He felt the coarse facts of the plain world so thoroughly that he could not readily take in anything, which did not seem in accordance with them and like them. And what common idea of the invisible world seems in the least in accordance with them or like them? A journal-writer in one of his poems has expressed this: ‘Comfort has come to me here in the dreary streets of the city, Comfort—how do you think?—with a barrel-organ to bring it. Moping along the streets, and cursing my day as I wandered, All of a sudden my ear met the sound of an English psalm-tune. Comfort me it did, till indeed I was very near crying. Ah, there is some great truth, partial very likely, but needful, Lodged, I am strangely sure, in the tones of the English psalm-tune: Comfort it was at least; and I must take without question Comfort, however it come, in the dreary streets of the city. ‘What with trusting myself, and seeking support from within me, Almost I could believe I had gained a religious assurance, Formed in my own poor soul a great moral basis to rest on. Ah, but indeed I see, I feel it factitious entirely; I refuse, reject, and put it utterly from me; I will look straight out, see things, not try to evade them; Fact shall be fact for me, and the Truth the Truth as ever, Flexible, changeable, vague, and multiform, and doubtful.— Off, and depart to the void, thou subtle, fanatical tempter!’ Mr. Clough’s fate in life had been such as to exaggerate this naturally peculiar temper. He was a pupil of Arnold’s; one of his best, most susceptible and favourite pupils. Some years since there was much doubt and interest as to the effect of Arnold’s teaching. His sudden death, so to say, cut his life in the middle, and opened a tempting discussion as to the effect of his teaching when those taught by him should have become men and not boys. The interest which his own character then awakened, and must always awaken, stimulated the discussion, and there was much doubt about it. But now we need doubt no longer. The Rugby ‘men’ are _real_ men, and the world can pronounce its judgment. Perhaps that part of the world which cares for such things has pronounced it. Dr. Arnold was almost indisputably an admirable master for a common English boy,—the small, apple-eating animal whom we know. He worked, he pounded, if the phrase may be used, into the boy a belief, or at any rate a floating, confused conception, that there are great subjects, that there are strange problems, that knowledge has an indefinite value, that life is a serious and solemn thing. The influence of Arnold’s teaching upon the majority of his pupils was probably very vague, but very good. To impress on the ordinary Englishman a general notion of the importance of what is intellectual and the reality of what is supernatural, is the greatest benefit which can be conferred upon him. The common English mind is too