his life fainted,-" No, never." If he had ever had difficulty of breathing? "No, never."-If he had ever had sharp pain in the chest? "No, never."If any of his family had ever had disease of the chest? "Yes, my father had-he died of it."What age was he? "Fifty-three."-Was it suddenly fatal? "Yes, suddenly fatal." He then asked, “If

"Not

disease of the heart was a common disease?" very common."-" Where do we find it most?" "In large towns, I think."-"Why?" (Two or three causes were mentioned.) "Is it generally fatal?" Yes, I am afraid it is."

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The physician then quitted the house for medicine, leaving Mrs. Arnold, now fully aware from him of her husband's state. At this moment she was

joined by her son, who entered the room with no serious apprehension, and, on his coming up to the bed, his father, with his usual gladness of expression towards him, asked," How is your deafness, my boy?" (he had been suffering from it the night before,)-and then, playfully alluding to an old accusation against him, "You must not stay here; you know you do not like a sick room." He then sate down with his mother at the foot of the bed, and presently his father said in a low voice: "My son, thank God for me;" and, as his son did not at once catch his meaning, he went on, saying,— "Thank God, Tom, for giving me this pain: I have suffered so little pain in my life, that I feel it is very good for me: now God has given it to me, and I do so thank Him for it." And again, after a pause, he said,―alluding to a wish, which his son had often heard

him express, that if he ever had to suffer pain, his

faculties might be unaffected by it."-"How thankful I am that my head is untouched." Meanwhile his wife, who still had sounding in her ears the tone in which he had repeated the passage from the Epistle to the Hebrews, again turned to the Prayer Book, and began to read the Exhortation, in which it occurs in "the Visitation of the Sick." He listened with deep attention, saying emphatically,-"Yes," at the end of many of the sentences. "There should be

no greater comfort to Christian persons than to be made like unto Christ." "Yes."-"By suffering patiently troubles, adversities, and sickness."—"Yes." "He entered not into His glory before He was crucified." "Yes." At the words "everlasting life," she stopped, and his son said,—“I wish, dear Papa, we had you at Fox How." He made no answer, but the last conscious look, which remained fixed in his wife's memory, was the look of intense tenderness and love with which he smiled upon them both at that

moment.

The physician now returned with the medicines, and the former remedies were applied: there was a slight return of the spasms, after which he said :"If the pain is again as severe as it was before you came, I do not know how I can bear it." He then, with his eyes fixed upon the physician, who rather felt than saw them upon him, so as to make it impossible not to answer the exact truth, repeated one or two of his former questions about the cause of the disease, and ended with asking, "Is it likely to return?" and, on being told that it was, "Is it generally suddenly fatal?". -"Generally." On being asked whether he had any pain, he replied that he

had none, but from the mustard plaster on his chest, with a remark on the severity of the spasms in comparison with this outward pain; and then, a few moments afterwards, inquired what medicine was to be given; and on being told, answered, “Ah, very well." The physician, who was dropping the laudanum into a glass, turned round, and saw him looking quite calm, but with his eyes shut. In another minute he heard a rattle in the throat, and a convulsive struggle,—flew to the bed, caught his head upon his shoulder, and called to one of the servants to fetch Mrs. Arnold. She had but just left the room before his last conversation with the physician, in order to acquaint her son with his father's danger, of which he was still unconscious, when she heard herself called from above. She rushed up stairs, told her son to bring the rest of the children, and with her own hands applied the remedies that were brought, in the hope of reviving animation, though herself feeling, from the moment that she saw him, that he had already passed away. He was indeed no longer conscious. The sobs and cries of his children as they entered and saw their father's state, made no impression upon him-the eyes were fixed— the countenance was unmoved: there was a heaving of the chest-deep gasps escaped at prolonged intervals, and just as the usual medical attendant arrived, and as the old school-house servant, in an agony of grief, rushed with the others into the room, in the hope of seeing his master once more,—he breathed his last.

It must have been shortly before eight A. M. that he expired, though it was naturally impossible for

those who were present to adjust their recollections of what passed with precise exactness of time or place. So short and sudden had been the seizure, that hardly any one out of the household itself had heard of his illness before its fatal close. His guest, and former pupil, (who had slept in a remote part of the house,) was coming down to breakfast as usual, thinking of questions to which the conversation of the preceding night had given rise, and which, by the great kindness of his manner, he felt doubly encouraged to ask him, when he was met on the staircase by the announcement of his death. The masters knew nothing till the moment when, almost at the same time at the different boarding-houses, the fatal message was delivered, in all its startling abruptness, "that Dr. Arnold was dead." What that Sunday was in Rugby, it is hard fully to represent: the incredulity-the bewilderment-the agitating inquiries for every detail the blank, more awful than sorrow, that prevailed through the vacant services of that long and dreary day-the feeling as if the very place had passed away with him who had so emphatically been in every sense its head-the sympathy which hardly dared to contemplate, and which yet could not but fix the thoughts and looks of all on the desolate house, where the fatherless family were gathered round the chamber of death.

Five of his children were awaiting their father's arrival at Fox How. To them the news was brought on Monday morning, by the same pupil who had been in the house at his death, and who long would remember the hour when he reached the place, just as the early summer dawn-the dawn of that forty

seventh birthday-was breaking over that beautiful valley, every shrub and every flower in all its freshness and luxuriance, speaking of him who had so tenderly fostered their growth around the destined home of his old age. On the evening of that day, which they had been fondly preparing to celebrate with its usual pleasures, they arrived at Rugby in time to see their father's face in death.

He was buried on the following Friday, the very day week, since, from the same house, two and two in like manner, so many of those who now joined in the funeral procession to the Chapel, had followed him in full health and vigour to the public speeches in the school. It was attended by his whole family, by those of his friends and former pupils who had assembled from various parts during the week, and by many of the neighbouring clergy and of the inhabitants of the town, both rich and poor. The ceremony was performed by Mr. Moultrie, Rector of Rugby, from that place which, for fourteen years, had been occupied only by him who was gone, and to whom every part of that Chapel owed its peculiar interest; and his remains were deposited in the Chancel immediately under the Communion-table.

Once more his family met in the Chapel on the following Sunday, and partook of the Holy Communion at his grave, and heard read the sermon preached by him in the preceding year, on "Faith Triumphant in Death." And yet one more service in connexion with him took place in the Chapel, when, on the first Sunday of the next half-year, the school, which had dispersed on the eve of his death, assembled again within its walls under his successor, and witnessed in

VOL. II.

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