repeating one of the verses from St. John, he begged that the comparison might never again be made. The longer holidays were spent in Westmoreland, where, rambling with his offspring among the mountains, gathering wild flowers, and pointing out the beauties of Nature, Dr. Arnold enjoyed, as he himself would often say, "an almost awful happiness." Music he did not appreciate, though he occasionally desired his eldest boy, Matthew, to sing him the Confirmation Hymn of Dr. Hinds, to which he had become endeared, owing to its use in Rugby chapel. But his lack of ear was, he considered, amply recompensed by his love of flowers: "they are my music," he declared. Yet, in such a matter, he was careful to refrain from an excess of feeling, such as, in his opinion, marked the famous lines of Wordsworth:
"To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often He too deep for tears."
He found the sentiment morbid. "Life," he said, "is not long enough to take such intense interest in objects in themselves so little." As for the animal world, his feelings towards it were of a very different cast. "The whole subject," he said, "of the brute creation is to me one of such painful mystery, that I dare not approach it." The Unitarians themselves were a less distressing thought. Once or twice he found time to visit the Continent, and the letters and journals recording in minute detail his reflections and impressions in France or Italy show us that Dr. Arnold preserved, in spite of the distractions of foreign scenes and foreign manners, his accustomed habits of mind. Taking very little interest in works of art, he was occasionally moved by the beauty of natural objects; but his principal pre-occupation remained with the moral aspects of things. From this point of view, he found much to reprehend in the conduct of his own countrymen. "I fear," he wrote, "that our countrymen who live abroad are not in the best possible moral state,
