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" (Mrs Forster) as his critical letters
usually are--we find three noteworthy criticisms on contemporaries,
all tinged with that slight want of cordial appreciation which