On Wednesday evening, Sir Mountstuart E. Grant-Duff delivered an address
as President of the Richmond Athenaeum. His subject was the life and writings of the late Matthew Arnold, and he illustrated the inefficiency of our boasted politi- cal machinery by saying that if Mr. Arnold had been elected to the House of Commons, he might have perhaps become War Minister or Minister of Public Destruction, or even the bead of the Board of Works or Minister of Public Construction; but Minister of Public Instruction, for which his career had very specially fitted him, never. That is a good epigram, but we are not sure that it is true. For our own part, we think that Mr. Arnold would have been quite as likely to have been made Vice-President of the Council of Education as President of the Board of Works, and a great deal more likely to have been made Vice-President of the Council of Education, than Minister at War. Censure founded on pure hypothesis is hardly as telling as it might be.
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