considered one"; and as late as 1887 he declared himself "one of the
Liberals of the future, who happen to be grown, alas! rather old."

But, though he believed himself to be a Liberal, he had the most lively
disrelish for the Liberalism of that great Middle Class which, during
the greater part of his life, played so large a part in Liberal
politics. In 1882, reviewing, in his favourite manner, the various
classes of English Society, and discussing their adequacy to fulfil the
ideal of perfect citizenship, he wrote--

"Suppose we take that figure we know so well, the earnest and
non-conforming Liberal of our Middle Classes, as his schools and his
civilization have made him. He is for Disestablishment; he is for
Temperance; he has an eye to his Wife's Sister; he is a member of his
local caucus; he is learning to go up to Birmingham every year to the
feast of Mr. Chamberlain. His inadequacy is but too visible."

Certainly Arnold's Liberalism had nothing in common with the Liberalism
of the great Middle Class. Indeed, so far as theory is concerned, it had
a democratic basis, inasmuch as he believed that democracy was a product
of natural law, and that our business was to adapt our political and
social institutions to it. "Democracy," he said, "is trying to _affirm
its own essence_: to live, to enjoy, to possess the world, as
aristocracy has tried, and successfully tried, before it."

The movement of Democracy he regarded as being an "operation of nature,"
and, like other operations of nature, it was neither to be praised nor
blamed. He was neither a "partisan" of it, nor an "enemy." His only care
was, if he could, to guide it aright, and to secure that it used its
predominant power in human affairs at least as wisely as the aristocracy