parsonages, they will understand, I think, exactly what Matthew Arnold
meant.

In 1850 great changes came upon the Arnold family. The "Doctor's" elder
three children--Jane, Matthew, and my father--married in that year, and
a host of new interests sprang up for every member of the Fox How
circle. I find in a letter to my father from Arthur Stanley, his
father's biographer, and his own Oxford tutor, the following reference
to "Matt's" marriage, and to the second series of Poems--containing
"Sohrab and Rustum"--which were published in 1854. "You will have
heard," writes Stanley, "of the great success of Matt's poems. He is in
good heart about them. He is also--I must say so, though perhaps I have
no right to say so--greatly improved by his marriage--retaining all the
genius and nobleness of mind which you remember, with all the lesser
faults pruned and softened down." Matt himself wrote to give news of his
wedding, to describe the bride--Judge Wightman's daughter, the dear and
gracious little lady whom we grandchildren knew and loved as "Aunt Fanny
Lucy"--and to wish my father joy of his own. And then there is nothing
among the waifs and strays that have come to me worth printing, till
1855, when my uncle writes to New Zealand:

I hope you have got my book by this time. What you will like best, I
think, will be the "Scholar Gipsy." I am sure that old Cumner and
Oxford country will stir a chord in you. For the preface I doubt if
you will care, not having much before your eyes the sins and
offenses at which it is directed: the first being that we have
numbers of young gentlemen with really wonderful powers of
perception and expression, but to whom there is wholly wanting
a "_bedeutendes Individuum"_--so that their productions are most
unedifying and unsatisfactory. But this is a long story.