be inevitable. The difficulty, however, of making the first step, where the alleged objection to alteration was its impracticability, was not to be easily surmounted. The mere resistance to change which clings to old institutions, was in itself a considerable obstacle, and in the case of some of the public schools, from the nature of their constitution, in the first instance almost insuperable; and whether amongst those who were engaged in the existing system, or those who were most vehemently opposed to it, for opposite, but obvious reasons, it must have been extremely difficult to find a man who would attempt, or if he attempted, carry through, any extensive improvement.

It was at this juncture that Dr. Arnold was elected headmaster of a school which, whilst it presented a fair average specimen of the public schools at that time, yet by its constitution imposed fewer shackles on its head, and offered a more open field for alteration than was the case at least with Eton or Winchester. The post itself, in spite of the publicity, and to a certain degree formality, which it entailed upon him, was in many respects remarkably suited to his natural tastes;-to his love of tuition, which had now grown so strongly upon him, that he declared sometimes, that he could hardly live without such employment; to the vigour and spirits which fitted him rather to deal with the young than the old; to the desire of carrying out his favourite ideas of uniting things secular with things spiritual, and of introducing the highest principles of action into regions comparatively uncongenial to their reception.

Even his general interest in public matters was not without its use in his new station. Many, indeed, both of his admirers and of his opponents, used to lament that a man with such views and pursuits should be placed in such a situation. "What a pity," it was said on the one hand, "that a man fit to be a statesman should be employed in teaching school boys." "What a shame," it was said on the other hand, "that the head-master of Rugby should be employed in writing essays and pamphlets." But, even had there been no connexion between the two spheres of his interest, and had the inconvenience resulting from his public prominence been far greater than it was, it would have been the necessary price of having him at all in that place. He would not have been himself, had he not felt and written as he did; and he could not have endured to live under the grievance of remaining silent on subjects, on which he believed it to be his most sacred duty to speak what he thought.

As it was, however, the one sphere played into the other. Whatever labour he bestowed on his literary works was only part of that constant progress of self-education which he thought essential to the right discharge of his duties as a teacher. Whatever interest he felt in the struggles of the political and ecclesiastical world, reacted on his interest in the school, and invested

it in his eyes with a new importance. When he thought of the social evils of the country, it awakened a corresponding desire to check the thoughtless waste and selfishness of schoolboys; a corresponding sense of the aggravation of those evils by the insolence and want of sympathy too frequently shown by the children of the wealthier classes towards the lower orders; a corresponding desire that they should there imbibe the first principles of reverence to law and regard for the poor, which the spirit of the age seemed to him so little to encourage. When he thought of the evils of the Church, he would "turn from the thought of the general temple in ruins, and see whether they could not, within the walls of their own little particular congregation," endeavour to realize what he believed to be its true idea; "what use they could make of the vestiges of it still left amongst themselves-common reading of the Scriptures, common prayer, and the communion." (Serm. vol. iv. pp. 266, 316.) Thus, whatever of striking good or evil happened in any part of the wide range of English dominion," "declared on what important scenes some of his own scholars might be called upon to enter," "whatever new and important things took place in the world of thought," suggested the hope that they, when they went forth amidst the strife of tongues and of minds, might be endowed with the spirit of wisdom and power." (Serm. vol. v. p. 405.) And even in the details of the school, it would be curious to trace how he recognised in the peculiar vices of boys the same evils which, when full grown, became the source of so much social mischief; how he governed the school precisely on the same principles as he would have governed a great empire; how constantly, to his own mind or to his scholars, he exemplified the highest truths of theology and philosophy in the simplest relations of the boys towards each other, or towards him.

In entering upon his office he met with difficulties, many of which have passed away, but which must be borne in mind, if points are here dwelt upon, that have now ceased to be important, but were by no means insignificant or obvious when he came to Rugby. Nor did his system at once attain its full maturity. He was a long time feeling his way amongst the various institutions which he formed or invented:-he was constantly striving after an ideal standard of perfection which he was conscious that he had never attained; to the improvements which, in a short time, began to take place in other schools-to those at Harrow, under his friend Dr. Longley, and to those at Winchester, under Dr. Moberly, to which he alluded in one of his later sermons, (vol. v. p. 150,) he often looked as models for himself; to suggestions from persons very much younger than himself, not unfrequently from his former pupils, with regard to the course of reading, or to alterations in his manner of preaching, or to points of discipline, he would often listen with the

greatest deference. His own mind was constantly devising new measures for carrying out his several views. "The school," he said, on first coming, "is quite enough to employ any man's love of reform; and it is much pleasanter to think of evils, which you may yourself hope to relieve, than those with regard to which you can give nothing but vain wishes and opinions." "There is enough of Toryism in my nature," he said, on evils being mentioned to him in the place, to make me very apt to sleep contentedly over things as they are, and therefore I hold it to be most true kindness when any one directs my attention to points in the school which are alleged to be going on ill."

The perpetual succession of changes which resulted from this, was by many objected to as excessive, and calculated to endanger the stability of his whole system. "He wakes every morning," it was said of him, "with the impression that every thing is an open question." But rapid as might be the alterations to which the details of his system were subjected, his general principles remained fixed. The unwillingness which he had, even in common life, to act in any individual case without some general law to which he might refer it, ran through every thing; and at times it would almost seem as if he invented universal rules with the express object of meeting particular cases. Still, if in smaller matters this gave an occasional impression of fancifulness or inconsistency, it was, in greater matters, one chief cause of the confidence which he inspired. Amidst all the plans that came before him, he felt, and he made others feel, that whatever might be the merits of the particular question at issue, there were principles behind which lay far more deeply seated than any mere question of school government, which he was ready to carry through at whatever cost, and from which no argument or menace could move him.

