ing; and what I above all other things wish to see is, a close union between Christian reformers and those who are often, as I think, falsely charged with being enemies of Christianity. It is a part of the perfection of the Gospel that it is attractive to all those who love truth and goodness, as soon as it is known in its true nature, whilst it tends to clear away those erroneous views and evil passions with which philanthropy and philosophy, so long as they stand aloof from it, are ever in some degree corrupted. My feeling towards men whom I believe to be sincere lovers of truth and the happiness of their fellow creatures, while they seek these ends otherwise than through the medium of the Gospel, is rather that they are not far from the kingdom of God, and might be brought into it altogether, than that they are enemies whose views are directly opposed to our own. That they are not brought into it is, I think, to a considerable degree, chargeable upon the professors of Christianity; the high Church party seeming to think that the establishment in Church and State is all in all, and that the Gospel principles must be accommodated to our existing institutions, instead of offering a pattern by which those institutions should be purified; and the Evangelicals, by their ignorance and narrow-mindedness, and their seeming wish to keep the world and the Church ever distinct, instead of labouring to destroy the one by increasing the influence of the other, and making the kingdoms of the world indeed the kingdoms of Christ.

XXVI. TO AUGUSTUS HARE, ESQ.

Laleham, March 7, 1928.

I trust that you have recovered your accident at Perugia, and that you are enabled to enjoy your stay at that glorious Rome. I think that I have never written to you since my return from it last spring, when I was so completely overpowered with admiration and delight at the matchless beauty and solemnity of Rome and its neighbourhood. But I think my greatest delight after all was in the society of Bunsen, the Prussian minister at Rome. He reminded me continually of you, more than of any other man whom I know, and chiefly by his entire and enthusiastic admiration of every thing great and excellent and beautiful, not stopping to see or care for minute faults; and though I cannot rid myself of that critical propensity, yet I can heartily admire and almost envy those who are without it. ... I have derived great benefit from sources of information that your brother has at different times recommended to me, and the perusal of some of his articles in the "Guesses at Truth" has made me exceedingly desirous of becoming better acquainted with him, as I am sure that his conversation would be really profitable to me, in the highest sense of the word, as well as delightful. And I have a double pleasure in saying this, because I did not do him justice formerly in my estimate of him, and am anxious to do myself justice now by saying that I have learnt to judge more truly. You will have heard of my changed prospects in consequence of my election at Rugby. It will be a severe pang to me to leave Laleham ; but otherwise I rejoice in my appointment, and hope to be useful if life and health are spared me. . . . . . I think of going to Leipsic, Dresden, and Prague, to worship the Elbe and the country of John Huss and Ziska. All here unite in kindest remembrances to you, and I wish you could convey to the very stones and air of Rome the expression of my fond recollection for them.

XXVII. TO REV. JOHN TUCKER.

Laleham, May 25, 1828. (After speaking of Mr. Tucker's proposed intention of going as a missionary to India.) If you should go to India before we have an opportunity of meeting again, I would earnestly beg of you not to go away with the notion, which I sometimes fear that my oldest friends are getting of me, that I am become a hard man, given up to literary and scholastic pursuits, and full of worldly and political views of things. It has given me very great pain to think that some of those whom I most love, and with whom I would most fain be one in spirit, regard my views of things as jarring with their own, and are losing towards me that feeling of Christian brotherhood which I think they once entertained. I am not in the slightest degree speaking of any offence given or received, or any personal decay of regard, but I fancy they look upon me as not quite one with themselves, and as having my affections fixed upon lower objects. Assuredly I have no right to regret that I should be thought deficient in points in which I know I am deficient; but I would most earnestly protest against being thought wilfully and contentedly deficient in them, and not caring to be otherwise. And I cannot help fearing that my conversation with you last winter twelvemonth led you to something, at least, of a similar impression.

XXVIII. TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.

Laleham, April 24, 1828.

It seems an age since I have seen you or written to you; and I hear that you are now again returned to London, and that your eldest boy, I am grieved to find, is not so well and strong as you could wish. I could really be half romantic, yet I do not know that I ought to use any such equivocal epithet. When I think how little intercourse I hold with my most valued friends, it is almost awful to feel the tendencies of life to pare down one's affections and feelings to the minimum compatible with any thing like humanity. There is one's trade and one's family, and beyond it seems as if the great demon of worldly-mindedness would hardly allow one to bestow a thought or care.

