Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/111

 developments of democratic ideas, changed all the habits of men's thinking, shook the old fabrics to their foundations, and did not, as yet, build new temples. Science changed its front, so did History, Literature, and Art. Theology and Philosophy strove to preserve their old formation, but as the years went on were forced, if they were to exist at all, to change it also. And in the wildered disorder of men running to and fro, searching in vain for some foundation of the mind, there were only a few who found it or who believed it would be found, The greater number doubted like Arnold, were restless like him, or like him fell back on stoicism, or fled away from the noises into silence and solitude. There are many who remember those days. They lived in the thick of the battle, and most of them, being serious in that serious time, did their duty as they could. There are many now who are too young to have partaken of that strife or endured its confusion of hustling thoughts, of multitudinous efforts to find truth, but they ought to know something of its history, and be grateful to those who fought so well the battle of progress, and who suffered in the battle. It is because Arnold's poetry concerning his own soul and the soul of man reflects and embodies so much more closely that time of thirty years than either the poetry of Tennyson or Browning, that I have dwelt on it so long. It is history, an interesting history.

Looking back, we see that the times were not so