The Dean of Westminster summoned a number of the late
Mr. Matthew Arnold's friends to a meeting on Wednesday in the Jerusalem Chamber, at which it was decided that a bust or medallion of the poet should be placed in Westminster Abbey, and that some more lasting memorial, in the shape of an Arnold scholarship for proficiency in English literature, should be established in Oxford. Scarcely ever, perhaps, at such a meeting as this, was the personal feeling expressed deeper or more unanimous. Deeply as Mr. Arnold's poetry had touched most of the speakers,—the Dean especially showed how deep an impression it had made upon him,—it was quite evident that, to most of those present, the man was even more than the poet. The Master of Balliol said so in so many words. The Lord Chief Justice, in a few most eloquent words, declared that Arnold's buoyant companionship had made even the autumnal years of his life spring-like. Whatever else can be said of Matthew Arnold, and much was justly said of his services to English literature, no one can doubt that, in spite of his strange theological vagaries, he belonged to that great trans- figured band of which he himself wrote, with a supreme scorn for dogmatic differences such as to many of us seem of the utmost significance :— " Christian or pagan, free or slave,
Soldier or anchorite, Distinctions we esteem so grave, Are nothing in their sight, Who little reek who pined unseen, Who was on action hurled,
Whose one bond is that all have been Unspotted from the world."
Matthew Arnold was a power in the world, but he came out unspotted from it.
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