Philistines meaning the ill-behaved and ignorant. The word so applied arose in Germany from the
Charlies or Philisters, who were in everlasting collision with the students; and in these “town and gown
rows” identified themselves with the town, called in our universities “the snobs.” Matthew Arnold, in the
Cornhill Magazine, applied the term Philistine to the middle class, which he says is “ignorant,
narrow-minded, and deficient in great ideas,” insomuch that the middle-class English are objects of
contempt in the eyes of foreigners.