g Englishman who had become
a classic in his own lifetime. The fact is that what I have done in
establishing a number of current phrases, such as _Philistinism,
Sweetness and Light_, and all that is just the thing to strike him." In
1884 he wrote from America about his phrase, _The Remnant_--"That term
is going the round of the United States, and I understand what Dizzy
meant when he said that I had performed 'a great achievement in
launching phrases.'" But his wise epigrams and compendious sentences
about books and life, admirable in themselves, will hardly recall the
true man to the recollection of his friends so effectually as his sketch
of the English Academy, disturbed by a "flight of Corinthian leading
articles, and an irruption of Mr. G.A. Sala;" his comparison of Miss
Cobbe's new religion to the British College of Health; his parallel
between Phidias' statue of the Olympian Zeus and Coles'
truss-manufactory; Sir William Harcourt's attempt to "develop a system
of unsectarian religion from the Life of Mr. Pickwick;" the "portly
jeweller from Cheapside," with his "passionate, absorbing, almost
blood-thirsty clinging to life;" the grandiose war-correspondence of the
_Times_, and "old Russell's guns getting a little honey-combed;" Lord
Lumpington's subjection to "the grand, old, fortifying, classical
curriculum," and the "feat of mental gymnastics" by which he obtained
his degree; the Rev. Esau Hittall's "longs and shorts about the
Calydonian Boar, which were not bad;" the agitation of the Paris
Correspondent of the _Daily Telegraph_ on hearing the word "delicacy";
the "bold, bad men, the haunters of Social Science Congresses," who
declaim "a sweet union of philosophy and poetry" from Wordsworth on the
duty of the State towards education; the impecunious author "commercing
with the stars" in Grub Street, reading "the _Star_ for wisdom and
charity, the _Telegraph_ for taste and style," and looking for the
letter from the Literary Fund, "enclosing half-a-crown, the promise of
my dinner at Christmas, and the kind wishes of Lord Stanhope[3] for my
better success in authorship."

One is tempted to prolong this analysis of literary arts and graces; but
enough has been said to recall some leading characteristics of Arnold's
genius in verse and prose. We turn now to our investigation of what he
accomplished. The field which he included in his purview was
wide--almost as wide as our national life. We will consider, one by one