len between 1867
and 1877. His infidelities were chiefly in the direction of politics,
not of religion or irreligion, and they were of a less gay and
frivolous character than those of a generally similar kind in earlier
dates. They were partly devoted to the change which has brought it
about, that, while during the third quarter of the century the
Conservatives were in power, though on three different occasions, yet
in each for absolutely insignificant terms, in the fourth Mr
Gladstone's tenure of office from 1880 to 1885 has been the only
period of real Liberal domination. But although he dealt with the
phenomenon from various points of view in such articles as "The Nadir
of Liberalism," the "Zenith of Conservatism," and so forth, it was
chiefly, as was natural at the time, in relation to Ireland that he
exercised his political pen, and enough has been said about these
Irish articles by anticipation above. _Discourses in America_,
the result of his lecturing tour to that country in 1883-84, and the
articles on Amiel, Tolstoi, and Shelley's Life, which represent his
very last stage of life, require more particular attention.

The _Discourses in America_, two of them specially written, and
the other, originally a Cambridge "Rede" discourse, recast for the
Western Hemisphere, must always rank with the most curious and
interesting of Mr Arnold's works: but the very circumstances of their
composition and delivery made it improbable, if not impossible, that
they should form one of his best. These circumstances were of a kind
which reproduces itself frequently in the careers of all men of any
public distinction. In his days of comparative obscurity, or in some
position of "greater freedom and less responsibility," even when he
ceases to be obscure, a man deals faithfully, but perhaps a little
flippantly, with this or that person, thing, nation, subject,
doctrine. Afterwards he is brought into a relation with the person or
nation, into a position as regards the thing, subject, or doctrine,
which necessitates, if not exactly a distinct recantation in the
humiliating sense attached to the Latin, yet a more or less graceful
and ingenious palinode in the more honourable one which we allow to
the Greek equivalent and original. Mr Arnold could never be lacking in
grace or in ingenuity; but he certainly had, in his earlier work,
allowed it to be perfectly visible that the world of American
politics, American manners, American instit