position of greater importance and influ- pathy with fresh and varied forms of ence than it had ever reached before thought, and so made us think for ourselves the chair of poetry at Oxford. Next year in a fruitful way. He bade us shake off appeared "Merope," a tragedy after the convention, and see "the thing in itself," Greek manner, which was in itself per- without prejudice and without conceit, haps not quite successful, but which gave personal or national. And, on the way, him the opportunity of writing a preface what beauties of perception and style, that contained one of the most valuable what felicities of manner! Who that has expositions of the principles of criticism read it will easily forget the address to ever produced in England. Then followed Oxford - "home of lost causes, and forthe Lectures on Translating Homer" saken beliefs, and unpopular names, and and the "Last Words," in both of which impossible loyalties "-which closes the he put forward his plea for the English preface, or the translation of Maurice de hexameter. That plea has not generally Guérin's "Centaur," or the summing up been allowed, but every one who heard of Heine and Byron with which the Heine the lectures, or has since then studied article ends, or the delicate truth and those scarce little volumes, was struck originality of all that moral observation in with the breadth and the enlightenment which the Joubert essay abounds? To of their tone, at that time so new to En- look at these passages again is to underglish criticism. stand, even apart from Mr. Arnold's poems, what Sainte-Beuve meant when five or six years before he drew the attention of the French public to a young English writer, "dont le talent réunit la pureté et la passion." The Essays in Criticism," a collection of articles and lectures, appeared in 1865, twenty-three years ago. How faintly does the young writer of to-day, to whom its methods and maxims have almost unconsciously become the commonplaces of his literary education, realize all he owes to that modest little volume! But as one traces back the stream of thought, as one recalls Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt and Macaulay, as one thinks of the older Quarterly and Edinburgh and the lumbering conscientiousness of the Retrospective Review, one gradually becomes aware of all that the essays and their successors have done for us. The critic, by that book, acquired a new dignity and importance. It both enlarged his functions and abated his pretensions. Thenceforward criticism, among those who aspired to any eminence in it, was to be a much humbler and sincerer thing than it had been in the omniscient days of Jeffrey and Croker; and at the same time it was to deal with a wider world than that of which Lamb or Hazlitt had had knowledge. "A disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world"-so Mr. Arnold originally defined his task, and his whole literary life has been an effort to fulfil it. Mr. Arnold was of course re-elected at the end of his five years, and at the end of ten many were the complaints in Oxford that the statutes did not permit a third term. More than once, as vacancies occurred in later years, efforts were made to induce him to come forward as a candidate once more, but by that time he had made himself, or believed that he had made himself, unpopular with the clergy, and he shrank from the danger of what he used to call "an odious contest." So he never stood again, and though he now and then lectured at the Royal Institution, in provincial towns, and during two visits to America, Oxford knew him officially no more. But he loved Oxford to the end; "that sweet city" which he celebrated in Thyrsis" "and in the famous preface to the essays always continued to exercise her spell upon him, and he was interested to the last in watching the part that she played in the life of England, in the men who were conspicuous in her colleges, in the books that she produced, in the The essays "movements" which from time to time themselves were an adequate comment on passed over her. But after he ceased to such a definition. To many persons even be professor of poetry, the subjects of his of the reading class such studies as those critical writing underwent a change. He on Joubert, on Eugénie and Maurice de would not have been his father's son had Guérin, or on "The Literary Influence of he not been profoundly interested in reliAcademies" were a revelation. "All can gion; he would not have been the opengrow the flower now, for all have got the minded critic that he was had he not seen seed." But twenty-five years ago Mr. Ar- that upon many classes in modern Ennold by such work opened new worlds of gland religion was losing its hold. Therethought and feeling to those who had eyes fore, he set himself to consider whether a to see and ears to hear; he taught us sym-way might not be found of preserving what was essential in religion while giving | Arnold has been almost exclusively the up whatever modern criticism had shown fame of a prose-writer. Those students to be untenable. His fastidious taste could hardly find hearing they have revolted against the crude attempts of nowhere of late found expression that I some modern reformers of religion, and know of — who with all esteem and enjoyin what we believe to have been his earli- ment of his essays, of the clearness and est writings on these subjects, certain arti- beauty of their sentiment and style, recles published in Macmillan's Magazine, tained the opinion that if justly judged he he dealt rather unmercifully with the me- must be judged by his verse and not by chanical methods of Bishop Colenso. his prose-certainly not by this alone; His own views he expounded some ten or that future students would cleave to that twelve years later in the book called “ Lit- with more of care and of love; that the erature and Dogma;" in its successor most memorable quality about him was "God and the Bible;" and in 1877, in the the quality of a poet. Not that they liked volume of