XXX. TO THE REV. F. C. BLACKSTONE.

Laleham, July 11, 1828.

It would be foolish to talk of the deep love that I bear to Laleham, and the wrench which it will be to part from it; but this is quite consistent with a lively interest in Rugby, and when I strolled with in the meadows there, during our visit of last week, I thought that I already began to feel it as my home. . . There will be enough to do, I imagine, without any addition; though I really feel very sanguine as to my own relish for the work, and think that it will come more naturally to me than I at first imagined. May God grant that I may labour with an entire confidence in Him, and with none in myself without Him.

XXXI. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ.

Laleham, July 29, 1828.

. . I never would publish without a considerable revision of them. I well know their incompleteness, and suspect much worse faults in them. Do not imagine that I neglect your remarks; far from it: I would attend to them earnestly, and would soften gladly anything that was too harsh, or that might give offence, and would alter the mere inadvertencies of my hasty writing in point of style. But certainly the character of the style I could not alter, because no other would be natural to me; and though I am far from wishing other people to write as I do, yet for myself I hold it best to follow my own fashion. . .

I owe it to Rugby not to excite needless scandal by an isolated and uncalled-for publication. I shall never be Mr. Dean, nor do I wish it; but having undertaken the office of Dr. Wooll, with double l or single l, as best suits your fancy, I do wish to do my utmost in it, and not to throw difficulties in my own way by any imprudence. This, of course, would apply either to minor points, or to those on which I distrusted my own competent knowledge. Where I am fully decided on a matter of consequence, I would speak out as plainly and boldly as your heart could wish.

We are all in the midst of confusion; the books all packed, and half the furniture; and on Tuesday, if God will, we shall leave this

In allusion to the first volume of his Sermons, which was now in the process of publication.

dear place, this nine years' home of such exceeding happiness. But it boots not to look backwards. Forwards, forwards, forwards,should be one's motto. I trust you will see us in our new dwelling ere long; I shall want to see my old friends there, to wear off the gloss of its newness.

XXXII. TO THE REV. JOHN TUCKER.

Laleham, August, 1828.

I am inclined to write to you once again before we leave Laleham, as a sort of farewell from this dear place; and you shall answer it with a welcome to Rugby. You fancy us already at Rugby, and so does J. Keble, from whom I received a very kind letter some time since, directed to me there. But we do not move till Tuesday, when we go, fourteen souls, to Oxford, having taken the whole coach; and on Wednesday we hope to reach Rugby, having in like manner secured the whole Leicester coach from Oxford to Rugby. Our goods and chattels, under convoy of our gardener, are at this time somewhere on the Grand Junction Canal, and will reach Rugby I hope this evening. The poor house here is sadly desolate; all the carpets up, half the furniture gone, and signs of removal everywhere visible. And so ends the first act of my life since I arrived at manhood. For the last eight years it has been a period of as unruffled happiness as I should think could ever be experienced by man. M's illness, in 1821, is almost its only dark spot;-and how was that softened and comforted! It is almost a fearful consideration; and yet there is a superstitious notion, and an unbelieving one, too, which cannot receive God's mercies as his free gift, but will always be looking out for something wherewith to purchase them. An humbling consideration much rather it is and ought to be; yet all life is humbling, if we think upon it, and our greatest mercies, which we sometimes least think of, are the most humbling of all..... The Rugby prospect I contemplate with a very strong interest: the work I am not afraid of, if I can get my proper exercise; but I want absolute play, like a boy, and neither riding nor walking will make up for my leaping-pole and gallows, and bathing, when the youths used to go with me, and I felt completely for the time a boy as they were. It is this entire relaxation, I think, at intervals, such again as my foreign tours have afforded, that gives me so keen an appetite for my work at other times, and has enabled me

to go through it not only with no fatigue, but with a sense of absolute pleasure. I believe that I am going to publish a volume of Sermons. You will think me crazed perhaps; but I have two reasons for it; chiefly, the repeated exhortations of several individuals for the last three or four years; but these would not alone have urged me to it, did I not wish to state for my own sake what my opinions really are, on points where I know they have been grievously misrepresented. Whilst I lived here in Laleham my opinions mattered to nobody; but I know that while I was a candidate for Rugby, it was said in Oxford that I did not preach the Gospel, nor even touch upon the great doctrines of Christianity in my sermons; and if this same impression be prevalent now, it will be mischievous to the school in a high degree. Now, if what I really do preach be to any man's notions not the Gospel, I cannot help it, and must be content to abide by the consequences of his opinion; but I do not want to be misunderstood, and accused of omitting things which I do not omit.

