sentence of his in a letter of 1858, when he
and his wife at last took a house in Chester Square: "It will be
something to unpack one's portmanteau for the first time since I was
married, nearly seven years ago." "Something," indeed; and one's only
wonder is how he, and still more Mrs Arnold (especially as they now
had three children), could have endured the other thing so long. There
is no direct information in the _Letters_ as to the reason of
this nomadic existence, the only headquarters of which appear to have
been the residence of Mrs Arnold's father, the judge, in Eaton Place,
with flights to friends' houses and to lodgings at the places of
inspection and others, especially Dover and Brighton. And guesswork is
nowhere more unprofitable than in cases where private matters of
income, taste, and other things are concerned. But it certainly would
appear, though I have no positive information on the subject, that in
the early days of State interference with education "My Lords" managed
matters with an equally sublime disregard of the comfort of their
officials and the probable efficiency of the system.[1]

Till I noticed the statement quoted opposite, I was quite unable to
construct any reasonable theory from such a passage as that in a
letter of December 1852[2] and from others which show us Mr Arnold in
Lincolnshire, in Shropshire, and in the eastern counties. Even with
the elucidation it seems a shockingly bad system. One doubts whether
it be worse for an inspector or for the school inspected by him, that
he should have no opportunity for food from breakfast to four o'clock,
when he staves off death by inviting disease in the shape of the
malefic bun; for him or for certain luckless pupil-teachers that,
after dinner, he should be "in for [them] till ten o'clock." With this
kind of thing when on duty, and no home when off it, a man must begin
to appreciate the Biblical passages about partridges, and the wings of
a dove, and so forth, most heartily and vividly long before seven
years are out, more particularly if he be a man so much given to
domesticity as was Matthew Arnold.

However, it was, no doubt, not so bad as it looks. They say the rack
is not, though probably no one would care to try. There were holidays;
there was a large circle of hospitable family friends, and strangers
were only too anxious to welcome (and perhaps to propitiate) Her
Majesty's Inspector. The agreeable anomalies of the British legal
syst