written communication, Lord Aberdeen invited Dr. Chalmers to pay him a visit at Haddo House. The invitation was accepted, and soon after the arrival of the eminent divine host and guest took a long walk in the grounds. Subsequently Lord Aberdeen said to his daughter-in-law (who, of course, retained in afteryears a vivid memory of the occasion) with an air of relief: Mary, I do think I see the way to a settlement of the Church question.'

Next morning Dr. Chalmers departed for Edinburgh, where he was met by Dr. Candlish and other Church leaders. But no favourable result accrued from Dr. Chalmers's visit to Lord Aberdeen.

Is

Now, it can hardly be doubted that after the conference at Haddo House Dr. Chalmers must have shared the hopefulness of his host, based, we must suppose, on some plan mutually agreed upon, and containing doubtless an element of reciprocal concession or compromise. Why then did this bear no fruit? there not ground for the surmise that Dr. Candlish, whose normal attitude does not appear to have inclined towards concession in such matters, felt obliged to object to the scheme then presented by Dr. Chalmers ?

Whatever may have been the inner workings which contributed to the ultimate failure, it was certainly a lasting cause of acute disappointment and sorrow to Lord Aberdeen. And perhaps even to him the magnitude of the Disruption was to some extent a surprise, though not so complete as in the case of the Home Secretary, as will be seen by the following incident.

The resignations on the part of the seceding ministers had to be addressed to the Home Office. On the day when these were expected to arrive the Home Secretary (Sir James Graham), on arriving at his office, remarked to his private secretary when passing through to his own room: 'I would like to see any of the letters of resignation from the Scotch ministers.' 'Yes, Sir James, when I have sorted them.' 'Sorted? But surely there will only be a dozen or so?' 'More like three hundred, sir.' 'Heavens !' exclaimed Sir James in a tone of dismay, 'how I have been deceived!'

Looking back from the present distance of time, it may be felt that, after all, what seemed like a calamity was by no means altogether such. An immense act of self-sacrifice must surely, in one way or another, ultimately bring benediction. Certainly the new Church was endowed with abounding zeal and permanent vitality, and this must indirectly have tended gradually to the benefit also of the Established Church. But at first there was, inevitably, much bitterness of estrangement.

An illustration of this is provided by an imaginary dialogue

which, no doubt, has often been quoted or referred to in Scotland, but which perhaps is not as well known in England.

Two men going in opposite directions are supposed to meet on a Sunday morning, when the following conversation ensues:

FIRST MAN: 'Are ye no goin' to kirk?'

SECOND MAN:

" FIRST MAN:

Ah, then you'll be goin' to the Free Kirk, the wee Kirk, the Kirk withoot the steeple ? '

SECOND MAN: Aye, and ye'll be goin' to the Auld Kirk, the cauld Kirk, the Kirk withoot the people.'

But, happily, all that is a thing of the past, and instead of a ten years' conflict there has been for ten years and more a steady progress towards the much-to-be-desired union between the Established Church of Scotland and the United Free Church.

And now, lastly, and also chiefly, the book before us gives the presentation of the event which has formed the chief ground of criticism concerning Lord Aberdeen.

Fortunately, the defence-the apologia-can be stated within compact compass.

It has been stated so often as to become a received tradition that the country was allowed to drift' into the Crimean War, and that Lord Aberdeen, as Prime Minister, was especially responsible for that calamity.

To drift? Nay, but it was rather the case of a torrent, which became so swollen, so impetuous, that the current was almost irresistible.

Throughout all the antecedent course of affairs Lord Aberdeen had ceaselessly toiled to avert the catastrophe, but, as he pathetically declared, 'I labour for peace, but when I speak to them thereof they make ready for battle.'

The war fever was abroad, and some of the Prime Minister's own colleagues did little, if anything, to repress it; indeed, the influence of some, or at least, one of them was rather the other way, and by the Press as a whole the demand for war was vigorously encouraged.

Charles Dickens in Our Mutual Friend, incidentally and with characteristic acumen, illustrates the prevalent spirit of the time when he makes Mr. Boffin misread the title of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, etc., as The Decline and Fall off the Rooshun Empire.' If any empire was to decline and fall it must surely be that of Russia: Delenda est Carthago.' And if anything were needed to prove how vehemently the war party carried on their propaganda, it can be found in the unsparing lampoons and garbage rhymes which were directed against the Prime Minister as the chief obstacle to war.

When at length it became evident that war would be declared,

what would have been the right course for Lord Aberdeen to adopt? He was at the parting of the ways-the supreme moment. He had done his best to preserve peace, but he had not succeeded. Was he not, therefore, justified in withdrawing? This course would certainly have been congenial and attractive for him; but to adopt it would have been in appearance, or in fact, to desert the ship in the midst of storm and stress.

He decided to remain at his post, and so it came about that the unforeseen misfortunes of the campaign were especially associated with his name.

In regard to his decision to remain at the helm when war was declared, it should not be ignored that a contributory cause was certainly the knowledge that this was greatly desired by his Sovereign. Lord Aberdeen's devotion to Queen Victoria was of a depth and sincerity that partook of the romantic element, though never permitted by him to be manifested in external exuberance. And there is abundant evidence of the abiding confidence and affection with which he was regarded by Her Majesty.

