ARTHUR, CHESTER ALAN (183o-1886), 21st president of the United States was born in Fairfield, Vt., on Oct. 5, 183o. His father, William Arthur (1796-1875), when 18 years of age, emigrated from Co. Antrim, Ireland, and, after teaching in various places in Vermont and Lower Canada, became a Baptist minister. William Arthur had married Malvina Stone, an American girl who lived in Canada at the time of the marriage, and the numerous changes of the family residence afforded a basis for allegations in 188o that the son Chester was born not in Vermont, but in Canada, and was therefore ineligible for the presidency. Chester entered Union college as a sophomore, and graduated with honour in 1848. He then became a schoolmaster, at the same time studying law. In 1853 he entered a law office in New York city, and in the following year was admitted to the bar. His reputation as a lawyer began with his connection with the famous "Lemmon slave case," in which, as one of the special counsel for the State, he secured a decision from the highest State courts that slaves brought into New York while in transit between two slave States were ipso facto free. In another noted case, in 1855, he obtained a decision that negroes were entitled to the same accommodations as whites on the street railways of New York city.
In politics Arthur was actively associated from the outset with the Republican Party. When the Civil War began he held the po sition of engineer-in-chief on Governor Edwin D. Morgan's staff, and afterwards became successively acting quartermaster general, inspector general, and quartermaster general of the State troops, in which capacities he showed much administrative efficiency. At the close of Governor Morgan's term, Dec. 31, 1862, Gen. Arthur re sumed the practice of his profession, remaining active, however, in party politics in New York city. In Nov. 1871, he was appointed by President U. S. Grant collector of customs for the port of New York. The custom-house had long been conspicuous for the most flagrant abuses of the "spoils systems"; and though Gen. Arthur admitted that the evils existed and that they rendered efficient ad ministration impossible, he made no extensive reforms. In 1877 President Rutherford B. Hayes began the reform of the civil serv ice with the New York custom-house. A non-partisan• commission, appointed by Secretary John Sherman, recommended sweeping changes. The president demanded the resignation of Arthur and his two principal subordinates, George H. Sharpe, the surveyor, and Alonzo B. Cornell, the naval officer, of the port. Gen. Arthur refused to resign on the ground that to retire "under fire" would be to acknowledge wrong-doing, and claimed that as the abuses were inherent in a widespread system he should not be made to bear the responsibility alone. His cause was espoused by Senator Roscoe Conkling, for a time successfully; but on July 11, 1878, during a recess of the Senate, the collector was removed, and in Jan. 1879, after another severe struggle, this action received the approval of the Senate. His business conduct of the office was not impugned. but, at that period, he was a political manager conspicu ously hostile to civil service reform. However, in defence of his management, he issued a statement pointing out that the record of his immediate predecessors in the office showed seven times as many changes in appointments as he had made.
In 188o Gen. Arthur was a delegate at large from New York to the Republican national convention. In common with the rest of the "Stalwarts," he worked hard for the nomination of Gen. U. S. Grant for a third term. Upon the triumph of James A. Garfield, the necessity of conciliating the defeated faction led to the hasty acceptance of Arthur for the second place on the ticket. His nomi nation was coldly received by the public ; and when, after his elec tion and accession, he actively engaged on behalf of Conkling in the great conflict with Garfield over the New York patronage, the impression was widespread that he was unworthy of his position. Upon the death of President Garfield, Sept. 19, 1881, Arthur took the oath as his successor. Coming at a period of intense factional controversy and following the assassination of Garfield, which had profoundly shocked the public mind, the accession of Arthur to the presidency created apprehensions. The widespread expressions of dismay in the press at the probable outcome of an administra tion in the hands of so confirmed a factionist and spoilsman as he was reputed to be, are said to have deeply wounded Arthur. But his inaugural address was clear, judicious and reassuring, and his expressed purpose, from which he never measurably deviated, to administer his office in a spirit devoid of factional animosity, estab lished the confidence of the nation and won for him the approval of many of his severest critics. Contrary to the general expecta tion, his appointments as a rule were unexceptionable, and he ear nestly supported the Pendleton law for the reform of the civil service. His use of the veto in 1882 in the cases of a Chinese im migration bill (prohibiting immigration of the Chinese for 20 years in contravention of the treaty of 188o) and a river and harbour bill (appropriating over $18,000,000 some of which was to be ex pended on insignificant streams) confirmed the favourable impres sion that had been made. The most important events of his admin istration were the passage of the Tariff Act of 1883 and of the Edmunds law prohibiting polygamy in the territories, and the com pletion of three great continental railways—the Southern Pacific, the Northern Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe.
