The same want of action appears in the narratives. The charm of these beautiful poems resides not in what takes place in them, but in the restful pictures they present. There is no breathless speed such as we feel in the narratives of Scott and Byron, but, on the contrary, the calm of a reflective spirit. _Sohrab and Rustum_ (1853) and _Balder Dead_ (1855) seemed to open out to Arnold a wider field of productiveness than any he had hitherto found. They took him outside himself, and gave variety to his poetry; and perhaps the thing most to be regretted in his literary history is that he wrote no more pieces of this class. Not that they are altogether the best of his poems; but blank verse so beautiful as his never cloys, and it seemed as if he might have found innumerable subjects suitable to his genius, subjects inviting quiet reflexion and not injured by the absence of rapid movement. There are two features of special value in the work of Arnold. One is his unshrinking intellectual sincerity. The bent of his mind compelled him to endeavour to understand the world in which he lived. He found much in it that was unwelcome to him. His scepticism as to dogmatic religion was a source of great pain to himself. Life would have been far more smooth and easy if he had been able to believe more; and hence that sympathy with many things he did _not_ believe which Newman noted in him. Yet he never shows the slightest sign of yielding to the temptation and playing false with his intellect. Wherever it leads him Arnold goes; and he has taught no higher lesson than that of unvarying trust in reason and loyalty to 'the high white star of truth.' It may be doubted whether any of his poetic contemporaries has pursued a path so undeviatingly straight. Even Browning is bribed by his feelings to play questionable tricks with his intellect. The second feature is the style of Arnold. He presents one of the best examples in English of the classical spirit. He is always measured and restrained. He detested 'haste, half-work, and disarray,' and certainly his own example tended to discourage them. Lucidity and flexibility and sanity were the qualities he specially strove to embody in his work. It was because he found them in Goethe that he specially admired the great German poet. It was because of the absence of them that he uttered his most severe criticisms upon his countrymen both in the present and in the past. [Sidenote: Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861).]