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 THE LIFE 
 
 THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 LONDON: 
 GEORGE WOODFALL AND SON, 
 
 ANGEL COURT, SKINNER STREET.
 
 A^s- 
 
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 ■ ■
 
 THE 
 
 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D., 
 
 LATE HEAD MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOL, 
 
 AND 
 
 REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, M.A., 
 
 FELLOW AND TUTOR OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 B. FELLOWES, LUDGATE STREET. 
 
 1844.
 
 LP 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The sources from which this work has been drawn 
 have necessarily been exceedingly various. It was 
 in fact originally intended to be actually composed 
 by different writers, as in the instance of the valu- 
 able contribution which, in addition to his kind 
 assistance throughout, has been furnished to the 
 earlier part by Mr. Justice Coleridge ; and although, 
 in its present shape, the responsibility of arranging 
 and executing it has fallen upon one person, yet it 
 should still be clearly understood how largely I have 
 availed myself of the aid of others, in order to supply 
 tlie defects of my own personal knowledge of Dr. 
 Arnold's life and character, which was confined to 
 the intercourse I enjoyed with him, first as his pupil 
 at Itugby, from 1829 to 1834, and thenceforward, on 
 more familiar terms, to the end of his life. 
 
 To his family, I feel that the fewest words; will 
 best express my sense, both of the confidence which 
 they reposed in me by entrusting to my care so pre- 
 cious a charge, and of the manifold kindness with 
 which they have assisted me, as none others could.
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 To the many attached friends of his earlier years, 
 the occurrence of whose names in the following 
 pages makes it unnecessary to mention them more 
 particularly here, I would also take this opportunity 
 of expressing my deep obligations, not only for the 
 readiness with which they have given me access to 
 all letters and information that I could require, but 
 still more for the active interest which they have 
 taken in lightening my responsibility and labour, and 
 for the careful and most valuable criticism to which 
 some of them have allowed me to subject the whole 
 or the greater part of this work. Lastly, his pupils 
 will perceive the unsparing use I have made of their 
 numerous contributions. I had at one time thought 
 of indicating the various distinct authorities from 
 which the chapter on his "School Life at Rugby" has 
 been compiled, but I found that this would be im- 
 practicable. The names of some of those who have 
 most aided me will be found in the Correspondence. 
 To those many others, who are not there mentioned 
 — and may I here be allowed more especially to name 
 my younger schoolfellows, with whom I have become 
 acquainted chiefly through the means of this work, 
 and whose recollections, as being the most recent 
 and the most lively, have been amongst the most 
 valuable that I have received — I would here ex- 
 press my warmest thanks for the more than assistance 
 which they have rendered me. Great as has been 
 the anxiety and difficulty of this undertaking, it has 
 been relieved by nothing so much as the assurance 
 which I have received through their cooperation, that 
 T was not mistaken in the estimate I had formed of 
 our common friend and master, and that the influ-
 
 PREFACE. VI 1 
 
 ence of his teaching and example continues and will 
 continue to produce the fruits which he would most 
 have desired to see. 
 
 The Correspondence has been selected from the 
 mass of letters preserved, in many cases, in almost un- 
 broken series from first to last. One large class — 
 those to the parents of his pupils, — I have been un- 
 able to procure, and possibly they could not have 
 been made available for the present work. Another 
 numerous body of letters — those which were ad- 
 dressed to scientific or literary men on questions 
 connected with his edition of Thucydides or his 
 History, — I have omitted, partly as thinking them 
 too minute to occupy space wanted for subjects of 
 more general importance ; partly because their sub- 
 stance or their results have for the most part been 
 incorporated into his published works. To those 
 which appear in the present collection, something of 
 a fragmentary character has been imparted by the 
 necessary omission, wherever it was possible, of repe- 
 titions, such as must necessarily occur in letters 
 written to different persons at the same time, — of 
 allusions which would have been painful to living- 
 individuals, — of domestic details, which, however cha- 
 racteristic, could not have been published without a 
 greater infringement on privacy than is yet possible, 
 — of passages which, without further explanation 
 than could be given, would certainly have been mis- 
 understood. Still, enough remains to give in his <>u o 
 words, and in his own manner, what he thought and 
 felt on the subjects of most interest to him. And 
 though the mode of expression must be judged 1»\ 
 the relation in which lie stood to those whom ho ad-
 
 VJ11 l'REFACE. 
 
 dressed, and with the usual and just allowance for the 
 familiarity and unreservedness of epistolary inter- 
 course, yet, on the whole, the Letters represent (ex- 
 cept where they correct themselves) what those who 
 knew him best believe to have been his deliberate 
 convictions and his habitual feelings. 
 
 The object of the Narrative has been to state so 
 much as would enable the reader to enter upon the 
 Letters with a correct understanding of their writer 
 in his different periods of life, and his different sphere 
 of action. In all cases where it was possible, his 
 opinions and plans have been given in his own words, 
 and in no case, whether in speaking of what he did 
 or intended to do, from mere conjecture of my own 
 or of any one else. Wherever the narrative has 
 gone into greater detail, as in the chapter on his 
 " School Life at Rugby," it has been where the Let- 
 ters were comparatively silent, and where details 
 alone would give to those who were most concerned 
 a true representation of his views and actions. 
 
 In conclusion, it will be obvious that to have 
 mixed up any judgment of my own, either of praise 
 or censure, with the facts or the statements con- 
 tained in this work, would have been wholly irrelevant. 
 The only question which I have allowed myself to ask 
 in each particular act or opinion that has come be- 
 fore me, has been not whether I approved or disap- 
 proved of it, but whether it was characteristic of him. 
 To have assumed the office of a judge, in addition 
 to that of a narrator or editor, would have increased 
 the responsibility, already great, a hundredfold; and 
 in the present case, the vast importance of many 
 of the questions discussed — the insufficient time and
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 knowledge which I had at command — the almost 
 filial relation in which I stood towards him — would 
 have rendered it absolutely impossible, even had it 
 not been effectually precluded by the nature of the 
 work itself. For similar reasons. I have abstained 
 from giving any formal account of his general cha- 
 racter. He was one of a class whose whole being, 
 intellectual, moral, and spiritual, is like the cloud of 
 the poet, 
 
 " Which moveth altogether, if it move at all," 
 
 and whose character, therefore, is far better expressed 
 by their own words and deeds, than by the represent- 
 ation of others. Lastly, I would also hope that the 
 plan, which I have thus endeavoured to follow, will 
 in some measure compensate for the many deficien- 
 cies, which I have vainly endeavoured to remedy 
 in the execution of the task which I have under- 
 taken. Some, indeed, there must be, who will 
 painfully feel the contrast, which probably always 
 exists in the case of any remarkable man, between 
 the image of his inner life, as it Mas known to those 
 nearest and dearest to him, and the outward image 
 of a written biography, which can rarely be more 
 than a faint shadow of what they cherish in their 
 own recollections — the one representing what ho was 
 — the other only what he thought and did ; the one 
 formed in the atmosphere which he had himself 
 created, — the other necessarily accommodating itself 
 to the public opinion to which it is mainly addressed. 
 But even to these — and much more to readers in ge- 
 neral — it is my satisfaction to reflect that any untrue 
 or imperfect impression of his thoughts and feelings
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 which may be gathered from my account of them, will 
 be sufficiently corrected by his own representation of 
 them in his Letters, and that the attention will not 
 be diverted by any extraneous comments or infer- 
 ences from the lessons which will be best learned 
 from the mere record itself of his life and teaching. 
 
 May 14th, 1844. 
 University College, Oxford.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 KARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION. 
 
 Birth. — Education at Warminster and Winchester. — Cha- 
 racter and pursuits as a boy. — Associations of his child- 
 hood in after life. — Letter from Mr. Justice Cole- 
 ridge. — Education at Oxford. — Corpus Society. — Early 
 friends. — Tucker. — Cornish. — Dyson. — Keble. — Pursuits. 
 — Attic Society. — Religious doubts on his ordination 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LIFE AT LALEHAM. 
 
 Election at Oriel. — Fellows of Oriel. — Marriage and settle- 
 ment at Laleham. — Formation of his religious character 
 and helief. — Early objects of ambition. — Love for Lale- 
 ham. — Occupations and views as private tutor. — Letter 
 from Mr. Price. — General pursuits. — Lexicon and edi- 
 tion of Thucydidcs.— Articles on Roman History in En- 
 cyclopaedia Metropolitans. — First acquaintance with Nie- 
 buhr's history, and with German literature. — First visit to 
 Rome, and friendship with Chevalier Bunscn.— Early in- 
 terest in social and theological subjects. — Independent 
 views. — First volume of Sermons.— Election to the Head- 
 mastership of Rugby. — Prediction of Dr. Hawkins . 25
 
 Xii CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 Pane 
 
 1. To J. T. Coleridge, Esq. Choice of a profession . 52- 
 
 2. To Rev. G. Cornish. Leaving Oxford . • . .04 
 
 3. To Rev. J. Tucker. Oxford friends. — Religious state . 54 
 
 4. To J. T. Coleridge, Esq. Occupations at Laleham . 56 
 
 5. To Rev. G. Cornish. Interest in India. — Pupils. — Re- 
 
 ligious state ....... 58 
 
 6. To J. T. Coleridge, Esq. On his style . .60 
 
 7. To Rev. J. Tucker. Ecclesiastical History.— State of 
 
 the religious world. — Ireland . . . .61 
 
 8. To J. T. Coleridge, Esq. Christian year. — Roman 
 
 History ........ 62 
 
 9. To Rev. J. Tucker. Pupils. — Intercourse with poor. 
 
 — Tour in Scotland and the Lakes.— West Indian 
 slavery ........ 62 
 
 10. To W. W. Hull, Esq. Niebuhr.— Pupils ... 64 
 
 11. To Rev. J. Tucker. Aristotle's Politics. — Prophecy. — 
 
 Daniel. — English Reformation . . . .65 
 
 12. To Rev. G. Cornish. Tour in Italy. — Contrast of 
 
 lower orders in England and Italy . . . .66 
 
 13. To the same. Prevalence of intellectual activity united 
 
 with moral depravity. — Roman Catholicism . . 67 
 
 14. To Rev. E. Hawkins. Edition of Thucydides . . 68 
 
 15. To Rev. J. Tucker. Pain at having given offence by 
 
 opinions on inspiration 69 
 
 16. To Rev. E. Hawkins. Doubts about standing for the 
 
 Head-mastership of Rugby. — Expulsion at public 
 schools . . . . . . . . 71 
 
 17. To Rev. G. Cornish. Views in offering himself as a 
 
 candidate for Rugby ...... 72 
 
 18. To Rev. E. Hawkins. Election at Rugby . . .72 
 
 19. To Rev. J. Tucker. Intentions at Rugby. — Church 
 
 Reform ........ 73 
 
 20. To Rev. F. C. Blackstone. Hopes for Rugby.— Church 
 
 and State. — Reform . . . . . .75 
 
 21. To Augustus Hare, Esq. Rome. — Bunsen. — " Guesses 
 
 at Truth."— Bohemia 76 
 
 22. To Rev. J. Tucker. Protest against supposed world- 
 
 liness ........ 77
 
 CONTENTS. Xlll 
 
 Page 
 
 23. To J. T. Coleridge, Esq. Intercourse with friends. — 
 
 Dyson. — Love for Lalcham . . . . .78 
 
 24. To Rev. F. C. Blackstone. Laleham and Rugby . .79 
 
 25. To W. W. Hull, Esq. First volume of Sermons. — 
 
 Leaving Laleham ...... 80 
 
 26. To Rev. J. Tucker. Laleham and Rugby. — First volume 
 
 of Sermons . . . . . . . .81 
 
 27. To Rev. G. Cornish. Settlement at Rugby . . 82 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SCHOOL LIFE AT RUGBY. 
 
 State of opinion on English Public Schools. — His qualifica- 
 tions for the situation of Headmaster of Rugby. — Diffi- 
 culties. — Changes. — Fixed principles of education. — His 
 relation to the public. — To the trustees. — To the assistant 
 masters. — To the school. — His view of Christianizing pub- 
 lic schools. — Peculiarity of public schools. — General mode 
 of dealing with it. — I. Discipline of the school. 1. 
 Punishments. 2. Fagging. — Influence of the Sixth Form. 
 3. Removal of boys. — II. Instruction. — Religious spirit. 
 — Stimulus to exertion. — Respect for industry. — View of 
 academical distinctions. 1. Importance of classics. 2. 
 Modern History, modern languages and mathematics. 3. 
 Lessons in the Sixth Form. 4. General effect of his in- 
 tellectual teaching. — III. The school chapel. — Services. — 
 Communion. — Confirmation. — Sermons. — IV. Personal 
 intercourse with the boarders in his own house, and with 
 his scholars generally. — V. General results of his head- 
 mastership at Rugby.— Letter from Dr. Moberley . . 83 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 GENERAL LIFE AT RUGBY. 
 
 Intellectual advance on coming to Rugby. — His views and 
 writings. — I. Practical clement. — Interest in public and 
 national life. — Vehement language <>n political and eccle- 
 siastical subjects. — Conservatism. — Jacobinism. — Popular
 
 XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 principles. — Liberal principles. — II. Speculative element. 
 — Design of three great works. 1. History of Rome. 2. 
 Commentary on the Scriptures. 3. " Christian Politics," 
 or " Church and State." — Private life at Rugby. — Domestic- 
 circle. — Friendships. —Intercourse with the poor. — Life at 
 Fox How 17+ 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE, AUGUST 1828 — AUGUST 1 830. 
 
 Hopeful view. — First volume of his edition of Thucydides. — 
 Essay on the social progress of States. — Pamphlet on " the 
 Christian duty of conceding the Roman Catholic claims " . 223 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 1. To J. T. Coleridge, Esq. Entrance on his work at 
 
 Rugby 226 
 
 2. To Rev. F. C. Blackstone. First impressions of Rugby 227' 
 
 3. To the same. Differences of opinion .... 228- 
 
 4. To Rev. J. C. Hare. " Defence of Niebuhr." — Pamphlet 
 
 " On Roman Catholic claims." — Estimate of the past. 
 
 — Spirit of chivalry . . . . . .229 
 
 5. To Rev. Dr. Hawkins. Pamphlet ' ; On Roman Ca- 
 
 tholic claims." — Toryism. — Ignorance of the Clergv . 231 
 
 6. To the Parent of a pupil holding Unitarian opinions . 233 
 
 7. To Rev. G. Cornish. Domestic happiness. — Pamphlet. 
 
 — Schism . . . . . . . .234 
 
 8. To Rev. F. C. Blackstone. Idolatry — how far appli- 
 
 cable to the Church of Rome ..... 236' 
 
 9. To Rev. J. Tucker. Thoughts of emigration to Aus- 
 
 tralia 237 
 
 10. To J. T. Coleridge, Esq. Death of his father-in-law. 
 
 — School. — Latin verse and prose. — Thucvdides. — 
 Pamphlet ........ 230 
 
 11. To Rev. H. Jenkyns. Thucvdides. — True principles 
 
 of philology . . . . . . . .241 
 
 12. To J. T. Coleridge, Esq. Libel in John Bull. — Re- 
 
 spect for Episcopacy ...... 242 
 
 13. To F. Hartwell, Esq. Interest in school . . .242
 
 CONTENTS. XV 
 
 Page 
 
 14. To Rev. G. Cornish. School. — French Revolution of 
 
 1 830. — Guizot. — Niebuhr. — Grande Chartreuse. — 
 Venice. — Padua. — Tyrol. — Old Testament. — School 
 Sermons ........ 243 
 
 15. To Rev. Dr. Hawkins. Church — in what sense a 
 
 society • — French Revolution of 1830. — Belgian Re- 
 volution ........ 24*. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE. — SEPTEMBER 1830 TO 
 DECEMBER 1832. 
 
 Alarm at the social condition of the lower orders in England. 
 — Wish to rouse the Clergy. — Attempts to influence the 
 Useful Knowledge Society. — Establishment of the " En- 
 glishman's Register." — Thirteen letters in the " Sheffield 
 Courant." — Want of sympathy. — Evangelical party. — 
 Wish for Commentary on Old Testament. — Second volume 
 of Sermons, with Essay on Interpretation of Scripture . 250 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 16. To J. T.Coleridge, Esq. Want of sympathy. — Public 
 
 affairs. — False reports of his proselytising his pupils. 
 
 — Conservatism ....... 256 
 
 1?. To Susannah Arnold. Public affairs. — Duty of the 
 Clergy. — State of the lower orders. — Record news- 
 paper ......... 259 
 
 18. To Rev. Augustus Hare. Public affairs. — Old Testa- 
 ment Prophets. — St. Paul and St. James. — Want of 
 a Magazine for the poor . . . . .261 
 
 10. To the Archbishop of Dublin. Proposal of setting up a 
 
 newspaper ........ 263 
 
 20. To Chevalier Bunsen. Death of Niebuhr. — Italy. — 
 
 First news of French Revolution. — Interview with 
 Niebuhr. — Church Reform, and Reform Bill. — Dread 
 of warlike spirit in France ..... 264 
 
 21. To John Ward, Esq. Englishman's Register. — Aris- 
 
 tocracy. — Reform Bill. — National Debt. — Monopo- 
 lies. — Corn Laws. — Political excitement . . . 267
 
 XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 22. To the Archbishop of Dublin. Failure of " Englishman's 
 
 Register" 269 
 
 23. To W. Tooke, Esq. Refusal of an offer of preferment. 
 
 — Useful Knowledge Society. — " Cottage Evenings " 270 
 
 24. To Mrs. Fletcher. On the death of her son . . 273 
 
 25. To Rev. F. C. Blackstone. Irvingism. — Gift of tongues. 
 
 — Coming of " the Day of the Lord." — Whigs and 
 Tories 273 
 
 26. To W. W. Hull, Esq. Contrast of private happiness 
 
 with public distress. — Cholera. — Work on the Evi- 
 dences 274 
 
 27. To Rev. J. C. Hare. Philological Museum. — Religion 
 
 and 7ro\rtix.r) ....... 27C 
 
 28. To the Archbishop of Dublin. Farewell on his leaving , 
 
 Oxford. — Danger of public schools. — Church reform 276 
 
 29. To W. W. Hull, Esq. Essay on Interpretation of Scrip- 
 
 ture. — Right use of the Second Commandment . 277 
 
 30. To Rev. G. Cornish. Rydal. — Intercourse with friends. 
 
 — Archbishop Whately. — Essay .... 278 
 
 31. To the Lady F. Egerton. On the conversion of an 
 
 Atheist 279 
 
 32. To the same. On the same ..... 282 
 
 33. To J. T. Coleridge, Esq. Rydal. — Newspapers. — 
 
 Sheffield Courant. — School composition . . . 284 
 
 34. To Rev. J. E. Tyler. Society for the Promotion of 
 
 Christian Knowledge. — Uselessness of miscellaneous 
 information for the people ..... 285 
 
 35. To J. Ward, Esq. Domestic Life. — Intercourse with 
 
 poor. — Useful Knowledge Society .... 287 
 
 36. To the Archbishop of Dublin. Wish for a Comment- 
 
 ary on the Bible 288 
 
 37. To the same. Idea of a Commentary without Secta- 
 
 rianism. — Death of his sister Susannah . . . 289
 
 CONTENTS. XV11 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE, JANUARY 1833 — SEPTEMBER 
 
 1835. 
 
 Page 
 
 Fears for the Church Establishment. — Pamphlet on the 
 "Principles of Church Reform."— Outcry occasioned by 
 it. — Settlement of his own views. — Preface to Third Vo- 
 lume of Thucydides. — Fragments on " the State and the 
 Church." — Third Volume of Sermons. — Purchase of Fox 
 How. — Return to Roman History. — Influence over his 
 Scholars ......... 292 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 38. To Rev. J. Hearn. New Year's Day in Westmore- 
 
 land. — Intolerance ...... 303 
 
 39. t To W. K. Hamilton, Esq. a Rome, and the towns 
 
 of Italy. — Gloomy prospects .... 304 
 
 40. To the Archbishop of Dublin. Pamphlet on Church 
 
 Reform. — Reasons for writing it . . . 304 
 
 41. To the same. Reasons for his coming to Westmore- 
 
 land. — Commentary. — Magazine .... 305 
 
 42. To Rev. J. Tucker. Farewell on his going to India. 
 
 — Recollections of Oxford. — Gloomy views of Eu- 
 rope and England ...... 307 
 
 43. To an old pupil, (a.) Advice on living in uncongenial 
 
 society ..,.•••• 308 
 
 44. To Rev. Dr. Hawkins. Remonstrance against a charge 
 
 of haste and ignorance in his writings . . . 309 
 
 45. To the same 310 
 
 46. To W. Smith, Esq. Unitarians. — In what sense 
 
 Christians . . . . . . . .312 
 
 47. To Chevalier Bunsen. Political opinions. — Jacobinism. 
 
 Economists. — Toryism. — Historical Liberty. — 
 
 Reform Bill. — Articles and Liturgy . . . 3J5 
 
 48. To the Archbishop of Dublin. Calumnies . . .318 
 
 1 The names of hisLaleham pupila in this table of Contents are marked l>y 
 a t, which was inadvertently omitted in the correspondence itself. 
 VOL. I. b
 
 XVIII CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 49. To Rev. J. Hcarn. False view of what is Christian 
 
 doctrine . . . . . . . .318 
 
 50. To Lady Cavan. The right use of the Fourth Com- 
 
 mandment ........ 320 
 
 51. To J. T. Coleridge, Esq. Description of Fox How . 322 
 
 52. To a pupil. Want of devotion and reverence . . 323 
 
 53. To W. W. Hull, Esq. His birthday.— Pamphlet. — 
 
 Confirmation. — Cricket-matches .... 324 
 
 54. To Rev. Augustus Hare. Pamphlet. — Not latitudi- 
 
 narian ........ 325 
 
 55. To Rev. 6. Cornish. The same. — Westmoreland and 
 
 Warwickshire ....... 326 
 
 56. To Rev. J. C. Hare. Bunsen. — Third Volume of Nie- 
 
 buhr. — Roman History ..... 327 
 
 57. To Mr. Sergeant Coleridge. Birth of his youngest 
 
 daughter. — Bunsen's letters. — Political excitement. 
 — Whately. — Oxford Party. — Church of England. — 
 Christ the only object of religious affection. — Church 
 and State. — School. — Allan Bank. — Teaching his 
 Daughters 328 
 
 58. To Jacob Abbott. Interest in America. — Young 
 
 Christian. — Unitarianism ..... 332 
 
 59. To the Archbishop of Dublin. Translation of the New 
 
 Testament. — Grounds of Roman Catholic Relief 
 Act. — High Churchmen. — On party spirit a . . 334 
 
 GO. To W. W. Hull, Esq. Health. — Confession. — Faith. 
 — Uncertainty of Life. — Death of his friends, Lowe 
 and Augustus Hare ...... 33G 
 
 61. To Rev. F. C. Blackstone. Fixing of views. — Moun- 
 
 tain scenery. — School ...... 337 
 
 62. To Rev. J. C. Hare. On the death of Augustus Hare 338 
 
 63. To Rev. Dr. Hawkins. Tracts for the Times. — Episco- 
 
 pacy not essential ....... 338 
 
 64. To Rev. J. C. Hare. Declaration for the admission of 
 
 Dissenters to the Universities. — Unitarians. — Peti- 
 tion against the Jew Bill ..... 340 
 
 65. To W. W. Hull, Esq. Abstract of his work on the 
 
 Identity of Church and State .... 342 
 
 * This fragment, from the name of the person addressed having been lost. \v;is 
 accidentally joined in the text to the end of the preceding letter.
 
 CONTENTS. xi\ 
 
 Page 
 
 6G. To W. Empson, Esq. Irish establishment. — Colleges 
 
 and halls 343 
 
 67. To Rev. Dr. Longley. False hopes of reaction. — School. 
 
 — Pupils in Westmoreland ..... 34. r > 
 
 G8. To the Archbishop of Dublin. — Respect for Episco- 
 pacy. — Church and State. — Sermons on the Evi- 
 dences. — Mechanics' Institute ..... 34'> 
 
 69. To a former landlord. — Advice under painful illness. — 
 
 Forgiveness of injuries ...... 348 
 
 70. To Mrs. Delafield. On her 77th birthday . • .350 
 
 71. To Chevalier Bunsen. Roman History. — Illyrians. — 
 
 Physical history. — Trades' Unions. — Letter on 
 Christian Sacrifice. — Abbott's works. — America . 350 
 
 72. To an old pupil (a.) Right use of University distinc- 
 
 tions. — Reserve ....... 352 
 
 73. To T. F. Ellis, Esq. Course of study desirable for 
 
 Orders 354 
 
 74. * To H. Highton, Esq. a Rugby Magazine . . 356 
 
 75. To Rev. J. Hearn. New Poor Law. — Name of 
 
 Christ 357 
 
 76. To Mr. Justice Coleridge. On his elevation to the 
 
 Bench. — Church government. — Wordsworth. — 
 Coleridge's " Letters on Inspiration "... 357 
 
 77. To Rev. J. C. Hare. Plan of a theological review . 358 
 
 78. To Rev. F. C. Blackstone. Influence over pupils. — 
 
 Church government ...... 360 
 
 79. To Rev. Dr. Longley. Fifth Form. — Number of the 
 
 school. — School-grammar. — Expulsion. — Entrance. 
 
 — Examination . . . . . . .301 
 
 80. To Chevalier Bunsen. Want of sympathy. — aroXmxij. — 
 
 Hymn-book. — High Church party. — Evangelicals. 
 — Whigs. — Philosophy of parties. — Interest in 
 school 363 
 
 81. * To C. J. Vaughan, Esq. Interest in old pupils. — 
 
 Advice to learn German. — Advice for reading . 366 
 
 82. * To A. P. Stanley, Esq. Oxford.— Popular and libe- 
 
 ral principles.— Tory reaction .... 368 
 
 a The names of his former Rugby pupils, where not otherwise specified, are 
 marked with a k .
 
 XX CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 83. To the Archbishop of Dublin. Origin of Civilization. 
 
 — Influence of Greek philosophy. — Odium . . 370 
 
 84. To an old pupil (a.) Value of veneration. — Calumnies 372 
 
 85. To Sir T. S. Pasley, Bart. Comparative advantages of 
 
 private and public education ..... 374 
 
 86. t To H. Strickland, Esq. Advice for a tour in Asia 
 
 Minor 375 
 
 87. To Mr. Justice Coleridge. Calumnies. — Example of 
 
 Burnet. — Aristophanes. — Pindar. — Homer. — Pu- 
 pils. — Oxford and the London University . . 376 
 
 88. To Rev. Dr. Hawkins. Heads of houses and convoca- 
 
 tion. — Clergy and Dissenters .... 378 
 
 89. To a pupil. Advice with regard to sceptical doubts . 379 
 
 90. * To H. Hatch, Esq. Consumption .... 383 
 
 91. To the Rev. F. C. Blackstone. Want of leisure. — De- 
 
 fects in existing books. — Liberty and Toryism . 383 
 
 92. To Mr. Justice Coleridge. Separation from friends . 385 
 
 93. * To C. J. Vaughan, Esq. Hatch. — Intercourse with 
 
 poor — Phsedo of Plato. — Livy .... 386 
 
 94. To Chevalier Bunsen. Polybius Hannibal's Passage 387 
 
 95. * To J. P. Gell, Esq. Interest in former pupils . 389 
 
 96. To Mr. Justice Coleridge. Rugby in the holidays. — 
 
 Rugby Magazine. — Pupils. — Pheedo. — Coleridge's 
 Table-talk 389
 
 THE LIFE 
 
 THOMAS ARNOLD, D-D. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION. 
 
 Thomas Arnold, seventh child and youngest son of 
 William and Martha Arnold, was born on June 13th, 
 17S)">, at West Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, where 
 his family had been settled for two generations, their 
 original residence having been at Lowestoft", in Suf- 
 folk. 
 
 His father, who was collector of the customs at 
 Cowes, died suddenly of spasm in the heart, on 
 March 3rd, 1801. His two elder brothers, William 
 and Matthew, died, the first in 1806, the second in 
 1820. His sisters all survived him, with the excep- 
 tion of the third, Susannah, who, after a lingering 
 complaint in the spine, died at Laleham, in I v .'!i'. 
 
 His early education was confided by his mother to 
 her sister, Mrs. I )elafield, who took a great pride in 
 her charge, and directed all his Btudies as a child. In 
 1803 he was sent to Warminster school, in Wilt- 
 shire, under Dr. Griffiths, with whose assistant master, 
 Mr. Lawes, he kept up his intercourse long after 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 2 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 they had parted. In 1807 he was removed to Win- 
 chester, where, having entered as a commoner, and 
 afterwards become a scholar of the college, he re- 
 mained till 1811, a passage of his life not without 
 interest, both from the strong Wykehamist feelings 
 which he always cherished, and also from the advan- 
 tage with which, during his head-mastership at Rugby, 
 he recurred to his knowledge, there first acquired, of 
 the peculiar constitution of a public school, and to 
 his recollections of the tact in managing boys shown 
 by Dr. Goddard, and the skill in imparting scholar- 
 ship which distinguished Dr. Gabell, who were suc- 
 cessively head masters of Winchester during the 
 period of his stay there. 
 
 He was then, as always, of a shy and retiring dis- 
 position, but his manner as a child, and till his en- 
 trance at Oxford, was marked by a stiffness and for- 
 mality the very reverse of the joyousness and sim- 
 plicity of his later years ; his family and schoolfellows 
 both remember him as unlike those of his own age, 
 and with peculiar pursuits of his own ; and the tone 
 and style of his early letters, which have been for 
 the most part preserved, are such as might naturally 
 have been produced by living chiefly in the company 
 of his elders, and reading, or hearing read to him be- 
 fore he could read himself, books suited to a more 
 advanced age. 
 
 Both as a boy and a young man he was remarkable 
 for a tendency to indolence, amounting almost to a 
 constitutional infirmity; and though his after-life 
 will show how completely this was overcome by habit, 
 yet he often said that early rising was a daily effort 
 to him, and that in this instance he never found the
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 3 
 
 truth of the usual rule of all things being made easy 
 by custom. With this, however, was always united 
 great occasional energy; and one of his schoolfellows 
 gives it as his impression of him that " he was stiff 
 in his opinions, and utterly immoveable by force or 
 fraud, when he had made up his mind, whether right 
 or wrong." 
 
 It is curious to trace the beginnings of some of his 
 later interests in his earliest amusements and occu- 
 pations. Those who know the love of naval and 
 military affairs which is so apparent in the latest 
 chapters of his Roman History, and in the latest 
 friendship which he formed in his maturer years, will 
 be amused by the first indications of it in the impres- 
 sion produced upon him by living at the Isle of 
 Wight in the time of the war, and in his childish 
 sports of rival fleets, and acting the battles of the 
 Homeric heroes as he learned them from Pope's 
 translation of the Iliad, which he used to repeat with 
 great delight. He was from his earliest years ex- 
 ceedingly fond of ballad poetry, which his Winchester 
 schoolfellows used to learn from his repetition before 
 they had seen it in print ; and his own compositions 
 as a boy all ran in the same direction. A play of 
 this kind, in which his schoolfellows were introduced 
 as the dramatis persona?, and a long poem of " Simon 
 de Montfort," in imitation of Scott's Marmion, pro- 
 cured for him at school, by way of distinction from 
 another boy of the same name, the appellation of 
 Poet Arnold. And the earliest specimen of his com- 
 position which has been preserved is a little tragedy, 
 written before he was seven yours old, on " Piercy 
 Earl of Northumberland," suggested apparently by 
 
 B 2
 
 4 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 Home's play of Douglas; which, however, contains 
 nothing worthy of notice, except, perhaps, the accu- 
 racy of orthography, language, and blank verse metre, 
 in which it is written, and the precise arrangement 
 of the different acts and scenes. 
 
 But he was most remarked for his forwardness in 
 history and geography. His strong power of memory, 
 (which, however, in later years depended mainly on 
 association,) extending to the exact state of the wea- 
 ther on particular days, or the exact words and po- 
 sition of passages which he had not seen for twenty 
 years, showed itself very early and chiefly on these 
 subjects. One of the few recollections which he re- 
 tained of his father was, that he received from him, 
 at three years old, a present of Smollett's History of 
 England, as a reward for the accuracy with which he 
 had gone through the stories connected with the por- 
 traits and pictures of the successive reigns; and at the 
 same age he used to sit at his aunt's table arranging 
 his geographical cards, and recognising by their shape 
 at a glance the different counties of the dissected 
 map of England. 
 
 He long retained a grateful remembrance of the 
 miscellaneous books to which he had access in the 
 school library at Warminster, and when, in his Pro- 
 fessorial chair at Oxford, he quoted Dr. Priestley's 
 Lectures on History, it was from his recollection of 
 what he had there read when he was eight years old. 
 At Winchester he was a diligent student of Russell's 
 Modern Europe; Gibbon and Mitford he had read 
 twice over before he left school ; and amongst the 
 comments on his reading and the bursts of political 
 enthusiasm on the events of the day in which he in-
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. i> 
 
 dulged in his Winchester letters, it is curious, as con- 
 nected with his later labours, to read his indignation, 
 when fourteen years old, " at the numerous boasts 
 which are everywhere to be met with in the Latin 
 writers." " I verily believe," he adds, " that half at 
 least of the Roman history is, if not totally false, at 
 least scandalously exaggerated: how far different are 
 the modest, unaffected, and impartial narrations of 
 Herodotus, Thucydidcs, and Xenophon." 
 
 The period both of his home and school education 
 was of too short a duration to exercise much in- 
 fluence upon his after life. But he always looked 
 back upon it with a marked tenderness. The keen 
 sense which he entertained of the bond of relation- 
 ship and of early association, not the less from the 
 blank in his own domestic recollections occasioned 
 by his father's death, and his own subsequent re- 
 moval from the Isle of Wight, invested with a 
 peculiar interest the scenes and companions of his 
 childhood. His strong domestic affections had acted 
 as an important safeguard to him, when he was 
 thrown at so early an age into the new sphere of an 
 Oxford life ; and when, in later years, he was left the 
 head of the family, he delighted in gathering round 
 him the remains of his father's household, and in 
 treasuring up every particular relating to his birth- 
 place and parentage, even to the graves of the older 
 generations of the family in the parish church at 
 Lowestoff, and the great willow tree in his lather's 
 grounds at Slattwoods, from which he transplanted 
 shoots successively to Laleham, to Rugby, and to Fox 
 How. Every date in the family history, with the altera- 
 tion of hereditary names, and the changes of their re-
 
 6 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 sidence, was carefully preserved for his children in his 
 own handwriting, and when in after years he fixed 
 on the abode of his old age in Westmoreland, it was 
 his great delight to regard it as a continuation of his 
 own early home in the Isle of Wight. And when, 
 as was his wont, he used to look back from time to 
 time over the whole of this period, it was with the 
 solemn feeling which is expressed in one of his 
 later journals, written on a visit which he paid 
 to the place of his earliest school-education, in 
 the interval between the close of his life at Lale- 
 ham, and the beginning of his work at Rugby. 
 " Warminster, January 5th [1828]. I have not 
 written this date for more than twenty years, and 
 how little could I foresee when I wrote it last, what 
 would happen to me in the interval. And now to 
 look forward twenty years — how little can I guess 
 of that also. Only may He in whose hands are 
 time and eternity, keep me evermore His own ; that 
 whether I live, I may live unto Him ; or whether I 
 die, I may die unto Him ; may He guide me with 
 His counsel, and after that receive me to glory 
 through Jesus Christ our Saviour." 
 
