becomes
frankly prosaic at inconvenient times, and is more often on the level of
eloquent and graceful rhetoric than of poetry. It is frequently liquid
and melodious, but there is no burst of native song in it anywhere. It
is the work of a true poet, nevertheless; but there are many voices for
the Muse. It is sincere, it is touched with reality; it is the mirror of
a phase of life in our times, and not in our times only, but whenever
the intellect seeks expression for its sense of the limitation of its
own career, and its sadness in a world which it cannot solve.

A word should be added concerning the personality of Arnold
which is revealed in his familiar letters,--a collection that has
dignified the records of literature with a singularly noble memory of
private life. Few who did not know Arnold could have been prepared
for the revelation of a nature so true, so amiable, so dutiful.
In every relation of private life he is shown to have been a man of
exceptional constancy and plainness. The letters are mainly home
letters; but a few friendships also yielded up their hoard, and thus
the circle of private life is made complete. Every one must take
delight in the mental association with Arnold in the scenes of his
existence, thus daily exposed, and in his family affections. A nature
warm to its own, kindly to all, cheerful, fond of sport and fun, and
always fed from pure fountains, and with it a character so founded
upon the rock, so humbly serviceable, so continuing in power and
grace, must wake in all the responses of happy appreciation, and
leave the charm of memory.

He did his duty as naturally as if it required neither resolve, nor
effort, nor thought of any kind for the morrow, and he never failed,
seemingly, in act or word of sympathy, in little or great things; and
when, to this, one adds the clear ether of the intellectual life where
he habitually moved in his own life apart, and the humanity of his
home, the gift that these letters bring may be appreciated. That gift
is the man himself; but set in the atmosphere of home, with son-ship
and fatherhood, sisters and brothers, with the bereavements of
years fully accomplished, and those of babyhood and boyhood,--a
sweet and wholesome English home, with all the cloud and sunshine
of the English world drifting over its roof-tree, and the soil of England
beneath its stones, and English duties for the breath of its being.
To add such a home to the household-rights of