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the successor of Pius the Ninth, the 260th Pope, designated in the ancient prophecy of the Popes under the phrase lumen in cælo, will be one of the most memorable and important that has been held since King Charles of Anjou of Anjou threatened to unroof the building when the Cardinals had been so long in debate, because he feared that the Holy Spirit could not descend through the roof to inspire their hearts with concord and with wisdom.

Grasped by feeble hands, and surrounded by blind or by treacherous counsellors, the two great theocratic princedoms of the Old World are in extreme peril. A remarkable chronological bond may be traced, since the date of the first preaching of Mohammed, between the fortunes of the Papacy and of the Caliphate. At no time,

since the close of the great Schism in 1429, or since the establishment of the Crescent at Constantinople, have the prospects of either institution been so gloomy. But there is between the two this striking and shameful contrast. While the fear that the Sultan may be driven from Constantinople only excites the faith of the followers of Islam to a more glowing fervour, the loss of that small territorial dominion, in the acquisition and increase of which the Popes have shewn so cynical a contempt for the precepts of the Founder of their religion, is bewailed as the death blow of Catholic Christianity. No association, either in history or in romance, is more grotesque, if impartially viewed, than that of the lordship of the Exarchate of Ravenna as a necessary appendage of the Fisherman's ring.

CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

NEW SERIES.-No. I.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

UNDER the shadow of tall, dark fir-trees, in a garden not far from the Thames, here rather in mid career than a "youthful" river, it was our lot ten years ago to pass a brief holiday. Beautiful memories clung about the place; the house in the garden was a modern building, but the old house lived still in warm tradition, as having formed the shelter of Thomas Arnold and his family.

Here, at Laleham, near Staines, where his father had been settled a few years, taking private pupils to prepare for the higher studies of the University, Matthew Arnold was born, the eldest son of nine children. His birthday is the 24th December, 1822. His mother, whose maiden name was Mary Penrose, was daughter of a clergyman of literary tastes, and sister of one of his father's school and college friends. The Arnolds were a Suffolk family, but Thomas Arnold's father held an appointment in the Customs, at Cowes, Isle of Wight.

The child manifested early a lively interest in the world around him by crawling about the room with great vigour as on mighty voyages of exploration. This promising faculty, combined with the fact that at that period his body was large in proportion to his legs, earned for him from his father the nickname of "Crab." As he grew out of baby-clothes he became of fine, well-proportioned physique, fond of games and sports, and a good hand on the river with the fly. His father was wont to bathe, sail, row, and join in gymnastic exercises with the young men who were his pupils, so that the boy was not without a healthy example in matters physical as well as spiritual.

In 1827 or 1828, Matthew Arnold was sent to Rugby, but afterwards came back to Laleham to school with Mr. Buckland, his father's brother-in-law, and former coadjutor in private tutorship. Here several who are now famous were his schoolfellows.

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After this he was sent to Winchester for two years, but did not much like the life there, and was thence removed to Rugby, where he lived at home, his father being then head-master, and attended lessons at the school. Having gained an exhibition, he went in 1840 to Balliol College, Oxford.

In 1843 Matthew Arnold won the Newdegate prize for English verse with his poem entitled "Cromwell." This was printed in the same year as having been recited in the Theatre on the 28th of June, but Commemoration Day of that year was so uproarious that the poem was never delivered aloud. The young poet's first contact with "Philistinism," therefore, was among his own fellows, and he might have thought, with his longing glance toward Greece, that so unseemly a disturbance would not have been allowed at the Olympic games, or the Panathenaic festival. Perhaps, never being one to unduly estimate himself, he might have been glad to escape the ordeal of employing against these uncircumscribed Philistines the jaw-bone of power in the recitation of his own poem.

"Cromwell" is of no remarkable promise; of no manifest genius; but it is much above the average of Prize Poems. It contains beautiful passages, and shews a practised fluency, but there is no mighty presence of Cromwell in the poem. We may surmise that it would have been a very different work if its year of appearance had been but two or three delayed, for in 1845 appeared the first edition of the "elucidations" of Thomas Carlyle. The following from "Cromwell " has been objected to:

With feet that spurned the ground, lo! Milton there
Stood like a statue; and his face was fair-

Fair beyond human beauty; and his eye,

That knew not earth, soared upwards to the sky.

But the objection is a piece of Philistinism that may match much that has since appeared in misappreciation of Matthew Arnold. The theory of the objection is, no doubt, that an eye closed like Milton's could not soar upwards to the sky. If it were to be said, however, of a man who now and again grew weary of the pettiness of earth, that he found comfort in the sky, would it mean on a cloud? The sky is an old, old symbol for life that is not of earth. Milton's eye, debarred of the external orb, looked up and found no blank, but the skyey portal of the inner world. When Mr. Matthew Arnold has shewn a literal generation how to interpret Oriental symbolism, he will have added to the number of those able to

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