 In 1811, in his 16th year, he was elected as a 
 scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford ; in 1814, 
 his name was placed in the first class in Litterse 
 Humaniores ; in the next year he was elected Fellow 
 of Oriel College ; and he gained the Chancellor's prize 
 for the two University Essays, Latin and English, 
 for the years 1815 and 1817. Those who know the 
 influence which his college friendships exercised over 
 his after life, and the deep affection which he always
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 7 
 
 bore to Oxford, as the scene of the happiest recollec- 
 tions of his youth, and the sphere which he hoped to 
 occupy with the employments of his old age, will re- 
 joice in the possession of the following record of his 
 under-graduate life by that true and early friend, to 
 whose timely advice, protection, and example, at the 
 critical period when he was thrown with all the spirits 
 and the inexperience of boyhood on the temptations 
 of the University, he always said and felt, that he 
 had owed more than to any other man in the world. 
 
 LETTER FROM MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE. 
 
 Heath's Court, September 1843. 
 MY DEAR STANLEY, 
 
 When you informed me of Mrs. Arnold's wish 
 that I would contribute to your memoir of our dear 
 friend, Dr. Arnold, such recollections as I had of his 
 career as an under-graduate at Oxford, with the in- 
 timation that they were intended to fill up that 
 chapter in his life, my only hesitation in complying 
 with her wish arose from my doubts, whether my 
 impressions were so fresh and true, or my powers of 
 expression such as to enable me to do justice to the 
 subject. A true and lively picture of him at that 
 time would be, I was sure, interesting in itself; and 
 I felt certain also that his Oxford residence contri- 
 buted essentially to the formation of his character 
 in after life. My doubts remain ; but I have not 
 thought them important enough to prevent my en- 
 deavouring at least to comply witli her request ; nor 
 will I deny that I promise myself much pleasure.
 
 8 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 melancholy though it may bo, in this attempt to 
 recall those days. They had their troubles, I dare 
 say, but in retrospect they always appear to me 
 among the brightest and least chequered, if not the 
 most useful, which have ever been vouchsafed to 
 me. 
 
 Arnold and I, as you know, were under-graduates 
 of Corpus Christi, a college very small in its num- 
 bers, and humble in its buildings, but to which we 
 and our fellow-students formed an attachment never 
 weakened in the after course of our lives. At the 
 time I speak of, 1809, and thenceforward for some 
 few years, it was under the Presidency, mild and 
 inert, rather than paternal, of Dr. Cooke. His 
 nephew, Dr. Williams, was the vice-president, and 
 medical fellow, the only lay fellow permitted by the 
 statutes. Retired he was in his habits, and not for- 
 ward to interfere with the pursuits or studies of the 
 young men. But I am bound to record not only his 
 learning and good taste, but the kindness of his 
 heart, and his readiness to assist them by advice and 
 criticism in their compositions. When I wrote for 
 the Latin Verse prize, in 1810, I was much indebted 
 to him for advice in matters of taste and Latinity, 
 and for the pointing out many faults in my rough 
 verses. 
 
 Our tutors were the present Sedleian Professor, 
 the Rev. G. L. Cooke, and the lately deceased Pre- 
 sident, the Rev. T. Bridges. Of the former, because 
 he is alive, I will only say that I believe no one 
 ever attended his lectures without learning to admire 
 his unwearied industry, patience, and good temper, 
 and that few if any quitted his pupil room without
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 9 
 
 retaining a kindly feeling towards him. The recent 
 death of Dr. Bridges would have affected Arnold as 
 it has me : he was a most amiable man ; the affec- 
 tionate earnestness of his manner, and his high tone 
 of feeling, fitted him specially to deal with young 
 men ; he made us always desirous of pleasing him ; 
 perhaps his fault Mas that he was too easily pleased ; 
 I am sure that he will be long and deeply regretted 
 in the University. 
 
 It was not, however, so much by the authorities 
 of the college that Arnold's character was affected, 
 as by its constitution and system, and by the residents 
 whom it was his fortune to associate with familiarly 
 there. I shall hardly do justice to my subject, unless 
 I state a few particulars as to the former, and what I 
 am at liberty to mention as to the latter. Corpus is 
 a very small establishment, — twenty fellows and 
 twenty scholars, with four exhibitioners, form the 
 foundation. No independent members were admitted 
 except gentlemen commoners, and they were limited 
 to six. Of the scholars several were bachelors, and 
 the whole number of students actually under college 
 tuition seldom exceeded twenty. But the scholar- 
 ships, though not entirely open, were yet enough so 
 to admit of much competition ; their value, and still 
 more, the creditable strictness and impartiality with 
 which the examinations were conducted, (qualities at 
 that time more rare in college elections than now,) 
 insured a number of good candidates lor each vacancy, 
 and we boasted a more than proportionate share of 
 successful competitors for university honours. It had 
 been generally understood, (I know not whether the 
 statutes prescribe the practice,) that in the examin-
 
 10 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 ations a large allowance was made for youth ; cer- 
 tain it was that we had many very young candidates, 
 and that of these, many remarkable for early proficiency 
 succeeded. We were then a small society, the mem- 
 bers rather under the usual age, and with more than 
 the ordinary proportion of ability and scholarship ; 
 our mode of tuition was in harmony with these cir- 
 cumstances; not by private lectures, but in classes of 
 such a size as excited emulation, and made us careful 
 in the exact and neat rendering of the original, yet not 
 so numerous as to prevent individual attention on the 
 tutor's part, and familiar knowledge of each pupil's 
 turn and talents. In addition to the books read in 
 lecture, the tutor at the beginning of the term set- 
 tled with each student upon some book to be read 
 by himself in private, and prepared for the public 
 examination at the end of term in Hall ; and with 
 this book something on paper, either an analysis of it, 
 or remarks upon it, was expected to be produced, 
 M-hich insured that the book should really have been 
 read. It has often struck me since, that this whole 
 plan, which is now I believe in common use in the 
 University, was well devised for the tuition of young 
 men of our age. We were not entirely set free from 
 the leading-strings of the school ; accuracy was cared 
 for ; we were accustomed to viva voce rendering, and 
 viva voce question and answer in our lecture-room, 
 before an audience of fellow-students, whom we 
 sufficiently respected ; at the same time, the addi- 
 tional reading trusted to ourselves alone, prepared us 
 for accurate private study, and for our final exhibition 
 in the schools. 
 
 One result of all these circumstances was, that we
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 11 
 
 lived on the most familiar terms with each other ; 
 we might be, indeed we were, somewhat boyish in 
 manner, and in the liberties we took with each other; 
 but our interest in literature, ancient and modern, 
 and in all the stirring matters of that stirring time, 
 was not boyish ; we debated the classic and romantic 
 question ; we discussed poetry and history, logic and 
 philosophy ; or we fought over the Peninsular battles 
 and the Continental campaigns with the energy of 
 disputants personally concerned in them. Our habits 
 were inexpensive and temperate: one break-up party 
 was held in the junior common room at the end of 
 each term, in which we indulged our genius more 
 freely, and our merriment, to say the truth, was 
 somewhat exuberant and noisy ; but the authorities 
 wisely forbore too strict an inquiry into this. 
 
 It was one of the happy peculiarities of Corpus 
 that the bachelor scholars were compelled to resi- 
 dence. This regulation, seemingly inconvenient, but 
 most wholesome as I cannot but think for them- 
 selves, and now unwisely relaxed, operated very be- 
 neficially on the under-graduates ; with the best and 
 the most advanced of these they associated very use- 
 fully : I speak here with grateful and affectionate 
 remembrances of the privileges which I enjoyed in 
 this way. 
 
 You will see that a society thus circumstanced was 
 exactly one most likely to influence strongly the cha- 
 racter of such a lad as Arnold was at his election. 
 He came to us in Lent Term, 1811, from Win- 
 chester, winning his election against .several very 
 respectable candidates. He was a mere boy in ap- 
 pearance as well as in age ; but we saw in a very
 
 12 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 short time that lie was quite equal to take Iiis part in 
 the arguments of the common room ; and he was, I 
 rather think, admitted by Mr. Cooke at once into his 
 senior class. As he was equal, so was he ready to 
 take part in our discussions : he was fond of convers- 
 ation on serious matters, and vehement in argument ; 
 fearless too in advancing his opinions — which, to say 
 the truth, often startled us a good deal ; but he was 
 ingenuous and candid, and though the fearlessness 
 with which, so young as he was, he advanced his opi- 
 nions might have seemed to betoken presumption, 
 yet the good temper with which he bore retort or 
 rebuke, relieved him from that imputation ; he was 
 bold and warm, because so far as his knowledge went 
 he saw very clearly, and he was an ardent lover of 
 truth, but I never saw in him even then a grain of 
 vanity or conceit. I have said that some of his opi- 
 nions startled us a good deal; we were indeed for 
 the most part Tories in Church and State, great re- 
 specters of things as they were, and not very tolerant 
 of the disposition which he brought with him to 
 question their wisdom. Many and long were the 
 conflicts we had, and with unequal numbers. I think 
 I have seen all the leaders of the common room 
 engaged with him at once, with little order or consi- 
 deration, as may be supposed, and not always with 
 great scrupulosity as to the fairness of our arguments. 
 This was attended by no loss of regard, and scarcely 
 ever, or seldom by even momentary loss of temper. 
 We did not always convince him — perhaps we ought 
 not always to have done so — yet in the end a consi- 
 derable modification of his opinions was produced : 
 in one of his letters to me, written at a much later
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 13 
 
 period, lie mentions this change. In truth, there 
 were those among us calculated to produce an im- 
 pression on his affectionate heart and ardent in- 
 genuous mind ; and the rather because the more we 
 saw of him, and the more we battled with him, the 
 more manifestly did we respect and love him. The 
 feeling with which we argued gave additional power 
 to our arguments over a disposition such as his ; and 
 thus he became attached to young men of the most 
 different tastes and intellects; his love for each taking 
 a different colour, more or less blended with respect, 
 fondness, or even humour, according to those differ- 
 ences ; and in return they all uniting in love and 
 respect for him. 
 
 There will be some few to whom these remem- 
 brances will speak with touching truth ; they will re- 
 member his single-hearted and devout schoolfellow, 
 who early gave up his native land, and devoted him- 
 self to the missionary cause in India ; the high-souled 
 and imaginative, though somewhat indolent lad, who 
 came to us from Westminster — one bachelor, whose 
 father's connexion with the House of Commons and 
 residence in Palace Yard made him a great authority 
 with us as to the world without, and the statesmen 
 whose speeches he sometimes heard, but we discussed 
 much as if they had been personages in history ; and 
 whose remarkable love for historical and geographical 
 research, and his proficiency in it, with his clear judg- 
 ment, quiet humour, and mildness in communicating 
 information, made him peculiarly attractive to Arnold; 
 — and above all, our senior among the undcr-gra- 
 duates, though my junior in years, the author of the 
 Christian Year, who came fresh from the single teach-
 
 14 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 ing of his venerable father, and achieved the highest 
 honours of the University at an age when others fre- 
 quently are but on her threshold. Arnold clung to all 
 these with equal fidelity, but regarded each with differ- 
 ent feelings ; each produced on him a salutary, but 
 different effect. His love for all without exception I 
 know, if I know any thing of another man's heart, 
 continued to his life's end ; it survived (how can the 
 mournful facts be concealed in any complete and 
 truth-telling narrative of his life ?) separation, suspen- 
 sion of intercourse, and entire disagreement of opi- 
 nion, with the last of these, on points believed by 
 them both to be of essential importance. These two 
 held their opinions with a zeal and tenacity propor- 
 tionate to their importance ; each believed the other 
 in error pernicious to the faith and dangerous to him- 
 self; and what they believed sincerely, each thought 
 himself bound to state, and stated it openly, it may 
 be with too much of warmth; and unguarded expres- 
 sions were unnecessarily, I think inaccurately, re- 
 ported. Such disagreements in opinion between the 
 wise and good are incident to our imperfect state ; 
 and even the good qualities of the heart, earnestness, 
 want of suspicion may lay us open to them ; but 
 in the case before me the affectionate interest 
 with which each regarded the other never ceased. 
 I had the good fortune to retain the intimate 
 friendship and correspondence of both, and I can 
 testify with authority that the elder spoke and wrote 
 of the younger as an elder brother might of a younger 
 whom he tenderly loved, though he disapproved of 
 his course ; while it was not in Arnold's nature to 
 forget how much he had owed to Keble : he bitterly
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 15 
 
 lamented, what he laboured to avert, the suspension 
 of their intimate intercourse; he was at all times anx- 
 ious to renew it; and although where the disagreement 
 turned on points so vital between men who held 
 each to his own so conscientiously, this may have 
 been too much to expect, yet it is a most gratifying 
 thought to their common friends that they would 
 probably have met at Fox How under Arnold's roof, 
 but a few weeks after he was called away to that 
 state, in which the doubts and controversies of this 
 life will receive their clear resolution. 
 
 I return from my digression, — Arnold came to us 
 of course not a formed scholar, nor, I think, did he 
 leave the college with scholarship proportioned to his 
 great abilities and opportunities. And this arose in 
 part from the decided preference which he gave to the 
 philosophers and historians of antiquity over the poets, 
 coupled with the distinction which he then made, er- 
 roneous as I think, and certainly extreme in degree, 
 between words and things, as he termed it. His cor- 
 respondence with me will show how much he mo- 
 dified this too in after life; but at that time he 
 was led by it to undervalue those niceties of lan- 
 guage, the intimate acquaintance with which he did 
 not then perceive to be absolutely necessary to a pre- 
 cise knowledge of the meaning of the author. His 
 compositions, therefore, at this time, though full of 
 matter, did not give promise of that clear and sj ti- 
 nted style which lie afterwards mastered; lie gained 
 no verse prize, but was an unsuccessful competitor 
 for the Latin Verse in the year 181 'J, when Henry 
 Latham succeeded, the third brother of that house 
 who had done so ; and though this is the onlv oc-
 
 10 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 casion on which I have any memorandum of his 
 writing, I do not doubt, that he made other attempts. 
 Among us were several who were fond of writing 
 English verse ; Keblc was even then raising among 
 us those expectations, which he has since so fully 
 justified, and Arnold was not slow to follow the ex- 
 ample. I have several poems of his written about 
 this time, neat and pointed in expression, and just in 
 thought, but not remarkable for fancy or imagin- 
 ation. I remember some years after his telling me 
 that he continued the practice " on principle," he 
 thought it a useful and humanizing exercise. 
 
 But, though not a poet himself, he was not insen- 
 sible of the beauties of poetry — far from it. I re- 
 flect with some pleasure, that I first introduced him 
 to what has been somewhat unreasonably called the 
 Lake Poetry ; my near relation to one, and connex- 
 ion with another of the poets, whose works were so 
 called, were the occasion of this ; and my Uncle hav- 
 ing sent me the Lyrical Ballads, and the first edition 
 of Mr. Wordsworth's poems, they became familiar 
 among us. We were proof, I am glad to think, 
 against the criticism, if so it might be called, of the 
 " Edinburgh Review ;" we felt their truth and beauty, 
 and became zealous disciples of Wordsworth's phi- 
 losophy. This was of peculiar advantage to Arnold, 
 whose leaning was too direct for the practical and 
 evidently useful — it brought out in him that feeling 
 for the lofty and imaginative which appeared in all 
 his intimate conversation, and may be seen spiritual- 
 izing those even of his writings, in which, from their 
 subject, it might seem to have less place. You know 
 in later life how much he thought his beloved Fox
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 17 
 
 How enhanced in value by its neighbourhood to 
 Rydal Mount, and what store he set on the privilege 
 of frequent and friendly converse with the venerable 
 genius of that sweet spot. 
 
 But his passion at the time I am treating of was 
 for Aristotle and Thucydides ; and however he be- 
 came some few years after more sensible of the im- 
 portance of the poets in classic literature, this pas- 
 sion he retained to the last; those who knew him 
 intimately or corresponded with him, will bear me 
 witness, how deeply he was imbued with the lan- 
 guage and ideas of the former ; how in earnest and 
 unreserved conversation, or in writing, his train of 
 thoughts was affected by the Ethics and Rhetoric ; 
 how he cited the maxims of the Stagy rite as oracles, 
 and how his language was quaintly and racily pointed 
 with phrases from him. I never knew a man who 
 made such familiar, even fond use of an author : it is 
 scarcely too much to say, that he spoke of him as of 
 one intimately and affectionately known and valued 
 by him ; and when he was selecting his son's Uni- 
 versity, with much leaning for Cambridge, and many 
 things which at the time made him incline against 
 Oxford, dearly as he loved her, Aristotle turned the 
 scale ; " I could not consent," said he, " to send my 
 son to a University where he would lose the study of 
 him altogether." " You may believe," he said with 
 regard to the London University, " that I have not 
 forgotten the dear old Stagyrite in our examinations, 
 and I hope that he will be construed and discussed 
 in Somerset House as well as in the schools." i I is 
 fondness for Thucydides first prompted a Lexicon 
 Thucydideum, in which he made some progress at 
 vol. i. c
 
 18 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 Laleham ra 1821 and 1822, and ended as you know 
 in his valuable edition of that author. 
 
 Next to these he loved Herodotus. I have said 
 that he was not, while I knew him at Oxford, a 
 formed scholar, and that he composed stiffly and with 
 difficulty, but to this there was a seeming exception ; 
 he had so imbued himself with the style of Herodotus 
 and Thucydides, that he could write narratives in the 
 style of either at pleasure with wonderful readiness, 
 and as we thought with the greatest accuracy. I re- 
 member, too, an account by him of a Vacation Tour 
 in the Isle of Wio-ht after the manner of the Anabasis. 
 
 Arnold's bodily recreations were walking and bath- 
 ing. It was a particular delight to him, with two or 
 three companions, to make what he called a skirmish 
 across the country ; on these occasions we deserted 
 the road, crossed fences, and leaped ditches, or fell 
 into them : he enjoyed the country round Oxford, 
 and while out in this way, his spirits would rise, and 
 his mirth overflowed. Though delicate in appear- 
 ance, and not giving promise of great muscular 
 strength, yet his form was light, and he was capable 
 of going long distances and bearing much fatigue. 
 
 You know that to his last moment of health, he 
 had the same predilections ; indeed he was, as much 
 as any I ever knew, one whose days were 
 
 " Bound each to each by natural pietv." 
 
 His manhood had all the tastes and feelings of his 
 youth, only more developed and better regulated. 
 The same passion for the sea and shipping, and his 
 favourite Isle of Wight ; the same love for external 
 nature, the same readiness in viewing the charac-
 
 LTFE OP DR. ARNOLD. l!» 
 
 teristic features of a country and its marked positions, 
 or the most beautiful points of a prospect, for all 
 which he was remarkable in after life, we noticed in 
 him then. When Professor Buckland, then one of 
 our Fellows, began his career in that science, to the 
 advancement of which he has contributed so much, 
 Arnold became one of his most earnest and intelli- 
 gent pupils, and you know how familiarly and prac- 
 tically he applied geological facts in all his later years. 
 
 In June, 1812, I was elected Fellow of Exeter 
 College, and determined to pursue the law as my 
 profession : my residence at Oxford was thencefor- 
 ward only occasional ; but the friendship which had 
 grown up between us suffered no diminution. Some- 
 thing, I forget now the particular circumstance, led 
 to an interchange of letters, which ripened into a 
 correspondence, continued with rather unusual regu- 
 larity when our respective occupations are considered, 
 to within a few days of his death. It may show the 
 opinion which 1 oven then entertained of him, that I 
 carefully preserved from the beginning every letter 
 which I ever received from him : you have had an 
 opportunity of judging of the value of the collection. 
 
 After I had ceased to reside, a small debating 
 society called the Attic Society was formed in Ox- 
 ford*, which held its meetings in the rooms of the 
 members by turns. Arnold was among the earliest 
 
 :i Tn this society he formed or confirmed his acquaintance with 
 :\ new circle of friends, chiefly of other colleges, whose names Mil! 
 appear in the ensuing correspondence by tin- Bide of those of an 
 
 earlier date from Corpus, and of a somewhat later date from Oriel, 
 Mr. how.', Mr. Hull, .Mr. Randall, Mr. Blackstone, and .Mr. Hare, 
 and through him with his Cambridge brother, now Ajchdi 
 
 Hare.
 
 •_M) LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 members, and was, I believe, an embarrassed speaker. 
 This J should have expected; for, however he might 
 appear a confident advancer of his own opinions, he 
 was in truth bashful, and at the same time had so 
 acute a perceptiou of what Mas ill-seasoned, or irrele- 
 vant, that he would want that freedom from restraint 
 which is essential at least to young speakers. This 
 society was the germ of the Union, but I believe he 
 never belonged to it. 
 
 In our days, the religious controversies had not be- 
 gun, by which the minds of young men at Oxford are, I 
 fear, now prematurely and too much occupied ; the 
 routine theological studies of the University were, I 
 admit, deplorably low, but the earnest ones amongst us 
 were diligent readers of Barrow, Hooker, and Taylor. 
 Arnold was among these, but I have no recollection 
 of any thing at that time distinctive in his religious 
 opinions. What occurred afterwards, does not pro- 
 perly fall within my chapter, yet it is not uncon- 
 nected with it, and I believe I can sum up all that 
 need be said on such a subject, as shortly and as ac- 
 curately, from the sources of information in my hands, 
 as any other person can. His was an anxiously in- 
 quisitive mind, a scrupulously conscientious heart ; 
 his inquiries, previously to his taking orders, led him 
 on to distressing doubts on certain points in the 
 Articles ; these were not low nor rationalistic in their 
 tendency, according to the bad sense of that term : 
 there was no indisposition in him to believe merely 
 because the article transcended his reason; he doubted 
 the proof and the interpretation of the textual au- 
 thority. His state was very painful, and I think 
 morbid ; for I remarked that the two occasions ou
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 21 
 
 which I was privy to his (list rc><, were precisely 
 those in which to doubt was against his dearest 
 sellouts of worldly happiness; and the consciousness 
 of this seemed to make him distrustful of the argu- 
 ments which wore intended to lead his mind to ac- 
 quiescence. Upon the first occasion to which I 
 allude, he was a Fellow of Oriel, and in (dose inter- 
 course with one of the friends I have before men- 
 tioned, then also a fellow of the same college: to 
 him as well as to me he opened his mind, and from 
 him he received the wisest advice, which he had the 
 wisdom to act upon; he was bid to pause in his in- 
 quiries, to pray earnestly for help and light from 
 above, and turn himself more strongly than ever to 
 the practical duties of a holy life; he did so, and 
 through severe trials was finally blessed with perfect 
 peace of mind, and a settled conviction. If there be 
 any so unwise as to rejoice that Arnold, in his youth, 
 had doubts on important doctrines, let him he so- 
 bered with the conclusion of those doubts, when Ar- 
 nold's mind had not become weaker, nor his pursuit 
 of truth less honest or ardent, but when his abilities 
 were matured, his knowledge greater, his judgment 
 more sober; if there be any who, in youth, are suf- 
 fering the same distress which befell him. U t his con- 
 duct be their example, and the blessing which was 
 vouchsafed to him, their hope and consolation. In 
 a letter from that friend to myself, of the date of 
 February 14, 1819, I find the following extract, 
 which gives bo true and so considerate an account of 
 this passage in Arnold's life, thai you may be plei -< - 
 to insert it. 
 
 " I have not talked with Arnold lately on the dis-
 
 22 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 tressing thoughts which he wrote to you about, bur 
 I am fearful, from his manner at times, that he lias 
 by no means got rid of them, though I feel quite 
 confident that all will be well in the end. The sub- 
 ject of them is that most awful one, on which all very 
 inquisitive reasoning minds are, I believe, most liable 
 to such temptations — I mean the doctrine of the 
 blessed Trinity. Do not start, my dear Coleridge ; 
 I do not believe that Arnold has any serious scruples 
 of the understanding about it, but it is a defect of 
 his mind that he cannot get rid of a certain feeling 
 of objections — and particularly when, as he fancies, 
 the bias is so strong upon him to decide one way 
 from interest ; he scruples doing what I advise him, 
 which is, to put down the objections by main force 
 whenever they arise in his mind, fearful that in so 
 doing he shall be violating his conscience for a main- 
 tenance' sake. I am still inclined to think with you 
 that the wisest thing he could do would be to take 
 John M. (a young pupil whom I was desirous of 
 placing under his care,) and a curacy somewhere or 
 other, and cure himself not by physic, i. e. reading 
 and controversy, but by diet and regimen, i. e. holy 
 living. In the mean time what an excellent fellow 
 he is. I do think that one might safely say as some 
 one did of some other, ' One had better have Arnold's 
 doubts than most men's certainties.' " 
 
 I believe I have exhausted my recollections ; and 
 if I have accomplished as I ought, what I proposed 
 to myself, it will be hardly necessary for me to sum 
 up formally his character as an Oxford under-graduate. 
 At the commencement a boy — and at the close re- 
 taining, not ungracefully, much of boyish spirits, frolic,
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 23 
 
 and simplicity ; in mind vigorous, active, clear-sighted, 
 industrious, and daily accumulating and assimilating 
 treasures of knowledge; not averse to poetry, but de- 
 lighting rather in dialectics, philosophy, and history, 
 with less of imaginative than reasoning power; in 
 argument bold almost to presumption, and vehement; 
 in temper easily roused to indignation, yet more 
 easily appeased and entirely free from bitterness; fired 
 indeed, by what he deemed ungenerous or unjust to 
 others, rather than by any sense of personal wrong : 
 somewhat too little deferential to authority, yet with- 
 out any real inconsistency loving what was good and 
 great in antiquity the more ardently and reverently 
 because it was ancient ; a casual or unkind observer 
 might have pronounced him somewhat too pugna- 
 cious in conversation and too positive. I have given. I 
 believe the true explanation; scarcely any thing would 
 have pained him more than to be convinced that he had 
 been guilty of want of modesty, or of deference where 
 it was justly due ; no one thought these virtues of 
 more sacred obligation. In heart, if I can speak 
 with confidence of any of the friends of my youth, 1 
 can of his, that it was devout and pure, simple, sin- 
 cere, affectionate, and faithful. 
 
 It is time that I should close : already, I fear, I 
 have dwelt with something like an old man's pro- 
 lixity on passages of my youth, forgetting that no 
 one can take the same interest in them which I do 
 myself; that deep personal interest must, however, 
 be my excuse. Whoever sots a right value on the 
 events of his life for good or for evil, will agree that 
 next in importance to the rectitude of his own course 
 and the selection of his partner for life, and far be-
 
 24 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 yond all the wealth or honours which may reward his 
 labour, far even beyond the unspeakable gift of bodily 
 health, are the friendships which he forms in youth. 
 That is the season when natures soft and pliant grow 
 together, each becoming part of the other, and co- 
 loured by it ; thus to become one in heart with the 
 good, and generous, and devout, is, by God's grace, 
 to become, in measure, good, and generous, and de- 
 vout. Arnold's friendship has been one of the many 
 blessings of my life. I cherish the memory of it 
 with mournful gratitude, and I cannot but dwell 
 with lingering fondness on the scene and the period 
 which first brought us together. Within the peace- 
 ful walls of Corpus I made friends, of whom all are 
 spared me but Arnold — he has fallen asleep — but the 
 bond there formed, which the lapse of years and our 
 differing walks in life did not unloosen, and which 
 strong opposition of opinions only rendered more in- 
 timate ; though interrupted in time, I feel not to be 
 broken — may I venture, without unseasonable so- 
 lemnity, to express the firm trust, that it will endure 
 for ever in eternity. 
 
 Believe me, my dear Stanley, 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 J. T. c.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LIFE AT LALEHAM. 
 
 The society of the Fellows of Oriel College then, as 
 for some time afterwards, numbered amongst its mem- 
 bers some of the most rising men in the University, 
 and it is curious to observe the list, which, when the 
 youthful scholar of Corpus was added to it, contained 
 the names of Copleston, Davison, Whately, Keble, 
 Hawkins, and Hampden, and shortly after he left it, 
 those of Newman and Pusey. Amongst the friends 
 with whom he thus became acquainted for the first 
 time, may chiefly be mentioned Dr. Hawkins, since 
 Provost of Oriel, to whom in the last year of his life 
 he dedicated his Lectures on Modern History, and Dr. 
 Whately, afterwards Principal of St. Alban's Hall, 
 and now Archbishop of Dublin, towards whom his 
 regard was enhanced by the domestic intercourse 
 which was constantly interchanged in later years be- 
 tween their respective families, and to whose writings 
 and conversations he took an early opportunity of 
 expressing his obligations in the Preface to his first 
 volume of Sermons, in speaking of the various points 
 on which the communication of his friend's views had 
 " extended or confirmed his own. For the next
 
 26 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 four years he remained at Oxford taking private pu- 
 pils and reading extensively in the Oxford libraries, 
 an advantage which he never ceased to remember 
 gratefully himself, and to impress upon others, and of 
 which the immediate results remain in a great num- 
 ber of MSS., both in the form of abstracts of other 
 works, and of original sketches on history and theo- 
 logy. They are remarkable rather as proofs of in- 
 dustry than of power, and the style of all his compo- 
 sitions, both at this time and for some years later, is 
 cramped by a stiffness and formality alien alike to 
 the homeliness of his first published works and the 
 vigour of his later ones, and strikingly recalling his 
 favourite lines, 
 
 " The old man clogs our earliest j'ears, 
 And simple childhood comes the last." 
 
 But already in the examination for the Oriel Fellow- 
 ships, Dr. Whately had pointed out to the other elec- 
 tors the great capability of "growth" which he be- 
 lieved to be involved in the crudities of the youthful 
 candidate's exercises, and which, even in points where 
 he was inferior to his competitors, indicated an ap- 
 proaching superiority. And widely different as were 
 his juvenile compositions in many points from those 
 of his after life, yet it is interesting to observe in 
 them the materials which those who knew the pres- 
 sure of his numerous avocations used to wonder when 
 he could have acquired, and to trace amidst the 
 strangest contrast of his general thoughts and style 
 occasional remarks of a higher strain, which are in 
 striking, though in some instances perhaps accidental 
 coincidence with some of his later views.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 27 
 
 Meanwhile he had been gradually led to fix upon 
 his future course in life. In December, 1818, he 
 was ordained deacon at Oxford; and on August, 
 11th, 1820, he married Mary, youngest daughter of 
 the Rev. John Penrose, Rector of Fledborouoh, 
 in Nottinghamshire, and sister of one of his earliest 
 school and college friends, Trevenen Penrose ; having 
 previously settled in 1819 at Laleham, near Staines, 
 with his mother, aunt, and sister, where he remained 
 for the next nine years, taking seven or eight young 
 men as private pupils in preparation for the Univer- 
 sities, for a short time in a joint establishment with 
 his brother-in-law, Mr. Buckland, and afterwards in- 
 dependently by himself. 
 
 In the interval which had elapsed between the end 
 of his undergraduate career at Oxford, and his en- 
 trance upon life, had taken place the great change 
 from boyhood to manhood, and with it, a correspond- 
 ing change or growth of character, more marked and 
 more important than at any subsequent period of his 
 life. There was indeed another great step to be 
 taken before his mind reached that later stage of de- 
 velopment which was coincident with his transition 
 from Laleham to Rugby. The prosaic and matter 
 of fact element which has been described in his early 
 Oxford life still retained its predominance, and to a 
 certain extent dwarfed and narrowed his sphere of 
 thought; the various principles of political and the- 
 ological science which contained in germ all that WAS 
 to grow out of them, had not yet assumed their proper 
 harmony and proportions ; his feelings of veneration, 
 if less confined than in later years, were also less in- 
 tense : his hopes ami views, if more practicable and
 
 28 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 more easily restrained by the advice of others, were 
 also less wide in their range, ami less lofty in their 
 conception. 
 
 But, however great were the modifications which 
 his character subsequently underwent, it is the chauge 
 of tone at this time, between the earlier letters of this 
 period (such as the one or two first of the ensuing 
 series) and those which immediately succeed them, 
 that marks the difference between the high spirit and 
 warm feelings of his youth and the fixed earnestness 
 and devotion which henceforth took possession of his 
 whole heart and will. Whatever may have been the 
 outward circumstances which contributed to this — 
 the choice of a profession — the impression left upon 
 him by the sudden loss of his elder brother — the 
 new and to him elevating influences of married life 
 — the responsibility of having to act as the guide and 
 teacher of others — it was now for the first time that 
 the principles, which before he had followed rather as 
 a matter of course, and as held and taught by those 
 around him, became emphatically part of his own 
 convictions, to be embraced and carried out for life 
 and for death. 
 
 From this time forward the peculiarities of his 
 boyhood and early youth entirely disappear; the 
 indolent habits — the morbid restlessness and occa- 
 sional weariness of duty — the indulgence of vague 
 schemes without definite purpose — the intellectual 
 doubts which beset the first opening of his mind to 
 the realities of religious belief, when he shared at 
 least in part the state of perplexity which in his 
 later sermons he feelingly describes as the severest of 
 earthly trials, and which so endeared to him through-
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 29 
 
 out life tlio story of the confession of the Apostle 
 Thomas — all seem to have vanished away and never 
 
 again to have diverted him from the decisive choice 
 and energetic pursuit of what he set before him as 
 his end and duty. From this time forward no careful 
 observer can fail to trace that deep consciousness of 
 the invisible world, and that power of bringing it 
 before him in the midst and through the means of his 
 most active engagements, which constituted the pe- 
 culiarity of his religious life, and the moving spring 
 of his whole life. It was not that he frequently in- 
 troduced sacred names in writing or in conversation, 
 or that he often dwelt on divine interpositions ; where 
 many would have done so without scruple, he would 
 shrink from it, and in speaking of his own religious 
 feelings, or in appealing to the religious feelings of 
 others, he was, except to those most intimate with 
 him, exceedingly reserved. But what was true gene- 
 rally of the thorough interpenetration of the several 
 parts of his character, was peculiarly true of it in its 
 religious aspect: his natural faculties were not un- 
 clothed, but clothed upon ; they were at once coloured 
 by, and gave a colour to, the belief which they re- 
 ceived. It was his common acts of life, whether 
 public or private, that most exhibited the depth of 
 his religious convictions; it was in his manner of 
 dwelling on religious subjects, that the characteristic 
 tendencies of his mind chiefly displayed themselves. 
 Accordingly, whilst it is impossible, for this reason, 
 to understand his religious belief except through the 
 knowledge of his life and writings, it is impossible, on 
 the other hand, to understand his life and writings 
 without bearing in mind how vivid was his realization
 
 30 LIFK OF DR. ARNOLD 
 
 of those truths of the Christian Revelation on which 
 he most habitually dwelt. It was this which enabled 
 him to undertake labours which without such a power 
 must have crushed or enfeebled the spiritual growth 
 which in him they seemed only to foster. It was the 
 keen sense of thankfulness consciously awakened by 
 every distinct instance of his many blessings, which 
 more than any thing else explained his close union 
 of joyousness with seriousness. In his even tenor 
 of life it was difficult for any one who knew him 
 not to imagine " the golden chain of heavenward 
 thoughts and humble prayers by which, whether 
 standing or sitting, in the intervals of work or of 
 amusement," he " linked together " his " more special 
 and solemn devotions," (Serm. vol. iii. 277,) or not to 
 trace something of the consciousness of an invisi- 
 ble presence in the collectedness with which, at the 
 call of his common duties, he rose at once from his 
 various occupations ; or in the calm repose which, in 
 the midst of his most active labours, took all the dis- 
 turbing accidents of life as a matter of course, and 
 made toil so real a pleasure, and relaxation so real a 
 refreshment to him. And in his solemn and em- 
 phatic expressions on subjects expressly religious ; 
 in his manner of awful reverence when speak- 
 ing of God or of the Scriptures ; in his power of 
 realizing the operation of something more than 
 human, whether in his abhorrence of evil, or in 
 his admiration of goodness ; — the impression on those 
 who heard him Mas often as though he knew what 
 others only believed, as though he had seen what 
 others only talked about. " No one could know him 
 even a little," says one wdio was himself not amongst
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 31 
 
 bis most intimate friends, "and not be struck by his 
 absolute wrestling with evil, so that like St. Paul he 
 seemed to be battling with the wicked one, and yet 
 with the feeling of God's help on his side, scorning as 
 well as hating him." 
 
