Page:Studies of a Biographer 2.djvu/131

 genuine knowledge as well as providing modes of utterance of our sentiments. The questions which arise are those which upon Arnold's method seem to be passed over. It is his indifference to them which gives sometimes the very erroneous impression of a want of seriousness. Arnold was undeniably and profoundly in earnest, though he seems scarcely to have realised the degree in which, to ordinary minds, he seemed to be offering not stones, but mere vapour when asked for bread. He felt that he was occupied with the most serious of problems, and he saw at least some of the conditions of successful treatment. On all sides his loyalty to culture (the word has been a little spoilt of late), his genuine and hearty appreciation of scholarship and scientific thought, his longing to set himself in the great current of intellectual progress, are always attractive, and are the more marked because of his appreciation (his excessive appreciation, may I say?) of the 'sweetness,' if not the light, of the Oxford Movement. If, indeed, his appreciation was excessive, I am conscious, I hope, of the value of the doctrine which led him. We ought, he says, to have an 'infinite tenderness' for the popular science of religion. It is