collected papers called "Last the prose less, but that they liked the Essays on Church and Religion." It is verse more. His best essays ought to remarkable that the latest but one of his live longer than most, his best poems canwritings was an article in the March num- not but live as long as any, of the time." ber of the National Review on disestab- The statement that comparatively few of lishment in Wales; so impossible did he Mr. Arnold's readers cared for his poetry find it to keep his hand and his pen from was quite true in 1867; it is less true touching subjects of pressing ecclesiasti- now, though it would be inaccurate to say cal or theological interest. that he is a popular poet. His muse is too austere, the subjects with which he deals are too remote from the ordinary superficial interests of the many. But to a certain number of readers he has as a poet a place apart; a place in the inmost shrine of their affections. To them, the early poem Mr. Arnold must be pronounced to have been much less successful as a theologian than as a critic and a poet. Undoubtedly his own object was to preserve the Bible against the consequences of a purely destructive criticism. But to many he seemed to destroy the substance of reli-"Resignation," with its Wordsworthian gion, while he preserved merely a kind of severity, its air of bracing moral freshness, aroma or tradition. Even those, however, as though newly blowing from the Westwho deplore his rejection of dogma, and moreland fells; to them "Dover Beach," see a lamentable want of logic in his argu- with its noble music and the grave stoiment, can admire the spirituality of his cism of its tone; to them "The Strayed work, and the salutary manner in which he Reveller," with its magical realization of constantly dwells on the importance of the Greek spirit," The Sick King in Bo"conduct" in life. It is a tribute to the khara," and "Sohrab and Rustum," which wide effect produced by his principal work profess to be pictures of the mysterious of this class, Literature and Dogma," East, and are so much more; to them that many of the phrases with which it "Heine's Grave," "6 Rugby Chapel," the abounds have passed into common speech," Lines written in Kensington Gardens although much of its metaphysics is more than questionable, and the Hebrew scholarship of this and the other volume avowedly second-hand. - all these are among the most precious, the most abiding gifts that any modern mind has bequeathed to the English race. But it is invidious to name some poems We have reserved to the last Mr. Ar- and leave the others. When, some ten nold's work in poetry that work which years ago, Mr. Arnold made a selection is represented by the five or six little early of his own poems for the Golden Treasvolumes so dear to collectors, or by the ury series, and when his friends comtwo volumes of "Complete Poems "issued plained to him of the omission of one or in 1876, or by the three volumes, contain- other of their favorites, he laughingly aning these and fortunately a few more re-swered, "Of course if I had consulted my cent verses, which Messrs. Macmillan published two or three years ago. It is worth while here to quote a judgment written twenty years ago by a brother poet, a judgment of which it is easy to discount and to pardon the enthusiasm, and which, after all, tells the truth, if it tells it too forcibly. "For some years past," wrote Mr. Swinburne, "the fame of Mr. Matthew own taste I should have inserted everything." And indeed he would not have been far wrong; for so carefully modelled and welded are his poems, so sincerely are they felt, that there are hardly a dozen among the whole that one could wish away. Mr. Arnold was personally one of the most charming of men. On first acquaint on account of the simplicity of the dreams, than because of the artlessness of the methods with which their realization is attempted. The little fellow who was lately sent home to Liverpool by the Rhyl police commenced his quest of adventures early, being only nine years old. He left his parents on a Tuesday, walked all night, and reached Chester on Wednesday morning, drenched to the skin. Determined to put as great a distance as possible between himself and his parents, he walked straight on to Rhyl, a distance of fifty miles, in very bad weather. Here, on Thursday, he was found huddled up in a corner fast asleep, and next day was sent home. ance, indeed, there was something in his | sions he will distinguish himself before manner which might set matter-of-fact long. There is a certain element of papeople against him; but if they were sen- thos in such childish yearnings, not less sible they soon got over what was in reality purely superficial. His geniality and kindness of nature, his tolerance, his humor, soon won their way; and hence there were few men who had more or warmer friends. Even the egotism of which readers who did not know him used to complain was, for the most part, a rhetorical device; and where it was not, it was so frank, so good-natured, that it was soon forgiven. No one could be more missed in London than he, though for many years he had not actually lived in London. While his boys were growing up he lived at Harrow, that they might go to the school; of late years he occupied a pretty cottage at the foot of Pain's Hill, near Cobham. He loved the country; he had a strong affection for animals (who does not remember his poem "Geist's Grave"?) and his love for flowers was keen. In all family relationships he was admirable; and it may be of interest to mention that a vast number of letters from him to various members of his family are in existence, which are full of the personal and the literary charm that attaches to the best of his writings. His funeral took place on Thursday, at noon, at Laleham, near Staines, where he was born, and where three of his sons lie buried. From Chambers' Journal. WHAT a strange world of his own is that in which a boy lives! His parents he can see are necessary; but they hold inconvenient