But, if it please God, I will not sink into this state without some struggles, at least, against it. I saw Dyson the other day in Oxford, where I went to take my degree of B.D., and he and his wife were enough to freshen one's spirit for some time to come. I wish that you and I could meet oftener, and, instead of that, I fear that when I am at Rugby we shall meet even seldomer; but I trust that we shall meet sometimes still. You know, perhaps, and yet how should you? that my sixth child, and fourth son, was born on the 7th of April, and that his dear mother has been again preserved to me. All the rest of my children are quite well, and they are also tolerably well at the other houses, though the coming parting is a sad cloud both to them and to us. Still, without any affectation, I believe that John Keble is right, and that it is good for us to leave Laleham, because I feel that we are daily getting to regard it as too much of a home. I cannot tell you how we both love it, and its perfect peace seems at times an appalling contrast to the publicity of Rugby. I am sure that nothing could stifle this regret, were it not for my full consciousness that I have nothing to do with rest here, but with labour; and then I can and do look forward to the labour with nothing but satisfaction, if my health and faculties be still spared to me.

I went down to Rugby, a fortnight since, to meet the trustees. The terms of the school, which were far too low, have been raised on my representation; and there is some possibility of my being put into the situation of the head masters of Eton and Westminster, that is, to have nothing to do with any boarders. I have got six maps for Thucydides, all entirely original, and I have nearly finished half of the last book; so that I hope I may almost say "Italiam! Italiam!"

XXIX. TO THE REV. F. C. BLACKSTONE.

Laleham, July 11, 1828.

in

It would be foolish to talk of the deep love that I bear to Laleham, and the wrench which it will be to part from it; but this is quite consistent with a lively interest in Rugby; and when I strolled with the meadows there, during our visit of last week, I thought that I already began to feel it as my home. There will be enough to do, I imagine, without any addition; though I really feel very sanguine as to my own relish for the work, and think it will come more naturally to me than I at first imagined. May God grant that I may labour with an entire confidence in Him, and with none in myself without Him.

XXX. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ.

Laleham, July 29, 1828.

I never would publish' without a considerable revision of them. I well know their incompleteness, and suspect much worse faults in them. Do not imagine that I neglect your remarks; far from it: I would attend to them earnestly, and would soften gladly any thing that was too harsh, or that might give offence, and would alter the mere inadvertencies of my hasty writing in point of style. But certainly the character of the style I could not alter, because no other would be natural to me; and though I am far from wishing other people to write as I do, yet for myself I hold it best to follow my own fashion.

I owe it to Rugby not to excite needless scandal by an isolated and uncalled-for publication. I shall never be Mr. Dean, nor do I wish it; but having undertaken the office of Dr. Wooll, with double l or single l, as best suits your fancy, I do wish to do my utmost in it, and not to throw difficulties in my own way by an imprudence. This, of course, would apply either to minor points, or to those on which I distrusted my own competent knowledge. Where I am fully decided, on a matter of consequence, I would speak out as plainly and boldly as your heart could wish.

We are all in the midst of confusion; the books all packed, and half the furniture; and on Tuesday, if God will, we shall leave this dear place, this nine years' home of such exceeding happiness. But it boots not to look backwards. Forwards, forwards, forwards, should be one's motto. I trust you will see us in our new dwelling ere long; I shall want to see my old friends there, to wear off the gloss of its newness.

1) In allusion to the first volume of his Sermons, which was now in the process of publication.

XXXI.

TO THE REV. JOHN TUCKER.

Laleham, August, 1828.

