ace to note his abiding interest in, and affection for, the
House of Israel. The present writer once delivered a rather long and
elaborate lecture on Arnold's genius and writings; and next morning a
daily paper gave this masterpiece of condensed and tactful reporting:
"The lecturer stated that Mr. Arnold was of Jewish extraction, and
proceeded to read passages from his works." It might have been more
truly said that the lecturer suggested, as interesting to those who
speculate in race and pedigree, the question whether Arnold's remote
ancestors had belonged to the Ancient Race, and had emigrated from
Germany to Lowestoft, where they dwelt for several generations. There is
certainly no proof that so it was; and genealogical researches would in
any case be out of keeping with the scope of this book. It is enough to
note the fact of his affectionate and grateful feeling towards the
Jewish race, and this can best be done in his own words. The present
Lord Rothschild, formerly Sir Nathaniel de Rothschild, is the first
adherent of the Jewish faith who ever was admitted to the House of
Lords, though of course there have been other Peers of Jewish descent.
When Mr. Gladstone created this Jewish peerage,[32] Arnold wrote as
follows to an admirable lady whose name often appears in his published
Letters--

"I have received so much kindness from your family, and I have so
sincere a regard for yourself, that I should in any case have been
tempted to send you a word of congratulation on Sir Nathaniel's
peerage; but I really feel also proud and happy for the British public
to have, by this peerage, signally marked the abandonment of its old
policy of exclusion, the final and total abandonment of it. What have we
not learned and gained from the people whom we have been excluding all
these years! And how every one of us will see and say this in the
future!"

What, in his view, we had "learned and gained" from the Jewish people,
is well expressed in the preface to _Culture and Anarchy_.

"To walk staunchly by the best light one has, to be strict and sincere
with oneself, not to be of the number of those who say and do not, to be
in earnest--this is the discipline by which alone man is enabled to
rescue his life from thraldom to the passing moment and to his bodily
senses, to ennoble it, and to make it eternal. And this discipline has
been nowhere so effectively taught as in the School of Hebraism. The
intense and convinced energy with