ofonde, qui fait les inities, et que vous ne perdrez
jamais." But in spite of, perhaps because of, this sympathy with France,
he felt himself bound to protest and to warn.

Addressing his American audience in November, 1883, he pointed out the
dangers which England, Ireland, America, and France incur through
habitual disregard, in each case, of some virtue or grace without which
national perfection is impossible. He used, as a kind of text for his
discourse, the famous passage from the Philippians. "Whatsoever things
are true, whatsoever things are elevated, whatsoever things are just,
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are amiable, whatsoever
things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any
praise, have these in your mind, let your thoughts run upon these."

_Whatsoever things are pure_. [Greek: osa hagua]--thus the teacher of
Culture moralized on this pregnant phrase.

[Illustration: The Union Rooms, Oxford

At the Jubilee of the Union, 1873, Matthew Arnold responded to Dr.
Liddon's speech proposing 'Literature'

_Photo H.W. Taunt_]

"The question was once asked by the Town Clerk of Ephesus: 'What man is
there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a
worshipper of the great goddess Diana?' Now really, when one looks at
the popular literature of the French at this moment--their popular
novels, popular stage-plays, popular newspapers--and at the life of
which this literature of theirs is the index, one is tempted to make a
goddess out of a word of their own, and then, like the Town Clerk of
Ephesus, to ask: 'What man is there that knoweth not how that the city
of the French is a worshipper of the great goddess Lubricity?' Or
rather, as Greek is the classic and euphonious language for names of
gods and goddesses, let us take her name from the Greek Testament, and
call her the goddess Aselgeia. That goddess has always been a sufficient
power amongst mankind, and her worship was generally supposed to need
restraining rather than encouraging. But here is now a whole people,
law, literature, nay, and art too, at her service! Stimulations and
suggestions by her and to her meet one in it at every turn.... 'Nature,'
cries M. Renan, 'cares nothing about chastity.' What a slap in the face
to the sticklers for 'Whatsoever things are pure'!... Even though a
gifted man like M. Renan may be so carried away by the tide of opinion
in France where he lives, as to say that Nature car