I am inclined to write to you once again before we leave Laleham, as a sort of farewell from this dear place; and you shall answer it with a welcome to Rugby. You fancy us already at Rugby, and so does J. Keble, from whom I received a very kind letter some time since, directed to me there. But we do not move till Tuesday, when we go, fourteen souls, to Oxford, having taken the whole coach; and on Wednesday we hope to reach Rugby, having, in like manner, secured the whole Leicester coach from Oxford to Rugby. Our goods and chattels, under convoy of our gardener, are at this time somewhere on the Grand Junction Canal, and will reach Rugby I hope this evening. The poor house here is sadly desolate; all the carpets up, half the furniture gone, and signs of removal every where visible. And so ends the first act of my life since I arrived at manhood. For the last eight years it has been a period of as unruffled happiness as I should think could ever be experienced by man. M's illness, in 1821, is almost its only dark spot ;-and how was that softened and comforted! It is almost a fearful consideration; and yet there is a superstitious notion, and an unbelieving one, too, which cannot receive God's mercies as his free gift, but will always be looking out for something wherewith to purchase them. An humbling consideration much rather it is and ought to be; yet all life is humbling, if we think upon it, and our greatest mercies, which we sometimes least think of, are the most humbling of all. . . . The Rugby prospect I contemplate with a very strong interest; the work I am not afraid of, if I can get my proper exercise; but I want absolute play, like a boy, and neither riding nor walking will make up for my leaping-pole and gallows, and bathing, when the youths used to go with me, and I felt completely for a time a boy, as they were. It is this entire relaxation, I think, at intervals, such again as my foreign tours have afforded, that gives me so keen an appetite for my work at other times, and has enabled me to go through it not only with no fatigue, but with a sense of absolute pleasure. I believe that I am going to publish a volume of Sermons. You will think me crazed perhaps; but I have two reasons for it: chiefly, the repeated exhortations of several individuals for the last three or four years; but these would not alone have urged me to it, did I not wish to state, for my own sake, what my opinions really are, on points where I know they have been grievously misrepresented. Whilst I lived here in Laleham my opinions mattered to nobody; but I know that while I was a candidate for Rugby, it was said in Oxford that I did not preach the Gospel, nor even touch upon the great doctrines of Christianity in my sermons; and if this same impression be prevalent now, it will be mischievous to the school in a high degree. Now, if what I really do preach be to any man's notions not the Gospel, I cannot help it, and must be content to abide by the consequences of his opinion; but I do not want to be misunderstood, and accused of omitting things which I do not omit.

XXXII. TO THE REV. GEORGE CORNISH.

Rugby, August 16, 1828.

If I can do my work as I ought to do it, we shall have

every reason to be thankful for the change. I must not, it is true, think

of dear old Laleham, and all that we have left there, or the perfect peace of our eight years of wedded life passed there together. It is odd that both you and I should now for the first time in our lives be moving from our parents' neighbourhood; but in this respect our happiness was very uncommon, and to me altogether Laleham was so like a place of premature rest, that I believe I ought to be sincerely thankful that I am called to a scene of harder and mo e anxious labour. . . The boys come back next Saturday week. So here begins the second act of our lives. May God bless it to us, and make it help forward the great end of all.

CHAPTER III.

SCHOOL LIFE AT RUGBY.

It would be useless to give any chronological details of a life so necessarily monotonous as t at of the Head-master of a public school; and it is accordingly only intended to describe the general system which Dr. Arnold pursued during the fourteen years he was at Rugby. Yet some apology may seem to be due for the length of a chapter, which to the general reader must be comparatively deficient in interest. Something must indeed, be forgiven to the natural inclination to dwell on those recollections of his life, which to his pupils are the most lively and the most recent-something to the almost unconscious tendency to magnify those scenes which are most nearly connected with what is most endeared to oneself. But independently of any local or personal considerations, it has been felt that if any part of Dr. Arnold's work deserved special mention, it was his work at Rugby; and that if it was to be of any use to those of his own profession who would take any interest in it, it could only be made so by a full and minute account.

Those who look back upon the state of English education in the year 1927, must remember how the feeling of dissatisfaction with existing institutions which had begun in many quarters to display itself, had already directed considerable attention to the condition of public schools. The range of classical reading, in itself confined, and with no admixture of other information, had been subject to vehement attacks from the liberal party generally, on the ground of its alleged narrowness and inutility. And the more undoubted evil of the absence of systematic attempts to give a more directly Christian character to what constituted the education of the whole English gentry, was becoming more and more a scandal in the eyes of religious men. who at the close of the last century and the beginning of this-Wilberforce, for example, and Bowdler-had lifted up their voices against it. A complete r formation, or a complete destruction of the whole system, seemed to many persons sooner or later to