'One has often wondered whether upon the whole earth there is anything so unintelligent, so unapt to perceive how the world is really going, as an ordinary young Englishman of our upper class'

Poet, education reformer, social theorist and passionate critic of Victorian England, Matthew Arnold condemned an industrial society in 'bondage to machinery' and argued instead that the wonder and joy of culture - in particular the 'sweetness and light' of classical civilization - were essential to human life. The other pieces here, on literary criticism, schools, France, journalism and democracy, form a powerful call to arms from a writer who believed that the English needed to be taught not what to think, but how to think.

Edited with an introduction by P. J. Keating.