 Above all, it was necessary for a right understand- 
 ing, not only of his religious opinions, but of his 
 whole character, to enter into the peculiar feeling 
 of love and adoration* which he entertained towards 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, — peculiar in the distinctness 
 and intensity which, as it characterized almost all his 
 common impressions, so in this case gave additional 
 strength and meaning to those feelings with which 
 he regarded not only His work of Redemption but 
 Himself, as a living Friend and Master. " In that 
 unknown world in which our thoughts become in- 
 stantly lost," it was his real support and delight 
 to remember that "still there is one object on which 
 our thoughts and imaginations may fasten, no less 
 than our affections; that amidst the light, dark from 
 excess of brilliance which surrounds the throne of 
 ( Jod, we may yet discern the gracious form of the Son 
 of Man," (Serm. vol. iii. 90.) In that consciousness 
 which pressed upon him at times even heavily, of the 
 difficulty of considering God in His own nature, be- 
 lieving as he did that " Providence, the Supreme 
 Iking, the Deity, and other such terms repel us to 
 an infinite distance," and that the revelation of the 
 Father, in Himself unapproachable, is to be looked 
 upon rather as the promise of another life, than as the 
 support of this life, it was to him a thought of perhaps 
 more than usual comfort to feel that "our (Jod" is 
 '•.lesus Christ our Lord, the image of the invisible
 
 32 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 God," and that " in Him is represented all the fulness 
 of the Godhead, until we know even as we are 
 known." (vol. v. 222.) And with this full conviction 
 both of his conscience and understanding, that He of 
 whom he spoke was " still the very selfsame Jesus 
 in all human affections and divine excellences;" 
 there was a vividness and tenderness in his con- 
 ception of Him, on which, if one may so say, all 
 his feelings of human friendship-and affection seemed 
 to fasten as on their natural object, "bringing be- 
 fore him His actions, imaging to himself His very 
 voice and look," there was to him (so to speak) 
 a greatness in the image thus formed of Him, on 
 which all his natural instincts of reverence, all his 
 range of historical interest, all his admiration of truth 
 and goodness at once centred. " Where can we find 
 a name so holy as that we may surrender our whole 
 souls to it, before which obedience, reverence with- 
 out measure, intense humility, most unreserved adora- 
 tion may all be duly rendered ?" was the earnest in- 
 quiry of his whole nature intellectual and moral, no 
 less than religious. And the answer to it in like 
 manner expressed what he endeavoured to make the 
 rule of his own personal conduct, and the centre of 
 all his moral and religious convictions : " One name 
 there is, and one alone, one alone in heaven and earth 
 — not truth, not justice, not benevolence, not Christ's 
 mother, not His holiest servants, not His blessed 
 sacraments, nor His very mystical body the Church, 
 but Himself only who died for us and rose again, Jesus 
 Christ, both God and man." (Serm. vol. iv. 210.) 
 
 Whatever may have been the exact views of his 
 future course which presented themselves to him, it is
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 33 
 
 evident, that lie Mas not insensible to the attraction 
 of visions of extensive influence, and almost to his 
 latest hour he seems to have been conscious of the 
 existence of the temptation within him, and of the 
 necessity of contending against it. " 1 believe," he 
 said, many years afterwards, in speaking of these 
 early struggles to a Rugby pupil who was consult- 
 ing him on the choice of a profession, — " 1 believe 
 that naturally I am one of the most ambitious men 
 alive," and "the three great objects of human am- 
 bition," he added, to which alone he could look as 
 deserving the name, were " to be the prime minister 
 of a great kingdom, the governor of a great empire, 
 or the writer of works which should live in every 
 age and in every country." But in some respects the 
 loftiness of his aims made it a matter of less diffi- 
 culty to confine himself at once to a sphere in which, 
 whilst he felt himself well and usefully employed, 
 he felt also that the practical business of his daily 
 duties acted as a check upon his own inclinations 
 and speculations, and when he entered upon his work 
 at Lalehani, he seems to have regarded it as his work 
 for life. "I have always thought," he writes in L823, 
 "with regard to ambition, that I should like to be 
 aut Caesar aut nullus, and as it is pretty well settled 
 for me that I shall not be Cffisar, 1 am quite content 
 to live in peace as nullus." 
 
 With these views he settled at Lalehani for the 
 next nine years. There is naturally but little to in- 
 terrupt the retirement of a life, which was only broken 
 by the short tours in England or on the Continent, 
 in which then, as afterwards, he employed his vaca- 
 
 VOL. I. D 

 
 34 LIPE OP DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 t ions. Still it is not without interest to dwell on 
 these years, the profound peace of which is contrasted 
 so strongly with the almost incessant agitations of his 
 Subsequent life, and "to remain awhile" (thus apply- 
 ing his own words on another subject) "on the high 
 ground where the waters which are hereafter to form 
 the separate streams " of his various social and theo- 
 logical views, " lie as yet undistinguished in their 
 common parent lake." 
 
 It was a period indeed on which he used himself 
 to look back, even from the wider usefulness of his 
 later years, almost with a fond regret, as to the hap- 
 piest time of his life. His situation supplied him 
 exactly with that union of retirement and work 
 which more than any other condition suited his na- 
 tural inclinations, and enabled him to keep up more 
 uninterrupted than was ever again in his power the 
 communication which he so much cherished with 
 his friends and relations. Without undertaking any 
 directly parochial charge, he was in the habit of 
 rendering constant assistance to Mr. Hearn, the curate 
 of the place, both in the parish church and work- 
 house, and in visiting the villagers — thus uniting 
 with his ordinary occupations greater means, than he 
 was afterwards able to command, of familiar inter- 
 course with his poorer neighbours, which he always 
 so highly valued. Bound as he was to Laleham by all 
 these ties, he long loved to look upon it as his final 
 home ; — and the first reception of the tidings of his 
 election at Rugby was overclouded with deep sorrow 
 at leaving the scene of so much happiness. Years 
 after he had left it, he still retained his early affection
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. :!"> 
 
 for it, and till lie bad purchased his house in West- 
 moreland, he entertained a lingering hope that he 
 might return to it in his old age, when he should 
 have retired from Rugby. Often he would revisit it, 
 and delighted in renewing his acquaintance with all 
 the families of the poor whom he had known during 
 his residence ; in showing to his children his former 
 haunts; in looking once again on his favourite views 
 of the great plain of Middlesex — the lonely walks along 
 the quiet banks of the Thames — the retired garden, 
 with its field and shrubbery, which lay behind his house, 
 and which had been the scenes of so many sportive 
 games and serious conversations — the churchyard of 
 Laleham, then doubly dear to him as containing the 
 graves of his infant child whom he buried there 
 in 1832, and of his mother, his aunt, and his sister 
 Susannah, who had so long formed almost a part of 
 his own domestic circle, and whom he lost within a 
 few years after his departure to Rugby. 
 " His general view of his work as a private tutor is 
 best given in his own words in 1831, to a friend who 
 was about to engage in a similar occupation. 
 
 " I know it has a bad name, but my wile and I always hap- 
 pened to be fond of it, and if I were to leave Rugby for no de- 
 merit of my own, I would take to it again with all the pleasure 
 in life. I enjoyed, and do enjoy, the society of youths of 
 seventeen or eighteen, for they are all alive in limbs and 
 spirits at least, if not in mind, while in older persons the 
 body and spirits often become lazy and languid, without 
 the mind gaining any vigour to compensate for it. Do not 
 take your work as a dose, and I do not think you will find 
 it nauseous. I am sure you will not, if your wife does not, 
 and if she is a sensible woman, she will not either, if you do 
 
 1» L'
 
 3G LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 not. The misery of private tuition seems to me to consist 
 in tliis, thai men enter upon it as a means to some further 
 end ; are always impatient for the time when they may lay 
 it aside. ; whereas if you enter upoo it heartily as your life's 
 business, as a man enters upon any other profession, you 
 are not then in danger of grudging every hour you give to 
 it, and thinking of how much privacy and how much so- 
 ciety it is robbing you; but you take to it as a matter of 
 course, making it your material occupation, and devote your 
 time to it, and then you find that it is in itself full of in- 
 terest, and keeps life's current fresh and wholesome by 
 bringing you in such perpetual contact with all the spring of 
 youthful liveliness. I should say, have your pupils a good 
 deal with you, and be as familiar with them as you possibly 
 can. I did this continually more and more before I left 
 Laleham, going to bathe with them, leaping and all other 
 gymnastic exercises within my capacity, and sometimes 
 sailing or rowing with them. They I believe always liked 
 it, and I enjoyed it myself like a boy, and found myself 
 constantly the better for it." 
 
 In many respects his method at Laleham resem- 
 bled the plan which he pursued on a larger scale at' 
 Rugby. Then, as afterwards, he had a strong sense of 
 the duty of protecting his charge, at whatever risk 
 to himself, from the presence of companions who 
 were capable only of exercising an evil influence 
 over their associates; and, young as he was, he per- 
 sisted in carrying out this principle, and in declining 
 to take any additional pupils as long as he had under 
 him any of such a character, whom yet he did not 
 feel himself justified in removing at once. And in 
 answer to the request of his friends that he would 
 raise his terms, " I am confirmed in my resolution 
 not to do so." he writes in 1^27, "lest I should get
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 37 
 
 the sons of very great people as my pupils whom it is 
 almost impossible to sophronize." In reply to a friend 
 in 1821, who had asked his advice in a difficult case 
 of dealing with a pupil, 
 
 " I have no doubt, 1 ' he answers, " that you have acini 
 perfectly right; for lenity is seldom to be repented of; 
 and besides, if you should find that it has been ill be- 
 stowed, you can have recourse to expulsion alter all. 
 But it is clearly right to try your chance of making 
 an impression ; and if you can make any at all, it is at 
 once your justification and encouragement to proceed. 
 It is very often like kicking a football up hill ; you kick 
 it onwards twenty yards, and it rolls back nineteen ; still 
 you have gained one yard, and thus in a good many 
 kicks you make some progress. This, however, is on the 
 supposition that the pupil's fault is cutpaTia and not ko^ho. • 
 for if he laughs behind your back at what you say to him, 
 he will corrupt others, and then there is no help for it, but 
 he must go. This is to me all the difference : I would be 
 as patient as I possiblj could with irresolution, unsteadi- 
 ness, and fits of idleness; but if a pupil has set his mind 
 to do nothing, but considers all the work as so much fudge, 
 which he will evade if he can, 1 have made up my resolu- 
 tion that I will send him away without scruple ; for not to 
 speak of the heartless trouble that such an animal would 
 give to myself, he is a living principle of mischief in the 
 house, being ready at all times to pervert his companions ; 
 and this determination I have expressed publicly, and if 
 I know myself I will act upon it, and 1 advise you most 
 
 heartily to do the same. Thus, then, with Mr. , when 
 
 he appeared penitent and made professions of amendment, 
 you were clearly right to give him a longer trial. If lu- 
 be sincere, however unsteady and backsliding, he will not 
 hurt the principles of your other pupils; for he will ma 
 glory in his own misconduct, which 1 suppose is the 
 danger: but if you have reason to think that tlie impres-
 
 38 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 sion yen made on him was only temporary, and that it 
 has since entirely gone away, and his own evil principles 
 as well as evil practices are in vigour, then I would advise 
 you to send him off without delay ; for then taking the 
 mischief he will do to others into the account, the football 
 rolls down twenty-live yards to your lack of twenty, and 
 that is a losing game." 
 
 " 'E%S<ijt»i o^uvyi 7ro?Ka (p^oviovta. Trig fj.v\?)kvo<; xparEEiv" he 
 writes, " must be the feeling of many a working tutor who 
 cannot open the eyes of his pupils to see what knowledge 
 is, — I do not mean human knowledge only, but 'wisdom.'" 
 
 " You could scarcely conceive the rare instances of ig- 
 norance that I have met with amongst them. One had no 
 notion of what was meant by an angle ; another could not 
 tell how many Gospels there are, nor could he, after due 
 deliberation, recollect any other names than Matthew, Mark 
 and Luke ; and a third holds the first concord in utter 
 contempt, and makes the infinitive mood supply the place 
 of the principal verb in the sentence without the least 
 suspicion of any impropriety. My labour, therefore, is 
 more irksome than I have ever known it ; but none of my 
 pupils give me any uneasiness on the most serious points, 
 and live of them staid the sacrament when it was last admi- 
 nistered. I ought constantly to impress upon my mind 
 how light an evil is the greatest ignorance or dullness when 
 compared with habits of profligacy, or even of wilful 
 irregularity and riotousness." 
 
 " I regret in your son," he says, (in writing to a parent,) 
 " a carelessness which does not allow him to think seri- 
 ously of what he is living for, and to do what is right not 
 merely as a matter of regularity, but because it is a duty. 
 I trust you will not think that I am meaning any thing 
 more than ray words convey, or that what I am regretting 
 in your son is not to be found in nineteen out of every 
 twenty young men of his age ; but I conceive that you would 
 wish me to form my desire of what your son should be, not 
 according to the common standard, but according to the
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 39 
 
 highest, — to be satisfied with no less in him than I should 
 have been anxious to find in a son of my own. He is 
 capable of doing a great deal ; and I have not seen any 
 thing in him which has called for reproof since he has 
 been with me. I am only desirous that he should work 
 more heartily, — just, in short, as he would work if he took 
 an interest of himself in his own improvement. On this, of 
 course, all distinction in Oxford must depend: but much 
 more than distinction depends on it; for the difference 
 between a useful education, and one which does not affect 
 the future life, rests mainly on the greater or less activity 
 which it has communicated to the pupil's mind, whether 
 he has learned to think, or to act, and to gain knowledge 
 by himself, or whether he has merely followed passively as 
 long as there was some one to draw him." 
 
 It is needless to anticipate the far more extended 
 influence which he exercised over his Rugby scholars, 
 by describing in detail the impression produced upon 
 his pupils at Laleham. Yet the mere difference of 
 the relation in which he stood towards them in itself 
 gave a peculiar character to his earlier sphere of 
 education, and as such may best be described in the 
 words of one amongst those whom he most esteemed, 
 Mr. Price, who afterwards became one of his assist- 
 ant-masters at Rugby*. 
 
 a I cannot allow Mr. Price's name to appear in these pages, 
 without expressing how nincli I am indebted to him for the assist- 
 ance wliicli, amidst his many pressing duties, he lias rendered to 
 this work, not only here, hut throughout, and which in many 
 Prom his long knowledge; and complete understanding of 
 Dr. Arnold's views and character, he alone could have rendered. 
 Nothing, indeed, but the very fact of the perpetual recurrence of 
 instances in which I have availed myself not only of lii^ sugges- 
 tions but of his words, would have prevented me from more fre- 
 quently acknowledging obligations, for winch I here wish to return 
 my thanks, however inadequately, once for all.
 
 40 LIFE OF I>lv. ARNOLD. 
 
 " Nearly eighteen years have passed away since I re- 
 sided at Laleham, and I had the misfortune of being but 
 two months as a ] mj>il there. I am unable, therefore, to 
 give you a complete picture of the Laleham life of my late 
 revered tutor; I can only impart to you such impressions 
 as my brief sojourn there has indelibly fixed in my re- 
 collection. 
 
 " The most remarkable thing which struck me at once on 
 joining the Laleham circle was, the wonderful healthiness 
 of tone and feeling which prevailed in it. Every thing about 
 me I immediately found to be most real ; it was a place 
 where a new comer at once felt that a great and earnest 
 work was going forward. Dr. Arnold's great power as a 
 private tutor resided in this, that he gave such an intense 
 earnestness to life. Every pupil was made to feel that 
 there was a work for him to do — that his happiness as well 
 as his duty lay in doing that work well. Hence, an inde- 
 scribable zest was communicated to a young man's feel- 
 ing about life ; a strange joy came over him on discovering 
 that he had the means of being useful, and thus of being 
 happy ; and a deep respect and ardent attachment sprang 
 up towards him who had taught him thus to value life and 
 his ownself, and his work and mission in this world. All 
 this was founded on the breadth and comprehensiveness 
 of Arnold's character, as well as its striking truth and re- 
 ality ; on the unfeigned regard he had for work of all kinds, 
 and the sense he had of its value both for the complex ag- 
 gregate of society and the growth and perfection of the 
 individual. Thus, pupils of the most different natures 
 were keenly stimulated ; none felt that he was left out, or 
 that, because he was not endowed with large powers of 
 mind, there was no sphere open to him in the honourable 
 pursuit of usefulness. This wonderful power of making all 
 his pupils respect themselves, and of awakening in them a 
 consciousness of the duties that God had assigned to them 
 personally, and of the consequent reward each should have 
 of his labours, was one of Arnold's most characteristic fea-
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 41 
 
 tures as a trainer of youth ; he possessed it eminently at 
 Rugby; but, if I may trust my own vivid'recollections, he 
 had it quite as remarkably at Laleham. His hold over all 
 his pupils I know perfectly astonished me. It was not so 
 much an enthusiastic admiration for his genius, or learning, 
 or eloquence which stirred within them; it was a sympa- 
 thetic thrill, caught from a spirit that was earnestly at 
 work in the world — whose work was healthy, sustained, and 
 constantly carried forward in the fear of God — a work that 
 was founded on a deep sense of its duty and its value ; and 
 was coupled with such a true humility, such an unaffected 
 simplicity, that others could not help being invigorated by 
 the same feeling, and with the belief that they too in their 
 measure could go and do likewise. 
 
 " In all this there was no excitement, no predilection 
 for one class of work above another ; no enthusiasm for 
 any one-sided object; but an humble, profound, and most 
 religious consciousness that work is the appointed calling 
 of man on earth, the end foi which his various faculties 
 were given, the element in which bis nature is ordained to 
 develope itself, and in which his progressive advance to- 
 wards heaven is to lie. Hence, each pupil felt assured of 
 Arnold's sympathy in his own particular growth and charac- 
 ter of talent ; in striving to cultivate his own gifts, in what- 
 ever direction they might lead him, he infallibly found 
 Arnold not only approving, but positively and sincerely 
 valuing for themselves the results he had arrived at; and 
 that approbation and esteem gave a dignity and a worth 
 both to himself and his labour. 
 
 " His humility was vcr\ deeply seated; his respect for 
 all knowledge sincere. A strange feeling passed over the 
 pupil's mind when he found great, and often undue, credit 
 given him for knowledge of which his tutor was ignor- 
 ant. Hut this generated no conceit : the example be- 
 fore his eves daily reminded him that it was only as a 
 
 means of usefulness, as an improvement Of talents for his 
 
 own good and that of others that knowledge was valued.
 
 \'2 LIFE OF DE. AJtNOLD. 
 
 lie could not find comfort, in the presence of such reality, 
 in any shallow knowledge. 
 
 " There was then, as afterwards, great simplicity in his 
 religious character. It was no isolated part of his nature, 
 it was a bright and genial light shining on every branch of 
 his life. He took very great pains with the Divinity lessons 
 of his pupils: and his lectures were admirable, and, I dis- 
 tinctly remember, very highly prized for their depth and 
 originality. Neither generally in ordinary conversation, 
 nor in his walks with his pupils, was his style of speaking 
 directly or mainly religious : but he was ever very ready to 
 discuss any religious question ; whilst the depth and truth 
 of his nature, and the earnestness of his religious con- 
 victions and feelings, were ever bursting forth, so as to 
 make it strongly felt that his life, both outward and inward, 
 was rooted in God. 
 
 " In the details of daily business, the quantity of time that 
 he devoted to his pupils was very remarkable. Lessons 
 began at seven, and with the interval of breakfast lasted till 
 nearly three ; then he would walk with his pupils, and dine 
 at half-past five. At seven he usually had some lesson on 
 hand ; and it was only when we all were gathered up in 
 the drawing room after tea, amidst young men on all sides 
 of him, that he would commence work for himself, in 
 writing his sermons or Roman History. 
 
 " Who that ever had the happiness of being at Lalehara, 
 does not remember the lightness and joyousness of heart, 
 with which he would romp and play in the garden, or 
 plunge with a boy's delight into the Thames ; or the merry 
 fun with which he would battle with spears with his pupils ? 
 Which of them does not recollect how the Tutor entered 
 into his amusements with scarcely less glee than himself? 
 
 " But I must conclude : I do not pretend to touch on every 
 point. I have told you what struck me most, and I have 
 tried to keep away all remembrance of what he was when 
 I knew him better. I have confined myself to the impres- 
 sion Laleham kit upon me." 
 
 b. ruiCE.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 4o 
 
 The studies which most occupied his spare time at 
 Laleham were philology and history, and he employed 
 himself chiefly on a Lexicon of Thucydides, and also 
 on an edition of that author with Latin notes, sub- 
 sequently exchanged for English ones, a short History 
 of Greece, never finished or published, and on articles 
 on Roman History from the times of the Gracchi to 
 that of Trajan, written for the Encyclopaedia Metro- 
 politana, between 1821 and 1827. 
 
 It was in 1825 that, through the recommendation 
 of Archdeacon Hare, he first became acquainted with 
 Niebuhr's History of Rome. In the study of this 
 work, which was the first German book he ever read, 
 and for the sake of reading- which he had learned 
 that language, a new intellectual world dawned upon 
 him, not only in the subject to which it related, but 
 in the disclosure to him of the depth and research of 
 German literature, which from that moment he 
 learned more and more to appreciate, and, as far as 
 his own occupations would allow him, to emulate. 
 
 On his view of Roman history its effect was imme- 
 diate : " It is a work (he writes on first perusing it) 
 of such extraordinary ability and Learning, that it 
 opened wide before my eyes the extent of my own 
 ignorance ;" and he at once resolved to delay any in- 
 dependent work of his own till he had more completely 
 studied the new field of inquiry suggested to him, in 
 addition to the doubts lie had himself already ex- 
 pressed as to the authenticity of much of the early 
 Roman history in one of his first article^ in the Ency- 
 clopaedia Metropolitana. In an article in the Quar- 
 terly Ivcviev. ;>f L825, lie was (to use Niebuhr's own 
 words of thanks to him in the second edition of his
 
 II LIFE OF Dli. AENOLD. 
 
 first volume, Note L053. i. p. 451. Eng. Transl.) 
 "the scholar who introduced the first edition of this 
 history to the English public ;" and the feeling which 
 had dictated this friendly notice of it grew with years. 
 The reluctance which he had at first entertained to 
 admit the whole of Niebuhr's conclusions, and which 
 remained even to 1832, when in regard to his views 
 of ancient history he was inclined to " charge him 
 with a tendency to excessive scepticism," (Pref. to 
 1st ed. of 2nd vol. of Thucyd. p. xiv.) settled by de- 
 grees into a determination " never to differ from him 
 without a full consciousness of the probability that 
 further inquiry might prove him to be right ;" (Pref. 
 to Hist, of Rome, vol. i. p. x.;) and his admiration for 
 him rose at last into a sentiment of personal venera- 
 tion, which made him, as he used to say, at once emu- 
 lous and hopeless, rendering him jealous for Niebuhr's 
 reputation, as if for his own, and anxious, amidst the 
 pressure of his other occupations, to undertake, or at 
 least superintend, the translation of the third volume 
 when it was given up by Hare and Thirlwall, from 
 a desire " to have his name connected with the trans- 
 lation of that great work, which no one had studied 
 more or admired more entirely." But yet more than 
 by his mere reading, all these feelings towards Nie- 
 buhr, towards Germany, and towards Roman history, 
 were strengthened by his visit to Rome in 1827, and 
 by the friendship which he there formed with Che- 
 valier Bunsen, successor to Niebuhr as minister at the 
 Papal court. He was at Rome only thirteen days, 
 but the sight of the city and of the neighbourhood, 
 to which he devoted himself to the almost entire ex- 
 clusion of the works of art. gave him a living interest
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. |.~. 
 
 in Rome which he bad before wanted, and which lie 
 
 never lost. The Chevalier Bunsen he saw no more 
 till 18oS; but the conversation which he had there 
 enjoyed with him formed the ground of an unbroken 
 intercourse by letters between them : by his encou- 
 ragement he was principally induced in later years to 
 resume the History of Rome, which he eventually 
 dedicated to him ; whilst from the resemblance in 
 many points of their peculiar pursuits and general 
 views, he used to turn with enthusiastic delight to 
 seek for his sympathy from the isolation in which he 
 often seemed to be placed in his own country. 
 
 His interest in public affairs seems to have been 
 much less keen at this period than either in the ear- 
 lier or later stages of his life ; but still his letters 
 contain, especially after 1826, indications of the same 
 lively sense of social evils, founded on his knowledge 
 of history, which became more and more a part of his 
 habitual thoughts. 
 
 " I think daily," he said, in speaking of the disturbances 
 in 1819, "ofThucydideSj and the Corcyrean sedition, and 
 of the story of the French Revolution, and of the Cassan- 
 dra-like fate of history, whose lessons are read in vain even 
 to the vnv next generation." 
 
 " 1 cannot tell you," he writes in 1820, " how the presenl 
 state of the country occupies my mind, and what a restless 
 desire 1 feel that it were in my power to do any good. My 
 chieffear is, thai when the actual suffering is a little abated, 
 people will go on as usual, and not probing to the bottom 
 the deep disease which is to my mind ensuring no ordinary 
 share of misery in the country before man) years are over. 
 Hut we kiuiw that it is our own fault if our greatest trials do 
 
 not turn out to be our greatest advantag 
 
 His early intimacy with the leading men of the
 
 Ill i. Mi. OF DE. ARNOLD. 
 
 then ( Iriel school, remarkable as it was for exhibiting a 
 union of religious earnestness with intellectual activity, 
 and distinct from any existing party amongst the 
 English clergy, contributed to foster the independence 
 which characterized his theological and ecclesiastical 
 views from the first time that lie took any real inter- 
 est in serious matters. And already he had begun 
 to conceive the necessity of great alterations in the 
 Church Establishment, a feeling which at this period, 
 when most persons seemed to acquiesce in its exist- 
 ing Btate, was naturally impressed upon him with 
 greater force than in the later years of his life, when 
 the attacks to which it was exposed from without 
 and from within, appeared at times to endanger its 
 existence. 
 
 " I hope to be allowed, before I die, to accomplish 
 something on Education, and also with regard to the 
 Church," he writes in 1826 ; " the last indeed even more 
 than the other, were not the task, humanly speaking, so 
 hopeless. But the more I think of the matter, and the 
 more I read of the Scriptures themselves, and of the history 
 of the Church, the more intense is my wonder at the lan- 
 guage of admiration with which some men speak of the 
 Church of England, which certainly retains the foundation 
 sure, as all other Christian societies do, except the Uni- 
 tarians, but has overlaid it with a very sufficient quantity of 
 hay and stubble, which I devoutly hope to see burnt one 
 day in the fire. I know that other churches have their 
 faults also, but what have I to do with them ? It is idle to 
 speculate in alien a republicd, but to reform one's own is a 
 business which nearly concerns us." 
 
 But the feeling which most dwelt upon his mind 
 was the strong sense which he entertained of " the 
 want of Christian principle in the literature of the
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 47 
 
 day, — not intentional perhaps in the writers, and till 
 the spirit of inquiry was stirred, not of the same con- 
 sequence ;" and a corresponding fear " of the ap- 
 proach of a greater struggle between good and evil 
 than the world had yet seen, in which there might 
 well happen the greatest trial to the faith of good 
 men that could be imagined, if the greatest talent 
 and ability were' decidedly on the side of their ad- 
 versaries, and they would have nothing but faith and 
 holiness to oppose to it." Hence one object of his 
 early attempts at his Roman History was the hope, 
 as he said, that its tone might be such " that the 
 strictest of what is called the Evangelical party 
 would not object to putting it into the hands of their 
 children." Hence again, his earnest desire to see 
 some leading periodical taking a decidedly religious 
 tone, unconnected with any party feeling : — 
 
 " It would be a most happy event," he writes in 18'22, 
 " if a work which has so great a sale, and contains so much 
 curious information, and has so much the tone of mm of 
 the world, [as the Quarterly Review,] could be disciplined 
 to a uniformly Christian spirit, and appear to uphold good 
 principles for their own sake, and not merely as tending to 
 the maintenance of things as they are. It would be de- 
 lightful to see a work sincerely Christian, which should be 
 neither High Church, nor what is called Evangelical." 
 
 The following extracts also exhibit more definitely 
 his approaches to his subsequent views : — 
 
 "What say you," he writes in 1S-27, to Dr. Whately, 
 " to a work on wo^iTixri, in the old Greek sense of the 
 word, in which I should try to apply the principles of the 
 Gospel to the legislation and administration of a state. It 
 would begin with a simple statement of the rsxofof man 
 according to Christianity, and then would go on to show
 
 48 LIFE OP ML ARNOLD. 
 
 how the knowledge of this rsMf would affect all our views 
 Of national wealth, and the whole question of political 
 economy ; and also our practice with regard to wars, oaths, 
 and various other relics of the croix^a- to*/ hqtiaou" 
 
 And to Mr. Blackstone in the same year: — 
 
 " T have long had in my mind a work on Christian 
 Politics, or the application of the Gospel to the state of 
 man as a citizen, in which the whole question of a reli- 
 gious establishment and of the education proper for Christ- 
 ian members of a Christian commonwealth would naturally 
 find a place. It would embrace also an historical sketch 
 of the pretended conversion of the kingdoms of the world 
 to the kingdom of Christ in the fourth and fifth centuries, 
 which I look upon as one of the greatest tours cPaddresse 
 that Satan ever played, except his invention of Popery. 
 I mean that by inducing kings and nations to conform 
 nominally to Christianity, and thus to get into their hands 
 the direction of Christian society, he has in a great mea- 
 sure succeeded in keeping out the peculiar principles of 
 that society from any extended sphere of operation, and 
 in ensuring the ascendancy of his own. One real conver- 
 sion there seems to have been, that of the Anglo-Saxons; 
 but that he soon succeeded in corrupting; and at the Nor- 
 man Conquest we had little I suppose to lose even from 
 the more direct introduction of Popery and worldly reli- 
 gion which came in with the Conqueror." 
 
 All these floating visions, which were not realized 
 till long afterwards, are for the time best represented 
 in the first volume of his Sermons, which were 
 preached in the parish church at Laleham, and form 
 by far the most characteristic record of this period. 
 
 " My object," he said in his Preface, " has been to bring 
 the great principles of the Gospel home to the hearts and 
 practices of my own countrymen in my own time — and
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 49 
 
 particularly to those of my own station in society, with 
 whose sentiments and language I am naturally most fami- 
 liar. And for this purpose, I have tried to write in such a 
 style as might be used in real life, in serious conyersation 
 with our friends, or with those who asked our advice ; in the 
 language, in short, of common life, and applied to the cases 
 of common life; but ennobled and strengthened by those 
 principles and feelings which are to be found only in the 
 Gospel." 
 
 This volume is not only in the time of its appear- 
 ance, but also in its style and substance, the best in- 
 troduction to all his later works ; the very absence of 
 any application to particular classes or states of opi- 
 nion, such as gives more interest to his subsequent 
 sermons, is the more fitted to exhibit his fundamental 
 views, often not developed in his own mind, in their 
 naked simplicity. And it is in itself worthy of notice. 
 as being the first or nearly the first attempt, since 
 followed in many other quarters, at breaking through 
 the conventional phraseology with which English 
 preaching had been so long encumbered, and at uniting 
 the language of reality and practical sense with 
 names and words which, in the minds of so many of 
 the educated classes, had become closely associated 
 with notions of sectarianism or extravagance. 
 
 It was published in ] 828, immediately after his re- 
 moval to Rugby, and had a rapid circulation. Many, 
 both then and long afterwards, who most differed 
 from some of his more peculiar opinions, rejoiced in 
 the possession of a volume which contained so much 
 in which the) agreed, and bo little from which they 
 differed; and the objections to its style or substance 
 may best be gathered from the following extracts' of 
 his own letter^ 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 .".(I LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 1. " If the sermons arc read, I do not care one farthing 
 if the readers think me the most unclassical writer in the 
 English language. It will only remove me to a greater 
 distance from the men of elegant minds with whom 1 shall 
 most loathe to be associated. But, however, I have looked 
 at the sermons again, with a view to correcting the baldness 
 which you complain of, and in some places I have endea- 
 voured to correct it. And I again assure you, that I will 
 not knowingly leave unaltered any thing violent, harsh, or 
 dogmatical. I am not conscious of the ex cathedra tone 
 of my sermons — at least not beyond what appears to me 
 proper in the pulpit, where one does in a manner speak 
 ex cathedra. But I think my decided tone is generally 
 employed in putting forward the sentiments of Scripture, 
 not in drawing my own conclusions from it." 
 
 2. In answer to a complaint that " they carry the 
 standard so high as to unchristianize half the community," 
 he says, " I do not see how the standard can be carried 
 higher than Christ or his Apostles carry it, and I do not 
 think that we ought to put it lower. I am sure that the 
 habitually fixing it so much lower, especially in all our in- 
 stitutions and public practice, has been most mischievous." 
 
 3. " I am very much gratified by what you say of my 
 sermons ; yet pained to find that their tone is generally 
 felt to be so hard and severe. I believe the reason is, that 
 I mostly thought of my pupils in preaching, and almost 
 always of the higher classes, who I cannot but think have 
 commonly very little of the ' bruised reed ' about them. 
 You must remember that I never had the regular care of 
 a parish, and therefore have seen comparatively little of 
 those cases of a troubled spirit, and of a fearful and 
 anxious conscience, which require comfort far more than 
 warning. But still, after all, I fear that the intense mercy 
 of the Gospel has not been so prominently represented as 
 it should have been, while I have been labouring to ex- 
 press its purity." 
 
 Meanwhile, his friends had frequently represented
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 51 
 
 to him the desirableness of a situation which Mould 
 secure a more certain provision, and a greater sphere 
 of usefulness than that which he occupied at Lale- 
 ham ; and he had been urged, more than once, to 
 stand for the mastership at Winchester, which he 
 had declined first from a distrust of his own fitness 
 or inclination for the office, and afterwards from more 
 general reasons. But the expense of the neighbour- 
 hood of Laleham had already determined him to leave 
 it, and he was framing plans for a change of life, 
 when, in August, 1827, the head-mastership of Rugby 
 became vacant by the resignation of Dr. Wooll, who 
 had held it for twenty-one years. It was not till late 
 in the contest for the situation that he finally re- 
 solved to offer himself as a candidate. When, there- 
 fore, his testimonials were sent in to the twelve 
 trustees, noblemen and gentlemen of Warwickshire, 
 in whom the appointment rests, the canvass for the 
 office had advanced so far as to leave him, in the 
 opinion of himself and many of his friends, but little 
 hope of success. On the day of the decision, the tes- 
 timonials of the several candidates were read over in 
 the order in which they had been sent in ; his own 
 were therefore among the last; and whilst none of 
 the trustees were personally acquainted witli him, 
 few if any of them, owing to the lateness of his ap- 
 pearance, had heard his name before. His testi- 
 monials Mere few in number, and most of them 
 couched in general language, but all speaking strongly 
 of his qualifications. Among>t them was a letter 
 from Dr. Hawkins, now Provost of Oriel, in which it 
 was predicted that, if Mr. Arnold were elected to the 
 head-mastership of Rugby, he would change the face 
 
 E 'J
 
 52 LIFE <>i DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 of education all through the public schools of* Eng- 
 land. The trustees had determined to be guided en- 
 tirely by the merits of the candidates, and the im- 
 pression produced upon them by this letter, and by 
 the general confidence in him expressed in all the 
 testimonials, was great and immediate, and accordingly 
 he was at once elected in December, 1827. In June, 
 1828, he received Priest's orders from Dr. Howley, 
 then bishop of London ; in April and November of the 
 same year took his degree of B.D. and D.D.; and in 
 August entered on his new office. 
 