Among enactments made by Congress on recommendation of the I administration were the repeal of the stamp taxes on matches, pro prietary articles, and bank cheques ; the reduction of letter postage from three cents to two cents; the enlargement of fast-mail and free-delivery systems ; and the establishment of special letter de liveries. In 1882 a convention was made for relocating the bound ary between Mexico and the United States, and in 1883 a recipro cal commercial treaty for fostering trade with Mexico was nego tiated. In connection with commercial treaties President Arthur recommended the establishment of a monetary union of American countries to secure the adoption of a uniform currency basis, and to promote the general remonetization of silver. A treaty was ne gotiated with Nicaragua which empowered the United States to construct a canal, railway and telegraph line across Nicaraguan territory but was not ratified by the Senate. On Feb. 1885, President Arthur made an address at the dedication of the Wash ington monument, at the national capital, which was brought to completion during his term. One of his last official acts was the appointment of Gen. U. S. Grant as general of the army, a special bill creating this rank having been passed by Congress, March 3, 1885. In 1884 Arthur permitted his name to be presented for re nomination at the Republican National convention, but he was easily defeated by the supporters of James G. Blaine. Although a close friend of Conkling, long an implacable political enemy of Blaine, Arthur supported the latter in the ensuing presidential campaign. At the end of his term he resumed his residence in New York City, where he died on the i8th of November, 1886.
That Arthur should have retired from the presidency with the respect of the people of the United States is the best testimonial to the way in which he had filled the office, especially in view of his earlier record. It remains only to be said that, alike in public and private life, his bearing was always dignified without being pompous ; that he was easy of approach, genial in conversation and manner, and a man of many and close friends.
As a romantic hero he differs very considerably from the charac ter familiar to us through Tennyson's Idylls of the King. In the earlier poems he is practically a lay figure; his court is the point of departure and return for the knights whose adventures are re lated in detail, but he himself is a passive spectator. In the prose romances he is a monarch the splendour of whose court, his riches and generosity, are the admiration of all, but morally he is no whit different from the knights who surround him. He has two sons, neither of them born in wedlock, one of them, Modred, alike his son and his nephew. In certain romances, Perlesvaus and Diu Crone, he is a veritable roi faineant, overcome by sloth and luxury. As a fairy king not only does Layamon represent three ladies as appearing at his birth, and prophesying his future greatness, while, as we all know, three queens appear at his death to bear him to the land of Avalon, but in Huon de Bordeaux he is heir to the king dom of the fairy king Oberon ; and in the little-known poem of Brun de la Montagne, preserved in a unique ms. of the Biblio theque Nationale, we are told that all fairy-haunted places, wher ever they may be, belong to Arthur— et tout ces lieux fags sont Artus de Bretagne.
Thus in the diverse aspects of Arthur's character we have some indication of the perplexing variations of the literature which gath ered round his name.
So far as the historic element is concerned it is meagre, consist ing in the bare statement by Nennius, quoted above, and in the His toria Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, which might perhaps be more correctly characterized as the most successful work of fiction ever composed. Between these two there is an in terval of upwards of 40o years, Nennius dating from the 8th cen tury, Geoffrey writing in the middle of the 12th. Arthurian tradi tion is a stream which runs underground, starting as a mere trickle, and emerging at the end of its journey as a mighty river. Literature is silent, but popular tradition must have been active. William of Malmesbury, writing just before Geoffrey, refers to Arthur as one of whom the Britons "rave wildly to-day" ("hodie delirant"), and there were certainly many more tales current than Geoffrey found room for in his history. Close upon the appear ance of Geoffrey's work followed the rhymed adaptations of Wace (French) and Layamon (early English), both of which, not ably the latter, contain material lacking in the prose work. That stories of Arthur and his knights had, before this, travelled as far afield as Italy is proved by the Arthurian carvings on the north doorway of Modena cathedral (early 12th century) and the fact that Signor Rajna has discovered the names of Arthur and Gawain as witnesses to deeds belonging to the first quarter of the I 2th cen tury; it is clear from the character of the documents that the per sons attesting could not have been born later than io8o, which would argue a popular knowledge of Arthurian tradition in the I 1th century.
The great body of verse romances which constitutes the most interesting, and from the literary point of view, the most im portant, section of Arthurian romance only came into existence in the latter half of the 1 2th century. Its most important monuments are the works of Chretien de Troyes (Erec, Yvain, Le Chevalier de la Charrette, Perceval, or Le Conte del Graal), and of his trans lator, Hartmann von Aue (Erec, Iwein) ; and the great Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach, the source of which is still a subject of debate, but which has become more familiar to the present genera tion through Wagner's music drama Parsi f al. To the poetical suc ceeded the prose versions, headed by the trilogy of Robert de Bor ron: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin and Perceval; and these com paratively short texts were expanded gradually into the enormous body of cyclic romances of which numerous mss. are extant. In its final form the Joseph became the Grand Saint Graal, or Estoire del Saint Graal, probably the last of the romances to be com posed; the Merlin received pseudo-historic and romantic addi tions; the Perceval was replaced by the prose Lancelot, with the Galahad Queste and Mort Arhus as concluding sections. In the final stages the prose version of the Tristan story was interpolated into the already unwieldy corpus of romance.