It  is  easy  enough  to  detect  him  in  the  breach
of  his  own  rules,  and  to  chide  him  for  turning
aside  to  indulge  in  disproportionate  praise  and
blame.  Yet  we  are  not  to  forget  that  he
created  a  new  era  in  criticism,  and  gave  a  new
interest  to  aesthetic  forms  of  culture.
II

In  politics  Arnold  was  a  sort  of  hesitant
Liberal,  without  the  habit  of  allegiance  to
party  leaders,  and  with  some  marked  peculiari-
ties of  his  own.^  He  was  hospitably  inclined
toward  many  new  theories;  but  as  these  were
more  often  wrong  than  right,  his  entertain-
ment of  them  was  looked  upon  as  a  harmless
diversion.  Besides,  a  man  who  persisted  in
judging  for  himself,  who  took  nothing  at  sec-
ond hand,  who  bowed  the  knee  to  no  reputa-
tion, however  high  its  pedestal  in  the  temple
of  fame,  was  not  likely  to  be  a  successful
politician.  He  pitied  the  sorrows  of  the  people
who  suffer,  the  dim  common  populations  "who
faint  away";  but  he  pitied  them  from  above,

^  Introduction  to  Culture  and  Anarchy.
1253]


Matthew  Arnold

and  the  idea  that  the  fountains  of  authority
were  in  these  masses  never  occurred  to  him.  He
had  honorable  and  true  convictions  on  certain
vexed  issues  of  the  day,  issues  which  are  still
in  process  of  adjustment  and  have  no  imme-
diate prospect  of  settlement.  He  held  that
there  must  be  a  levelling  in  the  immense  in-
equalities of  material  condition  and  property
which  exist  in  England,  and  which  he  thought
were  due  to  the  feudal  system  of  land  tenure.
