gure's grown convex.' Since 1871 we have learnt the answer to the
sombre lesson, 'What is it to grow old?' But, thank God! we can laugh
even yet.

The humour and high spirits of _Friendship's Garland_ were, however,
but the gilding of a pill, the artificial sweetening of a nauseous
draught. In reality, and joking apart, the book is an indictment at
the bar of _Geist_ of the English people as represented by its middle
class and by its full-voiced organ, the daily press. Mr. Arnold
invented Arminius to be the mouthpiece of this indictment, the
traducer of our 'imperial race,' because such blasphemies could not
artistically have been attributed to one of the number. He made
Arminius a Prussian because in those far-off days Prussia stood for
Von Humboldt and education and culture, and all the things Sir Thomas
Bazley and Mr. Miall were supposed to be without. Around the central
figure of Arminius the essentially playful fancy of Mr. Arnold grouped
other figures, including his own. What an old equity draughtsman would
call 'the charging parts' of the book consist in the allegations that
the Government of England had been taken out of the hands of an
aristocracy grown barren of ideas and stupid beyond words, and
entrusted to a middle class without noble traditions, wretchedly
educated, full of _Ungeist_, with a passion for clap-trap, only
wanting to be left alone to push trade and make money; so ignorant as
to believe that feudalism can be abated without any heroic Stein, by
providing that in one insignificant case out of a hundred thousand,
land shall not follow the feudal law of descent; without a single
vital idea or sentiment or feeling for beauty or appropriateness; well
persuaded that if more trade is done in England than anywhere else, if
personal independence is without a check, and newspaper publicity
unbounded, that is, by the nature of things, to be great; misled every
morning by the magnificent _Times_ or the 'rowdy' _Telegraph_;
desperately prone to preaching to other nations, proud of being able
to say what it likes, whilst wholly indifferent to the fact that it
has nothing whatever to say.

Such, in brief, is the substance of this most agreeable volume. Its
message was lightly treated by the grave and reverend seigniors of the
State. The magnificent _Times_, the rowdy _Telegraph_, continued to
preach their gospels as before; but for all that Mr. Arnold found an
audience fit, though few, and, of course, he fou