knowledge and application in the school was | the most helpless imbecility, seeming to be alas great as if it had been his sole object.

He introduced, with this view, a variety of new regulations; contributed liberally himself to the foundation of prizes and scholarships, as incentives to study, and gave up much of his leisure to the extra labor of new examinations for the various Forms and of the yearly examina tion for the whole school. The spirit of industry which his method excited in his better scholars, and more or less in the school at large, was considerable; and it was often complained that their minds and constitutions were over-worked by premature exertion. Whether this was the case more at Rugy than in other schools, since the greater exertions generally required in all parts of education, it is difficult to determine. He himself would never allow the truth of it, though maintaining that it would be a very great evil if it were so. Whenever he saw that boys were reading too much, he remonstrated with them, relaxed their work, and if they were in the upper part of the school, would invite them to his house in the half-year of the holidays to refresh them.

Often

most like the spirit of Mephistopheles." when seen in union with moral depravity, he would be inclined to deny its existence altogether; the generation of his scholars, to which he looked back with the greatest pleasure, was not that which contained most instances of individual talent, but that which had altogether worked steadily and industriously. The university honors which his pupils obtained were very considerable, and at one time unrivaled by any school in England, and he was unfeignedly delighted whenever they occurred. But he never laid any stress upon them, and strongly deprecated any system which would encourage the notion of their being the chief end to be answered by school education. He would often dwell on the curious alternations of cleverness or dullness in school generations, which seemed to baffle all human calculation or exertion. 'What we ought to do is to send up boys who will not be plucked." A mere plodding boy was above all others encouraged by him. At Laleham he had once got out of patience, and spoken sharply to a pupil of this kind, when He had a strong belief in the general union of the pupil looked up in his face and said, “Why moral and intellectual excellence. "I have now do you speak angrily, sir ?—indeed I am doing had some years' experience," he once said in the best that I can.' Years afterwards he used to preaching at Rugby, "I have known but too tell the story to his children, and said, "I never many of those who in their utter folly have said felt so much ashamed in my life-that look and in their heart, there was no God; but the sad that speech I have never forgotten." And sight for assuredly none can be more sad-though it would of course happen that clever of a powerful, an earnest, and an inquiring | boys, from a greater sympathy with his undermind seeking truth, yet not finding it-the hor- standing, would be brought into closer interrible sight of good deliberately rejected, and course with him, this did not affect his feeling, evil deliberately chosen-the grievous wreck of not only of respect, but of reverence to those earthly wisdom united with spiritual folly-I be- who, without ability, were distinguished for high lieve that it has been, that it is, that it may be- principle and industry. "If there be one thing Scripture speaks of it, the experience of others on earth which is truly admirable, it is to see has witnessed it! but I thank God that in my God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural own experience I have never witnessed it yet; powers, where they have been honestly, truly, I have still found that folly and thoughtlessness and zealously cultivated." In speaking of a have gone to evil; that thought and manliness pupil of this character, he once said "I would have been united with faith and goodness." stand to that man hat in hand;" and it was his And in the case of boys his experience led him feeling after the departure of such an one that to use his words in a letter to a friend, more drew from him the most personal, perhaps the and more to believe in this connection, for only personal, praise which he ever bestowed on which divers reasons may be given. One, and any boy in his Sermons. a very important one, is, that ability puts a boy in sympathy with his teachers in the matter of his work, and in their delight in the works of great minds; whereas a dull boy has much more sympathy with the uneducated, and others to whom animal enjoyments are all in all." "I am sure," he used to say, that in the case of boys the temptations of intellect are not comparable to the temptations of dullness;" and he often dwelt on "the fruit which he above all things longed for,-moral thoughtfulness,-the inquiring love of truth going along with the devoted love of goodness.'

