Passing Ragrigg Gate 8.37. On the Bowness Terrace 8.45. Over Troutbeck Bridge 8.51. Here is Ecclerigg 8.58. And here Lowood Inn 9.4. And here Waterhead and our ducking bench 9.12. The valley opens :-Ambleside and Rydal Park, and the gallery on Loughrigg. Rotha Bridge 9.16. And here is the poor humbled Rotha, and Mr. Brancker's cut, and the New Millar Bridge 9.21. Alas! for the alders gone, and succeeded by a stiff wall. Here is the Rotha in his own beauty, and here is poor T. Flemming's field, and our own mended gate. Dearest children, may we meet happily! Entered FOX HOW and the birch copse at 9.25; and here ends journal. Walter first saw us, and gave notice of our approach. We found all our dear children well, and Fox How in such beauty that no scene in Italy appeared in my eyes comparable to it. We breakfasted, and at a quarter before eleven I had the happiness of once more going to an English church, and that church our own beloved Rydal chapel."

CHAPTER XIV.

THE REGIUS PROFESSORSHIP.

"THE delightful excrescence of a tour," which Dr. Arnold had so fondly anticipated during his Italian journey, was fully realized when he found himself once more among his own mountains, and within sound of the bell of Rydal chapel. His continental excursion had answered all the purposes he intended, and his recollections of Rome were so vividly refreshed, that he felt he had no need to visit Italy again. The beauty of the scenery between Antrodoco and Terni, he thought, surpassed anything he had hitherto seen, except it were La Cava, and the country dividing the Bay of Naples from Salerno. "But," said he, "when we returned to Fox How I thought that no scene on this earth could ever be to me so beautiful. I mean that so great was its actual natural beauty, that no possible excess of beauty in any other scene could balance the deep charm of home, which in Fox How breathes through everything. But the actual and real beauty of Fox How is, in my mind, worthy to be put in comparison with anything, as a place for human dwelling."

The four days at this beloved Fox How were accordingly enjoyed to the utmost, and he returned to Rugby in excellent health and spirits, and quite ready for his work-a work of which the importance, as he himself remarked, could scarcely be overrated. At this time he fully believed that he was finally shut out from any appointment to the new Professorships in Oxford; but though such an appointment would have been most acceptable, and though it grieved him to be thus excluded from the place which he honoured and loved, and where he believed he might be enabled to do so much good, he knew full well that this privation was permitted by One who knows best where, and when, and how, He will have his servants to serve Him; and he received it as an intimation that his appointed work lay in another direction.

Meanwhile the school was fuller than ever: and he pleased himself with hoping to be able to appoint from among his old pupils the new master whose services would be required after the ensuing vacation. That he read less than ever was still his complaint; and he told Chevalier Bunsen how all his books alike, stood on his shelves, as it were mocking him. The school he thought sadly too full, and he had thirty-six in his own form.

A letter which he wrote in September, to Dr. Hawkins, gives us further insight into his views of ecclesiastical matters. He writes:

W.

"I never can make out from anybody, except the strong Newmanites, what the essence of episcopacy is supposed to be. The Newmanites say that certain divine powers of administering the sacraments effectually, can only be communicated by a regular succession from those who, as they suppose, had them at first. Law holds this ground: there must be a succession in order to keep up the mysterious gift bestowed on the priesthood, which gift makes Baptism wash away sin, and converts the elements in the Lord's Supper into effectual means of grace. This is intelligible and consistent, though I believe it to be in the highest degree false and Antichristian. Is government the essence of Episcopacy, which was meant to be perpetual in the Church! Is it the monarchical element of government? and if so, is it the monarchical element pure or limited? Conceive what a difference between an absolute monarchy, and one limited like ours; and still more like the French monarchy under the constitution of 1789. I cannot in the least tell, therefore, what you suppose to be the real thing intended to be kept in the Church, as I suppose you do not like the Newmanite view. And all the moderate High Churchmen appear to me to labour under the same defect,-that they do not seem to perceive clearly what is the essence of Episcopacy; or, if they do perceive it, they do not express themselves clearly."

