ncerns, his love of children, his
kindness to animals, his absolute freedom from bitterness, rancour, or
envy; his unstinted admiration of beauty, or cleverness, his frank
enjoyment of light and colour, of a happy phrase, an apt quotation, a
pretty room, a well-arranged dinner, a fine vintage; his childlike
pleasure in his own performances--"Did I say that? How good that was!"

But all these trifling touches of character-painting, perhaps, tend to
overlay and obscure the true portraiture of Matthew Arnold. He was
pre-eminently a good man, gentle, generous, enduring, laborious, a
devoted husband, a most tender father, an unfailing friend. Qualified by
nature and training for the highest honours and successes which the
world can give, he spent his life in a long round of unremunerative
drudgery, working even beyond the limits of his strength for those whom
he loved, and never by word or gesture betraying even a consciousness of
that harsh indifference to his gifts and services which stirred the
fruitless indignation of his friends. His theology, once the subject of
such animated criticism, seems now a matter of little moment; for,
indeed, his nature was essentially religious. He was loyal to truth as
he knew it, loved the light and sought it earnestly, and by his daily
and hourly practice gave sweet and winning illustration of his own
doctrine that conduct is three-fourths of human life.

We who were happy enough to fall under his personal influence can never
overstate what we owe to his genius and his sympathy. He showed us the
highest ideal of character and conduct. He taught us the science of good
citizenship. He so interpreted nature that we knew her as we had never
known her before. He was our fascinating and unfailing guide in the
tangled paradise of literature. And, while for all this we bless his
memory, we claim for him the praise of having enlarged the boundaries of
the Christian Kingdom by making the lives of men sweeter, brighter, and
more humane.

[Footnote 46: A saying attributed to Bishop Wilberforce.]

[Footnote 47: See the Introduction to his _Romans_, 3rd edition, 1870.]

[Footnote 48: See the Introduction to his _Romans_, 3rd edition, 1870.]

[Footnote 49: University and other Sermons, p. 175.]

[Footnote 50: W.E. Gladstone: _Later Gleanings_.]

[Footnote 51: _Essays in Criticism_. "Pagan and Mediaeval Religious
Sentiment."]

[Footnote 52: J. Armitage Robinson, D.D., Easter Day, 1903.]

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