His whole method was founded on the principle of awakening the intellect of every individual boy. Hence it was his practice to teach by questioning. As a general rule, he never gave information, except as a kind of reward for an answer, and often withheld it altogether, or checked himself in the very act of uttering it, from a sense that those whom he was addressing had not sufficient interest or sympathy to entitle them to receive it. His explanations were as short as possible-enough to dispose of the difficulty and no more; and his questions were of a kind to call the attention of the boys to the real point of every subject, and to disclose to them the exact boundaries of what they

But for mere cleverness, whether in boys or men, he had no regard. "Mere intellectual acuteness," he used to say, in speaking (for ex-knew or did not know. With regard to younger ample) of lawyers, "divested as it is, in too many cases, of all that is comprehensive and great and good, is to me more revolting than

boys, he said, "It is a great mistake to think that they should understand all they learn; for God has ordered that in youth the memory

that the worst which shows that he has followed but one book, and followed that without reflection."

The

should act vigorously, independent of the un- very good!" was his well-known exclamation of derstanding whereas a man cannot usually pleasure when he met with some original recollect a thing unless he understands it." But thought; "is that entirely your own, or do you in proportion to their advance in the school he remember anything in your reading that sugtried to cultivate in them a habit not only of gested it to you?" Style, knowledge, correctcollecting facts, but of expressing themselves ness or incorrectness of statement or expression, with facility, and of understanding the princi- he always disregarded in comparison with indiples on which their facts rested. 'You come cation of promise of real thought. "I call that here," he said, "not to read, but to learn how the best theme," he said, "which shows that to read;" and thus the greater part of his in- the boy has read and thought for himself; that structions were interwoven with the process of the next best which shows that he has read sevtheir own minds; there was a continual refer-eral books, and digested what he has read; and ence to their thoughts, an acknowledgment that, so far as their information and power of reasoning could take them, they ought to have an opinion of their own. He was evidently Of the classical lessons generally his enjoyworking not for but with the form, as if they ment was complete. When asked once whether were equally interested with himself in making he did not find the repetition of the same lessons out the meaning of the passage before them. irksome to him, "No," he said, "there is a conHis object was to set them right, not by correct-stant freshness in them: I find something new ing them at once, but either gradually helping in them every time that I go over them." them on to a true answer, or by making the an- best proof of the pleasure which he took in them swers of the more advanced part of the form serve is the distinct impression which his scholars re as a medium through which his instructions tained of the feeling, often rather implied than might be communicated to the less advanced. expressed, with which he entered into the sevSuch a system he thought valuable alike to both eral works; the enthusiasm with which, both in classes of boys. To those who by natural the public and private orations of Demosthenes, quickness or greater experience of his teaching he would contemplate piece by piece "the_luwere more able to follow his instructions, it minous clearness" of the sentences; the affecconfirmed the sense of the responsible position tionate familiarity which he used to show towhich they held in the school, intellectually as wards Thucydides, knowing as he did the well as morally. To a boy less ready or less substance of every single chapter by itself; the accustomed to it, it gave precisely what he con- revival of youthful interest with which he would ceived that such a character required. He recur to portions of the works of Aristotle; the wants this," to use his own words, "and wants keen sense of a new world opening before him, it daily-not only to interest and excite him, with which in later years, with ever-increasing but to dispel what is very apt to grow around pleasure, he entered into the works of Plato;a lonely reader not constantly questioned-a above all, his childlike enjoyment of Herodotus, haze of indistinctness as to a consciousness of and that "fountain of beauty and delight which his own knowledge or ignorance; he takes a no man," he said, can ever drain dry," the vague impression for a definite one, an imper- poetry of Homer. The simple language of that fect notion for one that is full and complete, early age was exactly what he was most able to and in this way he is continually deceiving him- reproduce in his own simple and touching transself." lations; and his eyes would fill with tears, when he came to the story which told how Cleobis and Bito, as a reward for their filial piety, lay down in the temple, and fell asleep and died.

Hence, also, he not only laid great stress on original compositions, but endeavored so to choose the subjects of exercises as to oblige them to read and lead them to think for themselves. To his pupils, perhaps, of ordinary lessons, He dealt at once a death-blow to themes (as he the most attractive were the weekly ones on expressed it) on "Virtus est bona res," and Modern History. He had always a difficulty in gave instead historical or geographical descrip- finding any work which he could use with sattions, imaginary speeches or letters, etymolog-isfaction as a text-book. "Gibbon, which in ical accounts of words, or criticism of books, or put religious and moral subjects in such a form as awakened a new and real interest in them; as, for example, not simply carpe diem," or "procrastination is the thief of time;" but "carpere diem jubent Epicurei, jubet hoc idem Christus." So, again, in selecting passages for translation from English into Greek or Latin, instead of taking them at random from the Spectator or other such works, he made a point of giving extracts, remarkable in themselves, from such English and foreign authors as he most admired, so as indelibly to impress on the minds of his pupils some of the most striking names and passages in modern literature. "Ha,

