on earth." In 1887,
describing himself as "an aged outsider," he thus stated his own
attitude towards political problems--

"The professional politicians are always apt to be impatient of the
intervention in politics of a candid outsider, and he must expect to
provoke contempt and resentment in a good many of them. Still the action
of the regular politicians continues to be, for the most part, so very
far from successful, that the outsider is perpetually tempted to brave
their anger and to offer his observations, with the hope of possibly
doing some little good by saying what many quiet people are thinking and
wishing outside of the strife, phrases, and routine of professional
politics."

From first to last, he professed himself, and no doubt believed himself,
to be on the Liberal side. At the General Election of 1868 he urbanely
informed a Tory Committee, which asked for the advantage of his name,
that he was "an old Whig," nurtured in the traditions of Lansdowne
House. "Although," he said in 1869, "I am a Liberal, yet I am a Liberal
tempered by experience, reflection, and renouncement." In 1878 he
described himself as a "sincere but ineffectual Liberal": in 1880, as "a
Liberal of the future rather than a Liberal of the present." A year
later, he spoke smilingly of "all good Liberals, of whom I wish to be
considered one"; and as late as 1887 he declared himself "one of the
Liberals of the future, who happen to be grown, alas! rather old."

But, though he believed himself to be a Liberal, he had the most lively
disrelish for the Liberalism of that great Middle Class which, during
the greater part of his life, played so large a part in Liberal
politics. In 1882, reviewing, in his favourite manner, the various
classes of English Society, and discussing their adequacy to fulfil the
ideal of perfect citizenship, he wrote--

"Suppose we take that figure we know so well, the earnest and
non-conforming Liberal of our Middle Classes, as his schools and his
civilization have made him. He is for Disestablishment; he is for
Temperance; he has an eye to his Wife's Sister; he is a member of his
local caucus; he is learning to go up to Birmingham every year to the
feast of Mr. Chamberlain. His inadequacy is but too visible."

Certainly Arnold's Liberalism had nothing in common with the Liberalism
of the great Middle Class. Indeed, so far as theory is concerned, it had
a democratic basis, inasmuch as he believed that democracy wa