the reason of this nomadic existence, the only headquarters of which appear to have been the residence of Mrs Arnold’s father, the judge, in Eaton Place, with flights to friends’ houses and to lodgings at the places of inspection and others, especially Dover and Brighton.  And guesswork is nowhere more unprofitable than in cases where private matters of income, taste, and other things are concerned.  But it certainly would appear, though I have no positive information on the subject, that in the early days of State interference with education “My Lords” managed matters with an equally sublime disregard of the comfort of their officials and the probable efficiency of the system.[1]

Till I noticed the statement quoted opposite, I was quite unable to construct any reasonable theory from such a passage as that in a letter of December 1852[2] and from others which show us Mr Arnold in Lincolnshire, in Shropshire, and in the eastern counties.  Even with the elucidation it seems a shockingly bad system.  One doubts whether it be worse for an inspector or for the school inspected by him, that he should have no opportunity for food from breakfast to four o’clock, when he staves off death by inviting disease in the shape of the malefic bun; for him or for certain luckless pupil-teachers that, after dinner, he should be “in for [them] till ten o’clock.”  With this kind of thing when on duty, and no home when off it, a man must begin to appreciate the Biblical passages about partridges, and the wings of a dove, and so forth, most heartily and vividly long before seven years are out, more particularly if he be a man so much given to domesticity as was Matthew Arnold.

However, it was, no doubt, not so bad as it looks.  They say the rack is not, though probably no one would care to try.  There were holidays; there was a large circle of hospitable family friends, and strangers were only too anxious to welcome (and perhaps to propitiate) Her Majesty’s Inspector.  The agreeable anomalies of the British legal system (which, let Dickens and other grumblers say what they like, have made many good people happy and only a few miserable) allowed Mr Arnold for many years to act (sometimes while simultaneously inspecting) as his father-in-law’s Marshal on circuit, with varied company and scenery, little or nothing to do, a handsome fee for doing it, and no worse rose-leaf in the bed than heavy dinners and hot port wine, even this being alleviated by “the perpetual haunch of venison.”

For the rest, there are some pleasing miscellaneous touches in the letters for these years, and there is a certain liveliness of phrase in them which disappears in the later.  It is pleasant to find Mr Arnold on his first visit to Cambridge (where, like a good Wordsworthian, he wanted above all things to see the statue of Newton) saying what all of us say, “I feel that the Middle Ages, and all their poetry and impressiveness, are in Oxford and not here.”  In one letter —­written to his sister “K”