 The following letters and extracts have been 
 selected, not so much as important in themselves, 
 but rather as illustrating the course of his thoughts 
 and general views at this period. 
 
 LETTERS FROM 1817 TO 1828. 
 
 TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ! - . 
 
 Oxford, May 28, 1817. 
 
 1 thank you very heartily for the kindness which 
 
 all your letter displays, and I cannot better show my sense 
 of it, than by telling you without reserve my feelings and 
 arguments on both sides of the question. The study of 
 the law, in many respects, I think I should like, and cer- 
 tainly it holds out better encouragement to any ambitious 
 particles which I may have in my nature, than the church 
 does. But I do not think, if I know myself, which per- 
 haps is begging an important question, that my sober in- 
 clinations would lead me to the law so much as to the 
 church. I am sure the church would be the best for me, 
 for as 1 hope never to enter it with light views, so the 
 forming my mind to a proper sense of the clerical duties, 
 and then an occasion and call for the practice of them
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. .'»3 
 
 immediately succeeding, would I trust be must beneficial 
 to me. To effect this, I have great advantages in the ad- 
 vice and example of many of my friends here in Oxford, 
 and whether I know myself or not is another question, but 
 I most sincerely feel that I could with most pleasure de- 
 vote myself to the employments of a clergyman ; and that 
 I never should for a moment put any prospects of ambi- 
 tion or worldly honour in competition with the safe happi- 
 ness which I think a clergyman's life would grant me. 
 Seriously, I am afraid of the law; 1 know how much <\i n 
 here 1 am led away by various occupations from those 
 studies and feelings which are essential to every man ; and 
 I dare not risk the consequences of such a necessary di- 
 version of mind from all religious subjects, as woidd be 
 caused by my attending to a study so engrossing as that 
 of law. To this I am sure in your eyes nothing need be 
 added ; but besides I doubt whether my health would sup- 
 port so much reading and confinement to the house; and 
 after all, knowing who are at this moment contending for 
 the prizes of the law, it would I think be folly to stake 
 much on the chance of my success. Again, my present 
 way of life enables me to be a great deal at home with my 
 mother, aunt, and sister, who are all so circumstanced, 
 that I should not think myself justified in lightly choosing 
 any occupation that would separate me greatly from them. 
 On the other hand, if I find that I cannot conscientiously 
 subscribe to the Articles of the Church, be assured I never 
 will go into orders, but even then i should doubt whether 
 I could support either the expense or labour of the law. 
 1 hope you have overrated my " ambitious disputatious 
 and democratical " propensities; if. indeed, I have not 
 more of the two first than of the last. I think 1 should not 
 
 hesitate about my fitness for the church, as far as they are 
 concerned. I think you have not quite a correct notion of 
 my political faith; perhaps I have not myself, bul I do not 
 think 1 am democratically inclined, and God forbid 1 
 should ever be such a clergvman as Home [ooke
 
 54 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 TO REV. GEORGE CORNISH. 
 
 Lalcham, September 20, 1819. 
 
 Poor dear old Oxford ! if I live till I am 
 
 eighty, and were to enjoy all the happiness that the 
 warmest wish eould desire, I should never forget, or cease 
 to look back with something of a painful feeling on the 
 years we were together there, and on all the delights that 
 we have lost ; and I look forward with extreme delight 
 to my intended journey down to the audit in October, 
 when I shall take a long and last farewell of my old haunts, 
 and will, if I possibly can, yet take one more look at Bag- 
 ley Wood, and the pretty field, and the wild stream that 
 flows down between Bullington and Cowley Marsh, not 
 forgetting even your old friend, the Lower London Road. 
 Well, I must endeavour to get some such associations to 
 combine with Laleham and its neighbourhood ; but at pre- 
 sent all is harsh and ruffled, like woods in a high wind, 
 only I am beginning to love my own little study, where I 
 have a sofa full of books, as of old, and the two verse 
 books lying about on it, and a volume of Herodotus ; and 
 where I sit up and read or write till twelve or one 
 o'clock 
 
 TO REV. JOHN TUCKER. 
 
 Laleham, November 20, 1819. 
 
 This day eight years, about this time, we were assembled 
 in the Junior Common Room, to celebrate the first founda- 
 tion of the room, and had been amused by hearing Bar- 
 tholomew's song about " Musical George," and " Political 
 Tommy," and now, of the party then assembled, you are 
 the only one still left in Oxford, and the rest of us are 
 scattered over the face of the earth to our several abodes. 
 There is a " souvenir interessant " for you, as a French- 
 man would say, and one full well fitted for a November 
 evening. But do you know that I am half disposed to 
 quarrel with you, instead of giving you " Souvenirs " — for
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 55 
 
 did you not covenant to write to me first ? 
 
 Indeed, in the pictures that I have to form of my future 
 life, my friends have always held a part ; and it has been 
 
 a great delight to me to think, that will feel doubly 
 
 and naturally bound to so many of them, 
 
 and the benefits which I have received 
 
 from my Oxford friendships have been so invaluable, as 
 relating to points of the very highest importance, that it is 
 impossible for me ever to forget them, or to cease to look 
 on them as the greatest blessings I have ever yet enjoyed 
 in life, and for which I have the deepest reason to be most 
 thankful. Being then separated from you all, I am most 
 anxious that absence should not be allowed to weaken the 
 regard we bear each other ; and besides, I cannot forego 
 that advice and assistance which I have so long been ac- 
 customed to rely on, and with which I cannot as yet at 
 least safely dispense : for the management of my own mind is 
 a thing so difficult, and brings me into contact with much 
 that is so strangely mysterious, that I stand at times quite 
 bewildered, in a chaos where I can see no light either be- 
 fore or behind. How much of all this is constitutional 
 and physical I cannot tell, perhaps a great deal of it ; yet 
 it is surely dangerous to look upon all the struggles of the 
 mind as arising from the state of the body or the weather, 
 and so resolve to bestow no attention upon them. Indeed, 
 I think I have far more reason to be annoyed at the extra- 
 ordinary apathy and abstraction from every thing good, 
 which the routine of the world's business brings with it j 
 there are whole days in which all the feelings or principles 
 of belief, or of religion altogether, are in utter abeyance : 
 when one goes on very comfortably, pleased with external 
 and worldly comforts, and yet would find it difficult, if told 
 to enquire, to find a particle of Christian principle in one's 
 whole mind. It seems all quite moved out bodily, and one 
 retains no consciousness of a belief in any one religious 
 truth, but is living a life of virtual Atheism. I BUppose 
 these things are equalized Bomehow, but I am often in-
 
 56 LIFE <>!•' DK. AK.NOLD. 
 
 clined to wonder at and to envy those who seem never to 
 know what mental trouble is, and who seem to have no- 
 thing else to disturb them than the common petty annoy- 
 ances of life, and when these let them alone, then they are 
 h Eu7raGeir]cn. But I would compound for all this, if I 
 could but find that I had any liking for what 1 ought to 
 like ; but there is the Sunday School here, for instance, 
 which I never visit without the strongest reluctance, and 
 really the thought of having this to do makes me quite 
 dread the return of the Sunday. I have got it now en- 
 tirely into my own hands, so attend it I must and will, if 
 I can answer for my perseverance, but it goes sadly against 
 me 
 
 TO .1. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. 
 
 Laleham, November 29, 1819. 
 
 At last I am going to redeem the promise which I made 
 so long ago, and to give you some account of our summa 
 reruni. I have had lately the additional work of a sermon 
 every week to write, and this has interfered very much with 
 mv correspondence ; and I fear 1 have not yet acquired that 
 careful economy of time which men in your profession 
 often so well practise, and do not make the most of all the 
 odd five and ten minutes' spaces which I get in the course 
 of the day. However, I have at last begun my letter, and 
 will first tell you that I still like my business very well, and 
 what is very comfortable, I feel far more confidence in myself 
 than I did at first, and should not now dread having the 
 sole management of pupils, which at one time I should have 
 shrunk from. (After giving an account of the joint arrange- 
 ment of the school and the pupils with his brother-in-law ;) 
 
 B is naturally fonder of the school, and is inclined 
 
 to give it the greatest part of his attention ; and I, from my 
 Oxford habits, as naturally like the other part of the busi- 
 ness best ; and thus I have extended my time of reading 
 with our four pupils in the morning before breakfast, from
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 57 
 
 one hour to two. Not that I dislike being in the school, 
 but quite the contrary ; still, however, I have not the expe- 
 rience in that sort of work, nor the perfect familiarity with 
 my grammar requisite to make a good master, and I cannot 
 teach Homer as well as my friends Herodotus and Livv, 
 whom I am now reading, I suppose, for about the fiftieth 
 time. 
 
 Nov. 30th. — I was interrupted last night in the middle 
 of my letter, and as the evening is my only time for such 
 occupations, it cannot now go till to-morrow. You shall 
 derive this benefit, however, from the interruption, that I 
 will trouble you with no more details about the trade ; a 
 subject which I find growing upon me daily, from the re- 
 tired life we are leading, and from my being so much en- 
 grossed by it. There are some very pleasant families set- 
 tled in this place besides ourselves ; they have been very 
 civil to us, and in the holidays I dare say we shall see much 
 of them, but at present I do not feel I have sufficient time 
 to make an acquaintance, and cannot readily submit to the 
 needful sacrifice of formal visits, &c, which must be the 
 prelude to a more familiar knowledge of any one. As it 
 is, my garden claims a good portion of my spare time in 
 the middle of the day, when I am not engaged at home or 
 taking a walk ; there is always something to interest me 
 even in the very sight of the weeds and litter, for then I 
 think how much improved the place will be when they are 
 removed ; and it is very delightful to watch the progress of 
 any work of this sort, and observe the gradual change from 
 disorder and neglect to neatness and finish. In the course 
 of the autumn 1 have done much in planting and altering, 
 but these labours are now over, and 1 have now only to 
 hope for a mild winter as far as the shrubs arc concerned, 
 that they may not all DC dead when the spring comes. Of 
 the country about us, especially on the Surrey side. I have 
 
 explored much ; but not nearly so much as 1 could wish. It 
 is eery beautiful, and Borne of the scenes at the junction of 
 
 the heath eountrv with the rich \ alle\ of the Thames are \ en
 
 58 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 striking. Or if I do not venture so far from home, I have 
 always a resource at hand in the bank of the river up to 
 Staines ; which, though it be perfectly flat, has yet a great 
 charm from its entire loneliness, there being not a house 
 anywhere near it ; and the river here has none of that stir 
 of boats and barges upon it, which makes it in many places 
 
 as public as the high road Of what is going on in the 
 
 world or anywhere indeed out of Laleham, I know little or 
 nothing. I can get no letters from Oxford, the common 
 
 complaint I think of all who leave it ; and if P did 
 
 not bring us sometimes a little news from Eton, and Hull 
 from London, I should really, when the holidays begin, 
 find myself six months behind the rest of the world. . . . 
 Don Juan has been with me for some weeks, but I am 
 determined not to read it, for I was so annoyed by some 
 specimens that I saw in glancing over the leaves, that I will 
 not worry myself with any more of it. I have read enough 
 of the debates since parliament has met to make me marvel 
 at the nonsense talked on both sides, though I am afraid 
 the opposition have the palm out and out. The folly or 
 the mischievous obstinacy with which they persist in pal- 
 liating the excesses of the Jacobins is really scandalous, 
 though I own I do not wish to see Carlton House trimming 
 
 up the constitution as if it were an hussar's uniform 
 
 I feel, however, growing less and less political. 
 
 TO REV. GEORGE CORNISH. 
 
 Laleham, February 23, 1820. 
 
 You must know that you are one of three 
 
 persons in the world to whom I hold it wrong to write 
 short letters ; that is to say, you are one of three on whom 
 I can find it in my heart to bestow all my tediousness ; and 
 therefore though February 23rd stands at the top of the 
 page, I do not expect that this sheet will be finished for some 
 time to come. The first thing I must say is to congratu- 
 late you ou Charles's appointment. If this letter reaches
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 59 
 
 you amid the pain of parting, congratulation will indeed 
 seem a strange word ; yet it is, I think, a matter of real 
 joy after all ; it is just what Charles seems best fitted for; 
 his principles and character you may fully depend on, and 
 India is of all fields of honourable ambition that this world 
 offers, to my mind the fairest. You know I always had a 
 sort of hankering after it myself, and but that I prefer 
 teaching Creek to learning Ilindoostanee, and fear there 
 is no immediate hope of the conquest of China, 1 
 should have liked to have seen the Ganges well. To 
 your family India must seem natural ground ; and for the 
 separation, painful as it must be, yet do we not all in 
 reality part almost as decisively with our friends when 
 we once settle in life, even though the ocean should not 
 divide us ? How little intercourse may I dare to anticipate 
 in after days with those who for so many years have been 
 almost my constant companions ; and how little have I 
 seen for several years past of my own brother ! But this 
 is prosing. If Charles be still with you, give him my kindest 
 remembrances, with every wish for his future happiness : 
 it already seems a dream to look back on the time when 
 he used to come to my rooms to read Herodotus. Tell 
 him I retain some of his scribbling on the pages of my 
 Hederic's Lexicon, which may many a time remind me of 
 him, when he is skirmishing perhaps with Mahrattas or 
 Chinese, and I am still going over the old ground of 
 'urTOfirig awofolij h$s. You talk to me of " cutting blocks 
 with a razor ;" indeed it does me no good to lead my mind 
 to such notions ; for to tell you a secret, I am quite enough 
 inclined of myself to feel above my work, which is very 
 wrong and very foolish. I believe I am usefully employed, 
 and 1 am sure I am employed more safely for myself than 
 if I had more time for higher studies; it does my mind a 
 marvellous deal of good, or ought to do, to be kept upon 
 bread and water. But be this as it may, and be the priee 
 
 that I am paying much <>r little, 1 cannot forget for what 
 
 1 am paying it. (After speaking of his future prospects.)
 
 60 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD: 
 
 Here, indeed, I sympathize with you in the fear that this 
 earthly happiness may interest me too deeply. The 
 hold which a man's affections have on him is the more 
 dangerous because the less suspected; and one may be- 
 come an idolater almost before one feels the least sense 
 of danger. Then comes the fear of losing the treasure, 
 which one may love too fondly ; and that fear is indeed 
 terrible. The thought of the instability of one's happiness 
 comes in well to interrupt its full indulgence ; and if often 
 entertained must make a man either an Epicurean or a 
 Christian in good earnest. Thank eleven o'clock for 
 stopping my prosing ! Good night, and God bless you ! 
 
 TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. 
 [in answer to criticisms on a review of poppo's OBSERVATIONS critic.e.] 
 
 Laleham Garden, April 25, 1821. 
 
 Now for your remarks on my Poppo. All 
 
 clumsiness in the sentences, and want of connexion be- 
 tween the parts, I will do my best to amend ; and the 
 censure on verbal criticism I will either soften or scratch 
 out entirely, for J. Keble objected to the same part. The 
 translations also I will try to improve, and indeed I am 
 aware of their baldness. The additions which you propose 
 I can make readily ; but as to the general plainness of the 
 style, I do not think I clearly see the fault which you 
 allude to, and to say the truth, the plainness, i. e. the 
 absence of ornament and long words, is the result of de- 
 liberate intention. At any rate, in my own case, I am 
 sure an attempt at ornament would make my style so 
 absurd that you would yourself laugh at it. I could not 
 do it naturally, for I have now so habituated myself to 
 that unambitious and plain way of writing, and absence of 
 Latin words as much as possible, that I could not write 
 otherwise without manifest affectation. Of course 1 do not 
 mean to justify awkwardnesses and clumsy sentences, of 
 which I am afraid my writings are too full, and all which
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. t!l 
 
 I will do my best to alter wherever you have marked them ; 
 but any thing like puff, or verbal ornament, I cannot bring 
 myself to. Richness of style I admire heartily, but this 1 
 cannot attain to for lack of power. All I could do would 
 be to produce a bad imitation of it, which seems to me 
 very ridiculous. For the same reason, I know not how to 
 make the review more striking ; I cannot make it so by 
 its own real weight and eloquence, and therefore I think 
 I should only make it offensive by trying to make it fine. 
 Do consider, what you recommend is a7i\u><; a^a-rov, but I 
 must do what is agiarov spot. You know you always told 
 me I should never be a poet, and in like manner I never 
 could be really eloquent, for 1 have not the imagination 
 or fulness of mind needful to make me so 
 
 TO REV. JOHN TUCKER. 
 
 Laleham, October 21, 1822. 
 
 Be assured there is nothing I would so gladly 
 
 do as set about a complete Ecclesiastical History ; and I 
 love to fancy myself so engaged at some future time if I 
 live : but to begin such a thing now would be utterly 
 desperate. The want of books alone, and my inability to 
 consult libraries, would be a sufficient hindrance. I have 
 read a new book lately, which is rather an event for mi', 
 Jowett's Christian Researches in the Mediterranean. You 
 know it of course, and I doubt not like it as much as I do, 
 which is very much indeed. It is a very wonderful and a 
 very beautiful thing to see the efforts made on so large a 
 scale, and with motives so pine, to diffuse all good both 
 temporal and spiritual ; and I suppose that the world is 
 gradually dividing more and more into two divided parties 
 of good and evil,— the lukewarm and the formal Christians 
 are, I imagine, daily becoming less numerous. I am 
 puzzled beyond measure what to think about Ireland. 
 
 What good can be done permanently with a people who 
 
 literally do make man's life as cheap as beasts' ; and who
 
 G'J LIFE OF !>K. AKN<)U>. 
 
 arc content to multiply in idleness and in such beggary 
 that the first failure of a crop brings them to starvation. 
 I would venture to say that luxury never did half so much 
 harm as the total indifference to comfort is doing in Ire- 
 land, by leading to a propagation of the human species in 
 a state of brutality. I should think that no country in the 
 world needs missionaries so much, and in none would their 
 success be so desperate 
 
 TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. 
 
 Laleham, March 3, 1823. 
 
 I do not know whether you have ever seen 
 
 John Keble's Hymns. He has written a great number for 
 most of the holidays and several of the Sundays in the 
 year, and I believe intends to complete the series. I live 
 in hopes that he will be induced to publish them ; and it 
 is my firm opinion that nothing equal to them exists in our 
 language : the wonderful knowledge of Scripture, the purity 
 of heart, and the richness of poetry which they exhibit, I 
 never saw paralleled. If they are not published it will be 
 a great neglect of doing good. 1 wish you could see them ; 
 the contemplation of them would be a delightful employ- 
 ment for your walks between Hadlow Street and the 
 
 Temple Have you heard any thing more about 
 
 's Roman History ? I am really anxious to know 
 
 what sort of man he is, and whether he will write like a 
 Christian or no ; if he will, I have not a wish to interfere 
 with him ; if not, I would labour very hard indeed to anti- 
 cipate him, and prevent an additional disgrace from being 
 heaped upon the historical part of our literature. 
 
 TO REV. JOHN TUCKER. 
 
 Laleham, February 22, 1S24. 
 
 My pupils all come up into the drawing-room 
 
 a little before tea, and stay for some time, some reading,
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. <!:> 
 
 others talking, playing chess or backgammon, looking at 
 pictures, &c. — a great improvement if it lasts; and if this 
 fair beginning continues, I care not a straw for the labour 
 of the half year, for it is not labour but vexation which 
 hurts a man, and I find my comfort depends more and 
 more on their good and bad conduct. They are an awful 
 charge, but still to me a very interesting one, and one 
 which I could cheerfully pursue till my health or faculties 
 fail me. Moreover, I have now taken up the care of the 
 Workhouse, i. e., as far as going there once a week, to 
 read prayers and give a sort of lecture upon some part of 
 the Bible. I wanted to see more of the poor people, and I 
 found that unless I devoted a regular time to it, I should 
 never do it, for the hunger for exercise on the part of my- 
 self and my horses, used to send me out riding as soon as 
 my work was done ; whereas now I give up Thursday to 
 the village, and it will be my own fault if it does not do me 
 more good than the exercise would. You have heard I 
 suppose of Trevenen's tour with me to Scotland. Inde- 
 pendent of the bodily good which it did me, and which I 
 really wanted, I have derived from it the benefit of getting 
 rid of some prejudices, for I find myself often thinking of 
 Edinburgh quite affectionately, so great was the kindness 
 which we met with there, and so pleasant and friendly 
 were most of the people with whom we became acquainted. 
 As to the scenery, it far surpassed all my expectations : 
 I shall never forget the effect of the setting sun on the 
 whole line of the Grampians, covered with snow, as we saw 
 them from the steam-boat on the Forth between Alloa and 
 Stirling. It was so delightful also to renew my acquaint- 
 ance with the English lakes, and with Wordsworth 
 
 I could lucubrate largely de omni scibili, but paper happily 
 runs short. I am very much delighted with the aspect of 
 the Session of Parliament, and see with hearty gratitude 
 the real reforms and the purer spirit of government which 
 this happy rest from war is every year I trust gradually 
 encouraging. The West India question is thorny : but
 
 CA LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 I suppose the Government may entrench upon individual 
 property for a great national benefit, giving a fair com- 
 pensation to the parties, just as is done in every Canal 
 Bill. Nay, 1 cannot see why the rights of the planters are 
 more sacred than those of the old despotic kings and 
 feudal aristocracies who were made to part with many 
 good things which they had inherited from their ancestors 
 because the original tenure was founded on wrong; and so 
 is all slavery, all West Indian slavery at least, most cer- 
 tainly. 
 
 TO W. W. HULL, ESQ. 
 
 Laleham, September 30, 1824. 
 
 I am now working at German in good earnest, 
 
 and have got a master, who comes down here to me once 
 a week. I have read a good deal of Julius Hare's friend 
 Niebuhr, and have found it abundantly overpay the labour 
 of learning a new language, to say nothing of some other 
 very valuable German books with which I am becoming 
 acquainted, all preparatory to my Roman History. I am 
 going to set to work at the " Coke upon Littleton " of 
 Roman law,— to make myself acquainted, if possible, with 
 the tenure of property ; and I think I shall apply to you 
 for the loan of some of your books touching the civil law, 
 and specially Justinian's Institutes. As my knowledge 
 increases, I only get a clearer insight into my ignorance ; 
 and this excites me to do my best to remove it before I 
 descend to the Averaus of the press. But I am twice the 
 man for labour that I have been lately, for the last year or 
 two, because the pupils, I thank God, are going on well ; 
 I have at this moment the pleasure of seeing three of them 
 sitting at the round table in the drawing-room, all busily 
 engaged about their themes ; and the general good effect 
 of their sitting with us all the evening is really very sur- 
 prising.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 65 
 
 TO HHV. JOHN TUCKF.R. 
 
 Laleham, April 5, 1825. 
 
 I am getting pretty well to understand the 
 
 history of the Roman Kings, and to be ready to com- 
 mence writing. One of my most useful books is dear old 
 Tottle's [Aristotle's] Politics ; which give one so full a notion 
 of the state of society and opinions in old times, that by 
 their aid one can pick out the wheat from the chaff* in Livy 
 with great success. Mr. Penrose has lately mentioned a 
 work by a Mr. Cooper, in which he applies the prophecies 
 in the eleventh chapter of Daniel to Buonaparte. — Have 
 you read the work yourself? My own notion is, that peo- 
 ple try to make out from prophecy too much of a detailed 
 history, and thus I have never seen a single commentator 
 who has not perverted the truth of history to make it fit 
 the prophecy. I think that with the exception of those 
 prophecies which relate to our Lord, the object of pro- 
 phecy is rather to delineate principles and states of 
 opinion which shall come, than external events. I grant 
 that Daniel seems to furnish an exception, and 1 do not 
 know how Mr. Cooper has done his work ; but in general, 
 commentaries or expositions of the prophecies give me a 
 painful sense of unfairness in their authors, in straining 
 the facts to agree with the imagined prediction of them. 
 Have you seen Cobbett's " History of the Protestant Re- 
 formation," which he is publishing monthly in threepenny 
 numbers ? It is a queer compound of wickedness and 
 ignorance with strong sense and the mention of divers 
 truths which have been too much disguised or kept in the 
 back ground, but which ought to be generally known. Its 
 object is to represent the Reformation in England as a 
 great national evil, accomplished by all kinds of robbery 
 and cruelty, and tending to the impoverishment and misery 
 of the poor, and to the introduction of a careless clergy 
 and a spirit of ignorance and covetousness amongsl everj 
 
 body. It made me groan, while reading it. to think that 
 VOL. I. I
 
 66 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 the real history and effects of the Reformatio]) are so little 
 known, and the evils of the worldly policy of Somerset's 
 and Elizabeth's government so little appreciated. As it 
 is, Cobbett's book can do nothing but harm, so bad is its 
 spirit, and so evident its unfairness. 
 
 TO REV. GEORGE CORNISH. 
 
 Florence, July 15, 1825. 
 1 wish 1 could tell you something about the people, — 
 but how is it possible, travelling at the rate that we are 
 obliged to do ? We see, of course, the very worst speci- 
 mens — innkeepers, postillions, and beggars; and one is thus 
 in danger of getting an unfavourable impression of the in- 
 habitants in spite of one's judgment. A matter of more se- 
 rious thought, and on which I am vainly trying to procure 
 information, is the condition of the lower orders. 1 have 
 long had a suspicion that Cobbett's complaints of the de- 
 gradation and sufferings of the poor in England contained 
 much truth, though uttered by him in the worst possible 
 spirit. It is certain that the peasantry here are much more 
 generally proprietors of their own land than with us ; and 
 I should believe them to be much more independent and 
 in easier circumstances. This is, I believe, the grand 
 reason why so many of the attempts at revolution have 
 failed in these countries. A revolution would benefit the 
 lawyers, the savans, the merchants, bankers, and shop- 
 keepers, but I do not see what the labouring classes would 
 gain by it. For them the work has been done already, in 
 the destruction of the feudal tyranny of the nobility and 
 great men ; and, in my opinion, this blessing is enough to 
 compensate the evils of the French Revolution ; for the 
 good endures, while the effects of the massacres and de- 
 vastations are fast passing away. It is my delight every- 
 where to see the feudal castles in ruins, never, I trust, to 
 be rebuilt or reoccupied; and in this respect the watch-
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 67 
 
 word " Guerre aux chateaux, Paix aux Chaumieres," was 
 prophetic of the actual result of the French Revolution. 
 1 am sure that we have too much of the oligarchical spirit 
 in England, both in church and state ; and I think that 
 those one-eyed men, the political economists, encourage 
 this by their language about national wealth, &c. Toute- 
 fois, there is much good in the oligarchical spirit as it 
 exists in England 
 
 TO RKV. GEORGE CORNISH. 
 
 Laleham, October 18, 1825. 
 
 I have also seen some sermons preached before the Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge, by a Mr. Rose, directed against the 
 German Theologians, in the advertisement to which he 
 attacks my article in the Quarterly with great vehemence. 
 .... He is apparently a good man, and his book is likely, 
 I think, to do good ; but it does grieve me to find persons 
 of his stamp quarrelling with their friends when there are 
 more than enough of enemies in the world for every Christ- 
 ian to strive against. I met five Englishmen at the public 
 table at our inn at Milan, who gave me great matter for co- 
 gitation. One was a clergyman, and just returned from 
 Egypt; the rest were young men,i. e. between twenty-five 
 and thirty, and apparently of no profession. I may safely 
 say, that since I was an under-graduate, I never heard any 
 conversation so profligate as that which they all indulged in, 
 the clergyman particularly ; indeed, it was not merely gross, 
 but avowed principles of wickedness, such as I do not re- 
 member ever to have heard in Oxford. But what stnick 
 me most wa8, that with this sensuality there was united 
 some intellectual activity,— -they were not ignorant, but 
 seemed bent on gaining a great variety of solid information 
 from their travels. Now this union of vice and intellectual 
 power and knowledge seems to me rather a sign of the age, 
 
 and if it goes on, it threatens to produce one of the most 
 
 fearful forms of Antichrist which has jei appeared. I am 
 
 r 2
 
 lis LIFE OK DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 sure that the great prevalence of travelling fosters this spi- 
 rit, not that men learn mischief from the French or Ita- 
 lians, but because they are removed from the check of 
 public opinion, and are, in fact, self-constituted outlaws, 
 neither belonging to the society which they have left, nor 
 taking a place in that of the countries where they are tra- 
 velling. What I saw also of the Pope's religion in his own 
 territories excited my attention a good deal. Monkery 
 seems flourishing there in great force, and the abomina- 
 tions of their systematic falsehoods seem as gross as ever. 
 In France, on the contrary, the Catholics seemed to me to 
 be Christians, and daily becoming more and more so. In 
 Italy they seem to me to have no more title to the name 
 than if the statues of Venus and Juno occupied the place 
 of those of the Virgin. It is just the old Heathenism, 
 and, as I should think, with a worse system of deceit 
 
 TO REV. E. HAWKINS. 
 
 Laleham, October 22, 1826. 
 
 You know, I believe, that I am at work upon Thucydides, 
 and that it ought to be ready, if possible, by the beginning 
 of Lent Term. I wish much to get the judgments of seve- 
 ral men of different qualifications as to what I have already 
 completed. I should like to have the opinion of a pro- 
 fessed scholar as to the critical part; of a man deeply 
 versed in Greek history and law as to the historical and 
 antiquarian part, and particularly to tell me whether there 
 are any points connected with Thucydides which require 
 a particular discussion, and which I may have omitted in 
 pure ignorance ; and thirdly, I want the judgment of a man 
 of plain sense, to tell me what he thinks superfluous, and 
 what deficient, in the notes which I have given. Do you 
 think that you could do any thing for me on these points, 
 if I were to send you down the MS. of the first two books ;
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. (>i) 
 
 and remember that I want to have full and free censures, 
 reserving to myself, of course, the privilege of following 
 them or not, as I shall see cause, but promising to give 
 them the fullest attention. I think I might rely on the 
 Provost's being kind enough to give me his criticisms, as 
 he has already done it to some of the earlier chapters, and 
 almost all his suggestions are such as I shall thankfully 
 follow. 1 am a little anxious that our Oxford edition of 
 Thucydidcs should be as good as any which they are pub- 
 lishing in Germany. 
 
 TO KEV. JOHN TUCKER. 
 
 Laleham, March 4, 1827. 
 1 meant to have written almost immediately upon my re- 
 turn home from Kent; for delightful as is the recollection 
 of my short visit to you on every other ground, I was, and 
 have been ever since, a good deal annoyed by some part of 
 our conversation, i. e. by observing the impression pro- 
 duced on your mind by some of the opinions which I ex- 
 pressed. It is to me personally a very great pain that 1 
 should have excited feelings of disapprobation in the mind 
 of a man whom I so entirely approve and love, and yet 
 that I cannot feel the disapprobation to be deserved, and 
 therefore cannot remove the cause of it. And on more 
 general grounds it makes me fear, that those engaged in 
 the same great cause will never heartily sink their little 
 differences of opinion, when I find that you, who have 
 known me so long, cannot hear them without thinking them 
 not merely erroneous, but morally wrong, and such, there- 
 fore, as give you pain when uttered. 1 am not in the least 
 going to renew the argument ; it is very likely that I was 
 wrong in it ; and I am sure it would not annoy me that you 
 should think me so, just as I may think you wrong in any 
 point, or as I think J. Keble wrong in half an hundred, yet 
 without being grieved that he should hold them, that is,
 
 70 LIFE OF DK. ARNOLD. 
 
 grieved as at a fault. You may say that a great many 
 erroneous opinions imply no moral fault at all, but that 
 mine did, namely, the fault of an unsubmissive understand- 
 ing. But it seems to me that of all faults, this is the most 
 difficult to define or to discern: for who shall say where 
 the understanding ought to submit itself, unless where it 
 is inclined to advocate any thing immoral ? We know that 
 what in one age has been called the spirit of rebellious 
 reason, has in another been allowed by all good men to 
 have been nothing but a sound judgment exempt from 
 superstition. We know that the Catholics look with as 
 great horror on the consequences of denying the infallibi- 
 lity of the Church as you can do on those of denying the 
 entire inspiration of the Scriptures ; and that, to come 
 nearer to the point, the inspiration of the Scriptures in 
 points of physical science was once insisted on as stoutly 
 as it is now maintained with regard to matter of history. 
 Now it maybe correct to deny their inspiration in one and 
 not in the other ; but I think it is hard to ascribe the one 
 opinion to any thing morally faulty more than the other. 
 I am far from thinking myself so good a man by many de- 
 grees as you are. I am not so advanced a Christian. But 
 I am sure that my love for the Gospel is as sincere, and 
 my desire to bring every thought into the obedience of 
 Christ is one which I think I do not deceive myself in be- 
 lieving that I honestly feel. It is very painful, therefore, 
 to be suspected of paying them only a divided homage, or 
 to be deficient in reverence to Him whom every year that 
 I live my whole soul and spirit own with a more entire cer- 
 tainty and love. Let me again say, that I am neither de- 
 fending the truth of the particular opinions which I ex- 
 pressed to you, nor yet disavowing them. I only think 
 that it is a pity that they should shock you ; as I think we 
 ought to know one another's principles well enough by this 
 time, not certainly to make us acquiesce in all each other's 
 opinions, but to be satisfied that they may be entertained 
 innocently, and that, therefore, we may differ from each other
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 71 
 
 without pain. But enough of this ; only it has annoyed roe 
 a great deal, and has made me doubt where I can find a 
 person to whom I may speak freely if 1 cannot do so even 
 to you. 
 
 LETTERS RELATING TO THE ELECTION AT RUGBY. 
 
 TO REV. E. HAWKINS. 
 
 Lalehara, October 21, 1827. 
 
 1 feel most sincerely obliged to you and my other friends 
 
 in Oxford for the kind interest which you show in my be- 
 half, in wishing to procure for me the head-mastership at 
 Rugby. Of its being a great deal more lucrative than my 
 present employment I have no doubt ; nor of its being in 
 itself a situation of more extensive usefulness; but I do 
 doubt whether it would be so in my hands, and how far I 
 am fitted for the place of head-master of a large school. 
 I confess that I should very much object to un- 
 dertake a charge in which I was not invested with pretty 
 full discretion. According to my notions of what large 
 schools arc, founded on all I know and all I have ever 
 heard of them, expulsion should be practised much oftener 
 than it is. Now, 1 know that trustees, in general, are 
 averse to this plan, because it has a tendency to lessen the 
 numbers of the school, and they regard quantity more than 
 quality. In fact, my opinions on this point might, perhaps, 
 generally be considered as disqualifying me for the situ- 
 ation of master of a great school ; yet I could not consent to 
 tolerate much that I know is tolerated generally , and, there- 
 fore, I should not like to enter on an office which I could 
 not discharge according to my own views of what is right. 
 I do not believe mj self, that my system would be, in fact, a 
 cruel or a harsh one, and I believe that with mueli care on 
 the part of the masters, it would be seldom necessary to 
 
 proceed to the ratio ultima ; <>nl \ 1 would have it clearly
 
 ("2 LIFE OF l>K. ARNOLD. 
 
 understood, that I would most unscrupulously resort to it, 
 at whatever inconvenience, where there was a perseverance 
 in any habit inconsistent with a hoy's duties 
 
 TO KEV. GEOKGE COBNISH. 
 
