l too long on
these unfortunate books, for the handles they present are infinite;
but for my part I shall take leave to say little more about them. To
ask, in the common phrase, whether they did any harm would be to beg
the question in their own manner; to ask whether they produced any
effect would lead us too far. They certainly expressed a prevalent
tendency. Most fortunately Mr Arnold was allowed another ten years and
more wherein to escape from the wilderness which yielded these Dead
Sea fruits, and to till his proper garden once more. Yet we have not
quite done with the other fruits themselves.

The actual finale, _Last Essays on Church_ and _Religion_,
was still less popular, was indeed the least popular of all his works,
seeing that, as has been said above, it has never been reprinted. It
is easy to understand this, for it is perhaps the only one of his
books which can be definitely called dull. The apologetic tone
noticeable in _God and the Bible_ continues, but the apology is
illustrated and maintained in an even less attractive manner. The
Preface is perhaps the least dead part of the book; but its line of
argument shares, and perhaps even exaggerates, the controversial
infelicity of this unfortunate series. Mr Arnold deals in it at some
length with the comments of two foreign critics, M. Challemel-Lacour
and Signor de Gubernatis, on _Literature and Dogma_, bringing out
(what surely could have been no news to any but very ill-educated
Englishmen) the fact of their surprise, not at his taking the Bible
with so little seriousness, but at his taking it with any seriousness
at all. And he seems never even to dream of the obvious retort:
"Certainly. These men are at any rate 'thorough'; they are not
dilettante dalliers between two opinions. They have got far beyond
your half-way house and have arrived at their destination. We have no
desire to arrive at the destination, and therefore, if you will excuse
us, we decline to visit the half-way house." It is less surprising
that he did not see the force of the objections of another critic, M.
Maurice Vernes, to the equally illogical and unhistorical plan of
arbitrarily selecting this utterance as that of "Jesus," and another,
given by the same authority, as not that of "Jesus." A man, who was
sensible of this paralogism, could never take Mr Arnold's views on
Church and Religion at all.

But when we leave the Preface, even such faint liveliness as this
deserts us. The