short and light letter by way of reply." That "short and light letter"
appeared in the _Pall Mall_ of March 20, 1866. It dealt with the
respective but not incompatible claims of Culture and Liberty--the
former so defective in England, the latter so abundant--and it contained
this aspiration for Englishmen of the Middle Class. "I do not wish them
to be the café-haunting, dominoes-playing Frenchmen, but some third
thing: neither the Frenchmen nor their present selves."

He was now fairly launched on the course of social criticism. As time
went on, his essays attracted more and more notice, sometimes friendly,
sometimes hostile, but always interested and not seldom excited. Some of
the comments on the new and daring critic were inconceivably absurd. Of
Mr. Frederic Harrison's retort,[25] Arnold wrote that it was "scarcely
the least vicious, and in parts so amusing that I laughed till I cried."
Mr. Goldwin Smith described him as "a gentleman of a jaunty air, and on
good terms with the world." To the _Times_ he seemed "a sentimentalist
whose dainty taste requires something more flimsy than the strong sense
and sturdy morality of his fellow-Englishmen." One newspaper called him
"a high priest of the kid-glove persuasion"; another, "an elegant
Jeremiah"; and Mr. Lionel Tollemache, combining in one harmonious whole
the absurdities of all the other commentators, says: "When asked my
opinion of this quaint man of genius, I have described him as a _Hebrew
prophet in white kid gloves_."

The fact is that we are a serious people. The Middle Class, which he
singled out for attack, is quite pre-eminently serious. Philosophers and
critics--the _Spectator_ and the _Edinburgh_--had made seriousness a
religion. Editors, leader-writers, reviewers, the Press generally, were
steeped to their lips in seriousness. They could not understand, and
were greatly inclined to resent, the appearance of this bright, playful,