said, as he opened the Satires of Horace, "we shall see what it was."

Still it was in the Scripture a lessons that this found most scope. In the lower forms it was rather that more prominence was given to them, and that they were placed under better regulations than that they were increased in amount. In the Sixth Form, besides the lectures on Sunday, he introduced two lectures on the Old or New Testament in the course of the week, so that a boy who remained there three years would often have read through a great part of the New Testament, much of the Old Testament, and especially of the Psalms in the Septuagint version, and also committed much of them to memory; whilst at times he would deliver lectures on the history of the early Church, or of the English Reformation. In these lessons on the Scriptures he would insist much on the importance of familiarity with the very words of the sacred writers, and of the exact place where passages occurred; on a thorough acquaintance with the different parts of the story contained in the several Gospels, that they might be referred to at once; on the knowledge of the times when, and the persons to whom, the Epistles were written. In translating the New Testament, while he encouraged his pupils to take the language of the authorized version as much as possible, he was very particular in not allowing them to use words which fail to convey the meaning of the original, or which by frequent use have lost all definite meaning of their own-such as "edification," or "the Gospel." Whatover dogmatical instruction he gave was conveyed almost entirely in a practical or exegetical shape; and it was very rarely indeed that he made any allusion to existing parties or controversies within the Church of England. His own peculiar views, which need not be noticed in this place, transpired more or less throughout; but the great proportion of his interpretations were such as most of his pupils, of whatever opinions, eagerly collected and preserved for their own use in after life.

But more important than any details was the union of reverence and reality in his whole manner of treating the Scriptures, which so distinguished these lessons from such as may in them

For his own feeling about them, see Sermons, vol. iv. PP. 317. 321.

selves almost as little deserve the name of religious instruction as many lessons commonly called secular. The same searching questions, the same vividness which marked his historical lessons, the same anxiety to bring all that he said home to their own feelings, which made him, in preparing them for confirmation, endeavour to make them say, "Christ died for me," instead of the general phrase, "Christ died for us,"-must often, when applied to the natural vagueness of boys' notions on religious subjects, have dispelled it for ever. "He appeared to me," writes a pupil, whose intercourse with him never extended beyond these lessons, "to be remarkable for his habit of realizing everything that we are told in Scripture. You know how frequently we can ourselves, and how constantly we hear others go prosing on in a sort of religious cant or slang, which is as easy to learn as any other technical jargon, without seeing as it were by that faculty, which all possess, of picturing to the mind, and acting as if we really saw things unseen belonging to another world. Now he seemed to have the freshest view of our Lord's life and death that I ever knew a man to possess. His rich mind filled up the naked outline of the Gospel history;-it was to him the most interesting fact that has ever happened,—as real, as exciting (if I may use the expression) as any recent event in modern history of which the actual effects are visible." And all his comments, from whatever theory of inspiration they were given, were always made in a tone and manner that left an impression that from the book which lay before him he was really seeking to draw his rule of life, and, that whilst he examined it in earnest to find what its meaning was, when he had found it he intended to abide by it.

The effect of these instructions was naturally more permanent (speaking merely in an intellectual point of view) than the lessons themselves, and it was a frequent topic of censure that his pupils were led to take up his opinions before their minds were duly prepared for them. What was true of his method and intention in the simplest matters of instruction, was true of it as applied to the highest matters. Undoubtedly it was his belief that the minds of young men ought to be awakened to the greatness of things around them; and it was his earnest

endeavour to give them what he thought the best means of attaining a firm hold upon truth. But it was always his wish that his pupils should form their opinions for themselves, and not take them on trust from him. To his particular political principles he carefully avoided allusion, and it was rarely that his subjects for school compositions touched on any topics that could have involved, even remotely, the disputed points of party politics. In theological matters, partly from the nature of the case, partly from the peculiar aspect under which for the last six years of his life he regarded the Oxford school, he both expressed his thoughts more openly, and was more anxious to impress them upon his pupils; but this was almost entirely in the comparatively few sermons preached on what could be called controversial topics. In his intercourse indeed with his pupils after they had left the school, he naturally spoke with greater freedom on political or theological subjects, yet it was usually when invited by them, and, though he often deeply lamented their adoption of what he held to be erroneous views, he much disliked a merely unmeaning echo of his own opinions. "It would be a great mistake," he said, "if I were to try to make myself here into a Pope."

