On the

learn the opinions and feelings of Englishmen. whole, I was much delighted with my visit. The moral superiority of the German character in this instance was very striking; at the same time I owe it to the French to say, that now I have learned the whole story of the late revolution, I am quite satisfied of the justice of their cause, and delighted with the heroic and admirable manner in which they have conducted themselves. How different from even the beginning of the first revolution, and how satisfactory to find that in this instance the lesson of experience seems not to have been thrown away."

Ten days after Dr. Arnold had passed through Brussels, the insurrection in Belgium, which he had fully expected would arise as a natural consequence, out of the revolution in France, broke forth, and agitated the public mind with fresh anxieties and ever-varying speculations. But with the Belgians he felt little or no sympathy. France, he said, deserved the warmest admiration and the most cordial expression of it, if it were only for the contrast which the second revolution presented to the first; but with Belgium the case was wholly different; the merits of their quarrel he esteemed far more doubtful, and the conduct of the popular party far less pure.

A few months after Dr. Arnold's return to Rugby, news reached him that Niebuhr was no more; and in a letter to Chevalier Bunsen he spoke of his death as a great loss which all Europe had sustained: he always congratulated himself upon the course of events which had caused him to turn away from France and bend his homeward steps through the land which claimed as her own the man whom he regarded with so just and sincere an admiration; thereby enabling him to enjoy that brief converse, which he remembered with satisfaction and pleasure to the latest day of his life.

From that time till 1837 Dr. Arnold revisited the Continent no more. He came back to Rugby full of spirits and energy, hoping that he and his assistants were all going "to pull hard, and to pull together," during the coming half-year; for he saw how much there was to be done, and he felt with increasing solemnity the heavy responsibilities his position involved. He entered on his work with renewed energy and delight, thanking God that he continued to enjoy his work, and was in excellent condition for setting to it.

And here, one cannot but remark the singular soundness and healthiness of his tone of mind. No man revelled more than he in beautiful scenery; the short extracts here quoted prove how entirely he gave himself up to the contemplation of nature's grandeur and loveliness, and how thoroughly he appreciated the pleasure, the exhilaration, and the improvement to be derived from travel. But it was his rare and enviable characteristic to estimate extraneous enjoyments at their true value. When they came in due course, he received them with open arms; he roamed amid the ruins of an ancient world with a bosom beating high with reverence and poetic delight; he climbed the mountain-side with all the briskness and buoyancy of a child; and he gazed on the splendour of golden clouds, and flushing waters, and crimson sunsets, with a glowing heart, and a spirit that rose beyond the material beauty of a fair created world, into the brighter realms, where the Great Fashioner of the mighty universe, who has revealed Himself to us in the person of his beloved Son, dwells and reigns for ever and ever.

Yet with all these devotional, poetic, and lofty tendencies, he never came back to his daily labour with

distaste. It was his WORK-the work appointed him by his Master-and he looked back gratefully on the pleasant days of travel and leisure, and exulted to feel his frame so vigorous, his mind so clear, his whole man so strengthened for labour, and so meetened for the toil of his office, and the cares of his public life by the relaxation, and the season of innocent, healthful enjoyment, which God in His goodness had granted him.

And yet there was a cloud on his otherwise sunny, happy path-misconception of his opinions, and even of his practices, spread far and wide; and when he said, at the close of the year 1830, "There is no man in England who is less a party man than I am," he was fain to finish his sentence thus: -"for in fact no party would own me."

CHAPTER VII.

POLITICS AND LITERATURE.

THE years 1831-32 were darkened by the heavy clouds of pestilence. Cholera, then a new, and consequently a doubly and trebly awful visitation, came sweeping over the length and breadth of the land, mowing down its thousands, depopulating its towns, and causing men's hearts to quake with fear. The public mind was shrouded in gloom: death was busy in the palace and in the cottage; in crowded cities and in rustic road-side villages: the air was heavy with the tolling of funeral bells, and the mourners went about the streets. this was not all. The winter of 1830 was marked by disturbances in the rural districts, that seemed only the precursors of more serious and extensive outbreaks; and sober-minded people watched, and dreaded lest the rash spark struck from the flint of some wild misguided enthusiast should kindle the flame of Revolution throughout the country.

And

He saw

Dr. Arnold was greatly concerned. He saw deeper into the evil than did other men of that day. then, what people of his own class would not, or could not see, but what has been acknowledged on all hands since, that those whose spirit of anarchy was aroused, and whose fury was ever and anon expected to boil over, and, like a lava stream, sweep into oblivion the old and time-honoured institutions of the country, really

had their wrongs, and were justified in calling for redress, and for reform; though by no means justified in clamouring for their rights like hungry wolves, or infuriated lions. But who can wonder? or, if they wondered then, when only one side of the question was fairly argued, who can wonder now at the bitter murmurs of those whose just claims were forgotten by many, and disallowed by most,-when their minds, untaught and unoccupied with any ideas of truth, either religious, social, or political, were subjected to the sway of men, who with mistaken zeal, or, as is much to be feared, with self-seeking and revolutionising intent, went about from village to village, and from town to town, sowing the seeds of those very passions which made France, not half a century before, a place of carnage and blood and atrocities beyond description? What was to be done? The evil grew deeper and deeper; sober men passing at night from their places of business to their homes, gazed fearfully on the dark, gaunt, desperate looking throngs, crowding round some fierce, unscrupulous demagogue, who told them, in broad undiluted Saxon, the history of their wrongs, both real and imaginary, and more than hinted at the most terrific ways and means of redress. The softly nurtured and the high born took up the literature of the day, and trembled at the fervid eloquence with which the poor were assured that the rich were their natural enemies, and might lawfully be spoiled and punished by fire and by sword. And then the torch of the rioters flickered under the noonday sun, and flared beneath the dark night-sky; and the heavens were red with the terrible fires of open incendiarism.

For years Bristol bore the marks of the disastrous three days and nights that burned her jails, her custom