least of all from his pupils. The mass of boys are, doubtless, like the mass of men, incapable of receiving a deep and lasting impression from any individual character, however remarkable; and it must also be borne in mind, that hardly any of his scholars were called by rank or station to take a leading place in English society, where the effect of his teaching and character, whatever it might be in itself, would have been far more conspicuous to the world at large.

He himself, though never concealing from himself the importance of his work, would constantly dwell on the scantiness. of its results. "I came to Rugby," he said, " full of plans for school reform; but I soon found that the reform of a public school was a much more difficult thing than I had imagined." And again, "I dread to hear this called a religious school. I know how much there is to be done before it can really be called so."-" With regard to one's work," he said, "be it school or parish, I suppose the desirable feeling to entertain, is always to expect to succeed, and never think that you have succeeded." He hardly ever seems to have indulged in any sense of superiority to the other public schools. Eton, for example, he would often defend against the attacks to which it was exposed, and the invidious comparisons which some persons would draw between that school and Rugby. What were his feelings towards the improvements taking place there and elsewhere, after his coming to Rugby, have been mentioned already; even between the old system and his own, he rarely drew a strong distinction, conscious though he must have been of the totally new elements which he was introducing. The earliest letters from Rugby express an unfeigned pleasure in what he found existing, and there is no one disparaging mention of his predecessor in all the correspondence, published or unpublished, that has been collected for this work.

If, however, the prediction of Dr. Hawkins at his election, has been in any way fulfilled, the result of his work need not depend on the rank, however eminent, to which he raised Rugby School; or the influence, however powerful, which he exercised over his Rugby scholars. And, if there be any truth in the following letter from Dr. Moberly, to whose

testimony additional weight is given, as well by his very wide difference of political and ecclesiastical opinion, as by his personal experience, first as a scholar at Winchester, and an under-graduate at Oxford, then as the tutor of the most flourishing college in that University, and lastly, in his present position as Head-master of Winchester, it will be felt that, not so much amongst his own pupils, nor in the scene of his actual labours, as in every Public School throughout England, is to be sought the chief and enduring monument of Dr. Arnold's Head-mastership at Rugby.

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER OF DR. MOBERLY, HEAD-MASTER OF

WINCHESTER.

"Possibly," he writes, after describing his own recollections as a schoolboy," other schools may have been less deep in these delinquencies than Winchester; I believe that in many respects they were. But I did not find, on going to the University, that I was under disadvantages as compared with those who came from other places; on the contrary, the tone of young men at the University, whether they came from Winchester, Eton, Rugby, Harrow, or wherever else, was universally irreligious. A religious under-graduate was very rare, very much laughed at when he appeared; and I think I may confidently say, hardly to be found among publicschool men; or, if this be too strongly said, hardly to be found except in cases where private and domestic training, or good dispositions, had prevailed over the school habits and tendencies. A most singular and striking change has come upon our public schools -a change too great for any person to appreciate adequately, who has not known them in both these times. This change is undoubtedly part of a general improvement of our generation in respect of piety and reverence, but I am sure that to Dr. Arnold's personal earnest simplicity of purpose, strength of character, power of influence, and piety, which none who ever came near him could mistake or question, the carrying of this improvement into our schools is mainly attributable. He was the first. It soon began to be matter of observation to us in the University, that his pupils brought quite a different character with them to Oxford than that which we knew elsewhere. I do not speak of opinions; but his pupils were thought

ful, manly-minded, conscious of duty and obligation, when they first came to college; we regretted, indeed, that they were often deeply imbued with principles which we disapproved, but we cordially acknowledged the immense improvement in their characters in respect of morality and personal piety, and looked on Dr. Arnold as exercising an influence for good, which (for how many years I know not) had been absolutely unknown to our public schools.