XXXIII. TO THE REV. GEORGE CORNISH.

Rugby, August 16, 1828.

If I can do my work as I ought to do it, we shall have every reason to be thankful for the change. I must not, it is true, think of dear old Laleham, and all that we have left there, or the perfect peace of our eight years of wedded life passed there together. It is odd that both you and I should now for the first time in our lives be moving from our parents' neighbourhood; but in this respect our happiness was very uncommon, and to me altogether Laleham was so like a place of premature rest, that I believe I ought to be sincerely thankful that I am called to a scene of harder and more anxious labour. . . . . . The boys come back next Saturday week. So here begins the second act of our lives. May God bless it to us, and make it help forward the great end of all.

CHAPTER III.

SCHOOL LIFE AT RUGBY.

It would be useless to give any chronological details of a life so necessarily monotonous as that of the Head-master of a public school; and it is accordingly only intended to describe the general system which Dr. Arnold pursued during the fourteen years he was at Rugby. Yet some apology may seem to be due for the length of a chapter, which to the general reader must be comparatively deficient in interest. Something must, indeed, be forgiven to the natural inclination to dwell on those recollections of his life, which to his pupils are the most lively and the most recent-something to the almost unconscious tendency to magnify those scenes which are most nearly connected with what is most endeared to oneself. But independently of any local or personal considerations, it has been felt that if any part of Dr. Arnold's work deserved special mention, it was his work at Rugby; and that if it was to be of any use to those of his own profession who would take any interest in it, it could only be made so by a full and minute account.

Those who look back upon the state of English education in the year 1827, must remember how the feeling of dissatisfaction with existing institutions which had begun in many quarters to display itself, had already directed considerable attention to the condition of public schools. The range of classical reading, in itself confined, and with no admixture of other information, had been subject to vehement attacks from the liberal party generally, on the ground of its alleged narrowness and inutility. And the more undoubted evil of the absence of systematic attempts to give a more directly Christian character to what

constituted the education of the whole English gentry, was becoming more and more a scandal in the eyes of religious men, who at the close of the last century and the beginning of this— Wilberforce, for example, and Bowdler-had lifted up their voices against it. A complete reformation, or a complete destruction of the whole system, seemed to many persons sooner or later to be inevitable. The difficulty, however, of making the first step, where the alleged objection to alteration was its impracticability, was not to be easily surmounted. The mere resistance to change which clings to old institutions, was in itself a considerable obstacle, and, in the case of some of the public schools, from the nature of their constitution, in the first instance almost insuperable; and whether amongst those who were engaged in the existing system, or those who were most vehemently opposed to it, for opposite but obvious reasons, it must have been extremely difficult to find a man who would attempt, or if he attempted, carry through, any extensive improvement.

It was at this juncture that Dr. Arnold was elected headmaster of a school which, whilst it presented a fair average specimen of the public schools at that time, yet by its constitution imposed fewer shackles on its head, and offered a more open field for alteration than was the case at least with Eton or Winchester. The post itself, in spite of the publicity, and to a certain degree formality, which it entailed upon him, was in many respects remarkably suited to his natural tastes;-to his love of tuition, which had now grown so strongly upon him, that he declared sometimes that he could hardly live without such employment; to the vigour and spirits which fitted him rather to deal with the young than the old; to the desire of carrying out his favourite ideas of uniting things secular with things spiritual, and of introducing the highest principles of action into regions comparatively uncongenial to their reception.

Even his general interest in public matters was not without its use in his new station. Many, indeed, both of his admirers and of his opponents, used to lament that a man with such views and pursuits should be placed in such a situation. "What a pity,” it was said on the one hand, "that a man fit