It was, however, an almost inevitable consequence of coming into contact with his teaching, and with the new world which it opened, that his pupils would often, on their very entrance into life, have acquired a familiarity and encountered a conflict with some of the most harassing questions of morals and religion. It would also often happen, that the increasing reverence, which they felt for him, would not only incline them to receive with implicit trust all that he said in the lessons or in the pulpit, but also to include in their admiration of the man, all that they could gather of his general views either from report or from his published works: whilst they would naturally look with distrust on the opposite notions in religion and politics, brought before them, as would often be the case, in close connexion with vehement attacks on him, which in most cases they could hardly help regarding as unfounded or unfair. Still the greater part of his pupils, while at school, were, after the manner of English boys, altogether unaffected by his political opinions; and of

those who most revered him, none in after life could be found who followed his views implicitly, even on the subjects on which they were most disposed to listen to him. But though no particular school of opinion grew up amongst them, the end of his teaching would be answered far more truly, (and it may suggest to those who know ancient history, similar results of similar methods in the hands of other eminent teachers,) if his scholars learned to form an independent judgment for themselves, and to carry out their opinions to their legitimate consequences,to appreciate moral agreement amidst much intellectual difference, not only in each other or in him, but in the world at large; and to adopt many, if not all of his principles, whilst differing widely in their application of them to existing persons and circumstances.

III. If there is any one place at Rugby more than another which was especially the scene of Dr. Arnold's labours, both as a teacher and as a master, it is the School-chapel. Even its outward forms, from "the very cross at the top of the building," on which he loved to dwell as a visible symbol of the Christian end of their education, to the vaults which he caused to be opened underneath for those who died in the school, must always be associated with his name. "I envy Winchester its antiquity," he said, "and am therefore anxious to do all that can be done to give us something of a venerable outside, if we have not the nobleness of old associations to help us." The five painted windows in the chapel were put up in great part at his expense, altogether at his instigation. The subject of the first of these, the great east window, he delighted to regard as "strikingly appropriate to a place of education," being "the Wise Men's Offering," and the first time after its erection that the chapter describing the Adoration of the Magi was read in the church service he took occasion to preach upon it one of his most remarkable sermons, that of "Christian ProfessionsOffering Christ our best." (Serm. vol. iii. p. 112.) And as this is connected with the energy and vigour of his life, so the subject of the last, which he chose himself a short time before his death, is the confession of St. Thomas, on which he dwelt

a MS. Sermon.

with deep solemnity in his last hours, as in his life he had dwelt upon it as the great consolation of doubting but faithful hearts, and as the great attestation of what was to him the central truth of Christianity, our Lord's divinity. Lastly, the monuments of those who died in the school during his government, and whose graves were the first ever made in the chapel; above all, his own, the monument and grave of the only head-master of Rugby who is buried within its walls, give a melancholy interest to the words with which he closed a sermon preached on the Founder's day, in 1833, whilst as yet the recently-opened vaults had received no dead within them:

"This roof, under which we are now assembled, will hold, it is probable, our children and our children's children; may they be enabled to think, as they shall kneel perhaps over the bones of some of us now here assembled, that they are praying where their fathers prayed; and let them not, if they mock in their day the means of grace here offered to them, encourage themselves with the thought that the place had long ago been profaned with equal guilt; that they are but infected with the spirit of our ungodliness." a

But of him especially it need hardly be said, that his chief interest in that place lay in the three hundred boys who, Sunday after Sunday, were collected, morning and afternoon, within its walls. "The veriest stranger," he said, "who ever attends divine service in this chapel, does well to feel something more than common interest in the sight of the congregation here assembled. But if the sight so interests a mere stranger, what should it be to ourselves, both to you and to me?" (Serm. vol. v. p. 403.) So he spoke within a month of his death, and to him, certainly, the interest was increased rather than lessened by its familiarity. There was the fixed expression of countenance, exhibiting the earnest attention with which, after the service was over, he sat in his place looking at the boys as they filed out one by one, in the orderly and silent arrangement which succeeded, in the latter part of his stay, to the public calling over of their names in the chapel. There was the complete image of his union of dignity and simplicity, of manliness a Serm. vol. iii. p. 211.