iberal ideas of
1830-1860, think that the saving grace of that day that is dead was
precisely its objection to State interference.

"Equality," which follows, and which starts what might be called at
the time of the book its contemporary interest, is much more
far-reaching and of greater curiosity; indeed, it may perhaps be held
to be the most curious, in a certain sense, of all its author's
writings, and to give, in a not fully satisfactory but suggestive
fashion, a key to his complex character which is supplied by no other
of his essays. That there was (in no silly or derogatory sense of an
often absurdly used word) a slightly un-English side to that
character, few acute judges would deny. But its results, in the
greater part of the works, are so diffused, and, as it were,
subterranean, that they are difficult to extract and concentrate. Here
we seem to get the spirit much nearer proof. For the Equality which Mr
Arnold here champions is not English but French equality; not
political and judicial equality before the law, but social equality
enforced by the law. He himself admits, and perhaps even a little
exaggerates, his attitude of _Athanasius contra mundum_ in this
respect, amassing with relish expressions, in the sense opposite to
his own, from such representative and yet essentially diverse
authorities as Lord Beaconsfield, Mr Gladstone, Sir Erskine May, Mr
Froude, and Mr Lowe. Against them he arrays Menander and George
Sand--a counter-championship not itself suggestive of Equality. This
may be "only his fun"--a famous utterance which it is never more
necessary to keep in mind than when speaking or writing of Mr Arnold,
for his fun, such as it was, was pervading, and occasionally rather
cryptic. But the bulk of the paper is perfectly serious. Social
equality, and its compulsory establishment by a law against free
bequest or by public opinion, these are his themes. He asserts that
the Continent is in favour of them; that the English colonies,
_ci-devant_ and actual, are in favour of them; that the Greeks were in
favour of them; that the Bible is in favour of them. He cites Mr
Hamerton as to the virtues of the French peasant. He renews his old
tilt at the manners of the English lower-middle class, at Messrs Moody
and Sankey, at the great "Jingo" song of twenty years ago (as to
which, by the way, a modern Fletcher of Saltoun might have something
to say to-day), at the Puritans, at Mr Goldwin Smith, at many things
a