 Laleham, November 30, 1827. 
 You have often wanted me to be master at Winchester, 
 so I think you will be glad to hear that I am actually a 
 candidate for Rugby. I was strongly urged to stand, and 
 money tempted me, but I cannot in my heart be sorry to 
 stay where both M. and myself are so entirely happy. If I 
 do get it, I feel as if I could set to work very heartily, and, 
 with God's blessing, I should like to try whether my notions 
 of Christian education are really impracticable, whether 
 our system of public schools has not in it some noble ele- 
 ments which, under the blessing of the Spirit of all holiness 
 and wisdom, might produce fruit even to life eternal. When 
 I think about it thus, I really long to take rod in hand ; but 
 when I think of the tt^ o; to rexog, the perfect vileness which 
 I must daily contemplate, the certainty that this can at best 
 be only partially remedied, the irksomeness of " fortemque 
 Gyan fortemque Cloanthum," and the greater form and pub- 
 licity of the life which we should there lead, when I could 
 no more bathe daily in the clear Thames, nor wear old 
 coats and Russia duck trousers, nor hang on a gallows a , 
 nor climb a pole, I grieve to think of the possibility of a 
 change ; but as there are about thirty candidates, and I 
 only applied very late, I think I need not disquiet myself. 
 
 TO KEV. E. HAWKINS. (AFTER THE ELECTION.) 
 
 Laleham, December 28, 1S27. 
 Your kind little note ought not to have remained thus 
 long unanswered, especially as you have a most particular 
 
 a His gymnastic exercises.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. , '.) 
 
 claim on my thanks for your active kindness in the whole 
 business, and for your character of me to Sir H. Halford, 
 that I was likely to improve generally the system of public 
 education, a statement which Sir II. Halford told me had 
 weighed most strongly in my favour. You would not, I 
 am sure, have recommended me, if you had supposed that 
 I should alter things violently or for the pleasure of alter- 
 ing ; but, as I have at different times expressed in convers- 
 ation my disapprobation of much of the existing system, 
 I find that some people expect that I am going to sweep 
 away root and branch, quod absit ! I need not tell you 
 how wholly unexpected this result has been to us, and I 
 hope I need not say also what a solemn and almost over- 
 whelming responsibility I feel is imposed on me. I would 
 hope to have the prayers of my friends, together with my 
 own, for a supply of that true wisdom which is required 
 for such a business. To be sure, how small in comparison 
 is the importance of my teaching the boys to read Greek, 
 and how light would be a schoolmaster's duty if that were 
 all of it. Yet, if my health and strength continue as they 
 have been for the last eight years, I do not fear the labour, 
 and really enjoy the prospect of it. I am so glad that we 
 are likely to meet soon in Oxford. 
 
 TO REV. JOHN TUCKER. 
 
 Laleham, March '2. 
 
 With regard to reforms at Rugby, give me credit, I must 
 beg <>f you, for a most sincere desire to make it a place of 
 Christian education. At the same time my object will be, if 
 possible, to form Christian men, for Christian boys I can 
 scarcely hope to make; I mean that, from the natural im- 
 perfect state of boyhood, thej arc not susceptible of 
 
 Christian principles in their lull development upon their 
 
 practice, and 1 suspect that a low standard of morals in
 
 /4 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 many respects must be tolerated amongst them, as it was 
 on a larger scale in what I consider the boyhood of the 
 human race. But I believe that a great deal maybe done, 
 and I should be most unwilling to undertake the business, 
 if I did not trust that much might be done. Our impres- 
 sions of the exterior of every thing that we saw during our 
 visit to Dr. Wooll in January, were very favourable; at 
 the same time that I anticipate a great many difficulties in 
 the management of affairs, before they can be brought 
 into good train. But both M. and myself, I think, are 
 well inclined to commence our work, and if my health and 
 strength be spared me, I certainly feel that in no situation 
 could I have the prospect of employment so congenial to 
 my taste and qualifications ; that is, supposing always that 
 I find that I can manage the change from older pupils to 
 a school. Your account of yourself was most delightful : 
 my life for some years has been one of great happiness, 
 but I fear not of happiness so safe and permitted. I am 
 hurried on too fast in the round of duties and of domestic- 
 enjoyments, and I greatly feel the need, and shall do so 
 even more at Rugby, unless I take heed in time, of stopping 
 to consider my ways, and to recognise my own infinite 
 weakness and unworthiness. 1 have read the " Letters on 
 the Church," and reviewed them in the Edinburgh Review 
 for September 1826, if you care to know what I think of 
 them. I think that any discussion on church matters must 
 do good, if it is likely to lead to any reform ; for any 
 change, such as is within any human calculation, would be 
 
 an improvement. What might not do, if he would set 
 
 himself to work in the House of Lords, not to patch up 
 this hole or that, but to recast the whole corrupt system, 
 which in many points stands just as it did in the worst 
 times of popery, only reading " King " or " Aristocracy," 
 in the place of " Pope."
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 75 
 
 TO REV. F. C. BLACKSTONE. 
 
 Lalehain, March 14, 1828. 
 
 We are resigning private pupils, I imagine, 
 
 with very different feelings ; you looking forward to a life 
 of less distraction, and I to one of far greater, insomuch 
 that all here seems quietness itself in comparison with 
 what I shall meet with at Rugby. . . . There will be a 
 great deal to do, I suspect, in every way, when I first 
 enter <>n my situation ; but still, if my health continues, I 
 do not at all dread it, but on the contrary look forward to 
 it with much pleasure. I have long since looked upon 
 education as my business in life; and just before I stood 
 for Rugby, I had offered myself as a candidate for the 
 historical professorship at the London University ; and 
 had indulged in various dreams of attaching myself to 
 that institution, and trying as far as possible to influence 
 it. In Rugby there is a fairer field, because I start with 
 greater advantages. You know that I never ran down 
 public schools in the lump, but grieved that their exceed- 
 ing capabilities were not turned to better account; and if 
 I find myself unable in time to mend what 1 C( msider 
 faulty in them, it will at any rate be a practical lesson to 
 teach me to judge charitably of others who do not reform 
 public institutions as much as is desirable. I suppose 
 that you have not regarded all the public events of the 
 last few months without some interest. My views of things 
 certainly become daily more reforming; and what I above 
 all other things wish to see is, a close union between 
 Christian reformers and those who are often, as 1 think, 
 falsely charged with being enemies of Christianity. It is 
 a part of the perfection of the Gospel that it is attractive 
 to all those who Love truth and goodness, as soon as it is 
 known in its true nature, whilst it tends to clear awa\ 
 those erroneous views and evil passions with which phi- 
 lanthropy and philosophy, so long as they stand aloof 
 from it, are ever in some degree corrupted. \\\ feeling
 
 70 LIFE OF Dl{. ARNOLD. 
 
 towards men whom I believe to be sincere lovers of truth 
 and the happiness of their fellow creatures, while they 
 seek these ends otherwise than through the medium of 
 the Gospel, is rather that they are not far from the 
 kingdom of God, and might be brought into it altogether, 
 than that they are enemies whose views are directly op- 
 posed to our own. That they are not brought into it is, I 
 think, to a considerable degree, chargeable upon the 
 professors of Christianity ; the high Church party seeming 
 to think that the establishment in Church and State is all 
 in all, and that the Gospel principles must be accommo- 
 dated to our existing institutions, instead of offering a 
 pattern by which those institutions should be purified ; 
 and the Evangelicals by their ignorance and narrow- 
 mindedness, and their seeming wish to keep the world 
 and the Church ever distinct, instead of labouring to de- 
 stroy the one by increasing the influence of the other, 
 and making the kingdoms of the world indeed the king- 
 doms of Christ. 
 
 TO AUGUSTUS HARE, ESQ. 
 
 Laleham, March 7, 1828. 
 
 I trust that you have recovered your accident 
 
 at Perugia, and that you are enabled to enjoy your stay at 
 that glorious Rome. I think that I have never written to 
 you since my return from it last spring, when I was so 
 completely overpowered with admiration and delight at 
 the matchless beauty and solemnity of Rome and its 
 neighbourhood. But I think my greatest delight after all 
 was in the society of Bunsen, the Prussian minister at Rome. 
 
 He reminded me continually of you more than 
 
 of any other man whom I know, and chiefly by his entire 
 and enthusiastic admiration of every thing great and 
 excellent and beautiful, not stopping to see or care for 
 minute faults ; and though I cannot rid myself of that 
 critical propensity, yet I can heartily admire and almost 
 envy those who are without it 1 have derived great
 
 LIFE OF PR. ARNOLD. t / 
 
 benefit from sources of information, that your brother lias 
 at different times recommended to me, and the perusal of 
 some of his articles in the " Guesses at Truth " has made 
 me exceedingly desirous of becoming better acquainted 
 with him, as I am sure that his conversation would be 
 really profitable to me in the highest sense of the word, 
 as well as delightful. And I have a double pleasure in 
 saying this, because I did not do him justice formerly in 
 niv estimate of him, and am anxious to do myself justice 
 now by saying that I have learnt to judge more truly. 
 You will have heard of my changed prospects in conse- 
 quence of my election at Rugby. It will be a severe 
 pang to me to leave Laleham ; but otherwise I rejoice in 
 my appointment, and hope to be useful, if life and health 
 
 are spared me I think of going to Leipsic, Dresden, 
 
 and Prague, to worship the Elbe and the country of John 
 Huss and Zisca. All here unite in kindest remembrances 
 to you, and T wish you could convey to the very stones 
 and air of Rome the expression of my fond recollection 
 for them. 
 
 TO KKV. JUHN TUCKEH. 
 
 L;ileham, May 25, 1828. 
 (After speaking of Mr. Tucker's proposed intention 
 of going as a missionary to India.) If you should go 
 to India before we have an opportunity of meeting 
 again, I would earnestly beg of you not to go away 
 with the notion, which I sometimes fear that my oldest 
 friends are getting of me, that I am become a hard 
 man, given up to literary and scholastic pursuits, and 
 full of worldly and political views of things. It has given 
 me very great pain to think that some of those whom I most 
 love, and with whom I would most fain be one in spirit, 
 regard my views of things as jarring with their own, and 
 are losing towards me that feeling of Christian brother- 
 hood which I think they once entertained. I am not in 
 the slightest degree speaking of any offence given or re-
 
 78 LIFE OF DE. AENOLD. 
 
 ceived, or any personal decay of regard ; but I fancy they 
 look upon me as not quite one with themselves, and as 
 having my affections fixed upon lower objects. Assuredly 
 I have no right to regret that I should be thought de- 
 ficient in points in which I know I am deficient ; but I 
 would most earnestly protest against being thought wil- 
 fully and contentedly deficient in them, and not caring to 
 be otherwise. And I cannot help fearing that my convers- 
 ation with you last winter twelvemonth led you to some- 
 thing, at least, of a similar impression. 
 
 TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. 
 
 Laleham, April 24, 1828. 
 
 It seems an age since I have seen you or written to you. 
 
 I could really be half romantic, yet I do not 
 
 know that I ought to use any such equivocal epithet. When 
 I think how little intercourse I hold with my most valued 
 friends, it is almost awful to feel the tendencies of life to 
 pare down one's affections and feelings to the minimum 
 compatible with any thing like humanity. There is one's 
 trade and one's family, and beyond it seems as if the great 
 demon of worldly-mindedness would hardly allow one to 
 bestow a thought or care. 
 
 But, if it please God, I will not sink into this state with- 
 out some struggles, at least, against it. I saw Dyson the 
 other day in Oxford, where 1 went to take my degree of 
 B.D., and he and his wife were enough to freshen one's 
 spirit for some time to come. I wish that you and I could 
 meet oftener, and, instead of that, I fear that when I am at 
 Rugby we shall meet even seldomer ; but I trust that we 
 
 shall meet sometimes still The coming parting 
 
 is a sad cloud both to them and to us. Still, without any 
 affectation, I believe that John Keble is right, and that it 
 is good for us to leave Laleham, because I feel that we are 
 daily getting to regard it as too much of a home. I can-
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 79 
 
 not tell you how we both love it, and its perfect peace 
 seems at times an appalling contrast to the publicity of 
 Rugby. I am sure that nothing could stifle this regret, 
 woe it not for my full consciousness that I have nothing 
 to do with rest here, but with labour ; and then I can and 
 do look forward to the labour with nothing but satisfac- 
 tion, if my health and faculties be still spared to me. 
 
 I went down to Rugby, a fortnight since, to meet the 
 trustees. The terms of the school, which were far too 
 low, have been raised on my representation ; and there is 
 some possibility of my being put into the situation of the 
 head-masters of Eton and Westminster, that is, to have 
 nothing to do with any boarders. I have got six maps for 
 Thueydides, all entirely original, and I have nearly finished 
 half of the last book ; so that I hope I may almost say 
 " Italiam ! Italiam !" 
 
 To RBV. P. C. BLACKSTONB. 
 
 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, 1 thought that I already 
 
 began to feel it as my home There will be enough to 
 
 do, I imagine, without any addition ; though 1 reall) feel very 
 sanguine as to my own relish for the work, and think that 
 it will come more naturally to me than 1 at first imagined. 
 May God grant that 1 may labour with an entire confi- 
 dence in Him, and with none in myself without Him. . . .
 
 SO LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 TO W. W. HULL, ESQ. 
 
 Laleham, July 29, 1828. 
 
 I never would publish a 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 any thing 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 I do wish to do my utmost in it, 
 
 and not to throw difficulties in my own way by any impru- 
 dence. This, of course, would apply either to minor points, 
 or to those on which I distrusted my own competent know- 
 ledge. Where I am fully decided on a matter of conse- 
 quence, 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 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. 
 
 ■ In allusion to the first volume of his Sermons, which was now 
 in the process of puhlication.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 81 
 
 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 Leice- 
 ster coach from Oxford to Rugby. Our goods and chat- 
 tels, 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 happi- 
 ness 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 fear- 
 ful consideration; and yet that 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 nut afraid of, if I 
 can get my proper exercise; but I want absolute play, like B 
 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 tins entire relaxation, I think, at 
 intervals, such again as my foreign tonrs have afforded . 
 VOL. 1. Q
 
 82 LIFE OF DE. ARNOLD. 
 
 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 1 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 Hived 
 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 con- 
 sequences of his opinion ; but I do not want to be misun- 
 derstood, and accused of omitting things which I do not 
 omit 
 
 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 Lale- 
 ham 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. Some- 
 thing must, indeed, be forgiven to the natural inclina- 
 tion 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 inde- 
 pendently 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 giving not merely a general, but 
 a particular 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 
 
 G 2
 
 9 I LIFE OF Dii. ARNOLD. 
 
 whicb 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 at- 
 tacks 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 sons of the 
 whole English aristocracy, 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 ex- 
 tensive improvement. 
 
 It was at this juncture that Dr. Arnold was elected 
 head-master of a school which, whilst it presented a 
 fair average specimen of the public schools at that
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 85 
 
 time, yet by the nature of the institution 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 situation itself, in spite of 
 the publicity, and to a certain degree formality, which 
 it entailed upon him, was in many respects remark- 
 ably 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 
 it; 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 spheres compara- 
 tively uncongenial to their reception. 
 
 Even his general interest in public matters was 
 not without its use in his new station. Many, in- 
 deed, 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 lit to 
 be a statesman should be employed in teaching school- 
 boys." " What a shame," it was said on the other 
 hand, " that the head-master of Rugby should be 
 employed in writing essays and pamphlets/' lint, 
 even had there been no connexion between the 
 two spheres of his interest, and had the inconve- 
 nience 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 ;iv 
 he did ; ami he could not have endured t«> live under 
 the grievance of remaining silent on subjects, in
 
 80* LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 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 im- 
 portance. 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 prin- 
 ciples 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 gene- 
 ral temple in ruins, and see whether they could not, 
 within the walls of their own little particular congre- 
 gation," endeavour to realize what he believed to be 
 its true idea ; " what use they could make of the ves- 
 tiges of it still left amongst themselves — common 
 reading of the Scriptures, common prayer, and the 
 communion." (Serm. vol. iv. 266. 316.) Thus, 
 " whatever of striking good or evil happened in any 
 part of the wide range of English dominion" — " de- 
 clared on what important scenes some of his own 
 scholars might be called upon to enter," " whatever
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. ^7 
 
 now and important things took place in the world of 
 thought," suggested the hope "that they, when they 
 went forth amidst the strife 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 sim- 
 plest relations of the boys towards each other, or 
 towards him. 
 
 In entering upon his office he naturally met with 
 difficulties, many of which have since that time 
 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 onee attain its full maturity. He was a 
 long time feeling his way amongst the various in- 
 stitutions which he formed or invented ; — he was 
 constantly striving after an ideal standard of per- 
 fection, which he was conscious that he had never at- 
 tained ; to the improvements which, in a short time, 
 began to take place in other schools — to those at 
 Harrow, under his friend Dr. Longley, and to those 
 at Winchester, under Dr. Moberly, to which he al- 
 luded 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
 
 88 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 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 of 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 sys- 
 tem. " He wakes every morning," it was said of him, 
 " with the impression that every thing is an open ques- 
 tion." 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 every thing, and at times went 
 so far as almost to bear the appearance of inventing 
 universal rules with the express object of meeting 
 particular cases. Still, if in smaller matters it gave 
 an occasional impression of fancifulness or incon- 
 sistency, it was, in greater matters, one chief cause
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 89 
 
 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, in like manner, and his contempt for 
 worldly advantage, sometimes led him to require 
 from others more than might be reasonably expected 
 from them, and himself to adopt measures which the 
 world at large was sure to misinterpret, whilst at the 
 same time 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 whatever 
 were the temporary exasperations and excitements 
 thus produced in his dealings with others, they were 
 gradually removed by the increasing control over him- 
 self and his work which he acquired in later yens. 
 The readiness which he showed to acknowledge a
 
 1)0 LIFE OF DE. ARNOLD. 
 
 fault when once convinced of it, as well as to per- 
 severe in kindness even when he thought himself in- 
 jured, 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 appre- 
 ciated without remembering how, in the end of his 
 career, he rallied round him the public feeling, which 
 in its beginning and middle, from causes not here 
 necessary to be described, 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 the active support and 
 personal friendliness with which he was met by 
 them, he from the first maintained that in the actual 
 working of the school he must be completely inde- 
 pendent, and that their remedy, if they were dissatis- 
 fied, 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 him- 
 self, but to the master of every foundation school in 
 England." 
 
 To the co-operation of his assistant masters he at 
 once looked as essential to his own success. It was 
 one of his main objects to increase in all possible 
 ways their importance. What he was in his depart- 
 ment, he wished every one of them to be in theirs.
 
 LIFE OF Dlt. ARNOLD. 91 
 
 By raising their salaries he obviated the necessity of 
 their taking any parochial duty which should divert 
 their attention from the school, and procured from 
 the Bishop of the diocese the acknowledgment of 
 their situations as titles for orders. A system of 
 weekly councils was established, in which all school 
 matters were discussed, and he seldom or never acted 
 in any important point of school discipline without 
 consulting them ; and it was his endeavour, partly by 
 placing the boarding-houses under their care, partly 
 by an elaborate system of private tuition, which was 
 introduced with this express purpose, to encourage a 
 pastoral and friendly relation between them and the 
 several classes of boys intrusted to them ; and he 
 laboured generally to inspire them with the same 
 views of education and of life by which he was ani- 
 mated himself, — rejoicing to hear of any instances of 
 boys being sent to the school for the sake of his col- 
 leagues' instructions rather than of his own. His 
 views will perhaps be best explained by the two fol- 
 lowing letters. 
 
 LETTER OF INQUIRY FOR A MASTER. 
 
 What 1 want is a man who is a Christian and 
 
 a gentleman, an active man, and one who has common 
 sense, and understands boys. I do not so much care 
 about scholarship, as lie will have immediately under him 
 the lowest forms in the school; but yet, on second thoughts, 
 I do care about it very much, because his pupils may 
 be in the highest forms ; and besides, I think that even the 
 elements are best tan-lit by a man who lias a thorough 
 knowledge of the matter. However, it one must give way,
 
 i)*2 LIFE OP DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 1 prefer activity of mind and an interest in his work to 
 high scholarship : for the one may be acquired far more 
 easily than the other. I should wish it also to be under- 
 stood, that the new master may be called upon to take 
 boarders in his house, it being my intention for the future 
 to require this of all masters as I see occasion, that so in 
 time the boarding-houses may die a natural death. . . . With 
 this to offer, I think I have a light to look rather high for 
 the man whom I fix upon, and it is my great object to get 
 here a society of intelligent, gentlemanly, and active men, 
 who may permanently keep up the character of the school, 
 and make it " vile damnum," if I were to break my neck 
 to-morrow 
 
 LETTER TO A MASTER ON HIS APPOINTMENT. 
 
 The qualifications which I deem essential to 
 
 the due performance of a master's duties here, may in 
 brief be expressed as the spirit of a Christian and a gentle- 
 man, — that a man should enter upon his business not ek 
 Trapef yow, but as a substantive and most important duty ; 
 that he should devote himself to it as the especial branch 
 of the ministerial calling which he has chosen to follow — 
 that belonging to a great public institution, and standing 
 in a public and conspicuous situation, he should study 
 " things lovely and of good report ;" that is, that he should 
 be public spirited, liberal, and entering heartily into the 
 interest, honour, and general respectability and distinction 
 of the society which he has joined ; and that he should have 
 sufficient vigour of mind and thirst for knowledge, to persist 
 in adding to his own stores without neglecting the full im- 
 provement of those whom he is teaching. I think our 
 masterships here offer a noble field of duty, and I would 
 not bestow them on any one whom I thought would under- 
 take them without entering into the spirit of our system 
 heart and hand.
 
 LIFE OF DH. ARNOLD. 93 
 
 But the chief interest of his Rugby life lies of 
 course in his own personal government of the boys. 
 The natural effect of his concentration of interest on 
 what he used to call k ' our great self," the school, was 
 that the separate existence of the school was in re- 
 turn almost merged in him. This was not indeed 
 his own intention, but it was precisely because he 
 thought so much of the institution and so little of 
 himself, that, in spite of his own efforts to make it 
 work independently of any personal influence of his 
 own, it became so thoroughly dependent upon him, 
 and so thoroughly penetrated with his own spirit. 
 From one end of it to the other, whatever defects it 
 had were his defects ; whatever excellences it had were 
 his excellences. It was not the master who was bo- 
 loved or disliked for the sake of the school, but the 
 school which was beloved or disliked for the sake of 
 the master. Whatever peculiarity of character was 
 impressed on the scholars whom it sent forth, was 
 derived not from the genius of the place, but from 
 the genius of the man. Throughout the whole, 
 whether in the school itself, or in its aftereffects, 
 the one imago that we have before us is not Rugby, 
 but Arnold. 
 
 What was his great object has already appeared 
 from his letters; namely, the hope of making the 
 school a place of really Christian education; words 
 which in his mouth meant something very different 
 from the general professions which every good teacher 
 must be supposed to make, and which no teacher even 
 in the worst times of English education could have 
 openly ventured to disdain; but which it is exceed-
 
 94 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 ingly difficult so to explain, as that they shall not 
 seem to exceed or fall short of the truth. 
 
 It was not an attempt merely to give more theolo- 
 gical instruction, or to introduce sacred words into 
 school admonitions ; there may have been some oc- 
 casions for religious advice that might have been 
 turned to more advantage, some religious practices 
 which might have been more constantly or effectually 
 encouraged. His design arose out of the very na- 
 ture of his office ; the relation of an instructor to his 
 pupils was to him, like all the other relations of 
 human life, only in a healthy state, when subordi- 
 nate to their common relation to God. " The busi- 
 ness of a schoolmaster," he used to say, " no less 
 than that of a parish minister, is the cure of souls." 
 The idea of a Christian school, again, was to him 
 the natural result, so to speak, of the very idea of 
 a school in itself; exactly as the idea of a Christian 
 State seemed to him to be involved in the very idea 
 of a State itself. The intellectual training was not for 
 a moment underrated, and the machinery of the school 
 was left to have its own way ; but he looked upon 
 the whole as bearing on the advancement of the one 
 end of all instruction and education; the boys were 
 still treated as schoolboys, but as schoolboys who 
 must grow up to be Christian men ; whose age did 
 not prevent their faults from being sins, or their ex- 
 cellencies from being noble and Christian virtues; 
 whose situation did not of itself make the application 
 of Christian principles to their daily lives an imprac- 
 ticable vision. 
 
 His education, in short, it was once observed
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. Jj5 
 
 amidst the vehement outcry by which he used to be 
 assailed, was not (according to the popular phrase) 
 based upon religion, but was itself religious. It was 
 this chiefly which gave a oneness to his work amidst 
 a great variety of means and occupations, and a 
 steadiness to the general system amidst its almost 
 unceasing change. It was this which makes it diffi- 
 cult to separate one part of his work from another, 
 and which often made it impossible for his pupils to 
 say in after life, of much that had influenced them, 
 whether they had derived it from what was spoken 
 in school, in the pulpit, or in private. And, there- 
 fore, when either in direct religious teaching, or on 
 particular occasions, Christian principles were ex- 
 j Hi sly introduced by him, they had not the appear- 
 ance of a rhetorical flourish, or of a temporary appeal 
 to the feelings: they were looked upon as the natural 
 expression of what was constantly implied : it was 
 felt that he had the power, in which so many 
 teachers have been deficient, of saying what he did 
 mean, and of not saying what lie did not mean, — the 
 power of doing what was right, and speaking what 
 was true, and thinking what was good, independently 
 of anv professional or conventional notions that so to 
 act, speak, or think was becoming or expedient. 
 
 It was not merely an abstract school, but an 
 English public school, which he looked upon as the 
 sphere in which this was to be effected. There was 
 something to him at the very outset full of interest 
 in a great place of national education, such as he con- 
 sidered a public school to ho. 
 
 " There is." In- said, " or there ought to be, something
 
 9b LIFE OF l>K. ARNOLD. 
 
 very ennobling in being connected with an establishment 
 at once ancient and magnificent, where all about us, and 
 all the associations belonging to the objects around us, 
 should be great, splendid, and elevating. What an indi- 
 vidual ought and often does derive from the feeling that he 
 is born of an old and illustrious race, from being familiar 
 from his childhood with the walls and trees which speak of 
 the past no less than of the present, and make both full 
 of images of greatness ; this, in an inferior degree, belongs 
 to every member of an ancient and celebrated place of 
 education. In this respect, every one of us has a respon- 
 sibility imposed upon him, which I wish that we more con- 
 sidered." (Serm. vol. iii. 210.) a 
 
 a It was one of his most cherished wishes at Rugby, to be en- 
 abled to leave to the school some permanent rank or dignity, 
 which should in some measure compensate for its total barren- 
 ness of all historical associations, which he always felt painfully in 
 contrast with his own early school, Winchester. Such, amongst 
 other schemes, were his exertions to procure a medal or some 
 similar favour from the Crown. " I can truly say," he wrote in 
 1840, " that nothing which could have been given me in the way 
 of preferment, would have been so gratifying to me as to have 
 been the means in any degree of obtaining what I think would be 
 not more an honour than a real and lasting benefit to this school." 
 The general grounds on which he thought this desirable, may best 
 be stated in his own words : " I think that it would be well, on 
 public grounds, to confer what may be considered as analogous to 
 a peerage conferred on some of the wealthiest commoners, or to a 
 silk gown bestowed on distinguished lawyers ; that is, that when 
 schools had risen from a very humble origin to a considerable place 
 in the country, and had continued so for some time, some royal 
 gift, however small, should be bestowed upon them, merely as a 
 sort of recognition or confirmation, on the part of the Crown, of 
 the courtesy rank which they had acquired already. I have alwavs 
 believed that one of the simplest and most effectual means of im- 
 proving the foundation schools throughout the country, would be 
 to hold out the hope of some mark of encouragement from the 
 Crown, as thev might happen to deserve it."
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 97 
 
 This feeling of itself dictated the preservation of 
 the old school constitution as far as it was possible, 
 and he was very careful not to break through any 
 customs which connected the institution, however 
 slightly, with the past. But in this constitution there 
 were peculiarities of far greater importance in his eyes 
 for good or evil, than any mere imaginative associa- 
 tions; the peculiarities which distinguish the English 
 public school system from almost every other system 
 of education in Europe, and which are all founded on 
 the fact of so large a number of boys being left for 
 so large a portion of their time to form an independ- 
 ent society of their own, in which the influence, that 
 they exercise over each other, is far greater than can 
 possibly be exercised by the masters, even if multi- 
 plied beyond their present number. 
 
 How keenly he felt the evils resulting from this 
 system, and the difficulty of communicating to it a 
 really Christian character, will be evident to any 
 one who knows the twelfth Sermon in his second 
 volume, in which he unfolded, at the beginning of his 
 career, the causes which had led good men to declare 
 that " public schools are the seats and nurseries of 
 vice ;" or the three Sermons on " Christian Schools," 
 in his fifth volume, in which, with the added expe- 
 rience of ten years, he analyzed the six evils by which 
 he " supposed that great schools were likely to be 
 corrupted, and to be changed from the likeness of 
 God's people to that of a den of thieves." (Vol. v. 74.) 
 
 Sometimes he would be led to doubt whether it 
 were really compatible with the highest principles of 
 education; sometimes he would seem to have an ear- 
 nest and almost impatient desire to free himself from 
 
 VOL. I. II
 
 98 UFK OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 it. Still, on the whole, it was .always on a reforma- 
 tion, not on an overthrow, of the existing constitution 
 of the school that he endeavoured to act. " Another 
 system," he said, " may be better in itself, but I am 
 placed in this system, and am bound to try what I 
 can make of it." 
 
 With his usual undoubting confidence in what he 
 believed to be a general law of Providence, he based his 
 whole management of the school on his early formed 
 and yearly increasing conviction that what he had to 
 look for, both intellectually and morally, was not 
 performance but promise ; that the very freedom and 
 independence of school life, which in itself he thought 
 so dangerous, might be made the best preparation for 
 Christian manhood ; and he did not hesitate to apply 
 to his scholars the principle which seemed to him to 
 have been adopted in the training of the childhood of 
 the human race itself a . He shrunk from pressing on 
 the conscience of boys rules of action which he felt 
 they were not yet able to bear, and from enforcing 
 actions which, though right in themselves, would in 
 boys be performed from wrong motives. Keenly as 
 he felt the risk and fatal consequences of the failure 
 of this trial, still it was his great, sometimes his only 
 support, to believe that " the character is braced amid 
 such scenes to a greater beauty and firmness, than 
 it ever can attain without enduring and witnessing 
 them." 
 
 " Our work here would be absolutely unendurable if we 
 did not bear in mind that we should look forward as well 
 as backward — if we did not remember that the victory of 
 fallen man lies not in innocence but in tried virtue." (Serm. 
 
 a Sermons, vol. ii. p. 440.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. .99 
 
 vol. iv. 7.) " I hold fast," he said, "to the great truth, 
 that ' blessed is he that overcometh ;' " and he writes in 
 1837: — " Of all the painful things connected with my em- 
 ployment, nothing is equal to the grief of seeing a boy 
 come to school innocent and promising, and tracing the 
 corruption of his character from the influence of the tempt- 
 ations around him, in the very place, which ought to have 
 strengthened and improved it. But in most cases those 
 who come with a character of positive good are benefited ; 
 it is the neutral and indecisive characters which are apt to 
 be decided for evil by schools, as they would be in fact 
 by any other temptation." 
 
 But this very feeling led him with the greater 
 eagerness to catch at every means, by which the trial 
 might be shortened or alleviated. " Can the change 
 from childhood to manhood be hastened, without pre- 
 maturely exhausting the faculties of body or mind ?" 
 (Serm. vol. iv. p. 19.) was one of the chief questions, on 
 which his mind was constantly at work, and which in 
 the judgment of some he was disposed to answer too 
 readily in the affirmative. It was with the elder 
 boys, of course, that he chiefly acted on this principle, 
 but with all above the very young ones he trusted to 
 it more or less. Firmly as he believed that a time 
 of trial was inevitable, he believed no less firmly that 
 it might be passed at public schools sooner than under 
 other circumstances; and, in proportion as he disliked 
 the assumption of a false manliness in boys, was his 
 desire to cultivate in them true manliness, as the only 
 step to something higher, and to dwell on earnest 
 principle and moral thoughtrulness, as the great and 
 distinguishing mark between good and evil 1 . Hence 
 
 a See Sermons, vol. iv. p. 99. 
 
 ii 2
 
 100 LIFE OP DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 his wish that as much as possible should be done 
 by the boys, and nothing for them ; hence arose his 
 practice, in which his own delicacy of feeling and 
 uprightness of purpose powerfully assisted him, of 
 treating the boys as gentlemen and reasonable beings, 
 of making them respect themselves by the mere re- 
 spect he showed to them ; of showing that he ap- 
 pealed and trusted to their own common sense and 
 conscience. Lying, for example, to the masters, he 
 made a great moral offence ; placing implicit confi- 
 dence in a boy's assertion, and then, if a falsehood was 
 discovered, punishing it severely. — in the upper part 
 of the school, when persisted in, with expulsion. 
 Even with the lower forms he never seemed to be on 
 the watch for boys ; and in the higher forms any at- 
 tempt at further proof of an assertion was imme- 
 diately checked : — " If you say so, that is quite 
 enough — of course I believe your word ;" and there 
 grew up in consequence a general feeling that " it 
 was a shame to tell Arnold a lie — he always believes 
 one." 
 
 And this above all was the characteristic feature 
 of the public addresses which he used to make on 
 especial occasions to the boys, when assembled in the 
 great school, where the boys used to meet when the 
 whole school was assembled collectively, and not in 
 its different forms or classes. There he spoke to them 
 as members together with himself of the same great 
 institution, whose character and reputation they had 
 to sustain as well as he. He would dwell on the satis- 
 faction he had in being head of a society, where noble 
 and honourable feelings were encouraged, or on the 
 disgrace, which he felt in hearing of acts of disorder
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 101 
 
 or violence, such as in the humbler ranks of life 
 would render them amenable to the laws of their 
 country, or again, on the trust which he placed in 
 their honour as gentlemen, and the baseness of any 
 instance in which it was abused. " Is this a Christian 
 school?" he indignantly asked at the end of one of 
 those addresses, in which he had spoken of an exten- 
 sive display of bad feeling amongst the boys, and then 
 added, — "I cannot remain here if all is to be carried 
 on by constraint and force ; if I am to be here as a 
 gaoler I will resign my office at once." And few scenes 
 can be recorded more characteristic of him than on one 
 of these occasions, when, in consequence of a disturb- 
 ance, he had been obliged to send away several boys, 
 and when, in the midst of the general spirit of dis- 
 content which this excited, he stood in his place 
 before the assembled school, and said, " It is not ne- 
 cessary that this should be a school of three hundred, 
 or one hundred, or of fifty boys ; but it is necessary 
 that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen." 
 
 The means of carrying out these principles were 
 of course various ; they may, however, for the sake of 
 convenience, be viewed under the divisions of the 
 general discipline of the school, the system of in- 
 struction, the chapel services, and his own personal 
 intercourse and influence. 
 
 I. In considering his general management of the 
 discipline of the school, it will only be possible to 
 touch on its loading features. 
 
 1. He at once made a great alteration in the whole 
 system of punishments, in the higher part of the 
 school, "keeping it as much as possible in the back- 
 ground, and by kindness and encouragement attract-
 
 102 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 ing the good and noble feelings of those with whom 
 he had to deal."" As this appears more distinctly 
 elsewhere, it is needless to enlarge upon it here; but 
 a few words may be necessary to explain the view 
 with which, for the younger part of the school, he 
 made a point of maintaining, to a certain extent, the 
 old discipline of public schools. 
 
