ish old
country"--which paternal and patriotic desire was granted about the
end of the month, though only for a short time, during which he wrote
a pamphlet on the Italian question. Then "M. le Professeur Docteur
Arnold, Directeur General de toutes les Ecoles de la Grande Bretagne,"
returned to France for a time, saw Merimee and George Sand and Renan,
as well as a good deal of Sainte-Beuve, and was back again for good in
the foolish old country at the end of the month.

In the early winter of 1859-60 we find him a volunteer, commenting not
too happily on "the hideous English toadyism which invests lords and
great people with commands," a remark which seems to clench the
inference that he had not appreciated the effect of the Revolution
upon France. For nearly three parts of 1860 we have not a single
letter, except one in January pleasantly referring to his youngest
child "in black velvet and red-and-white tartan, looking such a duck
that it was hard to take one's eyes off him."[4] This letter, by the
way, ends with an odd admission from the author of the remark quoted
just now. He says of the Americans, "It seems as if few stocks could
be trusted to grow up properly without having a priesthood and an
aristocracy to act as their schoolmasters at some time or other of
their national existence." This is a confession. The gap, however, is
partly atoned for by a very pleasant batch in September from Viel Salm
in the Ardennes, where the whole family spent a short time, and where
the Director-General of all the schools in Great Britain had splendid
fishing, the hapless Ardennes trout being only accustomed to nets.

Then the interest returns to literature, and the lectures on
translating Homer, and Tennyson's "deficiency in intellectual power,"
and Mr Arnold's own interest in the Middle Ages, which may surprise
some folk. It seems that he has "a strong sense of the irrationality
of that period" and of "the utter folly of those who take it seriously
and play at restoring it." Still it has "poetically the greatest charm
and refreshment for me." One may perhaps be permitted to doubt whether
you can get much real poetical refreshment out of a thing which is
irrational and which you don't take seriously: the practice seems to
be not unlike that mediaeval one of keeping fools for your delectation.
Nor can the observations on Tennyson be said to be quite just or quite
pleasant. But every age and every individual is unjust to his or i