CCLII. TO THE REV. J. TUCKER.

Fox How, August 2, 1841.

I have heard of you in various quarters since your visit at Rugby, but I do not at all know what your plans are, and when you propose leaving England. If you can pay us another visit at Rugby before you sail, we shall all earnestly unite in entreating you to do so. It was a great gratification to me to find that many of our children enjoyed your visit extremely, and have spoken both of it and of your sermon which you preached in the church in a manner that has been very delightful to me.

For myself, my dear friend, your visit has been a happiness greater than I could tell you. It assured me, that I still possessed not only your affectionate remembrances for the sake of old times, which I never doubted, but your actual living friendship, unshaken by differences of opinion, whatever those differences might be. I believe in my own case, as often happens, my friends have exaggerated those differences. Keble, I am sure, has ascribed to me opinions which I never held, not of course wilfully, but because his sensitiveness on some points is so morbid, that his power of judgment is pro tanto utterly obscured. The first shock of perceiving something that he does not like makes him incapable of examining steadily how great or how little that something is. I had feared (therein very likely doing you injustice) that, before you left England for India, you had in some degree shared Keble's feelings, though on different grounds; and I did not write to you, though with many a wish to do so, because one feels instinctively repelled, I think, from communicating with an old friend, except on a footing of equal confidence and respect; and I doubted your feeling these towards me, though I did not doubt your kindness and affection. But one or two men have behaved towards me in the course of my life just as they might have done, being kind hearted and affectionate men, if I had committed some great crime, which rendered respect or friendship im

possible, though old kindness might still survive it. And this is hard to bear, when, far from being conscious of such great fault in myself in the points which are objected to, I hold my faith in those points to be the most certain truth in Christ, and the opposite opinions to be a most grievous and mischievous error, which I only will not, in the individual cases of those holding it, regard as they regard my supposed error, because I know that along with it there exist a truth and a goodness which I am clearly warranted in loving and in believing to be Christ's Spirit's work. But your last visit was so friendly:-I perceived, too, that you could bear things with which you might not agree, and saw and felt with satisfaction how much there was with which you did agree,--that I was altogether revived, and, if I may use St. Paul's language, "my heart was enlarged,” and I ventured to tell Fellowes to send you my new volume of Sermons, as to a man who might not and would not agree with all that he found there, but yet would not be shocked at it, but would believe that it was intended to serve the same cause to which he was himself devoted. And I have had the full intention of writing to you as in times past, if you again sailed to India, or if you remained in England; of which intention be this present letter the first fruits and pledge.

CCLIII. TO THE SAME.

Fox How, August 12, 1841.

I thank you very much for your letter, although, to say the truth, there were some expressions in it which a little disappointed me. I do not know, in point of fact, what our differences of opinion are, and with regard to Newmanism, I had supposed that we were mostly in agreement. I should have expected, therefore, that generally you would have agreed with the Introduction to my last volume; and that your differences would have been rather with some parts of the appendices. But I do not mean by disappointment the finding more or less of disagreement in

opinion, but much more the finding that you still look upon the disagreement, be it what it may, as a serious matter, by which I understand you to mean a thing deserving of moral censure; as if, for example, one had a friend whom one respected and loved for many good qualities, but whose temper was so irritable, that it made a considerable abatement in one's estimate of him. Of course, he who believes his own views to be true, must believe the opposite views to be error; but the great point in our judgment and feelings towards men seems to be not to confound error with fault. I scarcely know one amongst my dearest friends, except Bunsen, whom I do not believe to be in some point or other in grave error; I differ very widely from Whately on many points, as I differ from you and from Keble on others; but the sense of error is with me something quite distinct from the sense of fault, and if I were required to name Keble's faults or yours, it would never enter into my head to think of his Newmanism or your opinions, whatever they may be, which differ from own. The fault would be in my judgment, and, you will forgive me for saying so, the feeling as Keble does, and as I hoped that you now did not, towards an error as if it were a fault, and judging it morally. We are speaking, you will observe, of such errors as are consistent with membership, not only in Christianity, but in the same particular Church; and I cannot think that we have a right to regard such as faults, though we have quite a right, a right which I would largely exercise, to protest against them as mischievous, mischievous, it may be, in a very high degree, as I think Newmanism is ".

a See Letter CCLVI.

my

CHAPTER X.

LAST YEAR.-PROFESSORSHIP OF MODERN HISTORY AT

OXFORD.-LAST DAYS AT RUGBY.-DEATH.-CON

CLUSION.

It was now the fourteenth year of Dr. Arnold's stay at Rugby. The popular prejudice against him, which for the last few years had been rapidly subsiding, now began actually to turn in his favour;-his principles of education, which at one time had provoked so much outcry, met with general acquiescence;-the school, with each successive half-year, rose in numbers beyond the limit within which he endeavoured to confine it, and seemed likely to take a higher rank than it had ever assumed before ;-the alarm which had once existed against him in the theological world was now directed to an opposite quarter; his fourth volume of Sermons, with its Introduction, had been hailed by a numerous party with enthusiastic approbation; and many, who had long hung back from him with suspicion and dislike, now seemed inclined to gather round him as their champion and leader.

His own views and objects meanwhile remained But the feeling of despondency, with

the same.

which for some time past he had regarded public affairs, now assumed a new phase, which, though it might possibly have passed away with the natural course of events, coloured his mind too strongly during this period to be passed over without notice.

His interest, indeed, in political and ecclesiastical matters still continued; and his sermon on Easter Day, 1842, stands almost if not absolutely alone in the whole course of his school sermons, for the severity and vehemence of its denunciations against what he conceived to be the evil tendencies of the Oxford School. But he entertained also a growing sense of his isolation from all parties, whether from those with whom he had vainly tried to cooperate in former years, or those who, from fear of a common enemy, were now anxious to claim him as an ally; and it was not without something of a sympathetic feeling that, in his Lectures of this year, he dwelt so earnestly on the fate of his favourite Falkland, "who protests so strongly against the evil of his party, that he had rather die by their hands than in their company-but die he must; for there is no place left on earth where his sympathies can breathe freely; he is obliged to leave the country of his affections, and life elsewhere would be intolerable." And it is impossible not to observe how, in the characteristic course of sermons preached during this year, he turned from the active "course" of the Christian life, with its outward "helps and hindrances," to its inward "hopes and fears," and its final "close;" or how, in his habitual views at

a

a Sermons XIII.-XXXIV. in the posthumous volume, entitled, "Christian Life; its Hopes, its Fears, and its Close."