 " The beau ideal of school discipline with regard to 
 young boys would seem to be this, that, whilst corporal 
 punishment was retained on principle as fitly answering to 
 and marking the naturally inferior state of boyhood, and 
 therefore as conveying no peculiar degradation to persons 
 in such a state, we should cherish and encourage to the 
 utmost all attempts made by the several boys, as in- 
 dividuals, to escape from the natural punishment of their 
 age by rising above its naturally low tone of principle." 
 
 Flogging, therefore, for the younger part he re- 
 tained, though with much less frequency than it used 
 to be practised, confining it to moral offences, such as 
 lying, drinking, and habitual idleness, whilst his own 
 personal aversion to inflicting it insensibly reduced it 
 in practice, even below what it would have been in 
 theory. But in answer to the argument used in a 
 liberal journal, that it was even for these offences and 
 for this age degrading, he replied with characteristic 
 emphasis — 
 
 " I know well of what feeling this is the expression ; it 
 originates in that proud notion of personal independence 
 which is neither reasonable nor Christian — but essentially 
 barbarian. It visited Europe with all the curses of the age of 
 chivalry, and is threatening us now with those of Jacobinism. 
 At an age when it is almost impossible to find a 
 
 a Serm. vol. iv. p. 10G. The whole sermon is a full exposition 
 of his view.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 103 
 
 true manly sense of the degradation of guilt or faults, 
 where is the wisdom of encouraging a fantastic sense of 
 the degradation of personal correction ? What can be 
 more false, or more adverse to the simplicity, sobriety, 
 and humbleness of mind, which are the best ornament of 
 youth, and the best promise of a noble manhood?" 
 (Journ. Educ. vol. ix. pp. 281. 284.) 
 
 2. But his object was of course far higher, than to 
 check particular vices. " What I want to see in the 
 school," he said, "and what I cannot find, is an ab- 
 horrence of evil: I always think of the Psalm, 'Nei- 
 ther doth he abhor any thing that is evil.' " Amongst 
 all the causes, which in his judgment contributed to 
 the absence of this feeling, and to the moral child- 
 ishness, which he considered the great curse of public 
 schools, the chief seemed to him to lie in the spirit 
 which was there encouraged of combination, of com- 
 panionship, of excessive deference to the public opi- 
 nion prevalent in the school. Peculiarly repugnant 
 as this spirit was at once to his own reverence for 
 lawful authority, and to his dislike of servile submis- 
 sion to unlawful authority; fatal as he deemed it to 
 all approach to sympathy between himself and his 
 scholars — to all free and manly feeling in individual 
 boys — to all real and permanent improvement of the 
 institution itself — it gave him more pain when brought 
 prominently before him, than any other evil in the 
 school. At the very sight of a knot of vicious or 
 careless boys gathered together round the great 
 school-house tiro, "It makes me think," he would say, 
 "that I see the Devil in the midst of them." Prom 
 first to last, it was the great subject to which all his 
 anxiety converged. No half year ever pa.^sed without
 
 104 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 liis preaching upon it — he turned it over and over in 
 every possible point of view — he dwelt on it, as the one 
 master-fault of all. " If the spirit of Elijah were to 
 stand in the midst of us, and we were to ask him, 
 'What shall we do then?' his answer would be, 
 ' Fear not, nor heed one another's voices, but fear and 
 heed the voice of God only.' " (MS. Serm. on Luke 
 iii. 10. 1833.) 
 
 Against this evil he felt that no efforts of good 
 individual example, or of personal sympathy with 
 individual masters, could act effectually, unless there 
 were something to counteract it constantly amongst 
 the boys themselves. 
 
 " He, therefore, who wishes " (to use his own words) 
 " really to improve public education would do well to 
 direct his attention to this point, and to consider how 
 there can be infused into a society of boys such elements 
 as, without being too dissimilar to coalesce thoroughly 
 with the rest, shall yet be so superior as to raise the cha- 
 racter of the whole. It would be absurd to say that any 
 school has as yet fully solved this problem. I am con- 
 vinced, however, that, in the peculiar relation of the 
 highest form to the re'st of the boys, such as it exists in 
 our great public schools, there is to be found the best 
 means of answering it. This relation requires in many 
 respects to be improved in its character ; some of its fea- 
 tures should be softened, others elevated ; but here, and 
 here only, is the engine which can effect the end desired." 
 (Journ. Ed. p. 292.) 
 
 In other words, he determined to use, and to im- 
 prove to the utmost, the existing machinery of the 
 Sixth Form and of fagging; understanding, by the 
 Sixth Form, the thirty boys who composed the highest 
 class — " those who having risen to the highest form in
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 105 
 
 the school, will probably be at once the oldest, and 
 the strongest, and the cleverest ; and if the school 
 be well ordered, the most respectable in application 
 and general character ;" and by fagging, " the power 
 given by the supreme authorities of the school to the 
 Sixth Form, to be exercised by them over the lower 
 boys, for the sake of securing a regular government 
 amongst the boys themselves, and avoiding the evils of 
 anarchy, in other words, of the lawless tyranny of 
 physical strength."— (Journ. Ed. p. 287, 286.) 1 
 
 In many points he took the institution as he found 
 it, and as he remembered it at Winchester. The re- 
 sponsibility of checking bad practices without the 
 intervention of the masters, the occasional settlement 
 of difficult cases of school-government, the triumph of 
 order over brute force involved in the maintenance of 
 such an authority, had been more or less produced un- 
 der the old system both at Rugby and elsewhere. But 
 his zeal in its defence, and his confident reliance upon 
 it as the keystone of his whole government, were emi- 
 nently characteristic of himself, and were brought out 
 the more forcibly from the fact that it was a point on 
 which the spirit of the age set strongly and increas- 
 ingly against him, ou which there was a general ten- 
 dency to yield to the popular outcry, and on which 
 the clamour, that at one time assailed him, was 
 ready to fasten as a subject where all parties could 
 
 a It lias not been thought necessary here to enter at lengtb into 
 his defence of the general system of fagging, especially as it may 
 he seen by those who are interested in the subject in the article in 
 the ninth volume of the Quarterly Journal of Education, from 
 which the above extracts have been made, and to which an answer 
 was made by the Editor, in the ensuing Dumber.
 
 100 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 concur in their condemnation. But lie was immove- 
 able: and, though on his first coming, he had felt him- 
 self called upon rather to restrain the authority of the 
 Sixth Form from abuses, than to guard it from en- 
 croachments, yet now that the whole system was de- 
 nounced as cruel and absurd, he delighted to stand 
 forth as its champion ; the power, which was most 
 strongly condemned, of personal chastisement vested 
 in the Praepostors over those who resisted their 
 authority, he firmly maintained as essential to the 
 general support of the good order of the place ; and 
 there was no obloquy, which he would not undergo in 
 the protection of a boy, who had by due exercise of 
 this discipline made himself obnoxious to the school, 
 the parents, or the public. 
 
 But the importance, which he attached to it, arose 
 from his regarding it not only as an efficient engine 
 of discipline, but as the chief means of creating a re- 
 spect for moral and intellectual excellence through- 
 out the place, and of communicating his own in- 
 fluence to the mass of the school. Whilst he made 
 the Praepostors rely upon his support in all just use 
 of their authority, as well as on his severe judgment 
 of all abuse of it, he endeavoured also to make them 
 feel that they were actually fellow-workers with him 
 for the highest good of the school, upon the highest 
 principles and motives — that they had, with him, a 
 moral responsibility and a deep interest in the real 
 welfare of the place. Occasionally during his whole 
 stay, and regularly at the beginning or end of every 
 half-year during his later years, he used to make 
 short addresses to them on their own duties, or on 
 the general state of the school, one of which, as an
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 107 
 
 illustration of his general mode of speaking and act- 
 ing with them, it has been thought worth while to 
 give, as nearly as possible as his pupils could remem- 
 ber it, in the very words he used. After making a 
 few remarks to them on their work in the lessons : 
 " I will now," he proceeded, " say a few words to 
 you, as I promised. Speaking to you, as to young 
 men who can enter into what I say, I wish you to 
 feel that you have another duty to perforin, holding 
 the situation that you do in the school; of the im- 
 portance of this I wish you all to feel sensible, and 
 of the enormous influence you possess in ways in 
 which we cannot, for good or for evil, on all below 
 you ; and I wish you to see fully how many and 
 great are the opportunities offered to you here of 
 doing good — good, too, of lasting benefit to your- 
 selves as well as to others; there is no place, where 
 you will find better opportunities for some time to 
 come, and you will then have reason to look back to 
 your life here with the greatest pleasure. You will 
 soon find, when you change your life here for that at 
 the Universities, how very few in comparison they 
 are there, however willing you may then be, — at any 
 rate during the first part of your life there. That 
 there is good, working in the school, I most fully 
 believe, and we cannot feel too thankful for it; in 
 many individual instances, in different parts of the 
 school, I have seen the change from evil to good — 
 to mention instances would of course be wrong. 
 The state of the school is a subject of congratulation 
 to us all, but. onl\ BO tar as to encourage us to in- 
 creased exertions ; and I am sine we ought all to 
 feel it a subject of most sincere thankfulness to God;
 
 108 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 but we must not stop here ; we must exert ourselves 
 with earnest prayer to God for its continuance. And 
 what I have often said before I repeat now : what 
 we must look for here is, 1st, religious and moral 
 principles ; 2ndly, gentlemanly conduct ; 3dly, intel- 
 lectual ability." 
 
 Nothing, accordingly, so shook his hopes of doing 
 good, as weakness or misconduct in the Sixth. "You 
 should feel," he said, " like officers in the army or 
 navy, whose want of moral courage would, indeed, 
 be thought cowardice." " When I have confidence 
 in the Sixth," was the end of one of his farewell 
 addresses, " there is no post in England which I 
 would exchange for this ; but if they do not support 
 me, I must go." 
 
 It may well be imagined how important this was 
 as an instrument of education, independently of the 
 weight of his own personal qualities. Exactly at 
 the age when boys begin to acquire some degree of 
 self-respect, and some desire for the respect of others, 
 they were treated with confidence by one, whose con- 
 fidence they could not but regard as worth having ; 
 and found themselves in a station, where their own 
 dignity could not be maintained, except by consist- 
 ent good conduct. And exactly at a time when 
 manly aspirations begin to expand, they found them- 
 selves invested with functions of government, great 
 beyond their age, yet naturally growing out of their 
 position ; whilst the ground of solemn responsibility, 
 on which they were constantly taught that their 
 authority rested, had a general, though of course 
 not universal, tendency to counteract any notions of 
 mere personal self-importance.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 109 
 
 " 1 cannot deny that you have an anxious duty — a duty 
 which some might suppose was too heavy for your years. 
 But it seems to me, the nobler as well as the truer way of 
 stating the case to say, that it is the great privilege of this 
 and other such institutions, to anticipate the common time 
 of manhood ; that by their whole training they fit the cha- 
 racter for manly duties at an age when, under another 
 system, such duties would be impracticable ; that there is 
 not imposed upon you too heavy a burden ; but that you 
 are capable of bearing, without injury, what to others 
 might be a burden, and therefore to diminish your duties 
 and lessen your responsibility would be no kindness, but 
 a degradation — an affront to you and to the school." 
 (Serm. vol. v. p. 59.) 
 
 3. Whilst he looked to the Sixth Form, as the or- 
 dinary correction to the ordinary evils of a public 
 school, he still felt that these evils from time to time 
 developed themselves in a form, which demanded pe- 
 culiar methods to meet them, and which may best be 
 explained from a letter of his own. 
 
 " My own school experience has taught me the mon- 
 strous evil of a state of low principle prevailing amongst 
 those who set the tone to the rest. 1 can neither theo- 
 retically nor practically defend our public school system, 
 where the boys are left so very much alone to form a dis- 
 tinct society of their own, unless you assume that the 
 upper class shall be capable of being in a manner pe- 
 anai between the masters and the mass of the boys, 
 that is, shall be capable of receiving and transmitting to 
 the rest, through their example and influence, right prin- 
 ciples of conduct, instead of those extremely low ones 
 which are natural to a society of boys left wholly to form 
 their own standard of right and wrong. Now, when I get 
 any in this part of the school who are not to be influenced — 
 who have neither the will nor the power to influence others, 
 — not from being intentionally bad, but from very low wit,
 
 110 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 and extreme childishness or coarseness of character — the 
 evil is so great, not only negatively but positively, (for 
 their low and false views are greedily caught up by those 
 below them,) that I know not how to proceed, or how to 
 hinder the school from becoming a place of education for 
 evil rather than for good, except by getting rid of such 
 persons. And then comes the difficulty, that the parents 
 who see their sons only at home — that is just where the 
 points of character, which are so injurious here, are not 
 called into action — can scarcely be brought to understand 
 why they should remove them ; and having, as most people 
 have, only the most vague ideas as to the real nature of a 
 public school, they cannot understand what harm they 
 are receiving or doing to others, if they do not get into 
 some palpable scrape which very likely they never would 
 do. More puzzling still is it, when you have many boys 
 of this description, so that the evil influence is really very 
 great, and yet there is not one of the set whom you would 
 set down as a really bad fellow if taken alone ; but most 
 of them would really do very well if they were not together 
 and in a situation where, unluckily, their age and size 
 leads them, unavoidably, to form the laws and guide the 
 opinion of their society : whereas, they are wholly unfit to 
 lead others, and are so slow at receiving good influences 
 themselves, that they want to be almost exclusively with 
 older personsj instead of being principally with younger 
 ones." 
 
 The evil undoubtedly to any one acquainted with 
 it was great, and the difficulty, which he describes in 
 the way of its removal, was not only in itself great, 
 but tended to aggravate the evil. When first he 
 entered on his post at Rugby, there was a very general 
 feeling in the country, that so long as a boy kept him- 
 self from offences sufficiently enormous to justify ex- 
 pulsion, he had a kind of right to remain in a public 
 school ; that the worse and more troublesome to 
 parents were their sons, the more did a public school
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. Ill 
 
 seem the precise remedy for them ; that the great 
 end of a public school, in short, was to flog their vices 
 out of bad boys. Such a feeling as this not only ex- 
 cited double indignation so soon as boys were sent 
 away for lesser offences, but also secured an unfailing 
 supply of vicious sons, and inspired a natural reluct- 
 ance in scrupulous parents against committing their 
 boys to such a discipline. 
 
 His own determination had been fixed long before he 
 came to Rugby, and it was only after ascertaining that 
 his power in this respect would be absolute, that he con- 
 sented to become a candidate for the post a . Any thing 
 short of removing boys who were clearly incapable 
 of deriving good from the system, or whose influence 
 on others was decidedly and extensively pernicious, 
 seemed to him not a necessary part of the trials of 
 school, but an inexcusable and intolerable aggrava- 
 tion of them. " Till a man learns that the first, 
 second, and third duty of a schoolmaster is to get rid 
 of unpromising subjects, a great public school," he 
 said, " will never be what it might be, and what it 
 oujrht to be." The remonstrances which he encoun- 
 tered both on public and private grounds were vehe- 
 ment and numerous. But on these terms alone had 
 he taken his office: and he solemnly and repeatedly 
 declared, that on no other terms could he hold it, or 
 justify the existence of the public school system in a 
 Christian country. 
 
 The cases which fell under this rule included all 
 
 shades of character from the hopelessly bad up to the 
 
 really good, who yet from their peculiar circumstances 
 
 might be receiving great injury from the system of a 
 
 a See Letter to Dr. Hawkins, in 1627.
 
 112 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 public school; grave moral offences frequently re- 
 peated ; boys banded together in sets to the great 
 harm of individuals or of the school at large ; over- 
 grown boys, whose age and size gave them influence 
 over others, and made them unfit subjects for corporal 
 punishment, whilst the low place which, either from 
 idleness or dulness, they held in the school, encouraged 
 all the childish and low habits to which they were 
 naturally tempted a . He would retain boys after 
 offences, which considered in themselves would seem 
 to many almost deserving of expulsion; he would re- 
 quest the removal of others for offences which to 
 many would seem venial. In short, he was decided 
 by the ultimate result on the whole character of the 
 individual, or on the general state of the school. 
 
 It was on every account essential to the carrying 
 out of his principle, that he should mark in every way 
 the broad distinction between this kind of removal, 
 whether temporary or final; and what used to be called 
 expulsion, (in the strict sense of the word,) wdiich was 
 intended by him as a punishment and lasting dis- 
 grace, was inflicted publicly and with extreme solemn- 
 ity, was of very rare occurrence, and only for gross 
 and overt offences. But he took pains to show that 
 removal, such as is here spoken of, was not disgrace- 
 ful or penal, but intended chiefly, if not solely, for a 
 protection of the boy himself or his schoolfellows. 
 Often it would be wholly unknown who were thus 
 leaving or why ; latterly he generally allowed such 
 cases to remain till the end of the half-year, that their 
 
 a The admission of very young boys, e. g. under the age of ten, 
 he earnestly deprecated, as considering them incapable of profiting 
 by the discipline of the place.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 11*3 
 
 removal might pass altogether unnoticed : the sub- 
 joined letters also to the head of a college and a pri- 
 vate tutor, introducing such boys to their attention, 
 are, it is believed, samples of the general spirit, in 
 which he acted on these occasions*. 
 
 This system was not pursued without difficulty : 
 the inconvenience' attendant upon such removals was 
 
 a 1. To the Head of a college. — "With regard to , if 
 
 you had asked me about him half a year ago, I should have spoken 
 of him in the highest terms in point of conduct and steady atten- 
 tion to his work ; there has been nothing in all that has passed, 
 beyond a great deal of party and schoolboy feeling, wrong, as I 
 think, and exceedingly mischievous to a school, but from its pecu- 
 liar character not likely to recur at college or in after life, and not 
 reflecting permanently on a boy's principles or disposition. I think 
 
 you will have in a steady and gentlemanly man, who will 
 
 read fairly and give no disturbance, and one who would well repay 
 any interest taken in him by his tutor to direct him either in his 
 work or conduct. He was one of those who would do a great deal 
 better at college than at school ; and of this sort there are many: 
 as long as they are among boys, and with no closer personal in- 
 tercourse with older persons than a public school affords, they are 
 often wrong-headed and troublesome ; but older society and the 
 habits of more advanced life set them to rights again." 
 
 2 " Their conduct till they went away was as good 
 
 as possible, and I feel bound to speak strongly in their favour with 
 regard to their prospects at college ; for there was more of foolish- 
 ness than of vice in the whole matter, and it was their peculiar 
 situation in the school, and the peculiar danger of their fault among 
 
 us, that made us wish them to be removed. was very much 
 
 improved in his work, and did some of his business very well : 
 since he left us he has been with a private tutor, and I shall be 
 disappointed if he has not behaved there so as to obtain from him 
 a very favourable character." 
 
 3 " was not a bad Fellow at all, but had 
 
 overgrown school in his body before he had outgrown it in wit ; 
 he was therefore the hero of the younger boys for his strength and 
 prowess ; and this sort of distinction was doing him harm, so that 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 occasionally very great; sometimes the character of 
 the boy might have been mistaken, the difficulty of 
 explaining the true nature of the transaction to pa- 
 rents was considerable; an exaggerated notion was 
 entertained of the extent to which this view was 
 carried. 
 
 The qualities necessary to administer such a system 
 of course imply higher qualifications for a head-master 
 than mere scholarship or mere zeal ; and accordingly 
 here, as elsewhere, the force of his own character 
 was a powerful support to him : the determination to 
 carry out a general principle through a host of parti- 
 cular obstacles ; the largeness of view, which at least 
 endeavoured to catch the real features of every case ; 
 the consciousness which he felt himself, and made 
 others feel, of the uprightness and purity of his inten- 
 tions. The predictions that boys who failed at school 
 would turn out well with private tutors, were often 
 acknowledged to be verified in cases where removal 
 had been most complained of; the diminution of 
 corporal punishment in the school was necessarily 
 much facilitated ; a salutary effect was produced on 
 the boys by impressing upon them, that even slight 
 
 I advised his father to take him away, and to get him entered at 
 the University as soon as possible." 
 
 4. To a private tutor. — " I am glad that you continue to like 
 
 , nor am I surprised at it, for I always thought that school 
 
 brought out the bad in his character, and repressed the good. 
 There are some others in the same way whom you would find, I 
 think, very satisfactory pupils, but who are not improving here." 
 
 5. " It is a good thing, I have no doubt, that has left us ; 
 
 his is just one of those characters which cannot bear a public 
 school, and may be saved and turned to great good bv the humani- 
 ties of private tuition."
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. I 1 ."> 
 
 offences, which came under the head-master's eye, 
 were swelling the sum of misconduct which might 
 end in removal ; whilst many parents were dis- 
 pleased by the system, others were induced by it to 
 send " as many boys," he said, " and more than he 
 sent away;" lastly, he succeeded at least in shaking 
 the old notion of the conditions under which boys 
 must be allowed to remain at school, and in impress- 
 ing on others the standard of moral progress which 
 he endeavoured himself to enforce. 
 
 The following letter to one of the assistant-masters 
 expresses his mode of meeting the attacks to which 
 he was exposed on both of the two subjects last 
 mentioned. 
 
 " I do not choose to discuss the thickness of Praspostors' 
 sticks, or the greater or less blackness of a boy's bruises, 
 for the amusement of all the readers of the newspapers ; 
 nor do I care in the slightest degree about the attacks, if 
 the masters themselves treat them with indifference. If 
 they appear to mind them, or to fear their effect on the 
 school, the apprehension in this, as in many other in- 
 stances, will be likely to verify itself. For my own part, 
 I confess, that I will not condescend to justify the school 
 against attacks, when I believe that it is going on not only 
 not ill, but positively well. Were it really otherwise, I 
 think I should be as sensitive as any one, and very soon 
 give up the concern. But these attacks are merely what 
 I bargained for, so far as they relate to my conduct in the 
 school, because they are directed against points on which 
 my 'ideas' were fixed before I came to Rugby, and are 
 only more fixed now : e. g. that the authority of the Sixth 
 Form is essential to the good of the school, and is to be 
 upheld through all obstacles from within and from with- 
 out, and that sending awaybovs is a necessary and regulfti 
 
 i 2
 
 IK) LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 part of a good system, not as a punishment to one, but as 
 a protection to others. Undoubtedly it would be a better 
 system if there was no evil ; but evil being unavoidable 
 we are not a jail to keep it in, but a place of education 
 where we must cast it out, to prevent its taint from spread- 
 ing. Meanwhile let us mind our own work, and try to 
 perfect the execution of our own ' ideas,' and we shall have 
 enough to do, and enough always to hinder us from being 
 satisfied with ourselves ; but when we are attacked we have 
 some right to answer with Scipio, who, scorning to reply 
 to a charge of corruption, said, ' Hoc die cum Hannibale 
 bene et feliciter pugnavi :' — we have done enough good 
 and undone enough evil, to allow us to hold our assailants 
 cheap." 
 
 II. The spirit, in which he entered on the instruction 
 of the school, consituting as it did the main business 
 of the place, may perhaps best be understood from 
 a particular exemplification of it in the circumstances 
 under which he introduced a prayer before the first 
 lesson in the Sixth Form, over and above the general 
 prayers read before the whole school. On the morn- 
 ing on which he first used it he said, that he had 
 been much troubled to find that the change from 
 attendance on the death-bed of one of the boys in 
 his house to his school work had been very great : 
 he thought that there ought not to be that contrast, 
 and that it was probably owing to the school-work 
 not being sufficiently sanctified to God's glory; that 
 if it was made really a religious work, the transition 
 to it from a death-bed would be slight, and therefore 
 he intended for the future to offer a prayer before 
 the first lesson, that the day's work might be under- 
 taken and carried on solely to the glory of God and
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 117 
 
 their improvement, — that he might be the better 
 enabled to do his work \ 
 
 With this feeling, the general instruction of all 
 the lessons was invested, in his eyes, with the same 
 character of moral responsibility as any part more 
 directly religious; and his desire to raise the general 
 standard of knowledge and application in the school 
 was as 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 own leisure to 
 the extra labour of new examinations for the various 
 forms, and of a yearly examination 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 
 overworked by premature exertion. Whether this 
 was the case more at Rugby 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. The Greek union of the dperrj yv/Avaa-Tt/cri 
 with the apeTT) /jlovo-lkj], he thought invaluable in edu- 
 cation, and held that the freedom of the sports of 
 public schools was particularly favourable to it ; and 
 wherever he saw that boys were reading too much, 
 he always remonstrated with them, relaxed their 
 work, and when in the upper part of the school, 
 
 See Appendix A.
 
 118 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 would invite them to his own house in the half year 
 or the holidays to refresh them. 
 
 He had a strong belief in the general union of 
 moral and intellectual excellence. And in the 
 case of boys his experience led him, he said, " more 
 and more to believe in their connexion, for which 
 divers reasons may be given. One, and a very im- 
 portant 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 un- 
 educated, 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 dulness ;" and 
 he often dwelt on "the fruit which I above all 
 things long for, — moral thoughtfulness, — the inquir- 
 ing love of truth going along with the devoted love 
 of goodness." 
 
 But for mere cleverness, whether in boys or men, 
 he had no regard. " Mere intellectual acuteness," 
 he used to say, in speaking (for example) of lawyers. 
 " divested as it is, in too many cases, of all that is com- 
 prehensive and great and good, is to me more revolt- 
 ing than the most helpless imbecility, seeming to be 
 almost like the spirit of Mephistophiles." Often 
 when seen in company 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 con- 
 tained most instances of individual talent, but that 
 which had altogether worked steadily and industri- 
 ously. The university honours which his pupils obtained
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 110 
 
 were very considerable, and at one time unrivalled by 
 any school in England, and he was unfeignedly de- 
 lighted 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 educa- 
 tion. He would often dwell on the curious alter- 
 nations of cleverness or dulness in school generations, 
 which seemed to baffle all human calculation or ex- 
 ertion. " 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 the pupil looked up in 
 his face and said, " Why do you speak angrily, sir? — 
 indeed I am doing the best that I can." Years after- 
 wards he used to tell the story to his children, and 
 said, " I never felt so much ashamed in my life — 
 that look and that speech I have never forgotten." 
 And though it would of course happen that clever 
 boys, from a greater sympathy with his understanding, 
 would be brought into closer intercourse with him, 
 this did not affect his feeling, not only of respect, but 
 of reverence to those who, without ability, were dis- 
 tinguished for high principle and industry. " If 
 there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable, 
 it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of 
 natural powers, where they have been honestly, 
 truly, and zealously cultivated." It was of a case of 
 this kind amongst his pupils that he said emphatic- 
 ally, " I Mould stand to that man hut in hand;" and 
 it was his feeling after the departure of such an one 
 that drew from him the most personal, perhaps the
 
 120 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 only personal praise which he ever bestowed on any 
 boy in his Sermons. (See Sermons, vol. iii. p. 352, 
 353.) a 
 
 a The subjoined letters will best show the feeling with which 
 he regarded the academical successes or failures of his pupils. 
 
 1. To a pupil who had failed in his examination at the Uni- 
 versity : — 
 
 "I hardly know whether you would like my writing 
 
 to you ; yet I feel strongly disposed so far to presume on the old 
 relation which existed between us, as to express my earnest hope 
 that vou will not attach too much importance to your disappoint- 
 ment, whatever it may have been, at the recent examination. I 
 believe that I attach quite as much value, as is reasonable to uni- 
 versity distinctions ; but it would be a grievous evil if the good of 
 a man's reading for three years were all to depend on the result of 
 a single examination, affected as that result must ever in some de- 
 gree be by causes independent of a man's intellectual excellence. 
 I am saying nothing but what you know quite well already ; still 
 the momentary feeling of disappointment may tempt a man to do 
 himself great injustice, and to think that his efforts have been at- 
 tended by no proportionate fruit. I can only say, for one, that as 
 far as the real honour of Rugby is concerned, it is the effort, an 
 hundred times more than the issue of the effort, that is in my 
 judgment a credit to the school ; inasmuch as it shows that the 
 men who go from here to the University do their duty there ; and 
 that is the real point, which alone to my mind reflects honour 
 either on individuals or on societies ; and if such a fruit is in any 
 way traceable to the influence of Rugby, then I am proud and 
 thankful to have had such a man as my pupil. I am almost afraid 
 that you will think me impertinent in writing to you ; but I must 
 be allowed to feel more than a passing interest in those whom I 
 have known and valued here ; and in your case this interest 
 was renewed by having had the pleasure of seeing you in West- 
 moreland more lately. I should be extremely glad if you can find 
 an opportunity of paying us a visit ere long at Rugby." 
 
 2. To a pupil just before his examination at Oxford : — 
 
 " I have no other object in writing to you, than merely to assure 
 you of my hearty interest about you at this time, when I suppose
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 121 
 
 This being his general view, it remains to untold 
 his ideas of school-instruction in detail. 
 
 1. That classical studies should be the basis of in- 
 tellectual teaching, he maintained from the first. 
 " The study of language," he said, " seems to me as if 
 it was given for the very purpose of forming the 
 human mind in youth ; and the Greek and Latin 
 languages in themselves so perfect, and at the same 
 time freed from the insuperable difficulty which must 
 
 that the prospect of your examination is rising up closely before 
 you. Yet I hope that you know me better than to think that my 
 interest arises merely from the credit which the school may gain 
 from your success, or that I should be in a manner personally dis- 
 appointed if our men were not to gain what they are trying for. 
 On this score I am very hard, and I know too well the uncertain- 
 ties of examinations to be much surprised at any result. 
 
 " I am much more anxious, however, that you should not overwork 
 yourself, nor unnerve your mind for after exertion. And I wish to 
 sav that if you would like change of air or scene for a single day, 
 I should urge you to come down here, and if I can be of any 
 use to you, when here, in examining you, that vou mav not think 
 that you would be utterly losing your time in leaving Oxford, I 
 shall be very glad to do it. I am a great believer in the virtues of 
 a journey for fifty miles, for giving tone to the system where it has 
 been overworked." 
 
 3. To a pupil who had been unsuccessful in an examination for 
 the Ireland scholarship. 
 
 " I am more than satisfied with what you have done in the Ire- 
 laud ; as to getting it, I certainly never should have got it myself) 
 bo I have no right to be surprised if my pupils do not." 
 
 4. To a pupil who had gained a first class at Oxford : — 
 
 " Your letter has given all your friends here great joy, and nicist 
 heartily do I congratulate you upon it. Depend upon it, it i- a gift 
 of God, not to he gloried in, but deeply and thankfully to he prised, 
 for it mav he made to minister to His glory and to thegood <>! Ili- 
 Church, which never more needed the aid of the Spirit of wisdom, 
 as well as of the Spirit of love."
 
 122 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 attend any attempt to teach boys philology through 
 the medium of their own spoken language, seem the 
 very instruments, by which this is to be effected." 
 But a comparison of his earlier and later letters will 
 show how much this opinion was strengthened in later 
 years, and how, in some respects, he returned to parts 
 of the old system, which on his first arrival at Rugby 
 he had at once altered or discarded. To the use of 
 Latin verse, which he had been accustomed to regard 
 as " one of the most contemptible prettinesses of the 
 understanding," " I am becoming," he said, " in my 
 old affe more and more a convert." Greek and Latin 
 grammars in English, which he introduced soon after 
 he came, he found would not answer the purpose, 
 because the rules which in Latin fixed themselves in 
 the boys' memories, when learned in English, were 
 forgotten. But generally the change in his view was 
 occasioned by his increasing conviction, that " it was 
 not knowledge, but the means of gaining knowledge 
 which he had to teach;" as well as by his increasing 
 sense of the value of the ancient authors, as belong- 
 ing really to a period of modern civilization like our 
 own ; the feeling that in them, " with a perfect ab- 
 straction from those particular names and associations, 
 which are for ever biassing our judgment in modern 
 and domestic instances, the great principles of all 
 political questions, whether civil or ecclesiastical, are 
 perfectly discussed and illustrated with entire free- 
 dom, with most attractive eloquence, and with pro- 
 foundest wisdom." (Serm. vol. iii. Pref. p. xiii.) 
 
 From time to time, therefore, as in the Journal 
 of Education, (vol. vii. p. 240,) where his reasons are 
 stated at length, he raised his voice against the
 
 LIFE OP DR. ARNOLD. 123 
 
 popular outcry, by which classical instruction was at 
 that time assailed. And it was, perhaps, not with- 
 out a share in producing the subsequent reaction in 
 its favour, that the one Head-master, who, by his 
 political connexions and opinions, would have been 
 supposed most likely to yield to the clamour, was 
 the one who made the most deliberate and decided 
 protest against it. 
 
 2. But what was true of his union of new witli 
 old elements in the moral government of the school, 
 applies no less to its intellectual management also. 
 In the classical system itself, he was the first English- 
 man who introduced into public schools the more 
 historical and philosophical interest of philology and 
 of the ancient writers, as distinguished from the 
 mere verbal criticism and elegant scholarship of the 
 last century. And besides the general impulse, which 
 he gave to miscellaneous reading, both in the regular 
 examinations and by the encouragement of the tastes 
 of particular boys for geology or other such pursuits, 
 his attempt to incorporate into the school-work the 
 study of Modern History, Modern Languages and 
 Mathematics, as it was the first of its kind, so it 
 was at one time the chief topic of blame and praise 
 in his system of instruction. The reading of a con- 
 siderable portion of modern history was effected 
 without difficulty; but the endeavour to teach ma- 
 thematics and modern languages, especially the 
 latter, not as an optional appendage, but as a re- 
 gular part of the school business, was beset with 
 obstacles, which rendered his plan loss successful 
 than he had anticipated; though his wishes, espe- 
 cially for boys who were unable to reap the full advan-
 
 124 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 tage of classical studies were, to a great extent, 
 answered a . 
 
 a The instruction in modern languages passed through various 
 stages, of which the final result was that the several forms were 
 taught by their regular masters, French and German in the three 
 higher forms, and French in the forms below. How fully he was 
 himself awake to the objections to this plan will appear from the 
 subjoined letter in ] 84>0 ; but still he felt that it yet remained to 
 be shown how, for a continuance, all the boys of a large public 
 school can be taught modern languages, except by English masters, 
 and those the masters of their respective classical forms. 
 
 Extract from a Letter to Lord Denbigh : — 
 
 " I assume it certainly, as the foundation of all my view of the 
 case, that boys at a public school never will learn to speak or 
 pronounce French well under any circumstances. But to most 
 of our boys, to read it will be of far more use than to speak it ; 
 and, if they learn it grammatically as a dead language, I am sure 
 that whenever they have any occasion to speak it, as in going 
 abroad for instance, they will be able to do it very rapidly. I 
 think that if we can enable the boys to read French with facility, 
 and to know the Grammar well, we shall do as much as can be 
 done at a public school, and should teach the boys something 
 valuable. And, in point of fact, I have heard men, who have 
 left Rugby, speak with gratitude of what they have learnt with 
 us in French and German. 
 
 " It is very true that our general practice here, as in other 
 matters, does not come up to our theory ; and I know too well 
 that most of the boys would pass a very poor examination even 
 in French Grammar. But so it is with their mathematics ; and 
 so it will be with any branch of knowledge that is taught but 
 seldom, and is felt to be quite subordinate to the boy's main 
 study. Only I am quite sure that if the boy's regular masters fail 
 in this, a foreigner, be he who he may, would fail much more. 
 
