Nicholas Murray tells his story well, in readable workmanlike prose, giving a particularly good account of Matthew Arnold’s career as an inspector of schools. It is salutary to be reminded, in the words of the London Times obituary, that for thirty-five years the author of Culture and Anarchy (1869) earned his living by performing “the task of examining national schoolchildren in spelling, the rules of arithmetic, and plain sewing.” (What a great Beerbohm cartoon that would have made—“Mr. Arnold Drops a Stitch.”) For every thousand people who have read “Dover Beach” there must be only one who has read Schools and Universities on the Continent.

I am not that one, but Mr. Murray is, and his discussion of Arnold’s educational thinking, so tellingly different in scope and emphasis from the revolution wrought by his father at Rugby, is very valuable. He did not fuss about the minutiae of the curriculum, but wanted a happy environment for the children, stimulating teaching, and recognition of the difficulties under which schoolteachers labored. With disinterested determination he campaigned against the scheme of payment by results for teachers, which his employers officially supported and which bids fair to return to the English educational scene today. All his better-known work was fitted in between journeys up and down the country, visits, reports, marking, and making fact-finding trips abroad. Mr. Murray remarks, “He is the patron saint of those who have struggled to do serious intellectual work at the same time as holding down