many respects would answer the purpose so well, I dare not use.' Accordingly, the work, whatever it might be, was made the groundwork of his own observations, and of other reading from such books as the school library contained. Russell's Modern Europe, for example, which he estimated very low, though, perhaps from his own early acquaintance with it at Winchester, with less dislike than might have been expected, served this purpose for several years. On a chapter of this he would engraft, or cause the boys to engraft, additional information from Hallam, Guizot, or any other historian who happened to treat of the same period, whilst he himself, with that familiar in

terest which belonged to his favorite study of themselves almost as little deserve the name of history and of geography, which he always religious instruction as many lessons called secmaintained could only be taught in connection ular. The same searching questions, the same with it, would by his searching and significant vividness which marked his historical lessons, questions gather the thoughts of his scholars the same anxiety to bring all that he said round the peculiar characteristics of the age or home to their own feelings, which made him, in the country on which he wished to fix their at-preparing them for confirmation, endeavor to tention. Thus, for example, in the Seven Years' make them say, "Christ died for me,' instead War, he would illustrate the general connection of the general phrase, “Christ died for us," of military history with geography, by the sim- must often, when applied to the natural vagueple instance of the order of Hannibal's succes- ness of boys' notions on religious subjects, have sive victories; and then, chalking roughly on dispelled it forever. "He appeared to me," a board the chief points in the physical conform-writes a pupil, whose intercourse with him never ation of Germany, apply the same principle to extended beyond these lessons, "to be remarkthe more complicated campaigns of Frederickable for his habit of realizing everything that the Great. Or, again, in a more general examination, he would ask for the chief events which occurred, for instance, in the year 15 of two or three successive centuries, and, by making the boys contrast or compare them together, bring before their minds the differences and resemblances in the state of Europe in each of the periods in question.

Before entering on his instructions in theology, which both for himself and his scholars had most peculiar interest, it is right to notice the religious character which more or less pervaded the rest of the lessons. When his pupils heard him in preaching recommend them "to note in any common work that they read such judgments of men and things, and such a tone in speaking of them as are manifestly at variance with the spirit of Christ," or when they heard him ask, "whether the Christian ever feels more keenly awake to the purity of the spirit of the Gospel, than when he reads the history of crimes related with no true sense of their evil," instances would immediately occur to them from his own practice, to prove how truly he felt what he said. No direct instruction could leave on their minds a livelier image of his disgust at moral evil, than the black cloud of indignation which passed over his face when speaking of the crimes of Napoleon, or of Cæsar, and the dead pause which followed, as if the acts had just been committed in his very presence. No expression of his reverence for a high standard of Christian excellence could have been more striking than the almost involuntary expressions of admiration which broke from him whenever mention was made of St. Louis of France. No general teaching of the providential government of the world could have left a deeper impression, than the casual allusions to it which occurred as they came to any of the critical moments in the history of Greece and Rome. No more forcible contrast could have been drawn between the value of Christianity and heathenism, than the manner with which, for example, after reading in the earlier part of the lesson one of the Scripture descriptions of the Gentile world, "Now,' he said, as he opened the Satires of Horace, " we shall see what it was."

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

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 happenedas 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.

If there is any one place at Rugby more than another which was especially the scene of Dr. Arnold's labors, 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 Professions-Offering Christ Our Best." And as this is connected with the energy and vigor of his life, so the subject of the last, which

he chose himself a short time before his death, | impression thus produced, instead of belonging is the confession of St. Thomas, on which he to the feeling of the moment, has become part dwelt with deep solemnity in his last hours, as of an habitual rule for the whole conduct of life. in his life he had dwelt upon it as the great Often he would speak with severity and bitter consolation of doubting but faithful hearts, disappointment of the evils of the place; yet and as the great attestation of what was to him there was hardly ever a sermon which did not the central truth of Christianity, our Lord's di- contain some words of encouragement. "I vinity. Lastly, the monuments of those who have never," he said in his last sermon, "wished died in the school during his government, and to speak with exaggeration; it seems to me as whose graves were the first ever made in the unwise as it is wrong to do so. I think that it is chapel; above all, his own, the monument and | quite right to observe what is hopeful in us as grave of the only head-master of Rugby who is well as what is threatening; that general conburied within its walls, gave a melancholy in- fessions of unmixed evil are deceiving and hardterest to the words with which he closed a ser-ening, rather than arousing; that our evil never mon preached on the founders' day, in 1833, whilst as yet the recently-opened vaults had received no dead within them.

