All this is already ancient history, and history not ancient enough to be venerable. But the book as a book, and also as a document in the case, has, and always will have, interest. "The cries and catchwords" which Mr Arnold denounces, as men so often do denounce their own most besetting temptations, have not yet quite mastered him; but they have made a lodgment. The revolt--in itself quite justifiable, and even admirable--from the complacent acceptance of English middle-class thought, English post-Reform-Bill politics, English mid-century taste and ethics and philosophy,--from everything, in short, of which Macaulay was the equally accepted and representative eulogist and exponent, is conspicuous. It is from foreign and almost hostile sources that we must expect help. The State is to resume, or to initiate, its guidance of a very large part, if not of the whole, of the matters which popular thought, Liberal and Conservative alike, then assigned to individual action or private combination. We have not yet Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace labelled with their tickets and furnished with their descriptions; but the three classes are already sharply separated in Mr Arnold's mind, and we can see that only in the Philistine who burns Dagon, and accepts circumcision and culture fully, is there to be any salvation. The anti-clerical and anti-theological animus is already strong; the attitude _dantis jura Catonis_ is arranged; the _jura_ themselves, if not actually graven and tabulated, can be seen coming with very little difficulty. Above all, the singing-robes are pretty clearly laid aside; the Scholar-Gipsy exercises no further spell; we have turned to prose and (as we can best manage it) sense.