The Letters of Matthew Arnold V. 6; 1885-1888 (Victorian Literature & Culture)

In this final volume of the Virginia edition of Arnold's letters, Arnold joins for the last time a Royal Commission on Education, travelling first to Germany, and then on to Switzerland and Paris. Following his wife and younger daughter, Arnold also makes his second American visit, this time to see ""the Midget"", his first grandchild. Both missions reveal his well-known and characteristic zest for people and places - new acquaintances, new scenery, the total experience of living - observing, absorbing, recording and moving on. Finally, with maximum nostalgia and minimum regret, he resigned the inspectorship of schools in which he had spent nearly all of his adult existence and settles down, in sweet, bucolic content, to the life of a country squire. Then, tragically, abruptly and predictably, it screeches to a halt. Manifestly, he had lived daily with intimations of mortality. The series-cumulative index included with this volume is a valuable resource for tracking Arnold's records of his active life.