The "one philosophy" is, as Matthew Arnold himself puts it, "utrumque paratus," prepared for either event. Yet it leans, and how should it not lean, in a world like this, to the sadder and the more final. That vision of a godless universe, "rocking its obscure body to and fro," in ghastly space, is a vision that refuses to pass away. "To the children of chance," as my Catholic philosopher says, "chance would seem intelligible." But even if it be--if the whole confluent ocean of its experiences be--unintelligible and without meaning; it remains that mortal men must endure it, and comfort themselves with their "little pleasures." The immoral cruelty of Fate has been well expressed by Matthew Arnold in that poem called "Mycerinus," where the virtuous king _does not_ receive his reward. He, for his part will revel and care not. There may be nobler, there may be happier, ways of awaiting the end--but whether "revelling" or "refraining," we are all waiting the end. Waiting and listening, half-bitterly, half-eagerly, seems the lot of man upon earth! And meanwhile that --"Power, too great and strong Even for the gods to conquer or beguile, Sweeps earth and heaven and men and gods along Like the broad volume of the insurgent Nile And the great powers we serve, themselves must be Slaves of a tyrannous Necessity--" Matthew Arnold had--and it is a rare gift--in spite of his peaceful domestic life and in spite of that "interlude" of the "Marguerite" poems--a noble and a chaste soul. "Give me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me!" prayed the Psalmist. Well! this friend of Thyrsis had "a clean heart" and "a right spirit"; and these things, in this turbulent age, have their appeal! It was the purging of this "hyssop" that made it possible for him even in the "Marguerite" poems, to write as only those can write whose passion is more than the craving of the flesh. "Come to me in my dreams and then In sleep I shall be well again-- For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day!" It was the same chastity of the senses that made it possible for him to write those verses upon a young girl's death, which are so much more beautiful--though _those_ are lovely too--than the ones Oscar Wilde wrote on the same subject. "Strew on her, roses, roses, But never a spray of yew; For in silence she reposes-- Ah! would that I did too! Her cabined ample spirit It fluttered and failed for breath. Tonight it doth inherit The vasty halls of death."