In the same month, Dr. Arnold suffered from a slight attack of fever, which confined him to his room for three days. Again he complained that the school was swelling beyond its established numbers. There were now about 340 boys; 63 having been admitted after the Midsummer vacation. And yet he did not believe that there was much distinguished

talent in the School, or any great spirit of reading; but it gave him unfeigned pleasure to observe the "steady and kindly feeling" in the community, both towards the masters, and towards each other.

During his temporary detention from his regular duties, he says, writing to Mr. Justice Coleridge :

"If after a life of so much happiness, I ought to form a single wish for the future, it would be hereafter to have a Canonry of Christ Church, with one of the new Professorships of Scriptural Interpretation, or Ecclesiastical History. But Oxford,

both for its good and its beauty, which I love so tenderly, and for the evil now tainting it, which I would fain resist in its very birthplace, is the place where I would fain pass my latest years of unimpaired faculties."

He spoke in the same letter of his Roman History; telling his friend that he thought the second volume would be the least interesting of all, because it had no legends and no contemporary history. "I tried hard to make it lively," he said, "but that very trying is too like the heavy baron, who leaped over the chairs in his room, 'pour apprendre d'être vif.'" In the war of Pyrrhus he was oppressed all the while by a sense of Niebuhr's infinite superiority; for that chapter of the German historian he regarded as a perfect masterpiece. And in the second Punic War, where Niebuhr is little more than fragmentary, he hoped to progress much better, and with much greater freedom to himself; and he concludes by saying:-There floats before me an image of power and beauty in history, which I cannot in any way realize, and which often tempts me to throw all that I have written clean into the fire."

It was in the October of this year (1840) that he proposed to himself to acquire some knowledge of Sanscrit, "the sister of Greek," as he termed it; and he wanted to know from a former pupil, then at Haileybury College, what Sanskrit grammar and dictionary he used, and also whether there was "anything like a Sanskrit delectus, or an easy construing book for beginners." And at the close of the letter he turns suddenly from the consideration of the ways and means and

desirabilities of studying an Eastern language, to the report of foot-ball matches, which were then in great vigour.

"The Sixth match is over," he says, "being settled in one day by the defeat of the Sixth. The School-house match is pending, and the School-house have kicked one goal."

His love for manly, athletic exercises and sports, was vigorous as ever he still loved to go rambling over the country, and to take his daily bathe; and there are many who will well remember how, from his own garden, he used to watch, with all the interest of a combatant, and the keenness of a connoisseur, the foot-ball matches in the School-field.

His was a thoroughly wholesome nature; the tendencies of his mind, and the development of his physical forces, seemed mutually to strengthen each other. He presented one of the rarest combinations of various and even opposing qualities that the world has ever seen. He was learned, without a tinge of pedantry; practical without verging on mere dry utilitarianism; poetical and ideal in his tastes and fancies, yet in no wise given to sentimentality. He loved things that were ancient, because they were so; but he protested always against the errors and weaknesses of those venerable institutions which he regarded with affection and reverence. He was bold and uncompromising, almost perhaps to excess; but he was never carping or presumptuous: he was eminently devout, but perfectly free from superstition. In short, life was to him so great a reality, so tremendous a responsibility, that he attached even to its smallest revealings a sacred importance, and a deep illimitable influence.

And here I cannot help again quoting from the correspondence of the late Charlotte Bronté, edited by Mrs. Gaskell. After reading Stanley's Life of Dr. Arnold, she says: "Where can we find justice, firmness, independence, earnestness, sincerity, fuller and purer than in him? But this is not all, and I am glad of it. Besides high intellect and stainless rectitude, his letters and his life attest his possession of the most true-hearted affection. Without this, however one might admire, we could not love him; but WITH it I think we love him much!"

At this time, one of his former pupils, the Rev. H. Balston,