theories respecting cleanliness and education, which clash sadly with his notions of pleasure and freedom. But he consoles himself by thinking when he grows up he will do as he pleases. How happy he is in the world of his imagination! Everything about him excites him to activity and mischief. He is proof against the fearful gastronomic experiments he makes on himself, and triumphs over numerous accidents and adventures with which he meets, for nothing seems to hurt him. He is ever acting on a small scale the heroes of the boys' books that fire his imagination; and he looks with wondering contempt on any calling tamer than that of a soldier, hunter, admiral, or pirate, in one of which exciting profes The love of youthful adventure was further exemplified in two boys, aged respectively fifteen and sixteen, who not long since set out walking from Manchester to Liverpool. When near that city, however, their hearts seemed to have failed them, and one of them sent a postcard to his mother stating where they were and saying they had decided to return. As they were passing through Warrington on their way back, they were detained by an inspector at the police station. On the two youths were found a couple of loaded and capped pistols and ammunition, and a list of books, including 'Jack Sheppard," Paul Girard the Cabinboy," "Hard Times," and Life in the Wilds." The adventurers were relieved of their weapons and sent home. 66 99.66 It is this early devouring of cheap literature, not often so well selected as some of the books named, which leads to similar boyish expeditions to our seaport towns whence the cabin-boy or stowaway is to commence his world-dazzling career of gore and glory. Liverpool has frequently had the chance of being thus distinguished, and the landing-stage officials who, strange to say, do not seem to appreciate the honor - have grown quite experienced in “spotting" the embryo pirate or slaver looking about for a chance to embark. It is lucky for such young delinquents if the spirit of adventure does not lead them to appropriate other people's cash to defray expenses of preparation and the unromantic but necessary passage money. It is not many months since two youngsters were noticed, by one of the experienced officials before mentioned, walking up and down the landing-stage in a mysterious, expectant manner. As their overcoats had a very bulky appearance, their observer became suspicious, and questioned them. The youths' unsatisfactory answers finally led to their being detained and examined. It was another instance of youthful adventure. The bulky overcoats concealed leather belts, which contained revolvers and ammunition. The wouldbe hunters were further provided with money and tickets for America, and confessed it was their intention to live in the backwoods. A telegram to their parents led to the youths being taken home, probably, ere long, to thank their rescuers for putting a stop to their little romance. These youthful escapades become more serious when the actors in them have been tempted to relieve their employers' cashdrawers in order to fit out an expedition. This was the case in the next instance brought before our notice. The sandy watering-place of New Brighton, at the Mersey's mouth, seems in many boys' opinions to constitute a perfectly legitimate place for enacting Robinson Crusoe, and to be in a vague way associated in their minds with American prairies, the Australian bush, and Pacific island shores. Here two juvenile adventurers attracted the attention of the police to themselves by the magnificent way in which they were parting with money amongst the various amusements to be found there. They were discovered to be in possession of those dangerously fascinating toys, revolvers and cartridges, the usual "pennydreadful" serials, watches and jewelry, besides over thirteen pounds in cash, which they could not properly account for, so they were sent back to Birmingham to explain matters. On another occasion, five boys, whose ages varied from ten to fourteen years, got into trouble through camping-out in the same attractive place. A policeman observed a light underneath a large overturned boat on the shore. Such an unusual circumstance at once attracted him to the spot. He peeped beneath this improvised hut, and found our five Crusoes, who had dug a hole in the sand, and entered their retreat after the manner of an Eskimo. They had placed lighted candles at different parts of the boat, and were seated on some straw eating apples, and some were singing comic songs. Here was a happy scene of romantic boyhood to be rudely interrupted by the prosaic appearance of a commonplace policeman, just as they were commencing a glorious career of camping-out. They had all run away from home, as they informed the officer, who had a deal of trouble in persuading them to come out of their wig wam. Another lad from a manufacturing town had still more romantic ideas. Arrived in Liverpool, he first amused himself by driving about in a cab all day. His next proceeding was to rig himself out in a new suit of clothes, and of course to purchase the inevitable revolver, without which no hero is genuine. More ambitious than the usual New Brighton adventurers, he then took passage in a Manx steamer and landed in the Isle of Man. There he wandered into the interior, and found the solitude of the mountain district brought back descriptions of similar scenery in his favorite books. Our little traveller rambled about for a few days, camping out in a primitive rough-and-ready kind of way, and evidently intended to lead the life of the hunters so fascinatingly described in boys' libraries. With this view he began to stalk the game of the country, which in that island happens to be no more wild or formidable than the mountain sheep. Whether he partook of many mutton-chops, or looked forward to arraying himself in a woolly suit in the true Crusoe style, history is silent. But as the discovery of the carcases of several bulletperforated sheep by farmers in the