CHAPTER IL

LALEHAM.

FOR four years Arnold remained at Oxford, taking private pupils, and reading both deeply and widely in the University Libraries. During this period he acquired an immense amount of information, and to his latest days spoke gratefully of the advantages he had enjoyed, and sought always to recommend them to others. The number of MSS. which remain as interesting relics of this early stage of his manhood, show how careful a reader he was. Yet," says Canon Stanley, "they are remarkable rather as proofs of industry than of power; and the style of his compositions, both at this time and for years later, is cramped by a stiffness and formality, alien alike to the homeliness of his first published works, and the vigour of his later ones."

And this may help to encourage those, who, toiling up the steep ascents of learning and literature, feel so often, and with so keen a pain, the roughness, the weakness, or the dulness of their most careful and strenuous attempts at composition. It is a trite but apt saying, that "Rome was not built in a day." Neither was Dr. Arnold at one-and-twenty the clearsighted, keen-judging, polished historian and critic of Rugby celebrity!

But, be it remembered, he was INDUSTRIOUS: and though mere industry may exist where there is but small powerpower of itself is of little avail, and is certain to rust away, where the more ordinary, homespun commodity of industry is non-resident. The finest machinery, unworked and unoiled, soon becomes incomparably less valuable than the commoner workmanship, which day by day does its appointed task, and is kept in proper order.

Arnold was not content with his first-class honours, his fellowship, and his already acquired store of erudition;

he worked on earnestly and indefatigably, seeking Knowledge not only in her peculiar and accustomed haunts, but all along the dirty wayside of common, everyday life, and seizing and appropriating also the merest trifles and the slightest hints, that would have been unregarded by a mind less bent on improvement, and less earnestly anxious for self-culture.

His plan, which he subsequently recommended in his Lectures, was to acquaint himself thoroughly with some one given period, say for instance the fifteenth century;gathering information of all kinds, from all sources, and from the history of divers countries, synchronizing as he proceeded and as he accumulated the facts; and taking for this fifteenth century Philip de Comines as a text-book. The first volume which he took out of the Oriel Library, after his election, was Rymer's Fœdera!

In his MSS. from 1815 to 1818 are recorded his thoughts on Thucydides, Livy, and Gibbon, and his views of St. Paul's Epistles, and Chrysostom's Homilies; and in these early expressions of feeling may be traced, more or less in embryo, the startling opinions and sound judgments of his riper years. And when time for study was necessarily limited, we are told he had "a remarkable facility for turning to account spare fragments of time;"-a very valuable facility, be it remarked, and one that from its rich results inclines one to believe that, "Take care of the minutes, and the hours will take care of themselves," may be as sage an aphorism as the old proverbial axiom about the pence and the pounds!

From the precious stores of his youth, he was wont in his later days to draw materials for his great works; and the years spent at Oxford, between taking his degree and settling at Laleham, he used to call his "golden time." Undoubtedly he enjoyed great advantages: but they were by no means peculiar to himself. His experience differs from the majority of men, chiefly in this,—that while they, for the most part, neglect, or only partially avail themselves of their privileges, he made the very most of, and treasured with the utmost care, all the opportunities which the course of Providence placed at his disposal. His standard always rose before him, and "Excelsior" was ever in his mind.

In the midst of his arduous labours at Rugby, he lamented often the impossibility of finding leisure for personal study; and in October, 1835, he writes:

"Meanwhile I write nothing, and read barely enough to keep my mind in the state of a running stream, which I think it ought to be, if it would form or feed other minds: for it is ill drinking out of a pond whose stock of water is merely the remains of the long-past rains of the winter and spring, evaporating and diminishing with every successive day of draught."

And this very striking simile seems to have been constantly present to his imagination; for nearly four years later we find the recurrence of the same idea, in a letter to one of his former pupils, who was engaged in the work of tuition :-

"You need not think that your own reading will now have no object, because you are engaged with young boys. Every improvement of your own powers and knowledge tells immediately upon them, and indeed I hold that a man is only fit to teach so long as he is himself learning daily. If the mind once become stagnant, it can give no fresh draught to another mind: it is drinking out of a pond, instead of from a spring. And whatever you read tends generally to your own increase of power, and will be felt by you in a hundred ways hereafter."

