to be a statesman should be employed in teaching school-boys." "What a shame," it was said on the other hand, " that the headmaster of Rugby should be employed in writing essays and pamphlets." But, even had there been no connexion between the two spheres of his interest, and had the inconvenience resulting from his public prominence been far greater than it was, it would have been the necessary price of having him at all in that place. He would not have been himself, had he not felt and written as he did; and he could not have endured to live under the grievance of remaining silent on subjects, on which he believed it to be his most sacred duty to speak what he thought.

As it was, however, the one sphere played into the other. Whatever labour he bestowed on his literary works was only part of that constant progress of self-education which he thought essential to the right discharge of his duties as a teacher. Whatever interest he felt in the struggles of the political and ecclesiastical world, reacted on his interest in the school, and invested it in his eyes with a new importance. When he thought of the social evils of the country, it awakened a corresponding desire to check the thoughtless waste and selfishness of school-boys; a corresponding sense of the aggravation of those evils by the insolence and want of sympathy too frequently shown by the children of the wealthier classes towards the lower orders; a corresponding desire that they should there imbibe the first principles of reverence to law and regard for the poor which the spirit of the age seemed to him so little to encourage. When he thought of the evils of the Church, he would "turn from the thought of the general temple in ruins, and see whether they could not, within the walls of their own little particular congregation," endeavour to realize what he believed to be its true idea; "what use they could make of the vestiges of it still left amongst themselves-common reading of the Scriptures, common prayer, and the communion." (Serm. vol. iv. pp. 266. 316.) Thus, "whatever of striking good or evil happened in any part of the wide range of English dominion" -brought to his thoughts " on what important scenes some of his own scholars might be called upon to enter;" "whatever

new and important things took place in the world of thought," suggested the hope "that they, when they went forth amidst the strifes of tongues and of minds, might be endowed with the spirit of wisdom and power." (Serm. vol. v. p. 405.) And even in the details of the school, it would be curious to trace how he recognised in the peculiar vices of boys the same evils which, when full grown, became the source of so much social mischief; how he governed the school precisely on the same principles as he would have governed a great empire; how constantly, to his own mind or to his scholars, he exemplified the highest truths of theology and philosophy in the simplest relations of the boys towards each other, or towards him.

In entering upon his office he met with difficulties, many of which have since passed away, but which must be borne in mind, if points are here dwelt upon, that have now ceased to be important, but were by no means insignificant or obvious when he came to Rugby. Nor did his system at once attain its full maturity. He was a long time feeling his way amongst the various institutions which he formed or invented:-he was constantly striving after an ideal standard of perfection, which he was conscious that he had never attained; to the improvements which, in a short time, began to take place in other schoolsto those at Harrow, under his friend Dr. Longley, and to those at Winchester, under Dr. Moberly, to which he alluded in one of his later sermons, (vol. v. p. 150,) he often looked as models for himself;-to suggestions from persons very much younger than himself, not unfrequently from his former pupils, with regard to the course of reading, or to alterations in his manner of preaching, or to points of discipline, he would often listen with the greatest deference. His own mind was constantly devising new measures for carrying out his several views. "The school," he said, on first coming, "is quite enough to employ any man's love of reform; and it is much pleasanter to think of evils, which you may yourself hope to relieve, than those with regard to which you can give nothing but vain wishes and opinions." "There is enough of Toryism in my nature," he said, on evils being mentioned to him in the place, " to make me very apt to sleep contentedly over things as they are, and therefore I hold

it to be most true kindness when any one directs my attention to points in the school which are alleged to be going on ill."

The perpetual succession of changes which resulted from this, was by many objected to as excessive, and calculated to endanger the stability of his whole system. "He wakes every morning," it was said of him, "with the impression that everything is an open question." But rapid as might be the alterations to which the details of his system were subjected, the general principles remained fixed. The unwillingness which he had, even in common life, to act in any individual case without some general law to which he might refer it, ran through everything, and at times it would almost seem as if he invented universal rules with the express object of meeting particular cases. Still, if in smaller matters this gave an occasional impression of fancifulness or inconsistency, it was, in greater matters, one chief cause of the confidence which he inspired. Amidst all the plans that came before him, he felt, and he made others feel, that whatever might be the merits of the particular question at issue, there were principles behind which lay far more deeply seated than any mere question of school government, which he was ready to carry through at whatever cost, and from which no argument or menace could move him.