"I knew personally but little of him. You remember the first occasion on which I ever had the pleasure of seeing him: but I have always felt and acknowledged that I owe more to a few casual remarks of his in respect of the government of a public school, than to any advice or example of any other person. If there be improvement in the important points of which I have been speaking, at Winchester, (and from the bottom of my heart I testify with great thankfulness that the improvement is real and great,) I do declare, in justice, that his example encouraged me to hope that it might be effected, and his hints suggested to me the way of effecting it.

"I fear that the reply, which I have been able to make to your question, will hardly be so satisfactory as you expected, as it proceeds so entirely upon my own observations and inferences. At the same time I have had, perhaps, unusual opportunity for forming an opinion, having been six years at a public school at the time of their being at the lowest,-having then mingled with young men from other schools at the University, having had many pupils from different schools, and among them several of Dr. Arnold's most distinguished ones; and at last, having had near eight years' experience as the master of a school which has undergone, in great measure, the very alteration which I have been speaking of. Moreover, I have often said the very things, which I have here written, in the hearing of men of all sorts, and have never found anybody disposed to contradict them.

Believe me, my dear Stanley,

Yours most faithfully,
GEORGE MOBERLY."

L

CHAPTER IV.

GENERAL LIFE AT RUGBY.

Ir was natural that with the wider range of duty, and the more commanding position which Dr. Arnold's new station gave him, there should have been a new stage in his character and views, hardly less marked intellectually, than that which accompanied his change from Oxford to Laleham had been morally. The several subjects of thought, which more or less he had already entertained, especially during the two or three preceding years, now fell rapidly one by one into their proper places. Ready as he still was to take the advice of his friends in practice, his opinions now took a more independent course: and whatever subsequent modification they underwent, came not from without, but from within. Whilst he became more and more careful to reconcile his own views with those, whom, in ages past or present, he reverenced as really great men, the circle within which he bestowed his veneration became far more exclusive. The purely practical element sank into greater subordination to the more imaginative and philosophical tendencies of his mind;-in works of poetical or speculative genius, which at an earlier period he had been inclined to depreciate, he now, looking at them from another point of view, took an increasing delight. Within the letters of the very first year there is a marked alteration visible even in the mere form of his handwriting, and the mode of addressing his friends. The character which has already been given of his boyish verses at Oxford, becomes less and less applicable to the simple and touching fragments of poetry in which from time to time he expressed

the feelings of his later years. The change of style in his published writings from the baldness of his earlier works to the vigorous English of his mature age, indicates the corresponding impulse given to his powers, and the greater freedom and variety of his new range of thought.

With his entrance, therefore, on his work at Rugby, his public life, (if it may so be called,) no less than his professional life, properly begins. But what was true of the effect of his own character in his sphere as a teacher, is hardly less true of it in his sphere as an author. His works were not merely the inculcations of particular truths, but the expression of his whole mind; and excited in those who read them a sentiment almost of personal regard or of personal dislike, as the case might be, over and above the approbation or disapprobation of the opinions which they contained. Like himself, they partook at once of a practical and speculative character, which exposed them, like himself, to considerable misapprehension. On the one hand, even the most permanent of them seemed to express the feeling of the hour which dictated them. On the other hand, even the most transitory seemed to express no less the fixed ideas, by which his whole life was regulated: and it may be worth while, therefore, in regard to both these aspects, without descending into the details and circumstances of each particular work, which the ensuing correspondence will of itself sufficiently describe, to offer briefly a few remarks which may serve as a preface to all of them.

I. Greatly as his practical turn of mind was modified in his later years, and averse as he always was to what are technically called "practical men," yet, in the sense of having no views, however high, which he did not labour to bring into practice sooner or later, he remained eminently practical to the end of his life. "I always think," he used to say, "of that magnificent sentence of Bacon, 'In this world, God only and the angels may be spectators.' "Stand still, and see the salvation of God," he observed in allusion to Dr. Pusey's celebrated sermon on that passage, was true advice to the Israelites on the shores of the Red Sea; but it was not the advice which is needed in ordinary circumstances; it would have been false