'I fear,' he wrote, 'that our countrymen who live
abroad are not in the best possible moral state, however much
they may do in science or literature.' And this was unfortunate,
because 'a thorough English gentleman--Christian, manly, and
enlightened--is more, I believe, than Guizot or Sismondi could
comprehend; it is a finer specimen of human nature than any other
country, I believe, could furnish'. Nevertheless, our travellers
would imitate foreign customs without discrimination, 'as in the
absurd habit of not eating fish with a knife, borrowed from the
French, who do it because they have no knives fit for use'.
Places, no less than people, aroused similar reflections. By
Pompeii, Dr. Arnold was not particularly impressed. 'There is
only,' he observed, 'the same sort of interest with which one
would see the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah, but indeed there is
less. One is not authorised to ascribe so solemn a character to
the destruction of Pompeii.' The lake of Como moved him more
profoundly. As he gazed upon the overwhelming beauty around him,
he thought of 'moral evil', and was appalled by the contrast.
'May the sense of moral evil', he prayed, 'be as strong in me as
my delight in external beauty, for in a deep sense of moral evil,
more perhaps than in anything else, abides a saving knowledge of
God!'
His prayer was answered: Dr.
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