Of the mere external administration of the school, little need here be said. Many difficulties which he encountered were alike provoked and subdued by the peculiarities of his own character. The vehemence with which he threw himself into a contest against evil, and the confidence with which he assailed it, though it carried him through perplexities to which a more cautious man would have yielded, led him to disregard interests and opinions which a less earnest or a less sanguine reformer would have treated with greater consideration. His consciousness of his own integrity, and his contempt for worldly advantage, sometimes led him to require from others more than might be reasonably expected from them, and to adopt measures which the world at large was sure to misinterpret; yet these very qualities, in proportion as they became more appreciated, ultimately secured for him a confidence beyond what could have been gained by the most deliberate circumspection. But what

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ever were the temporary exasperations and excitements thus produced in his dealings with others, they were gradually removed by the increasing control over himself and his work which he acquired in later years. The readiness which he showed to acknowledge a fault when once convinced of it, as well as to persevere in kindness even when he thought himself injured, succeeded in healing breaches which, with a less forgiving or less honest temper, would have been irreparable. His union of firmness with tenderness had the same effect in the settlement of some of the perplexities of his office, which in others would have resulted from art and management; and even his work as a schoolmaster cannot be properly appreciated without remembering how, in the end of his career, he rallied round him the public feeling, which in its beginning and middle, as will appear further on, had been so widely estranged from him.

With regard to the Trustees of the school, entirely amicable as were his usual relations with them, and grateful as he felt to them for their active support and personal friendliness, he from the first maintained that in the actual working of the school he must be completely independent, and that their remedy, if they were dissatisfied, was not interference, but dismissal. On this condition he took the post, and any attempt to control either his administration of the school, or his own private occupations, he felt bound to resist " as a duty," he said on one occasion, "not only to himself, but to the master of every foundation school in England."

Of his intercourse with the assistant-masters it is for obvious reasons impossible to speak with that detail which the subject deserves. But though the co-operation of his colleagues was necessarily thrown into the shade by the activity and vigour of his own character, it must not be lost sight of in the following account, whether it be regarded as one of his most characteristic means of administration, or as an instance of the powerful influence he exercised over those with whom he was brought into close contact. It was one of his main objects to increase in all possible ways their importance and their interest in the place. "Nothing delights me more," he said, in speaking of the reputation enjoyed by one of his colleagues, “than

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to think that boys are sent here for his sake rather than for mine." In matters of school discipline he seldom or never acted without consulting them. Every three weeks a council was held, in which all school matters were discussed, and in which every one was free to express his opinion, or propose any measure not in contradiction to any fundamental principle of school administration, and in which it would not unfrequently happen that he himself was opposed and outvoted. He was anxious that they like himself should have time to read for their own improvement, and he was also glad to encourage any occasional help that they might render to the neighbouring clergy. But from the first he maintained that the school business was to occupy their main and undivided interest. The practice, which owing to their lower salaries had before prevailed, of uniting some parochial cure with their school duties, was entirely abolished, and the boarding-houses, as they respectively became vacant, he placed exclusively under their care. The connexion thus established between the masters and the boys in the several houses he laboured to strengthen by opening in various ways means for friendly communication between them ;—every house was thus to be as it were an epitome of the whole school. On the one hand every master was to have, as he used to say, "each a horse of his own to ride," independent of the "mere phantasmagoria of boys" passing successively through their respective forms; and on the other hand, the boys would thus have some one at hand to consult in difficulties, to explain their case if they got into trouble with the head-master, or the other masters, to send a report of their characters home, to prepare them for confirmation, and in general to stand to them in the relation of a pastor to his flock. "No parochial ministry," he would say to them, "can be more properly a cure of souls than yours;" and though, where it might happen that the masters were laymen, no difference was made between their duties to their boys and those of others,

This practice, which he first introduced at the end of each half-year, afterwards became monthly. He himself used latterly to write besides every half-year to the parents of every boy in his own form;-shortly, if the boy's character was good—at considerable length, if he had cause of complaint.