hedge of the law, it invaded Delicacy;
and whatever invaded delicacy helped to precipitate gross though perhaps
unforeseen evils. Unfortunately there are great masses--whole
classes--of people to whom delicacy, whether in speech or act, means
nothing. To eat, drink, sleep, buy and sell, marry and be given in
marriage, is for those masses the ideal and the law of life. These
things granted, they desire no more: any restriction on them, any
refinement of them, they dislike and resent. In another place[43] we
have cited the mysterious effect produced upon the Paris Correspondent
of the _Daily Telegraph_ by the sudden sound of the word "Delicacy." And
that word was uttered in connexion with the "enfranchising measure." "If
legislation on this subject were impeded by the party of bigotry, if
they chose not to wait for it, if they got married without it, and if
you were to meet them on the boulevard at Paris during their wedding
tour, should you go up to Bottles and say: 'Mr. Bottles, you are a
profligate man!' Poor Mr. Matthew Arnold, upon this, emerged suddenly
from his corner, and asked hesitatingly: 'But will any one dare to call
him a man of delicacy?' The question was so utterly unpractical that I
took no note of it whatever, and should not have mentioned it if it had
not been for its extraordinary effect upon our Paris Correspondent....
My friend Nick, who has all the sensitive temperament of genius, seemed
inexplicably struck by this word _delicacy_, which he kept repeating to
himself. 'Delicacy,' said he--'delicacy--surely I have heard that word
before! Yes, in other days,' he went on dreamily, 'in my fresh
enthusiastic youth; before I knew Sala, before I wrote for that infernal
paper, before I called Dixon's style lithe and sinewy--' 'Collect
yourself, my friend,' laying my hand on his shoulder; 'you are unmanned.
But in mentioning Dixon you redouble my strength; for you bring to my
mind the great sexual insurrection of the Anglo-Teutonic race, and the
master-spirit which guides it.'"[44]

But in matters far outside the region of marriage, that word
"delicacy," which so powerfully affected the Paris correspondent, is the
key to a great deal of what Arnold felt and wrote. In the sphere of
conduct he set up, as we have seen, two supreme objects for veneration
and attainment: Chastity and Charity. He practised them, he taught them,
and he used them as decisive tests of what was good and what was bad in
national life. B