On the 20th of December, 1818, he was ordained deacon at Oxford. Difficulties, as we have already remarked, presented themselves to his mind, and he feared to put down by main force as he was strongly advised to do these distressing objections, lest he should thereby violate his conscience for the sake of worldly interest; for in his case, to doubt was to jeopardize his dearest plans, and to shadow his most deeply cherished aspirations. Gradually, as his judgment strengthened, and as his mind was pervaded by a healthier tone, these scruples disappeared, and after the year 1820 returned no

more.

He settled at Laleham, near Staines, with his mother, his sister Susannah, and the affectionate preceptress of his early childhood, Miss Delafield, who had first tilled the promising soil, that was one day to bring forth the choicest fruits a

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hundredfold. For a short time, in conjunction with his brother-in-law, Mr. Buckland, and afterwards independently by himself, he received seven or eight young men as private pupils in preparation for the Universities. He began by making himself generally useful: even then, "Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," seems to have been, practically at least, his maxim. He did not relish the idea of attending the Sunday-school; but, very shortly after taking up his abode at Laleham, he tells his friend, the Rev. John Tucker, that he has it entirely in his own hands, so attend it he "must and will!' He soon began to visit the poor, and to assist Mr. Hearn, the curate of the place, in the workhouse, as well as in the parish church; and we find him excusing himself on the score of letter-writing, because lately he had had the additional work of a sermon to compose every week.

While his heart still yearned after "dear old Oxford," and his beloved haunts of "Bagley Wood, and the pretty field, and the wild stream that flows between Bullington and Cowley Marsh," he became insensibly more and more attached to Laleham and its pleasant localities. He always seemed to attach importance to the character of the scenery by which he was surrounded; yet, while he displayed the keenest appreciation of the truly beautiful and romantic, and while he invariably looked upon a landscape with the eye of a painter, and the soul of a poet, he had the sound sense to make the best of his rural advantages, whatever they might be. At the close of the letter already quoted, where he expresses a hankering after his Oxford haunts, he writes thus:

"Well! I must endeavour to get some associations to combine with Laleham and its neighbourhood; but at present all is harsh and ruffled, like woods in a high wind; only I am beginning to love my own little study, where I have a sofa full of books as of old, and the two verse-books lying about on it, and a volume of Herodotus, and where I sit up and read and write till twelve or one o'clock."

In order to describe fully his feelings towards his new home, and his new work, in this the first year of his residence, it may be as well to transcribe part of a letter, dated

November 29th, 1829, and addressed to his intimate friend, J. T. Coleridge, afterwards Mr. Justice Coleridge :

Buckland is naturally fonder of the school, and is inclined to give it the greatest part of his attention; and I, from my Oxford habits, as naturally like the other part of the business best; and thus I have extended my time of reading with our four pupils in the morning before breakfast, from one hour to two. Not that I dislike being in the school-room, but quite the contrary: still, however, I have not the experience in the sort of work, nor the perfect familiarity with my grammar, requisite to make a good master, and I cannot teach Homer as well as my friends Herodotus and Livy, whom I am now reading, I suppose, for the fiftieth time. November 30.-I was interrupted last night in the middle of my letter, and as the evening is my only time for such occupations, it cannot now go till to-morrow. You shall derive this benefit, however, from the interruption,—that I will trouble you with no more details about the trade; a subject which I find growing upon me daily, from the retired life we are leading, and from my being so engrossed by it. There are some very pleasant families settled in this place besides ourselves; they have been very civil to us, and in the holidays I dare say we shall see much of them; but at present I do not feel I have sufficient time to make an acquaintance, and cannot readily submit to the needful sacrifice of formal visits, which must be the prelude to a more familiar knowledge of any one. As it is, my garden claims a good portion of my spare time in the middle of the day, when I am not engaged at home, or taking a walk; there is always something to interest me even in the very sight of the weeds and litter, for then I think how much improved the place will be when they are removed; and it is very delightful to watch the progress of any work of this sort, and observe the gradual change from disorder and neglect, to neatness and finish. In the course of the autumn I have done much planting and altering, but these labours are over now, and I have only to hope for a mild winter as far as the shrubs are concerned, that they may not all be dead when the spring comes. Of the country around us, especially on the Surrey side, I have explored much but not nearly so much as I could wish. It is very beautiful, and some of the scenes at the junction of the heath-country with the rich valley of the Thames are very striking. Or, if I do not venture so far from home, I have always a resource at hand, in the bank of the river up to Staines; which, though it be perfectly flat, has yet a great charm from its entire loneliness, there being not a house anywhere near it; and the river