Of the mere external administration of the school, little need here be said. Many difficulties which he encountered were alike provoked and subdued by the peculiarities of his own character. The vehemence with which he threw himself into a contest against evil, and the confidence with which he assailed it, though it carried him through perplexities to which a more cautious man would have yielded, led him to disregard interests and opinions which a less earnest or a less sanguine reformer would have treated with greater consideration. His consciousness of his own integrity, and his contempt for worldly advantage, sometimes led him to require from others more than might be reasonably expected from them, and to adopt measures which the world at large was sure to misinterpret; yet these very qualities, in proportion as they became more appreciated, ultimately secured for him a confidence beyond what could have been gained by the most deliberate circumspection. But whatever were the temporary exasperations and excitements

thus produced in his dealings with others, they were gradually removed by the increasing control over himself and his work which he acquired in later years. The readiness which he showed to acknowledge a fault when once convinced of it, as well as to persevere in kindness even when he thought himself injured, succeeded in healing breaches which, with a less forgiving or less honest temper, would have been irreparable. His union of firmness with tenderness had the same effect in the settlement of some of the perplexities of his office, which in others would have resulted from art and management; and even his work as a schoolmaster cannot be properly appreciated without remembering how, in the end of his career, he rallied round him the public feeling, which in its beginning and middle, as will appear further on, had been so widely estranged from him.

With regard to the trustees of the school, entirely amicable as were his usual relations with them, and grateful as he felt to them for their active support and personal friendliness, he from the first maintained that in the actual working of the school he must be completely independent, and that their remedy, if they were dissatisfied, was not interference, but dismissal. On this condition he took the post, and any attempt to control either his administration of the school. or his own private occupations, he felt bound to resist "as a duty," he said on one occasion, "not only to himself, but to the master of every foundation school in England.”

Of his intercourse with the assistant masters it is for obvious reasons impossible to speak in any detail. Yet it would be injustice alike to them and to him not to bear in mind how earnestly he dwelt on their co-operation as an essential part of his own government of the school. It was one of his main objects to increase in all possible ways their importance. By raising their salaries he obviated the necessity of their taking any parochial duty which should divert their attention from the school, and procured from the Bishop of the diocese the acknowledgment of their situations as titles for orders. A system of weekly councils was established, in which all school matters were discussed, and he seldom or never acted in any important point of school discipline without consulting them. It was his endeavour, partly by placing the boarding-houses under their care, partly by an elaborate system of private tuition, which was introduced with this express purpose, to encourage a pastoral and friendly relation between them and the several classes of boys intrusted to them. What he was in his department, in short, he wished every one of them to be in theirs, and nothing rejoiced him more than to hear of instances in which he thought that boys were sent to the school for the sake of his colleagues instructions rather than of his own. It was his labour to inspire them with the views of education and of life, by which he was possessed

himself; and the bond, thus gradually formed, especially when in his later time several of those who had been his pupils became his colleagues, grew deeper and stronger with each successive year that they passed in the place. Out of his own family, there was no circle of which he was so completely the animating principle, as amongst those who co-operated with him in the great practical work of his life; none in which his loss was felt to be so irreparable, his example as a living spring of action, and a source of solemn responsibility, so keenly felt as amongst those who were called to continue their labours in the sphere and on the scene which had been ennobled to them by his counsels and his presence.'

But whatever interest attaches to the more external circumstances of his administration, and to his relations with others, who were concerned in it, is of course centred in his own personal government of the boys. The natural effect of his concentration of interest on what he used to call "our great self," the school, was that the separate existence of the school was in return almost merged in him. This was not indeed his own intention, but it was precisely because he thought so much of the institution and so little of himself, that. in spite of his efforts to make it work independently of any personal influence of his

1) His views will perhaps be best explained by the two following letters: LETTER OF INQUIRY FOR A MASTER.

What 1 want is a man who is a Christian and a gentleman, an active man, and one who has common sense, and understands boys. I do not so much care about scholarship, as he will have immediately under him the lowest forms in the school; but yet, on second thoughts, I do care about it very much, because his pupils may be in the highest forms; and besides, I think that even the elements are best taught by a man who has a thorough knowledge of the matter. However, if one must give way, I prefer activity of mind and an interest in his work to high scholarship: for the one may be acquired far more easily than the other. I should wish it also to be understood, that the new master may be called upon to take boarders in his house, it being my intention for the future to require this of all masters as I see occasion, that so in time the boarding-houses may die a natural death.

With this

to offer, I think I have a right to look rather high for the man whom I fix upon, and it is my great object to get here a society of intelligent, gentlemanly, and active men, who may permanently keep up the character of the school, and make it "vile damnum," if I were to break my neck to-morrow.

LETTER TO A MASTER ON HIS APPOINTMENT.

The qualifications which I deem essential to the due performance of a master's duties here, may in brief be expressed as the spirit of a Christian and a gentleman, that a man should enter upon his business not ix maptoyot, but as a substantive and most important duty; that he should devote himself to it as the especial branch of the ministerial calling which he has chosen to follow-that belonging to a great public institution, and standing in a public and conspicuous situation, he should study things "lovely and of good report ;" that is, that he should be public spirited, liberal, and entering heartily into the interest, honour, and general respectability and distinction of the society which he has joined; and that he should have sufficient vigour of mind and thirst for knowledge, to persist in adding to his own stores without neglecting the full improvement of those whom he is teaching. I think our masterships here offer a noble field of duty, and I would not bestow them on any one whom I thought would undertake them without entering into the spirit of our system heart

and hand.