or he saw
predominant the spirit of money-getting, the thirst for material
prosperity and the absence of spiritual interests. In 1888, while
at the house of a friend in Liverpool, he died suddenly and
peacefully from an attack of heart disease.

Arnold was one of the most exacting and critical of English
writers, a man who applied to his own works the same severe
standards that he set up for others. As a result his writings have
become one of the standards of purity and taste in style.

[Illustration: MATTHEW ARNOLD

1822-1888]

The story of _Sohrab and Rustum_ pleased him, and he enjoyed
writing the poem, as may be seen from a letter to his mother,
written in 1853. He says:

"All my spare time has been spent on a poem which I have just
finished, and which I think by far the best thing I have yet done,
and I think it will be generally liked; though one can never be
sure of this. I have had the greatest pleasure in composing it, a
rare thing with me, and, as I think, a good test of the pleasure
what you write is likely to afford to others. But the story is a
very noble and excellent one."

Two men, both competent to judge, have given at length their
opinion of Matthew Arnold's character. So admirable a man deserves
to be known by the young, although most of his writings will be
understood and appreciated only by persons of some maturity in
years. Mr. John Morley says:

"He was incapable of sacrificing the smallest interest of anybody
to his own; he had not a spark of envy or jealousy; he stood well
aloof from all the hustlings and jostlings by which selfish men
push on; he bore life's disappointments--and he was disappointed in
some reasonable hopes--with good nature and fortitude; he cast no
burden upon others, and never shrank from bearing his own share of
the daily load to the last ounce of it; he took the deepest,
sincerest, and most active interest in the well-being of his
country and his countrymen."

Mr. George E. Woodbury in an essay on Arnold remarks concerning the
man as shown in his private letters:

"A nature warm to its own, kindly to all, cheerful, fond of sport
and fun, and always fed from pure fountains, and with it a
character so founded upon the rock, so humbly serviceable, so
continuing in power and grac