eagerness with which, amidst that "endless succession of fields and hedge-rows," he would make the most of any features of a higher order; in the pleasure with which he would cherish the few places where the current of the Avon was perceptible, or where a glimpse of the horizon could be discerned; in the humorous despair with which he would gaze on the dull expanse of fields eastward from Rugby. "It is no wonder we do not like looking that way, when one considers that there is nothing fine between us and the Ural mountains. Conceive what you look over, for you just miss Sweden, and look over Holland, the north of Germany, and the centre of Russia." With this absence of local attraction in the place, and with the conviction that his occupations and official station must make him look for his future home elsewhere, "I feel," he said, "that I love Middlesex and Westmoreland, but I care nothing for Warwickshire, and am in it like a plant sunk in the ground in a pot, my roots never strike beyond the pot, and I could be transplanted at any minute without tearing or severing of my fibres. To the pot itself, which is the school, I could cling very lovingly, were it not that the laborious nature of the employment makes me feel that it can be only temporary, and that, if I live to old age, my age could not be spent in my present situation."

Fox How accordingly became more and more the centre of all his local and domestic affections. "It is with a mixed feeling of solemnity and tenderness," he said, "that I regard our mountain nest, whose surpassing sweetness, I think I may safely say, adds a positive happiness to every one of my waking hours

passed in it."

When absent from it, it still, he said, "dwelt in his memory as a vision of beauty from one vacation to another," and when present at it he felt that "no hasty or excited admiration of a tourist could be compared with the quiet and hourly delight of having the mountains and streams as familiar objects, connected with all the enjoyments of home, one's family, one's books, and one's friends,"-" associated with our work-day thoughts as well as our gala-day ones."

Then it was that, as he sat working in the midst of his family, "never raising his eyes from the paper to the window without an influx of ever new delights," he found that leisure for writing, which he so much craved at Rugby. Then it was that he enjoyed the entire relaxation, which he so much needed after his school occupations, whether in the journeys of coming and returning, those long journeys, which, before they were shortened by railway travelling, were to him, he used to say, the twelve most restful days of the whole year; or in the birthday festivities of his children, and the cheerful evenings when all subjects were discussed, from the gravest to the lightest, and when he would read to them his favourite stories from Herodotus, or his favourite English poets:-or, again, in those long mountain walks, when they would start with their provisions for the day, himself the guide and life of the party, always on the look out how best to break the ascent by gentle stages, comforting the little ones in their falls, and helping forward those who were tired, himself always keeping with the laggers, that none might strain their strength by trying to be in front

with him and then, when his assistance was not wanted, the liveliest of all; his step so light, his eye so quick in finding flowers to take home to those who were not of the party.

Year by year bound him with closer ties to his new home; not only Fox How itself with each particular tree, the growth of which he had watched, and each particular spot in the grounds, associated by him with the playful names of his children; but also the whole valley in which it lay, became consecrated with something of a domestic feeling. Rydal Chapel, with the congregation to which he had so often preached-the new circle of friends and acquaintance with whom he kept up so familiar an intercourse-the gorges and rocky pools which owed their nomenclature to him, all became part of his habitual thoughts: he delighted to derive his imagery from the hills and lakes of Westmoreland, and to trace in them the likenesses of his favourite scenes in poetry and history; even their minutest features were of a kind that were most attractive to him; "the running streams" which were to him "the most beautiful objects in nature;"-the wild flowers on the mountain sides, which were to him, he said "his music;" and which, whether in their scarcity at Rugby, or their profusion in Westmoreland, "loving them" as he used to say, "as a child loves them," he could not bear to see removed from their natural places by the wayside, where others might enjoy them as well as himself—the very peacefulness of all the historical and moral associations of the scenery-free alike from the remains of feudal ages in the past, and suggesting comparatively so little of suffering or of evil in the present,-rendered

doubly grateful to him the refreshment which he there found from the rough world in the school, or the sad feelings awakened in his mind by the thoughts of his Church and country. There he hoped, when the time should have come for his retreat from Rugby, to spend his declining years. Other visions, indeed, of a more practical and laborious life, from time to time passed before him, but Fox How was the image, which most constantly presented itself to him in all prospects for the future; there he intended to have lived in peace, maintaining his connexion with the rising generation by receiving pupils from the Universities; there, under the shade of the trees of his own planting, he hoped in his old age to give to the world the fruits of his former experience and labours, by executing those works for which at Rugby he felt himself able only to prepare the way, or lay the first foundations, and never again leave his retirement till (to use his own expression) "his bones should go to Grasmere churchyard, to lie under the yews which Wordsworth planted, and to have the Rotha with its deep and silent pools passing by."

CHAPTER V.

LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE.AUGUST 1828-AUGUST 1830.

THE two first years of Dr. Arnold's life at Rugby remarkably exhibit the natural sanguineness of his character, whether in the feeling with which he entered on the business of the school, or in the hopefulness with which he regarded public affairs, and which, more or less, pervaded all that he wrote at this time.

The first volume of sermons, and the first volume of his edition of Thucydides, containing, as they did, in many respects the basis of his theological and historical views, were published in February, 1829, and May, 1830; and little need be added to what has already been said of them. To the latter, indeed, an additional interest is imparted from its being the first attempt in English philology to investigate not merely the phrases and formulæ, but the general principles of the Greek language, and to illustrate, not merely the words, but the history and geography of a Greek historian. And in the Essay on the different periods of national existence appended to this first volume, but, in fact, belonging more to his general views of history and politics than to any particular illustration of Thucydides, is brought out more forci