterwards as the philosopher also,
placed high by public opinion among the living worthies of England.
What was sometimes against him was his want of seriousness. A laugh
from his hearers or readers seemed to be more valued by him than their
serious opposition, or their convinced assent. He trusted, like
others, to _persiflage_, and the result was that when he tried to be
serious, people could not forget that he might at any time turn round
and smile, and decline to be taken _au grand serieux_. People do not
know what a dangerous game this French _persiflage_ is, particularly
in England, and how difficult it becomes to exchange it afterwards for
real seriousness.

Those early Oxford days were bright days for me, and now, when those
young and old faces, whether undergraduates or archbishops, rise up
again before me, I being almost the only one left of that happy
company, I ask again, "Did they also belong to a mere dreamland, they
who gave life to my life, and made England my real home?" When I first
saw them at Oxford, I was really an undergraduate, though I had taken
my Doctor's degree at Leipzig. I lived, in fact, my happy university
life over again, and it would be difficult to say which academical
years I enjoy