 " I do not therefore see any way out of the difficulties of the 
 question, and I believe sincerely that our present plan is the least 
 bad, I will not say the best, that can be adopted; discipline is 
 not injured as it is with foreign masters, and I think that some- 
 thing is taught, though but little. With regard to German, I can 
 speak more confidently ; and I am sure that there we do facilitate
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 125 
 
 What has been hitherto said, relates rather to his 
 management of the instruction, than to the instruc- 
 tion itself. His personal share in the teaching of 
 the younger boys was confined to the general examin- 
 ations, in which he took an active part, and to two 
 lessons which he devoted in every week to the hear- 
 ing in succession every form in the school. These 
 visits were too transient for the boys to become 
 familiar with him ; but great interest was always ex- 
 cited, and though the chief impression was of extreme 
 fear, they were also struck by the way in which his 
 examinations elicited from them whatever they knew, 
 as well as by the instruction which they got merely 
 from hearing his questions, or from seeing the effect 
 produced upon him by their answers. But the chief 
 source of his intellectual as of his moral influence 
 over the school, was through the Sixth Form. To the 
 rest of the boys he appeared almost exclusively as a 
 master, to them he appeared almost exclusively as 
 an instructor : it was in the library tower, where he 
 heard their lessons, that his pupils became first really 
 acquainted with him, and that his power of teaching, 
 in which he found at once his main business and 
 pleasure, had its full scope. 
 
 It has been attempted hitherto to represent his 
 principles of education as distinct from himself, but 
 in proportion as we approach his individual teaching, 
 this becomes impracticable — the system is lost in the 
 man — the recollections of the Head-master of Rugby 
 are inseparable from the recollections of the personal 
 
 a boy's after study of the language considerably, and enable biru, 
 with mucb less trouble, to read those many German books, which 
 are so essential to bis classical studies at tbe university."
 
 126* LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 guide and friend of his scholars. They will at once 
 recall those little traits, which, however minute in 
 themselves, will to them suggest a lively image of 
 his whole manner. They will remember the glance, 
 with which he looked round in the few moments of 
 silence before the lesson began, and which seemed to 
 speak his sense of his own position and of theirs also, 
 as the heads of a great school ; the attitude in which 
 he stood, turning over the pages of Facciolati's Lexi- 
 con, or Pole's Synopsis, with his eye fixed upon the 
 boy who was pausing to give an answer; the well 
 known changes of his voice and manner, so faithfully 
 representing the feeling within ; the pleased look and 
 the cheerful " Thank you," which followed upon a 
 successful answer or translation ; the fall of his coun- 
 tenance with its deepening severity, the stern eleva- 
 tion of the eyebrows, the sudden "Sit down" which 
 followed upon the reverse ; the courtesy and almost 
 deference to the boys, as to his equals in society, so 
 long as there was nothing to disturb the friendliness 
 of their relation ; the startling earnestness with which 
 he would check in a moment the slightest approach 
 to levity or impertinence ; the confidence, with which 
 he addressed them in his half-yearly exhortations ; 
 the expressions of delight with which, when they had 
 been doing well, he would say that it was a constant 
 pleasure to him to come into the library. 
 
 His whole method was founded on his principle 
 of awakening the intellect of every individual boy. 
 Hence arose his practice of teaching 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 even in the very act
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 1 27 
 
 of uttering it, from a sense that those to whom lie ad- 
 dressed it had not sufficient interest or sympathy with 
 it, to entitle them to receive it. His explanations were 
 as short as possible — as much as would dispose of the 
 difficulty and no more ; and his questions were of a 
 kind at once to call the attention of the boys to the 
 real point of every subject, to disclose to them the 
 exact boundaries of their knowledge and their ignor- 
 ance, and to cultivate in them a habit not only of 
 collecting facts, but of expressing themselves with 
 facility, and of understanding the principles on which 
 their facts rested. " You come here," he said, " not 
 to read, but to learn how to read ;" and thus the 
 greater part of his instructions were interwoven with 
 the process of their own minds ; there was a continual 
 reference 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 ; a working not for, but with the form. BS 
 if they were equally interested with himself in mak- 
 ing out the meaning of the passage before them ; 
 a constant endeavour to set them right either bv 
 gradually helping them on to a true answer, or by 
 making the answers of the more advanced part of 
 the form serve as a medium, through which his in- 
 structions might be communicated to the less ad- 
 vanced part. 
 
 Hence, also, he not only laid great stress on origi- 
 nal compositions, but endeavoured so to choose the 
 Subjects of exercises as to oblige them to read, and 
 lead them to think for themselves. He dealt at once 
 the death-blow to themes (as he expressed it) on 
 " Virtus est bona res," and gave instead historical or
 
 128 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 geographical descriptions, imaginary speeches or 
 letters, etymological accounts of words, or criticisms 
 of books, or put religious and moral subjects in such 
 a form as awakened a new and real interest in them ; a 
 as, for example, not simply " carpe diem," or, " pro- 
 crastination is the thief of time;" but, "carperediem 
 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 pas- 
 sages in modern literature. An original remark, or 
 a remark suggested by something in the course of 
 their common reading, was what most pleased him, 
 and the only part of his work, which ever seemed 
 wearisome to him, was the correction of tame and 
 faulty exercises. Style, knowledge, correctness or 
 incorrectness of statement or expression, he always 
 disregarded in comparison with indication or promise 
 of real thought. " I call that the best theme," he 
 said, " which shows that the bov has read and thought 
 for himself; that, the next best, which shows that he 
 has read several books, and digested what he has 
 read ; and that the worst, which shows that he has 
 followed but one book, and followed that without re- 
 flection." 
 
 The interest in their work which this method ex- 
 cited in the boys was considerably enhanced by the 
 respect which, even without regard to his general 
 
 a See Appendix B.
 
 LITE OF DR. ARNOLD. 129 
 
 character, was inspired by the qualities brought out 
 prominently in the ordinary course of lessons. They 
 were conscious of (what was indeed implied in his 
 method itself) the absence of display, which made it 
 clear that what he said was to instruct them, not to 
 exhibit his own powers ; they could not but be struck 
 by his never concealing difficulties and always con- 
 fessing ignorance; acknowledging mistakes in his 
 edition of Thucydides, and on Latin verses, mathe- 
 matics, or foreign languages, appealing for help or 
 information to boys whom he thought better quali- 
 fied than himself to give it. And, even as an ex- 
 ample, it was not without its use, to witness daily 
 the power of combination and concentration on his 
 favourite subjects which had marked him even from a 
 boy; and which especially appeared in his illustra- 
 tions of ancient by modern, and modern by ancient 
 history; the widediscursiveness with which he brought 
 the several parts of their work to bear on each 
 other ; the readiness, with which he referred them to 
 the sources and authorities of information, when him- 
 self ignorant of it ; the eagerness, with which he 
 tracked them out when unknown. Events, sayings, 
 authors, from the mere fact of having been quoted or 
 mentioned by him, would become fixed in the me- 
 mory of his pupils, which, had they derived them 
 through another medium, they would soon have for- 
 gotten. The very scantiness, with which he occa- 
 sionally dealt out his knowledge, when not sati>liei| 
 that the hoys could enter into it, whilst it often pro- 
 voked a half-angry feeling of disappointment in those 
 who eagerly treasured up all that he uttered, left at 
 the same time an impression that the source from 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 LIFE OF I>K. ARNOLD. 
 
 which they drew was unexhausted and unfathomed, 
 and to all that he did say gave twice its original 
 value. 
 
 Intellectually, as well as morally, he felt that the 
 teacher ought himself to be perpetually learning, and 
 so constantly above the level of his scholars, f I am 
 sure," he said, speaking of his pupils at Laleham, 
 " that I do not judge of them or expect of them, as 
 I should, if I were not taking pains to improve my 
 own mind." For this reason, he maintained that no 
 schoolmaster ought to remain at his post much more 
 than fourteen or fifteen years, lest, by that time, he 
 should have fallen behind the scholarship of the age; 
 and by his own reading and literary works he en- 
 deavoured constantly to act upon this principle him- 
 self. " For nineteen out of twenty boys," he said 
 once to Archbishop Whately, in speaking of the 
 importance not only of information, but real ability 
 in assistant masters, (and his remark of course applied 
 still more to the station which he occupied himself,) 
 " ordinary men may be quite sufficient, but the 
 twentieth, the boy of real talents, who is more im- 
 portant than the others, is liable Oven to suffer injury 
 from not being early placed under the training of one 
 whom he can, on close inspection, look up to as his 
 superior in something besides mere knowledge. The 
 dangers," he observed, " were of various kinds. One 
 boy may acquire a contempt for the information it- 
 self, which he sees possessed by a man whom he 
 feels nevertheless to be far below him. Another Mill 
 fancy himself as much above nearly all the world as 
 he feels he is above his own tutor ; and will become 
 self-sufficient and scornful. A third Mill believe it to
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 1:11 
 
 be his duty, as a point of humility, to bring himself 
 down intellectually to a level with one whom he feels 
 bound to reverence, and thus there have been in- 
 stances, where the veneration of a young man of 
 ability for a teacher of small powers has been like 
 a millstone round the neck of an casle." 
 
 His practical talent as a scholar consisted in his 
 insight into the general structure of sentences and 
 the general principles of language, and in his deter- 
 mination to discard all those unmeaning formula. 1 and 
 phrases, by which so many writers of the last genera- 
 tion, and boys of all generations, endeavour to con- 
 ceal their ignorance. In Greek and Latin compo- 
 sition his exceeding indifference to mere excellence 
 of style, when unattended by any thing better, made 
 it difficult for him to bestow that praise, which was 
 necessary to its due encouragement as a part of the 
 School work, and he never was able to overcome the 
 deficiency, which he always felt in composing or cor- 
 recting verse exercises, even after his increased con- 
 viction of their use as a mental discipline. But to 
 prose composition in both languages he had from the 
 first attached considerable importance, not only as 
 the best means of acquiring a sound knowledge of 
 the ancient authors, but of attaining a mastery over 
 the English language also, by the readiness and ac- 
 curacy of expression which it imparted; and lie him- 
 self never lost that happy facility for imitating the 
 style of the Greek historians and philosophers, for 
 which lie was remarkable in youth, whilst his Latin 
 prose was peculiar for combining the force of com- 
 mon Latinity with the vigour and simplicity of his 
 
 K 2
 
 132 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 own style — perfectly correct and idiomatic, yet not 
 the language of Cicero or Livy, but of himself. 
 
 In the common lessons his scholarship was chiefly 
 displayed in the power of extempore translation into 
 English, which he had possessed in a remarkable de- 
 gree from the time that he was a boy at Winchester, 
 where the practice of reading the whole passage 
 from Greek or Latin into good English, without con- 
 struing each particular sentence word by word, had 
 been much encouraged by Dr. Gabell. So essential 
 did he consider this method to a sound study of the 
 classics, that he published an elaborate defence of it 
 in the Quarterly Journal of Education, and, when de- 
 livering his Modern Historv lectures at Oxford, where 
 he much lamented the prevalence of the opposite 
 system, he could not resist the temptation of pro- 
 testing against it, with no other excuse for intro- 
 ducing the subject, than the mention of the Latin 
 style of the middle age historians. In itself, he 
 looked upon it as the only means of really entering 
 into the spirit of the ancient authors; and requiring 
 as he did besides, that the translation should be made 
 into idiomatic English, and if possible, into that 
 style of English which most corresponded to the 
 period or the subject of the Greek or Latin writer in 
 question, he considered it further as an excellent ex- 
 ercise in the principles of taste and in the know- 
 ledge and use of the English language, no less than 
 of those of Greece and Rome. No one must sup- 
 pose that these translations in the least resembled 
 the paraphrases in his notes to Thucydides, which 
 are avowedly not translations, but explanations ; he
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 133 
 
 was constantly on the watch for any inadequacy or 
 redundancy of expression — the version was to repre- 
 sent, and no more than represent, the exact words of 
 the original ; and those who, either as his colleagues 
 or his pupils, were present at his lessons, well knew 
 the accuracy, with which every shade of meaning 
 would be reproduced in a different shape, and the 
 rapidity, with which he would pounce on any mistake 
 of grammar or construction, however dexterously 
 concealed in the folds of a free translation. 
 
 But in the subject of the lessons it was not only 
 the language, but the author and the age which rose 
 before him ; it was not merely a lesson to be got 
 through and explained, but a work which was to be 
 understood, to be condemned or to be admired. It 
 was an old opinion of his, which, though much modi- 
 fied was never altogether abandoned, that the mass 
 of boys had not a sufficient appreciation of poetry, to 
 make it worth while for them to read so much of the 
 ancient poets, in proportion to prose writers, as was 
 usual when he came to Rugby. But for some of 
 them he had besides a personal distaste. The Greek 
 tragedians, though reading them constantly, and por- 
 tions of them with the liveliest admiration, he thought 
 on the whole greatly overrated ; and still more, the 
 second-rate Latin poets, whom he never used at all, 
 such as Tibullus and Propertius. "I do really think," 
 lie said, speaking of these last as late as 1841?, "that 
 any examiners incur a serious responsibility who re- 
 quire or encourage the reading of the86 books for 
 scholarships; of all useless reading, surely the read- 
 ing of indifferent poets is most useless." And to
 
 1134 LIFE OP l>K. ARNOLD. 
 
 some of tlicm he bad a yet deeper feeling- of aversion. 
 It Mas not till 1835 that he ever had himself read the 
 plays of Aristophanes, and though he was then much 
 struck with the " Clouds," and ultimately introduced 
 the partial use of his Comedies in the school, yet his 
 strong moral disapprobation always interfered with 
 his sense of the genius both of that poet and Juvenal. 
 But of the classical lessons generally his enjoyment 
 was complete. When asked once whether he did not 
 find the repetition of the same lessons irksome to 
 him, " No," he said, " there is a constant freshness in 
 them ; I find something new in them every time that I 
 go over them." His scholars have long afterwards re- 
 called to their minds the delight with which, when a fine 
 passage occurred in the lesson, he would hang over 
 it, reading it over and over again ; the value which 
 he set on both the public and private orations of De- 
 mosthenes, and the burst of enthusiasm in which he 
 would sometimes indulge in the midst of them ; the 
 affectionate familiarity which he used to show towards 
 Thucydides, knowing as he did the substance of every 
 single chapter by itself; the revival of youthful interest 
 with which he would recur to portions of the works 
 of Aristotle ; the keen sense of a new world opening 
 before him, with which in later years, with ever in- 
 creasing pleasure, he entered into the works of Plato ; 
 — above all, his child-like enjoyment of Herodo- 
 tus, and that " fountain of beauty and delight, which 
 no man," he said, "can ever drain dry," the poetry of 
 Homer. The simple language of that early age was 
 exactly what he was most able to reproduce in his 
 own simple and touching translations; and his eves
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. I 35 
 
 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. 
 
 To his pupils, perhaps, of ordinary lessons, the most 
 attractive were the weekly ones on Modern History. 
 He had always a difficulty in finding any work which 
 he could use with satisfaction as a text book. "Gib- 
 bon, which in many respects would answer the purpose 
 so well, I dare not use." Accordingly, the work, what- 
 ever it might be, was made the groundwork of his own 
 observations, and of other reading from such works as 
 the school library contained. Russell's Modern Eu- 
 rope, for example, a work which he estimated very low, 
 though regarding it, perhaps from his own early ac- 
 quaintance with it at Winchester, with less dislike than 
 might have been expected, served this purpose for 
 several years; and on a chapter of this he would en- 
 graft, or cause the boys to engraft, additional informa- 
 tion from Ilallam, Guizot, or any other historian who 
 happened to treat of the same period, whilst he him- 
 self, with that familiar interest which belonged to his 
 favourite study of history, and of geography, which he 
 always maintained could only be taught in connexion 
 with it, would by his searching and significant ques- 
 tions gather the thoughts of his scholars round the 
 peculiar characteristics of the age or the country <>n 
 which lie wished to fix their attention. 
 
 Before entering on his instructions in theology, 
 which both for himself and hi> scholars had most 
 peculiar interest, it may be necessary to notice the 
 religious character which more or less pervaded the 
 resl of the lessons. When his pupils heard him in
 
 [30 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 preaching recommend tlicm "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," 
 (Serm. vol. iii. p. 116,) 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," (Serm. vol. ii. p. 223,) instances 
 would immediately occur to them from his own prac- 
 tice, 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 Caesar, 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 excel- 
 lence 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 forci- 
 ble contrast could have been drawn between the 
 value of Christianity and of 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."
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 137 
 
 Still it Avas in the Scripture 8 lessons that this 
 found most scope. In the lower forms it was 
 rather that most prominence was given to them, 
 and that they were placed under better regulations 
 than that they were increased in amount. In 
 the Sixth Form, besides the lectures on Sunday, he 
 also introduced two lectures on the Old or New 
 Testament in the course of the week, so that a 
 boy who remained there three years would often 
 have read through a great part of the New Tes- 
 tament, much of the Old Testament, and espe- 
 cially of the Psalms in the Septuagint version, and 
 also committed much of them to memory ; whilst at 
 times he would deliver lectures on the history of the 
 early Church, or of the English Reformation. In 
 these lessons he would insist much on the import- 
 ance of familiarity with the very words of Scripture, 
 and of the exact place where passages occurred ; 
 on their thorough acquaintance with the different 
 parts of the story contained in the several Gospels, 
 that they might be able at once to refer to them ; 
 on their knowledge of the times at which, and the 
 persons to whom, the Epistles were addressed. In 
 their translation of the New Testament, whilst he 
 encouraged them to use the lano-ua^e of the author- 
 ized version as much as possible, he was very parti- 
 cular in not allowing them to use words which fail 
 to convey the meaning of the original, or which by 
 frequent use have lost all definite meaning of their 
 own,— such as "edification," <>r -die Gospel." What- 
 ever dogmatical instruction he gave was conveyed 
 
 a For his own fooling about them, see Sermons, vol. iv. pp. 317. 
 321.
 
 138 LIFE <>i DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 almost entirely in a practical or exegetical shape; 
 
 and it was very rarely indeed that he made any 
 allusion to existing parties or controversies within the 
 Church of England. His own peculiar views, which 
 need not be noticed in this place, transpired more or 
 less throughout ; but the great proportion of his 
 interpretations were such as most of his pupils, of 
 whatever opinions, eagerly collected and preserved 
 for their own use in after life. 
 
 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 themselves almost 
 as little deserve the name of religious instruction as 
 many lessons commonly called secular. The same 
 searching questions, the same vividness which marked 
 his historical lessons, — the same anxiety to bring all 
 that he said home to their own feelings, which made 
 him, in preparing them for confirmation, endeavour 
 to make them say, " Christ died for me," instead of 
 the general phrase, " Christ died for us," — must often, 
 when applied to the natural vagueness of boys' notions 
 on religious subjects, have dispelled it for ever. 
 ki lie appeared to me," writes a pupil, whose inter- 
 course with him never extended beyond these lessons, 
 '■ to be remarkable for his habit of realizing every 
 thing that 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 auy 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 belong-
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 139 
 
 ing 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 tin.' 
 naked outline of the Gospel history ; — it was to him 
 the most interesting fact that has ever happened, — 
 as real, as exciting (if 1 may use the expression) as 
 any recent event in modern history of which the 
 actual effects are visible." And all his comments, 
 on whatever view 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. 
 
 The effect of these instructions was naturally 
 more permanent (speaking merely in an intellectual 
 point of view) than the lessons themselves, and it 
 was a frequent topic of censure that his pupils were 
 led to take up his opinions before their minds were 
 duly prepared lor it. It may be observed that what 
 was true of his method and intention in the simplest 
 matters of instruction, was true of it as applied to 
 the highest matters. Undoubtedly it was his belief 
 that the minds of young men ought to be awakened 
 as soon as possible to the greatness <>f things around 
 them ; and it was his earnest endeavour to give them 
 what he thought the best means of attaining a firm 
 hold upon truth. But it was always his wish that his 
 pupils should form their opinions for themselves, and 
 not take them on trust from him. To his particular 
 political principles he carefully avoided allusion, and 
 it was rarely that his subjects for school compositions
 
 140 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 touched on any topics that could have involved, even 
 remotely, the disputed points of party politics. In 
 theological matters, partly from the nature of the 
 case, partly from the peculiar aspect under which for 
 the last six years of his life he regarded the Oxford 
 school, he both expressed his thoughts more openly, 
 and was more anxious to impress them upon his 
 pupils ; but this was almost entirely in the compara- 
 tively few sermons preached on what could be called 
 controversial topics. And though in his intercourse 
 with his pupils after they had left the school, he 
 naturally spoke with greater freedom on political or 
 theological subjects, yet it was usually when in- 
 vited by them, and, though he often deeply lamented 
 their adoption of what he held to be erroneous 
 views, he much disliked a merely unmeaning echo 
 of his own opinions. " It would be a great mis- 
 take," he said, " if I were to try to make myself here 
 into a Pope." 
 
 It cannot, however, be doubted that, as one almost 
 inevitable consequence of coming into contact with 
 his teaching, and with the new world which it opened, 
 his pupils would often, on their very entrance into life, 
 have acquired a familiarity and encountered a con- 
 flict with some of the most harassing questions of 
 morals and religion. And it would often happen, 
 that the increasing reverence, which they felt for him, 
 would not only incline them to receive with implicit 
 credit all that he said in the lessons or in the pulpit, 
 but also to include in their admiration of the man, all 
 that they could gather of his general views either 
 from report or from his published works, whilst they 
 Mould naturally look with distrust on the opposite
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 141 
 
 notions in religion and politics, brought before them, 
 as would often be the case, in close connexion with 
 vehement attacks on him, which in most cases they 
 could hardly help regarding as unfounded or unfair. 
 Still the greater part of his pupils, while at school, 
 were, after the manner of English boys, altogether un- 
 affected by his political opinions; and of those who 
 most revered him, none in after life could be found 
 who followed his views implicitly, even on the subjects 
 on which they were most disposed to listen to him. 
 But though no particular school of opinion grew up 
 amongst them, the end of his teaching would be an- 
 swered far more truly, (and it may suggest to those 
 who know history, similar results of similar methods 
 in the hands of other eminent teachers,) if his scholars 
 learned to form an independent judgment for them- 
 selves, and to carry out their opinions to their legiti- 
 mate consequences, — to appreciate moral agreement 
 amidst much intellectual dillerence, not only in cacli 
 other or in him, but in the world at large ; — and to 
 adopt many, if not all of his principles, whilst differing 
 widely in their application of them to existing per- 
 sons and circumstances. 
 
 III. If there is any one place at Rugby more than 
 another which was especially the scene of Dr. Arnold's 
 labours, 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," a 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. 
 
 a MS. Sermon.
 
 L42 MPE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 "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 win- 
 dow, 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." 
 (Serm. vol. iii. p. 112.) And as this is connected 
 with the energy and vigour of his life, so the subject 
 of the last, which he chose himself a short time before 
 his death, is the confession of St. Thomas, on which 
 he dwelt with deep solemnity in his last hours, as in 
 his life he had dwelt upon it as the great consolation 
 of doubting but faithful hearts, and as the great 
 attestation of what was to him the central truth of 
 Christianity, our Lord's divinity. Lastly, the monu- 
 ments of those who died in the school during his 
 government of it, and whose graves were the first 
 ever made in the chapel ; above all, his own, the 
 monument and grave of the only head-master of 
 Rugby who is buried within its walls, give a melan- 
 choly interest to the words with which he closed a 
 sermon preached on the Founder's day, in 1833, 
 whilst as yet the recently opened vaults had received 
 no dead within them : 
 
 " This roof under which we are now assembled, will
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 148 
 
 hold, it is probable, our children and our children's chil- 
 dren ; may they be enabled to think, as they shall kneel 
 perhaps over the bones of some of us nov here assembled, 
 that they are praying where their fathers prayed ; and let 
 them not, if they mock in their day the means of grace 
 here offered to them, encourage themselves with the 
 thought that the place had long ago been profaned with 
 equal guilt ; that they are but infected with the spirit of 
 our ungodliness." (Scrm. vol. iii. p. 211.) 
 
 But of him especially it need hardly be said, that 
 his chief interest in that place lay in the three hun- 
 dred 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 congre- 
 gation here assembled. But if the sight so interests 
 a mere stranger, what should it be to ourselves, both 
 to you and to me?" (Serrn. vol. v. p. 403.) So he 
 spoke within a month of his death, and to him, cer- 
 tainly, the interest was increased rather than lessened 
 by its familiarity. How lively is the recollection his 
 scholars retain of the earnest attention with which, 
 after the service was over, he sat in his place look- 
 ing 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. How complete was the 
 image of his union of dignity and simplicity, of man- 
 liness and devotion, which they have who heard him 
 perform the chapel service, especially when at the 
 communion table ho would read or rather repeat 
 almost by heart the Gospel and Kpistle of the day, 
 with the impressiveness of one who entered into it
 
 144 LIFE OF DR. ABNOLD. 
 
 equally with his whole spirit and also with his whole 
 understanding; or again, when they witnessed the 
 visible animation, with which by force of long associa- 
 tion he joined in the musical parts of the service, to 
 which he was by nature wholly indifferent, especially 
 in the Te Deum, which he loved so dearly, or in the 
 chanting of the Nicene Creed, which was adopted in 
 accordance with his conviction that creeds in public 
 worship (Serm. vol. iii. p. 310.) ought to be used as 
 triumphant hymns of thanksgiving. 
 
 How evident, too, was his anxiety to impart his 
 own interest in the service to his scholars ; urging 
 them in his later sermons, or in his more private ad- 
 dresses, to join in the responses, at times with such 
 effect, that at least from all the older part of the 
 school the responses were very general ; and how 
 often was the course of the ecclesiastical year asso- 
 ciated in their minds with their remembrance of the 
 peculiar feeling, with which they saw that he regarded 
 the greater festivals, and of the almost invariable 
 connexion of his sermons with the services of the day. 
 The touching recollections of those amongst the liv- 
 ing or the dead, whom he loved or honoured, which 
 passed through his mind as he spoke of All Saints' 
 Day, and whenever it was possible, of its accompany- 
 ing feast, now no longer observed, All Souls' Dav ; — 
 and the solemn thoughts of the advance of human 
 life, and of the progress of the human race, and of 
 the Church, which were awakened by the approach of 
 Advent, — might have escaped a careless observer; but 
 it must have been difficult for any one not to have 
 been struck by the triumphant exultation of his whole 
 manner on the recurrence of Easter Dav. And Lent
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 145 
 
 was marked during the three last years of his time, by 
 a practice of having boxes put up during that season, in 
 the chapel and in the different boarding-houses, for the 
 reception of money for the poor, contributed privately 
 by the boys themselves, (see Scrm. vol. v. p. 122,) 
 not intended by him so much in the way of alms for 
 the relief of actual want, as affording an opportunity 
 of self-denial for themselves 9 . 
 
 He was anxious to secure the administration of 
 the rite of confirmation, if possible, once every two 
 years; when the boys were prepared by himself and 
 the other masters in their different boarding-houses, 
 who each brought up their own division of pupils in 
 succession to the communion table on the day of the 
 ceremony; and the interest of it was to him further 
 enhanced, on most seasons of its occurrence, during 
 the earlier period, by the presence of the late Bishop 
 Ryder, for whom he entertained a great respect, and 
 latterly by the presence of his intimate friend. Arch- 
 bishop Whately. The Confirmation Hymn of Dr. 
 Jlinds, which was used on these occasions, became 
 so endeared to his recollections, that, when travelling 
 abroad late at night, he would have it repeated or 
 Sung to him. One of the earliest public addresses 
 to the school was that made before the first con- 
 firmation, and published in the second volume of his 
 sermons; and he always had something of the kind, 
 
 <* He feared, however, to introduce more religious services, 
 than li«' thought the boys would bear without a sense of tedium or 
 formality, on which principle he dropped an existing practice of 
 
 devoting all the lessons in Passion Week to tin' New Testament ; 
 ami always hesitated (<> have :i chapel Bervice on bucIi festivals as 
 did not fall on Sundays, though in the last year of bis life he made 
 an exception with regard to Ascension Day. 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 140 LIFE OF DE. ARNOLD. 
 
 either before <»r after, over and above the Bishop's 
 charge, the regular Cliapel service. 
 
 The Communion was celebrated four times a year. 
 At first some of the Sixth Form boys alone were in the 
 habit of attending ; but he took pains to invite to it 
 boys in all parts of the school, who had any serious 
 thoughts, so that the number, out of two hundred and 
 ninety or three hundred boys, was occasionally a hun- 
 dred, and never less than seventy. To individual 
 boys he rarely spoke on the subject, from the fear of 
 its becoming a matter of form or favour ; but in his 
 sermons he dwelt upon it much, and would after- 
 wards speak with deep emotion of the pleasure and 
 hope which a larger attendance than usual would 
 give him. It was impossible to hear these exhorta- 
 tions, or to see him administer it, without being 
 struck by the strong and manifold interest, which it 
 awakened in him ; and at Rugby it was of course 
 more than usually touching to him from its peculiar 
 relation to the school. When he spoke of it in his 
 sermons, it was evident that amongst all the feelings 
 which it excited in himself, and which he wished to 
 impart to others, none was so prominent as the sense 
 that it was a communion not only with God, but 
 with one another, and that the thoughts thus roused 
 should act as a direct and especial counterpoise to 
 that false communion and false companionship, which, 
 as binding one another not to good but to evil, he 
 believed to be the great source of mischief in the 
 school at large. And when, — especially to the very 
 young boys, who sometimes partook of the Com- 
 munion, — he bent himself down with looks of fatherly 
 tenderness, and glistening eyes and trembling voice.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 147 
 
 in the administration of the elements, it was felt, 
 perhaps, more distinctly than at any other time, how 
 great was the sympathy which he felt with the ear- 
 liest advances to good in every individual boy. 
 
 That part of the Chapel service, however, which, at 
 least to the world at large, is most connected with 
 him, as being the most frequent and most personal 
 of his ministrations, was his preaching. Sermons had 
 occasionally been preached by the head-master of 
 this and other public schools to their scholars before 
 his coming to Rugby; but (in some cases from the 
 peculiar constitution or arrangement of the school) 
 it had never before been considered an essential 
 part of the head-master's office. The first half-year 
 he confined himself to delivering short addresses, of 
 about five minutes' length, to the boys of his own 
 house. But from the second half-year he began to 
 preach frequently; and from the autumn of 1831, 
 when he took the chaplaincy *, which had then be- 
 
 a Extract from a Letter to the Trustees, applying for tlie 
 situation : — " I had no knowledge nor so much as the slightest 
 suspicion of the vacancy," he writes, " till I was informed of it 
 last night. But the importance of the point is so great that I 
 most respectfully crave the indulgence of the Trustees to the re- 
 quest I venture to submit to them, namely, that if they see no 
 objection to it I may myself be appointed to the chaplaincy, 
 waiving, of course, altogether the salary attached to the office. 
 Whoever is chaplain, I must ever feel myself, as Head-master, the 
 real and proper religious instructor of the boys. No one else can 
 feel the same interest in them, and no one else (1 am not speak- 
 ing of myself personally, but merely by virtue of my situation) 
 can speak to them with so much influence. In fact, it seems to 
 me the natural and fitting thing, and the great advantage of having 
 a separate chapel for the school — that the master of the boys should 
 be officially as well a- really their pastor, and that he should not 
 devolve on another, however well quaiifiod, one of his own most 
 
 1. L>
 
 I }^ LIFK OF 1>R. ARNOLD. 
 
 come vacant, he preached almost every Sunday of the 
 school year to the end of his life. It may be allowable 
 to dwell for a few moments on a practice which lias 
 since been followed, whenever it was practicable, in 
 the other great public schools, and on sermons, which, 
 as they were the first of their kind, will also be pro- 
 bably long looked upon as models of their kind, in 
 English preaching. They were preached always in 
 the afternoon, and lasted seldom more than twenty 
 minutes, sometimes less ; a new one almost every time. 
 "A man could hardly," he said, " preach on the same 
 subject, without writing a better sermon than he had 
 written a few years before." However much they 
 may have occupied his previous thoughts, they were 
 written almost invariably between the morning and 
 afternoon service ; and though often under such stress 
 of time that the ink of the last sentence was hardly 
 dry when the chapel bell ceased to sound, they con- 
 tain hardly a single erasure, and the manuscript vo- 
 lumes remain as accessible a treasure to their posses- 
 sors as if they were printed. 
 
 When he first began to preach, he felt that his 
 chief duty was to lay bare, in the plainest language 
 that he could use, the sources of the evils of schools, 
 and to contrast them with the purity of the moral 
 law of Christianity. " The spirit of Elijah," he said, 
 
 peculiar and solemn duties. This, however, is a general question, 
 which I only venture so far to enter upon, in explaining my 
 motives in urging and requesting, in this present instance, that 
 the Trustees would present me to the Bishop to be licensed, allow- 
 ing me altogether to decline the salary, because I consider that I 
 am paid for my services already; and that being Head-master and 
 clergyman, I am bound to be the religious instructor of my pupils 
 bv virtue of mv situation."
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 141) 
 
 " must ever precede the spirit of Christ." But as he 
 advanced, there is a marked contrast between the 
 severe tone of his early sermons in the second volume, 
 when all was as yet new to him, except the know- 
 ledge of the evil which he had to combat, and the 
 gentler tone which could not but be inspired by the 
 greater familiarity both with his work and his pupils 
 produced by later years — between the direct attack 
 on particular faults which marks the course of Lent 
 Sermons in 1830, and the wish to sink the mention 
 of particular faults in the general principle of love to 
 Christ and abhorrence of sin, which marks the sum- 
 mary of his whole school experience in the last 
 sermon which he ever preached. And when he be- 
 came the constant preacher, he made a point of vary- 
 ing the more directly practical addresses with ser- 
 mons on interpretation of Scripture, on the general 
 principles and evidences of Christianity, or on the 
 dangers of their after life, applicable chiefly to the 
 elder boys. Amongst these last should be noticed 
 those which contained more or less the expression of 
 his sentiments on the principles to which he con- 
 ceived his pupils liable hereafter to be exposed at 
 Oxford, and most of which, as being of a more gene- 
 ral interest, he selected for publication in his third 
 and fourth volumes. That their proportion to the 
 published ones aftbrds no measure of their proportion 
 to the unpublished ones, may be seen at once 1>\ re- 
 ference to the year's <•< »u rse in the fifth volume, which, 
 out of thirty-four, contains only four, which could 
 possibly be included in this class. That it was not 
 his own intention to make them cither personal or 
 controversial, appears from an explanation to a friend
 
 150 LIFE 'OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 of a statement, which, in 1839, appeared in the news- 
 papers, that he " had been preaching a course of ser- 
 mons against the Oxford errors." — " The origin of 
 the paragraph was simply this : that I preached two 
 in February, showing that the exercise of our own 
 judgment was not inconsistent with the instruction 
 and authority of the Church, or with individual mo- 
 desty and humility, [viz., the thirty-first and thirty- 
 second in vol. iv.] They were not in the least con- 
 troversial, and neither mentioned nor alluded to the 
 Oxford writers. And I have preached only these 
 two which could even be supposed to bear upon their 
 doctrines. Indeed, I should not think it right, ex- 
 cept under very different circumstances from present 
 ones, to occupy the boys' time or thoughts with such 
 controversies." The general principles, accordingly, 
 which form the groundwork of all these sermons, are 
 such as are capable of a far wider application than to 
 any particular school of English opinion, and often 
 admit of direct application to the moral condition of 
 the school. But the quick ears of boys no doubt 
 were always ready to give such sermons a more per- 
 sonal character than he had intended, or perhaps had 
 even in his mind at the moment ; and at times, when 
 the fear of these opinions was more forcibly impressed 
 upon him, the allusion, and even mention of the 
 writers in question, is so direct that no one could 
 mistake it. 
 
