y a touch of magic so
potent that, although incapable of dullness, he has achieved authority,
and although convinced that faith is more romantic than doubt, or even
sin, he has got himself published and read. Summarising the "drift" of
Matthew Arnold, Mr Chesterton observes:

"The chief of his services may perhaps be stated thus, that he
discovered (for the modern English) the purely intellectual
importance of humility. He had none of that hot humility which is
the fascination of saints and good men. But he had a cold humility
which he had discovered to be a mere essential of the
intelligence."

Such a humility, purely hygienic in character, is for Englishmen the
beginning of wisdom on the Irish Question. It is the needle's eye by
which alone they can enter a city otherwise forbidden to them. Let there
be no misunderstanding. The attitude of mind commended to them is not
without its agreeable features. Closely scrutinised, it is seen to be a
sort of inverted vanity. The student begins by studying himself, an
exercise in self-appraisal which need not by any means involve
self-depreciation. What sort of a mind, then, is the English mind?

If there is anything in regard to which the love of friends corroborates
the malice of enemies it is in ascribing to the English an
individualism, hard-shelled beyond all human parallel. The Englishman's
country is an impregnable island, his house is a castle, his temperament
is a suit of armour. The function common to all three is to keep things
out, and most admirably has he used them to that end. At first, indeed,
he let everybody in; he had a perfect passion for being conquered, and
Romans, Teutons, Danes, and Normans in succession plucked and ate the
apple of England. But with the coming of age of that national
consciousness, the bonds of which have never been snapped, the English
entered on their lucky and courageous career of keeping things out. They
possess in London the only European capital that has never in the modern
period been captured by an invader. They withstood the intellectual
grandeur of Roman Law, and developed their own medley of customs into
the most eccentric and most equitable system in the world. They kept out
the Council of Trent, and the Spanish Armada. They kept out the French
Revolution, and Napoleon. They kept out for a long time the Kantian
philosophy, Romanticism, Pessimism, Higher Criticism, German music,
French painting,