After the resignation of Lord Aberdeen's Ministry (in consequence of the want of confidence vote in the House of Commons) the extraordinary spectacle was presented of the formation of a Government with one of the members of the defeated Administration at its head, namely, Lord Palmerston, who handsomely acknowledged that without Lord Aberdeen's assistance he could hardly have hoped to succeed in forming a Government. And this tribute formed only a part of that which, notwithstanding all the previous discordant episodes, Lord Aberdeen's former colleagues individually and collectively recorded, and which was summed up in their designation of him as 'a perfect gentleman.'

One would fain have dwelt on his unassuming piety, his fondness for children, his humour, though admittedly it was usually somewhat latent and of the semi-ironic (not sarcastic) type. But the word limit has been more than reached; and we must bid farewell to a personality revered by many, by quoting the phrase indicated through the Greek inscription engraved below the marble bust placed by some of his friends in Westminster Abbey:

ΔΙΚΑΙΟΤΑΤΟΣ.

ABERDEEN AND TEMAIR.

VOL. XCIII-No. 553

BB

MATTHEW ARNOLD—II

MATTHEW ARNOLD was a statesman as well as a poet. He inherited from his father a strong and patriotic concern in public affairs. In his study of politics he tried to get down to first principles. He scolded England, but loved her. In his early manhood the Government charged him with an official inquiry which took him to France and Germany. What he saw there filled him with alarm. He realised that England was adjusting herself too slowly to the intellectual and social conditions of modern Europe. On his return he warned his fellow-countrymen of their danger. Sixty years ago there were few to listen to his warning. But he persisted. He had laid his finger on three causes which checked the growth of a new unity in English life: (1) extreme economic inequality; (2) chaos in local government; (3) failure to make effective use of the civilising power of a liberal education. The first and second lay beyond his reach. But the third fell within the range of his duty. He used his pen as a weapon of propaganda. He fought for the humanities. He was a leader in the battle for secondary education.

Matthew Arnold was not only what the Scots call a son of the manse he was also a son of the school-house. His father, Thomas Arnold, of Rugby, was one of the greatest of English schoolmasters. His brother-in-law, W. E. Forster, was the author of the Education Act of 1870. Matthew was himself for a short time a master at Rugby. In 1847 he became private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, who, as President of the Council, was responsible for the Department of Education. In 1851 Lord Lansdowne appointed him to be an inspector of schools. Arnold inspected schools for thirty-five years. Thus throughout his working life he lived in the atmosphere of educational thought and practice. Sir Joshua Fitch, whom he inspected in the earlier years of his official duty, had a grateful memory of Matthew Arnold's 'genial kindness to teachers and scholars in the schools he visited.' But for schools and teaching Arnold had no marked early taste. His own inclinations lay elsewhere. The drudgery of a school inspector's life irked him often. But from the first he felt that in the course

of his daily work, dull as it was in many of its details, he was touching the springs of the future.

I think I shall get interested in the schools after a little time [he wrote to his wife a few months after he had taken up his work as an inspector]; their effects on the children are so immense, and their future effects in civilising the next generation of the lower classes, who, as things are going, will have most of the political power of the country in their hands, may be so important.

In 1859 the Duke of Newcastle's Commission on the State of Popular Education in England appointed him and Mark Pattison as Assistant Commissioners to inquire respectively into the state of education in France and in Germany. Arnold extended his inquiries into Switzerland and Holland. This was the turning point in Matthew Arnold's thoughts on politics. Just before he left England on his mission he wrote to his sister, Mrs. Forster :

I have no special interest in the subject of public education, but a mission like this appeals even to the general interest which every educated man cannot help feeling in such a subject. For five months I shall be dealing with its history and principles.

His foreign journey opened his eyes to the gravity of the situation. He realised for the first time that England was perilously behindhand in modern educational equipment. He saw that what was most urgently needed was an enlargement of opportunities for public secondary education.

Modern States [he wrote] cannot either do without free institutions or do without a rationally planned and effective civil organisation. Such an organisation, he believed, could be controlled only by the State. And, if it is to meet the wants of modern society, it must marshal the mind of the nation. Conscious though he was of the unity of Western civilisation, Arnold was no cosmopolitan. More than he realised, he was swept along by the nationalist movement of his time. He was both delighted and a little alarmed by what appeared to be the strong intellectual unity of France and Germany delighted by the élan of their advance, alarmed at the easy-goingness of the English State. He slipped into the habit of thinking of England in terms of France and Germany, forgetting the special problems of our United Kingdom and its connections with dominions overseas, and perhaps assuming that England would be to Wales and Scotland what Prussia was to Württemberg and Saxony. But he saw that one crucial difference between the policy of England and the policies of France and Germany lay in our then contrasted attitude towards the State. There the State co-ordered schools and Universities; here it held its hand from all avoidable interference with them. Consequently, on his return to England, he looked beyond the immediate scope of the