em (which, let Dickens and other grumblers say what they like,
have made many good people happy and only a few miserable) allowed Mr
Arnold for many years to act (sometimes while simultaneously
inspecting) as his father-in-law's Marshal on circuit, with varied
company and scenery, little or nothing to do, a handsome fee for doing
it, and no worse rose-leaf in the bed than heavy dinners and hot port
wine, even this being alleviated by "the perpetual haunch of venison."

For the rest, there are some pleasing miscellaneous touches in the
letters for these years, and there is a certain liveliness of phrase
in them which disappears in the later. It is pleasant to find Mr
Arnold on his first visit to Cambridge (where, like a good
Wordsworthian, he wanted above all things to see the statue of Newton)
saying what all of us say, "I feel that the Middle Ages, and all their
poetry and impressiveness, are in Oxford and not here." In one letter
--written to his sister "K" (Mrs Forster) as his critical letters
usually are--we find three noteworthy criticisms on contemporaries,
all tinged with that slight want of cordial appreciation which
characterises his criticism of this kind throughout (except, perhaps,
in the case of Browning). The first is on Alexander Smith--it was the
time of the undue ascension of the _Life-Drama_ rocket before its
equally undue fall. "It can do me no good [an odd phrase] to be
irritated with that young man, who certainly has an extraordinary
faculty, although I think he is a phenomenon of a very dubious
character." The second, harsher but more definite, is on
_Villette_. "Why is _Villette_ disagreeable? Because the
writer's mind [it is worth remembering that he had met Charlotte
Bronte at Miss Martineau's] contains nothing but hunger, rebellion,
and rage, and therefore that is all she can in fact put into her book.
No fine writing can hide this thoroughly, and it will be fatal to her
in the long-run." The Fates were kinder: and Miss Bronte's mind did
contain something besides these ugly things. But it _was_ her
special weakness that her own thoughts and experiences were
insufficiently mingled and tempered by a wider knowledge of life and
literature. The third is on _My Novel_, which he says he has
"read with great pleasure, though Bulwer's nature is by no means a
perfect one either, which makes itself felt in his book; but his gush,
his better humour, his abundant materials, and his mellowed
constructive s