[4] "I do not like the course for the History School at all; nothing but read, read, read, endless histories in English, many of them by quite second-rate men; nothing to form the mind as reading really great authors forms it, or even to exercise it as learning a new language, or mathematics, or one of the natural sciences exercises it." CHAPTER V. THE LAST DECADE. It would be unhistorical to assert, and unphilosophical to assume, that in the change or reversion noted at the end of the last chapter, Mr Arnold had any consciousness of relinquishment, still more to hint any definite sense of failure on his part. He would probably have said (if any one had been impertinent enough to ask, and he had condescended to reply) that he had said his say, had shot his bolt, and might leave them to produce their effect. But that there was, if no repentance, a certain disgust, I cannot but believe. He must have seen--he almost acknowledges that he saw--that the work which he at least thought was conservative was being utilised by others in a purely destructive spirit; he must have found himself in very unwelcome alliances; and (which is worst of all to a delicate and sensitive spirit) he must constantly have found fools dotting his _i_'s and emphasising his innuendoes in their own clumsy and Philistine fashion. At any rate, it is purely historical to say that he did henceforward almost entirely change his main line of operation as to religious matters, and that though, as has been shown, he persisted, not too fortunately, in politics, his method of discussion in that likewise was altered. As we heard no more of the three Lord Shaftesburys, so Bottles and his unwelcome society were permitted to remain unchronicled. In the latter department seriousness came upon Mr Arnold; in the former, if not a total, yet a general and certainly most welcome silence.