odging at Derby, with a workhouse, if I recollect aright, behind and a
penitentiary in front. But the _irksomeness_ of my new duties was what I
felt most, and during the first year or so it was sometimes
insupportable."

[Illustration: Laleham Church

As it was in Matthew Arnold's boyhood

_Photo H.W. Taunt_]

The name of Arnold is so inseparably connected with Education[9] that
many of Matthew Arnold's friends were astonished by this frank
confession, which he made in his address to the Westminster Teachers'
Association on the occasion of his retirement from the office of
Inspector. There is reason to believe that the profession on which he
had set his early affections was Diplomacy. It is easy to see how
perfectly, in many respects, diplomatic life would have suited him. The
proceeds of his Fellowship, then considerable and unhampered by any
conditions of residence, would have supplied the lack of private
fortune. He had some of the diplomatist's most necessary gifts--love of
travel, familiarity with European literature, keen interest in foreign
politics and institutions, taste for cultivated society, rich enjoyment
of life, and fascinating manners conspicuously free from English
stiffness and shyness. As to his interest in foreign politics, it is
only necessary to cite _England and the Italian Question_, which he
wrote in 1859, and which deals with the unity and independence of Italy.
It is the first essay which he ever published, but it abounds in
clearness and force, and is entirely free from the whimsicality which in
later years sometimes marred his prose. Above all it shows a sympathetic
insight into foreign aspirations which is rare indeed even among
cultivated Englishmen. In reference to this pamphlet he truly observed:
"The worst of the English is that on foreign politics they search so
very much more for what they like and wish to be true, than for what
_is_ true. In Paris there is certainly a larger body of people than in
London who treat foreign politics as a science, as a matter to _know_
upon before _feeling_ upon."

As regards the diplomatic life, it seems certain that he would have
enjoyed it thoroughly, and one would think that he was exactly the man
to conduct a delicate negotiation with tact, good humour, and good
sense. Some glimmering of these gifts seems to have dawned from time to
time on the unimaginative minds of his official chiefs; for three times
he was sent by the Education Office on