looks so really dark as when we contrast it with anything which there may be in us of good."

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," 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 and devotion, as he performed the chapel ser--the blessing on Abdiel. vice, especially when at the communion table he would read or rather repeat almost by heart the Gospel and Epistle of the day, with the impressiveness of one who entered into it equally with his whole spirit and also with his whole understanding.

Accordingly, even from the first, and much more in after years, there was blended with his sterner tone a strain of affectionate entreaty-an appeal to principles, which could be appreciated only by a few-exhortations to duties, such as self-denial, and visiting the poor, which some at least might practice, whilst none could deny their obligation. There also appeared most evidently-what indeed pervaded his whole school life-the more than admiration with which he regarded those who struggled against the stream of school opinion, and the abiding comfort which they afforded him. In them he saw not merely good boys and obedient scholars, but the companions of everything high and excellent, with which his strongly historical imagination peopled the past, or which his lively sense of things unseen realized in the invisible world. There were few present in the chapel who were not at least for the moment touched, when, in one of his earliest sermons, he closed one of these earnest appeals with the lines from Milton which always deeply moved him,

But it was, of course, in their direct practical application to the boys, that the chief novelty and excellence of his sermons consisted. Though he spoke with almost conversational plainness on the peculiar condition of public schools, his language never left an impression of familiarity, rarely of personal allusion. In cases of notorious individual misconduct, he generally shrunk from any pointed mention of them, and on one occasion when he wished to address the boys on an instance of untruthfulness which had deeply grieved him, he had the sermon before the regular service, in order to be alone in the Chapel with the boys, without the presence even of the other masters. Earnest and even impassioned as his appeals were, himself at times almost overcome with emotion, there was yet nothing in them of excitement. In speaking of the occasional deaths in the school, he would dwell on the general solemnity of the event, rather than on any individual or agitating details; and the

But more than either matter or manner of his preaching, was the impression of himself. Even the mere readers of his sermons will derive from them the history of his whole mind, and of his whole management of the school. But to his hearers it was more than this. It was the man himself, there more than in any other place, concentrating all his various faculties and feelings on one sole object, combating face to face the evil, with which directly or indirectly he was elsewhere perpetually struggling. He was not the preacher or the clergyman who had left behind all his usual thoughts and occupations as soon as he had ascended the pulpit. He was still the scholar, the historian, and theologian, basing all that he said, not indeed ostensibly, but consciously, and often visibly, on the deepest principles of the past and present. He was still the instructor and the schoolmaster, only teaching and educating with increased solemnity and energy. He was still the simple-hearted and earnest man, laboring to win others to share in his own personal feelings of disgust at sin, and love of goodness, and to trust to the same faith, in which he hoped to live and die himself.

It is difficult to describe, without seeming to

have known and understood our thoughts and | ideas.' And though it might happen that his opinion of boys would, like his opinions of men, be too much influenced by his disposition to judge of the whole from some one prominent feature, and though his fixed adherence to general rules might sometimes prevent him from making exceptions where the case required it; yet few can have been long familiar with him, without being struck by the distinctness, the vividness, and, in spite of great occasional mistakes, the very general truth and accuracy of his delineation of their individual characters, or the readiness with which, whilst speaking most severely of a mass of boys, he would make allowances, and speak hopefully in any particular instance that came before him. Often before any other eye had discerned it, he saw the germs of coming good or evil, and pronounced confident decisions, doubted at the time, but subsequently proved to be correct; so that those who lived with him described themselves as trusting to his opinions of boys as to divinations, and feeling as if by an unfavorable judgment their fate was sealed.