neighborhood, led to the youthful Nimrod's arrest, we presume the want of time alone prevented him from developing into a full-bloom specimen of the lone-scout or solitary hunter type. The effect on the youthful imagination of melodramatic tales is still more striking in America, where both opportunity for, and examples of similar exploits are not wanting. The miscreants brought into activity by the ten-cents tales of criminal life distinctively known as "dime-novel's," are themselves known as "dime-novel brigands. Three members of this class, we are told, were brought before the police magistrate of Harlem, and were shown to have formed themselves into a band, which, after establishing itself in a mountainous district, was to carry off and hold to ransom beautiful maidens and wealthy tourists. Before making for the hills, the youthful banditti plundered the hotel in which they had passed the night; more, on principle, it would seem, than with a mere view to profit, for their booty consisted only of thirty-six bedroom doorkeys. It appeared from a ledger found in their possession that they had begun business with a capital of two hundred dollars, "made at New York." But most of this sum had been spent before they reached the mountains; and an entry made the second day after their arrival on the scene of their intended exploits, showed that "things already looked blue." On the third day, the juvenile robbers found it necessary to pawn their solitary pistol; and the only act of highway robbery they succeeded in committing was the theft of some food left on the road by some workmen. Even this little adventure got them into trouble with a magistrate; but the police with good-natured contempt raised a subscription to pay their expenses back to New York. Thus the heroism of their expedition has been very effectively washed out. But while cheap sensational tales circulate amongst imaginative youths, we are not surprised to find these boy brigands of America rivalled by the boy burglars in this country. As it is with would-be heroes, not criminals, we are now dealing, we omit any further examples of the latter class. refuse us we should feel it greatly.... We like the cowboys their ways and deeds very much indeed. Please don't refuse us and believe us both to be two true cowboys on your permission." The picturesque costume of the ladies of the troupe seems to have proved alluring to a few of their own sex, who expressed their willingness to abandon a dull life in Liverpool for the dangers and excitements of a sojourn in the far West, and offered themselves as wives for the cowboys. Such are a few extracts from letters of many who are eager to forsake friends and country in order to seek adventures of which they have only been accustomed to read in thrilling romances. The fact that these applicants' services were not needed will doubtless be a source of satisfaction to most of them in years to come. The youth who lately provided himself with dagger, revolver, and bowie-knife, and commenced his journey Wild-Westward by travelling from London to Liverpool, is another instance of this fascination. Not long since two youngsters disap peared from Hull, and it was suspected that they had made their way to Liverpool. A detective on their track stopped the two runaways as they were leaving a shipping office where they had taken passage for Texas. They had evidently made up their minds to embark on a regular buccaneering expedition, as they were fully armed with revolvers, daggers, and large knives, and were provided with watches and money. Our subject receives further illustration from the effect that the exploits of the cowboys of Buffalo Bill in London and Texas Joe in Liverpool produced on many of our juveniles. To be a cowboy became the rage, and every lad who could get hold of his mother's clothes-line for a lariat or his father's wide-awake for a sombrero practised throwing the lasso, till not a dog could prowl the streets with out a good chance of being suddenly "yanked "off its legs by a flying rope. The shrill yells of these lads and the loud cracks of their toy pistols, making day But it is sea-adventures that are natuand night hideous, acted as a continual rally more attractive to the youths of this advertisement for the Wild West Show. country than the exploits of hunters, Numberless letters were written by school- scouts, or cowboys. Few young would-be boys modestly offering to join the cowboy Crusoes show such determination in runtroupe. One Liverpool lad wrote: "I hear ning away to sea as the Birkenhead boy, every day that you want boys So I should who, when only five years old, hid himself like to see you in private. I have tried away on board a Dublin steamer, and to get 3 pence to come and see you Be- afterwards stowed away to Ireland five cause I am sure you would like me I can times. He was also caught on board sing fence shoot I don't mean to say as I the Isle of Man steamers. He then disam a marksman but I know how to handle appeared, and it was found that he had one. I am waiting for an answer." An- stowed away on the City of Chester, and other says: "I herd you wanted a few had gone to New York. There he was boys to join your compy. I will make a captured and sent home. Although only bargain with you if I suit you to do any-eight years old, his mother is in constant thing you may want me to do as long as you keep me in clothes and food I will go with you without wagers except a few pence for pocket-money." The majority of the epistles represent more than one applicant, one of them being signed by no fewer than eight lads. Two other youths wrote: "We would like to go back with you to America and if you fear he will run away again. Some months ago he stowed away on one of the Hall line boats, such is his love for the sea. He is a sharp, promising boy, though a regular rambler, and the magistrate, to whom the mother had applied for advice, gave him a chance of behaving better by making him return to school. But some of these youths were quite |