 But it Avas of course in their direct practical ap- 
 plication to the boys, that the chief novelty and ex- 
 cellence of his sermons consisted. Speaking, as he 
 did, with almost conversational plainness on the pecu- 
 liar condition of public schools, his language never
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 151 
 
 left an impression of familiarity, rarely of personal 
 allusion. In cases of notorious individual miscon- 
 duct, he generally shrunk from any pointed mention 
 of them, and on one occasion when he wished to ad- 
 dress the boys on an instance of untruthfulness which 
 had deeply grieved him, he had the sermon before the 
 regular service, in order to be absolutely 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 ex- 
 citement. 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 agitat- 
 ing details. Often he would speak with severity and 
 bitter disappointment of the evils of the place ; yet 
 there was hardly ever a sermon which did not contain 
 some words of encouragement. " I have never," he 
 said in his last sermon, " wished to speak with exag- 
 geration ; it seems to me as unwise as it is wrong to 
 do so. I think that it is quite right to observe what 
 is hopeful in us as well as what is threatening; that 
 general confessions of unmixed evil are deceiving and 
 
 ■ On another occasion, in consequence of the practice of drink- 
 ing having prevailed to a great extent in the school, he addressed 
 tin boys at considerable length from bis place in the greal school, 
 saying that he should have spoken to them from the pulpit, hut 
 that as there were others present in the Chapel, he wished to hide 
 their shame. And then, (says one who was present,) " in a tone 
 of tin' deepest feeling, as if it wrung his inmost heart to confess 
 the existence of such an evil amongst as," he dwelt apon tin' sin and 
 the folly of the hahit, even where intoxication was not produced — 
 its evil effects both on body and mind- the folly of fancying it to 
 be manly — its general effect on the Bchool.
 
 152 LIFE OK DE. ARNOLD. 
 
 hardening, rather than arousing; that our evil never 
 Looks bo really dark as when we contrast it with any 
 thing which there may be in us of good." (Serin, 
 vol. v. p. 400.) 
 
 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 
 practise, whilst none could deny their obligation. 
 There also appeared most evidently — what indeed 
 pervaded his whole school life — the more than ad- 
 miration, with which he regarded those who strug- 
 gled 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 every thing high and excellent, 
 with which his strong historical imagination peopled 
 the past, or which his lively sense of things unseen 
 realized in the invisible world. There were few pre- 
 sent in the chapel who were not at least for the mo- 
 ment touched, when, in one of his earliest sermons, he 
 closed one of these earnest appeals with the lines 
 from Milton which always so deeply moved him, — the 
 blessing on Abdiel. 
 
 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 ma- 
 nagement 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
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 153 
 
 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 be- 
 hind 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 school- 
 master, only teaching and educating with increased 
 solemnity and energy. He was still the simple-hearted 
 and earnest man, labouring 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 
 lie hoped to live and die himself. 
 
 It is difficult to describe, without seeming to ex- 
 aggerate, the attention with which he was heard by 
 all above the very young boys. Years have passed 
 away, and many of his pupils can look back to hardly 
 any greater interest than that, with which, for those 
 twenty minutes, Sunday after Sunday, they sat be- 
 neath that pulpit, with their eyes fixed upon him, and 
 their attention strained to the utmost to catch every 
 word that he uttered. It is true, that, even to the 
 best, there was much, and to the mass of boys, the 
 greater part of what he said, that must have passed 
 away from them as soon as they had heard it, with- 
 out any corresponding fruits. But they were struck, 
 as boys naturally would be, by tin- originality of his 
 thoughts, and what always impressed them as the 
 beauty of his language; and in the substance of what 
 In- said, much that might have seemed useless, ho-
 
 154 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 cause for the most part impracticable to boys, was 
 not without its effect in breaking completely through 
 the corrupt atmosphere of school opinion, and ex- 
 hibiting before them once every week an image of 
 high principle and feeling, which they felt was not put 
 on for the occasion, but was constantly living amongst 
 them. And to all it must have been an advan- 
 tage, that, for once in their lives, they had listened to 
 sermons, which none of them could associate with the 
 thought of weariness, formality, or exaggeration. On 
 many there was left an impression to which, though 
 unheeded at the time, they recurred in after life — 
 even the most careless boys would sometimes, during 
 the course of the week, refer almost involuntarily to 
 the sermon of the past Sunday, as a condemnation 
 of what they were doing; and some, whilst they 
 wonder how it was that so little practical effect was 
 produced upon themselves at the time, yet retain the 
 recollection, (to give the words of one who so describes 
 himself,) that, " I used to listen to them from first to 
 last with a kind of awe, and over and over again could 
 not join my friends at the chapel door, but would 
 walk home to be alone ; and I remember the same 
 effects being produced by them, more or less, on 
 others, whom I should have thought as hard as stones, 
 and on whom I should think Arnold looked as some 
 of the worst boys in the school." 
 
 IV. Although the Chapel was the only place in 
 which, to the school at large, he necessarily appeared 
 in a purely pastoral and personal relation — yet this re- 
 lation extended in his view to his whole management 
 of his scholars ; and he conceived it to be his duty 
 and that of the other masters to throw themselves, as
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 1 55 
 
 much as possible, into the way of understanding and 
 entering into the feelings of the boys, not only in 
 their official intercourse, but always. When he was 
 first appointed at Rugby, his friends had feared that 
 the indifference which he felt towards characters and 
 persons, with whom he had no especial sympathy, 
 would have interfered with his usefulness as Head- 
 master. But in the case of boys, a sense of duty 
 supplied the want of that interest in character, as 
 such, which, in the case of men, he possessed but 
 little. Much as there was in the peculiar humour of 
 boys which his own impatience of moral thoughtless- 
 ness, or of treating serious or important subjects with 
 any thing like ridicule or irony, prevented him from 
 fully appreciating, yet he truly felt, that the natural 
 youthfulness and elasticity of his constitution gave 
 him a great advantage in dealing with them. — 
 " When T find that I cannot run up the library stairs," 
 he said, " I shall know that it is time for me to go." 
 Traits and actions of boys, which to a stranger 
 would have told nothing, were to him highly signi- 
 ficant. His quick and far-sighted eye became familiar 
 with the face and manner of every boy in the school. 
 " Do you see," he said to an assistant-master who 
 had recently come, " those two boys walking toge- 
 ther; I never saw them together before; you should 
 make an especial point of observing the company 
 they keep; — nothing so tells the changes in a boy's 
 character." The insight which he thus acquired into 
 the general characteristics of boyhood, will not be 
 doubted by any reader <»t' bis sermons ; and bis scholars 
 used sometimes t<> be startled by the knowledge of 
 their own notions, which his speeches to them im-
 
 156 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 plied. " Often and often," says one of them, " have 
 I said to myself, ' If it was one of ourselves who had 
 just spoken, he could not more completely 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 
 dispositions to judge of the whole from some one pro- 
 minent 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 ge- 
 neral 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 subse- 
 quently proved to be correct ; so that those, who 
 lived with him, describe themselves as trusting to his 
 opinions of boys as to divinations, and feeling as if by 
 an unfavourable judgment their fate was sealed. 
 
 His relation to the boarders in his own house (called 
 by distinction the School-house, and contai n ingbet ween 
 sixty and seventy boys.) naturally afforded more scope 
 for communication than with the rest of the school. 
 Besides the opportunities of showing kindness and 
 attention to them in his own family, in cases of dis- 
 tress or sickness, he also made use of the prepara- 
 tion for Confirmation for private conversation with
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 157 
 
 them ; and during the later years of his life was ac- 
 customed to devote an hour or more in the evening 
 to seeing each of them alone by turns, and talking on 
 such topics as presented themselves, leading them if 
 possible to more serious subjects. The general ma- 
 nagement of the house, both from his strong dislike 
 to intruding on the privacy even of the youngest, and 
 from the usual principles of trust on which he pro- 
 ceeded, he left as much as possible to the Praepostors. 
 Still his presence and manner when he appeared 
 officially, either on special calls, or on the stated occa- 
 sions of calling over their names twice a day, was not 
 without its effect. One of the scenes that most lives 
 in the memory of his school-house pupils is their 
 night muster in the hall, whilst he stood at the head 
 of the long table, where the prayers were read by 
 one of the boys, and a portion of Scripture by him- 
 self. This last was a practice, which he introduced 
 soon after his arrival, when, on one of these occasions, 
 he spoke strongly to the boys on the necessity of each 
 reading some part of the Bible every day, and then 
 added, that as he feared that many would not make the 
 rule for themselves, he should for the future always 
 read a passage every evening at this time. He usually 
 brought in his Greek Testament, and read about hall' 
 a chapter in English, most frequently his favourite 
 chapters in St. John ; when from the Old Testa- 
 ment, especially his favourite Psalms. I [e never made 
 any comment; but his manner of reading impressed 
 the boys considerably, and it was observed by some 
 of them, shortly after the practice was commenced, 
 that they had never understood the Psalms before. 
 On Sunday nights he read a prayer of his own. and
 
 158 LIFE OF Dli. ARNOLD. 
 
 before he began to preach regularly in the chapel, de- 
 livered the short addresses which have been before 
 mentioned, and which he resumed, in addition to his 
 other work on Sundays, during the last year and a 
 half of his life. 
 
 With the boys in the Sixth Form his private inter- 
 course was comparatively frequent, whether in the 
 lessons, or in questions of school government, or in 
 the more familiar relation in which they were brought 
 to him in their calls before and after the holidays, 
 their dinners with him during the half year, and the 
 visits which one or more used by turns to pay to him 
 in Westmoreland during part of the vacation. But 
 with the greater part of the school it was almost en- 
 tirely confined to such opportunities as arose out of 
 the regular course of school discipline or instruction, 
 and the occasional invitations to his house of such 
 amongst the younger boys, as he could find any reason 
 or excuse for asking. It would thus often happen 
 that a boy would leave Rugby without any personal 
 communication with him at all ; and even in the 
 higher part of the school, those who most respected 
 him would sometimes complain, even with bitterness, 
 that he did not give them greater opportunities of 
 asking his advice, or himself offer more frequently to 
 direct their studies and guide their inquiries. 
 
 Latterly, indeed, he communicated with them more 
 frequently, and expressed himself more freely both in 
 public and private on the highest subjects. But he 
 was always restrained from speaking much or often, 
 both from the extreme difficulty which he felt in 
 saying any thing without a real occasion for it, and 
 also from his principle of leaving as much as possible
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 1 5L> 
 
 to be filled up by the judgment of the boys them- 
 selves, and from his deep conviction that, in the most 
 important matters of all, the movement must come 
 not from without but from within. And it certainly 
 was the case, that, whenever he did make exceptions 
 to this rule, and spoke rather as their friend than 
 their master, the simplicity of his words, the rareness 
 of their occurrence, and the stern background of his 
 ordinary administration gave a double force to all that 
 was said. 
 
 Such, for example, would be the effect of his speak- 
 ing of swearing to a boy, not so much in anger or re- 
 proof, as assuring him how every year he would learn 
 to see more and more how foolish and disgusting 
 such language Mas ; or again, the distinction he would 
 point out to them between mere amusement, and 
 such as encroached on the next day's duties, when as 
 he said "it immediately becomes what St. Paul calls 
 revelling." Such also, would be the impression of his 
 severe rebukes for individual faults, showing by their 
 very shortness and abruptness his loathing and abhor- 
 rence of evil ; or again, in his preparation for Confirm- 
 ation, (after the short questions which were issued 
 rather as guides for their thoughts than as necessary 
 to be formally answered,) the few words spoken, with 
 his own deep conviction of their reality — the simple 
 repetition, for example, of the promise made to prayer, 
 with his earnest assurance that if that was not true, 
 nothing was true; if any thing in the Bible could be 
 relied upon, it was that — have become the turning 
 point of a boy's character, and have been graven on 
 his memory as a law for life. 
 
 Such also were the cases, in which, more than once.
 
 1 GO LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 boys, who were tormented while at school with scep- 
 tical doubts, took courage at last to unfold them to 
 him, and Mere almost startled to find the ready sympa- 
 thy with which, instead of denouncing them as pro- 
 fane, he entered into their difficulties and applied his 
 whole mind to assuage them ; or again, the readiness 
 with which in dealing with the worse class of boys, in 
 whom he saw indications of improvement, he would 
 grant indulgences, which on ordinary occasions he 
 would have denied, with a view of encouraging them 
 by signs of his confidence in them ; or the considerate 
 tenderness, with which at times on discovering cases 
 of vice, he would, instead of treating them with con- 
 tempt or extreme severity, allow the force of the 
 temptation, and urge it upon them as a proof brought 
 home to their own minds, how surely they must look 
 for help out of themselves. 
 
 But, independently of particular occasions of in- 
 tercourse, there was a deep under-current of sym- 
 pathy which extended to almost all, and which from 
 time to time broke through the reserve of his out- 
 ward manner. In cases where it might have been 
 thought that tenderness would have been extin- 
 guished by indignation, he was sometimes so deeply 
 affected in pronouncing sentence of punishment on 
 offenders, as to be hardly able to speak. " I felt," 
 he said once of some great fault of which he had 
 heard in one of the Sixth Form — and his eyes filled 
 with tears as he spoke, "as if it had been one of my 
 own children, and, till I had ascertained that it was 
 really true, I mentioned it to no one, not even to 
 any of the masters." And this feeling began, before 
 he could have had any personal knowledge of them.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 1(51 
 
 Nor were any thoughts so bitter to him, as those 
 suggested by the innocent faces of little boys, as 
 they first came from home, — nor any expressions of 
 his moral indignation deeper, than when he heard 
 of their being tormented or tempted into evil by 
 their companions. " It is a most touching thing 
 to me," he said once in the hearing of one of his 
 former pupils, on the mention of some new comers, 
 " to receive a new fellow from his father — when 
 I think what an influence there is in this place 
 for evil, as well as for good. I do not know 
 any thing which affects me more." His pupil, who 
 had, on his own first coming, been impressed chiefly 
 by the severity of his manner, expressed some sur- 
 prise, adding, that he should have expected this to 
 wear away with the succession of fresh arrivals. 
 "No!" he said, "if ever I could receive a new boy 
 from his father without emotion, I should think it 
 was high time to be off." 
 
 What he felt thus on ordinary occasions, was 
 heightened of course when any thing brought strongly 
 before him any evil in the school. " If this goes on," 
 he wrote to a former pupil on some such occasion, 
 " it will end either my life at Rugby, or my life alto- 
 gether." " How can I go on," he said, " with my 
 Roman History? There all is noble and high-minded, 
 and here I mid nothing but the reverse." The fol- 
 lowing extract from a letter to his friend, Sir T. 
 Pasley, describes this feeling. 
 
 " Since I began this letter, I have had some of tin- 
 troubles of school-keeping ; and one of those specimens 
 of the evil of boy -nature, wliieli makes me always unwilling 
 to undergo the responsibility of advising any man to send 
 
 Vol. I. M
 
 ll>L' LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 his son to a public school. There has been a system of 
 persecution carried on by the bad against the good, and 
 then, when complaint was made to me, there came fresh 
 persecution on that very account; and divers instances of 
 boys joining in it out of pure cowardice, both physical 
 and moral, when if left to themselves they would have 
 rather shunned it. And the exceedingly small number of 
 boys, who can be relied on for active and steady good on 
 these occasions, and the way in which the decent and re- 
 spectable of ordinary life (Carlyle's " Shams") are sure on 
 these occasions to swim with the stream, and take part 
 with the evil, makes me strongly feel exemplified what the 
 Scripture says about the strait gate and the wide one, — a 
 view of human nature, which, when looking on human life 
 in its full dress of decencies and civilizations, we are apt, 
 I imagine, to find it hard to realize. But here, in the 
 nakedness of boy-nature, one is quite able to understand 
 how there could not be found so many as even ten right- 
 eous in a whole city. And how to meet this evil I really 
 do not know ; but to find it thus rife after I have been [so 
 many] years fighting against it, is so sickening, that it is 
 very hard not to throw up the cards in despair, and upset 
 the table- But then the stars of nobleness, which I see 
 amidst the darkness, in the case of the few good, are so 
 cheering, that one is inclined to stick to the ship again, 
 and have another good try at getting her about." 
 
 V. As, on the one hand, his interest and sympathy 
 with the boys far exceeded any direct manifestation 
 of it towards them, so, on the other hand, the im- 
 pression which he produced upon them was derived, 
 not so much from any immediate intercourse or con- 
 versation with him, as from the general influence of 
 his whole character, displayed consistently whenever 
 he appeared before them. This influence, with its 
 consequent effects, was gradually on the increase
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 100 
 
 during the whole of his stay. From the earliest period, 
 indeed, the boys were conscious of something unlike 
 what they had been taught to imagine of a school- 
 master, and by many, a lasting regard was contracted 
 for him ; but it was not till he had been in his post 
 some years, that there arose that close bond of union 
 which characterized his relation to his elder pupils; 
 and it was, again, not till later still that this feeling 
 extended itself, more or less, through the mass of 
 the school, so that, in the higher forms at least, it 
 became the fashion (so to speak) to think and talk 
 of him with pride and affection. 
 
 The liveliness and simplicity of his whole be- 
 haviour must always have divested his earnestness of 
 any appearance of moroseness and affectation. " He 
 calls us fdlmvs" was the astonished expression of 
 the boys When, soon after his first coming, they heard 
 him speak of them by the familiar name in use 
 amongst themselves ; and in his later years, they ob- 
 served with pleasure the unaffected interest with 
 which, in the long autumn afternoons, he would stand 
 in the school-field and watch the issue of their fa- 
 vourite games of football. But his ascendancy was, 
 generally speaking, not gained, at least in the first 
 instance, by the effect of his outward manner. There 
 was a shortness, at times, something of an awkward- 
 ness in his address, occasioned partly by his natural 
 shyness, partly by his dislike of wasting words on 
 trivial occasions, which to boys must have been often 
 repulsive rather than conciliating ; something also of 
 extreme severity in his voice and countenance, be- 
 yond what he was himself at all aware of. With the 
 very little boys, indeed, his manner partook of that 
 
 m 2
 
 104 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 playful kindness and tenderness, which always marked 
 his intercourse with children ; but, in those above 
 this early age, and yet below the rank in the school 
 which brought them into closer contact with him, 
 the sternness of his character was the first thing that 
 impressed them. In many, no doubt, this feeling 
 was one of mere dread, which, if not subsequently 
 removed or modified, only served to repel those who 
 felt it to a greater distance from him. But in many 
 also, this was, even in the earlier period of their stay, 
 mingled with an involuntary and, perhaps, an uncon- 
 scious respect inspired by the sense of the manliness 
 and straightforwardness of his dealings, and still 
 more, by the sense of the general force of his moral 
 character ; by the belief (to use the words of differ- 
 ent pupils) in " his extraordinary knack, for I can 
 call it nothing else, of showing that his object in 
 punishing or reproving, was not his own good or plea- 
 sure, but that of the boy," — " in a truthfulness — an 
 eCkiKpiveia — a sort of moral transparency ; " in the fix- 
 edness of his purpose, and " the searchingness of his 
 practical insight into boys," by a consciousness, almost 
 amounting to solemnity, that " when his eye was 
 upon you, he looked into your inmost heart ;" that 
 there was some thing in his very tone and outward 
 aspect, before which any thing low, or false, or cruel 
 instinctively quailed and cowered. 
 
 And the defect of occasional over-hastiness and 
 vehemence of expression, which during the earlier 
 period of his stay at times involved him in some 
 trouble, did not materially interfere with their general 
 notion of his character. However mistaken it might 
 be in the individual case, it was evident to those who
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 1 05 
 
 took any thought about it, that that ashy paleness 
 and that awful frown were almost always the expres- 
 sion not of personal resentment, but of deep, in- 
 effable scorn and indignation at the sight of vice and 
 sin ; and it was not without its effect to observe, that 
 it was a fault against which he himself was constantly 
 on the watch — and which, in fact, was in later years so 
 nearly subdued, that most of those who had only 
 known him during that time can recall no instance 
 of it during their stay. 
 
 But as boys advanced in the school, out of this 
 feeling of fear " grew up a deep admiration, partaking 
 largely of the nature of awe, and this softened into a 
 sort of loyalty, which remained even in the closer and 
 more affectionate sympathy of later years." — " I am 
 sure," writes a pupil who had no personal commu- 
 nications with him whilst at school, and but little 
 afterwards, and who never was in the Sixth Form, 
 " that I do not exaggerate my feelings when I sav, 
 that I felt a love and reverence for him as one of quite 
 awful greatness and goodness, for whom I well re- 
 member that I used to think I would gladly lay down 
 my life ;" adding, with reference to the thoughtless 
 companions with whom he had associated, " I used to 
 believe that I too had a work to do for him in the 
 school, and did for his sake labour to raise the tone 
 of the set I lived in, particularly as regarded himself." 
 It was in boys immediately below the highest form 
 that this now feeling would usually rise for the first 
 time, and awaken a strong wish to know more of 
 him. Then, as they came into personal contact 
 with him, their general Bense of In- ability became 
 fixed, in the proud belief thai they were scholars of
 
 1GG LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 a man, who would be not less remarkable to the world 
 than he was to themselves ; and their increasing con- 
 sciousness of his own sincerity of purpose, and of the 
 interest which he took in them, often awakened, even 
 in the careless and indifferent, an outward respect for 
 goodness, and an animation in their work before un- 
 known to them. And when they left school, they 
 felt that they had been in an atmosphere unlike that 
 of the world about them : some of those, who la- 
 mented not having made more use of his teaching 
 whilst with him, felt that " a better thought than 
 ordinary often reminded them how he first led to it ; 
 and in matters of literature almost invariably found 
 that when any idea of seeming originality occurred to 
 them, that its germ was first suggested by some re- 
 mark of Arnold" — that "still, to this day, in reading 
 the Scriptures, or other things, they could constantly 
 trace back a line of thought that came originally from 
 him, as from a great parent mind." And w 7 hen they 
 heard of his death, they became conscious — often for 
 the first time — of the large place which he had occu- 
 pied in their thoughts, if not in their affections. 
 
 Such was the case with almost all who were in the 
 Sixth Form with him during the last ten years of his 
 life; but with some who, from peculiar circumstances 
 or greater sympathy with him, came into more per- 
 manent communication with him, there was a yet 
 stronger bond of union. His interest in his elder 
 pupils, unlike a mere professional interest, seemed to 
 increase after they had left the school. No sermons 
 were so full of feeling and instruction, as those which 
 he preached on the eve of their departure for the 
 Universities. It was now that the intercourse which
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 1 <)7 
 
 at school had been so broken, and as it were stolen by 
 snatches, was at last enjoyed between them to its full 
 extent. It was sometimes in the few parting words — 
 the earnest blessing which he then bestowed upon 
 them, — that they became for the first time conscious 
 of his real care and love for them. The same anxiety 
 for their good which he had felt in their passage 
 through school, he now showed, without the necessity of 
 official caution and reserve, in their passage through 
 life. To any pupil who ever showed any desire to con- 
 tinue his connexion with him, his house was always 
 open, and his advice and sympathy ready. No half- 
 year, after the four first years of his stay at Rugby, 
 passed without a visit from his former scholars : some 
 of them would come three or four times a year ; some 
 would stay in his house for weeks. He would offer to 
 prepare them for their university examinations by pre- 
 vious examinations of his own ; lie never shrunk from 
 adding any of them to his already numerous correspond- 
 ents, encouraging them to write to him in all perplex- 
 ities. To any who were in narrow circumstances, not 
 in one case but in several, he would at once offer as- 
 sistance, sometimes making them large presents of 
 books on their entrance at the University, sometimes 
 tendering them large pecuniary aid, and urging to 
 them that his power of doing so was exactly one of 
 those advantages of his position which he was most 
 bound to use. In writing for the world at large they 
 were in his thoughts, •• in whose welfare," he said. " I 
 naturally have the deepest interest, and in whom old 
 impressions may be supposed to hare still bo much 
 force, that I may claim from them at least a patient 
 hearing." (Serm. vol. iv. Pref. p. Iv.) And when an-
 
 1()8 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 DOyed by distractions from witln'n the school, Of 
 
 opposition from without, he turned, he used to say, 
 to their visits as " to one of the freshest springs of his 
 life." 
 
 They on their side now learned to admire those 
 parts of his character which, whilst at school, they 
 had either not known, or only imperfectly understood. 
 Pupils with characters most different from each other's, 
 and from his own — often with opinions diverging 
 more and more widely from his as they advanced in 
 life — looked upon him with a love and reverence 
 which made his gratification one of the brightest re- 
 wards of their academical studies — his good or evil 
 fame, a constant source of interest and anxiety to 
 them — his approbation and censure, amongst their 
 most practical motives of action — his example, one 
 of their most habitual rules of life. To him they 
 turned for advice in every emergency of life, not 
 so much for the sake of the advice itself, as because 
 they felt that no important stej> ought to be taken 
 without consulting him. They now felt the privilege 
 of being able to ask him questions on the many 
 points which his school teaching had suggested with- 
 out fully developing — but yet more, perhaps, they 
 prized the sense of his sympathy and familiar kind- 
 ness, which made them feel that they were not only 
 his pupils, but his companions. That youthfulness of 
 temperament which has been before noticed in his 
 relation to boys, was still more important in his re- 
 lation to young men. All the new influences which 
 so strongly divide the students of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury from those of the last, had hardly less interest 
 for himself than for them ; and, after the dulness or
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. L69 
 
 vexation of business or of controversy, a visit of a few 
 davs to Rugby would remind them, (to apply a fa- 
 vourite image of his own,) " how refreshing it is in 
 the depth of winter, when the ground is covered with 
 mow, and all is dead and lifeless, to walk by the sea- 
 shore, and enjoy the eternal freshness and liveliness 
 of ocean." His very presence seemed to create a 
 new spring of health and vigour within them, and to 
 give to life an interest and an elevation which re- 
 mained with them long after they had left him again, 
 and dwelt so habitually in their thoughts, as a living 
 image, that, when death had taken him away, the 
 bond appeared to be still unbroken, and the sense of 
 separation almost lost in the still deeper sense of a 
 life and an union indestructible. 
 
 What were the permanent effects of this system 
 and influence, is a question which cannot yet admit 
 of an adequate answer, least of all from his pupils. 
 The mass of boys are, doubtless, like the mass of 
 men, incapable of receiving a deep and lasting im- 
 pression from any individual character, however re- 
 markable; and it must also be borne in mind, that 
 hardly any of his scholars were called by rank or sta- 
 tion 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 con- 
 spicuous to the world at large. 
 
 He himself, though never concealing from himself 
 the importance of his work, would constantly dwell 
 on the Bcantiness of its results. " I came to Rugby," 
 lie -aid, •• full of plan- for school reform; but I soon 
 found that the reform of a public school \\;i^ a much 
 more difficult thing than I had imagined." And
 
 170 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 again, " I dread to hear this called a religious school. 
 I know liow 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 compari- 
 sons 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 ex- 
 isting, and there is no one disparaging mention of his 
 predecessor in all the correspondence, published or 
 unpublished* that has been collected for this work. 
 
 But if the prediction of Dr. Hawkins at his elec- 
 tion a , 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. Moberley, to whose testi- 
 mony 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 
 
 a See p. 51.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 171 
 
 Winchester and an uncler-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 mo- 
 nument of Dr. Arnold's Head-mastership at Rugby. 
 
 EXTRACT FROM A LKTTER OF DR. MOBERLEY, HEAD-MASTER OF 
 WINCHESTER. 
 
 " Possibly," he writes, after describing his own recollec- 
 tions 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, whe- 
 ther 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 public-school 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 improve- 
 ment of our generation in respect of piety and reverence, 
 but I am sure that to Dr. Arnold's personal earnest sim- 
 plicity of purpose, strength of character, power of influ- 
 ence, 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
 
 172 LIFE OF DK. ARNOLD. 
 
 soon began to be matter of observation to us in the Uni- 
 versity, that his pupils brought quite a different eharaeter 
 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 dis- 
 approved, but we cordially acknowledged the immense im- 
 provement 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 encou- 
 raged 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 ob- 
 servations 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 mea- 
 sure the very alteration, which I have been speaking of.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 173 
 
 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 any body disposed to contradict them. 
 Believe me, my dear Stanley, 
 
 Your's most faithfully, 
 
 George Mobekley."
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 GENERAL LIFE AT RUGBY. 
 
 It 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 be- 
 stowed his veneration became far more exclusive. 
 The purely practical element sank into greater sub- 
 ordination to the more imaginative and philosophical 
 tendencies of his mind ; — in works of poetical or 
 speculative genius, which at an earlier period he had
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 175 
 
 been inclined to depreciate, he now, looking at them 
 from another point of view, took an increasing de- 
 light ; and the very change of his style, whether 
 from the stiffness of his boyish verses to the simple 
 fragments in which from time to time he expressed 
 the feelings of his later years, or 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 expres- 
 sion 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 cha- 
 racter, which exposed them, like himself, to consider- 
 able misapprehension. On the one hand, even the 
 most permanent of them seemed to express the feel- 
 ing 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 lite was 
 regulated; and it may be worth while, therefore, 
 in regard to both these aspeetS) without descending 
 into the details and circumstances .of each particular 
 work, which the ensuing correspondence will of
 
 170 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 itself sufficiently describe, to offer briefly a few re- 
 marks which may serve as a preface to all of them. 
 
 T. Greatly as his practical turn of mind was modi- 
 fied in his later years, and averse as he always was to 
 what arc 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 mag- 
 nificent 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 advice when they were to conquer Ca- 
 naan." Secluded as he was, both by his occupations 
 and his domestic habits, from contact with the world, 
 even more than most men in his station, yet the in- 
 terest with which, now more than ever, he entered 
 into public affairs, was such as can rarely be felt by 
 men not actually engaged in the government of the 
 country. The life of a nation, he said, was to him 
 almost as distinct as that of an individual ; and 
 whatever might be his habitual subjects of public in- 
 terest, — the advance of political and social reform, — 
 the questions of peace and war, — the sufferings of the 
 j>oorer classes, — the growth of those rising common- 
 wealths in the Australian colonies, where, from time 
 to time, he entertained an ardent desire to pass the 
 close of his life, in the hope of influencing, if possible, 
 what he conceived to be the germs of the future
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 1 77 
 
 destinies of England and of the world, — came before 
 him with a vividness, which seemed to belong rather 
 to a citizen of Greece or Rome, than to the com- 
 parative apathy and retirement of the members of 
 modern states. 
 
 It was of course only or chiefly through his writ- 
 ings, that he could hope to act on the country at 
 large; and they accordingly, almost all, became in- 
 separably bound up with the course of public events. 
 They were not, in fact, so much words as deeds; not 
 so much the result of an intention to instruct, as of 
 an incontrollable desire to give vent to the thoughts 
 that were struggling within him. " I have a testi- 
 mony to deliver," was the motive which dictated 
 almost all of them. " I must write or die," was an 
 expression which he used more than once in times of 
 great public interest, and which was hardly too 
 Strong to describe what he felt. If he was editing 
 Thucydides, it was with the thought that he was en- 
 gaged, " not on an idle inquiry about remote ages 
 and forgotten institutions, but a living picture of 
 things present, fitted not so much for the curiosity of 
 the scholar, as for the instruction of the statesman 
 and the citizen." (Pref. vol. iii. p. xxii.) If he felt 
 himself called upon to write the History of Kome, 
 one chief reason was, because it " could be under- 
 stood by none so well as by those who have grown up 
 under the laws, who have been engaged in the parties, 
 who are themselves citizens of our kingly common- 
 wealth of England." (Pref. vol. i. p. vii.) [fhe was 
 anxious to set on fool a Commentary of the Scrip- 
 tures, it was mostly at times, when he was struck by 
 the reluctance or incapacity of the men of his own 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 LIFE OF I>K. ARNOLD. 
 
 generation to apply to their own social state the 
 warnings of the Apostles :u><l Prophets. If he was 
 desirous of maintaining against the Oxford school his 
 own views of the Church, it was that, " when he 
 looked at the social condition of his countrymen," 
 ho " could not doubt that here was the work for the 
 Church of Christ to do, that none else could do it, 
 and that with the blessing of her Almighty Head she 
 could." (Serm. vol. iv. Pref. p. cxv.) 
 
 It is not, therefore, to be wondered at, if that im- 
 patience of present evil, which belonged alike to his 
 principles and his disposition, appeared in his writ- 
 ings, and imparted to them — often, probably, unknown 
 to himself — something, if not of a polemical aspect, 
 at least of an attitude of opposition and attack, 
 averse though he was himself to controversy, and 
 carefully avoiding it with those whom he knew per- 
 sonally, even when frequently challenged to enter upon 
 it. " The wisdom of winter is the folly of spring," 
 was a maxim with him, which would often explain 
 changes of feeling and expression that to many might 
 seem inconsistencies. "If I were living in London," he 
 said, " I should not talk against the evil tendencies of 
 the clergy, any more than if I were living in Oxford I 
 should talk against the evil tendencies of the political 
 economists. It is my nature always to attack that 
 evil which seems to me most present." It was thus 
 a favourite topic, in his exposition of Scripture, to re- 
 mark how the particular sins of the occasion were 
 denounced, the particular forms of Antichrist indi- 
 cated, often without the qualification, which would 
 have been required by the presence of the opposite 
 danger. " Contrast," he used to say, " the language
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 170 
 
 of the first chapter of Isaiah, when the hierarchy of 
 Judah was in its full pride and power, with the lan- 
 guage of the second chapter of Malachi, when it was 
 in a state of decline and neglect." 
 
 Connected with this, was the peculiar vehemence 
 of language, which he often used, in speaking of the 
 Subjects and events of the day. This was indeed 
 partly to be accounted for by his eagerness to speak 
 out whatever was in his mind, especially when moved 
 by his keen sense of what he thought evil — partly by 
 the natural simplicity of his mode of speech, which 
 led him to adopt phrases in their simplest sense, with- 
 out stopping to explain them, or suspecting that they 
 would be misunderstood. But with regard to public 
 principles and parties, it was often more than this. 
 With every wish to be impartial, yet his natural tem- 
 perament, as he used himself to acknowledge, made 
 it difficult for him to place himself completely in an- 
 other's point of view ; and thus he had a tendency to 
 judge individuals, with whom he had no personal ac- 
 quaintance, from his conception of the party to which 
 they belonged, and to look at both through the 
 medium of that strong power of association, which 
 influenced materially his judgment, not only of 
 events, but of men, and even of places. Living in- 
 dividuals, therefore, and existing principles, became 
 lost to his view in the long line of images, past and 
 future, in which they only formed one link. livery 
 political or ecclesiastical movement suggested to him 
 the recollection of its historical representative in past 
 
 times, — and yet more, as by an instinct, half religious 
 and half historical, the thought of what he conceived 
 to be the prototypes of the various forma of error 
 
 N 2
 
 180 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 and wickedness denounced by the Prophets in the 
 Old Testament, or by our Lord and his Apostles in 
 the New. And looking not backwards only, but for- 
 wards, to their remotest consequences, and again 
 guiding himself, as he thought, by the example of 
 the language of St. Paul, who "seemed to have had 
 his eye fixed in vision rather upon the full-grown 
 evil of later times, than upon the first imperfect 
 show — the faint indications of it — in his own time," 
 (Scrm. vol. v. p. 346,) he saw in them the germs 
 of mischief yet to come, — not only the mischief of 
 their actual triumph, but the mischief of the reaction 
 against them. 
 
 There was besides a peculiar importance attaching, 
 in his view, to political questions, with which every 
 reader of his works must be familiar. The life of 
 the commonwealth is to him the main subject of his- 
 tory — the laws of political science the main lesson 
 of history — " the desire of taking an active share in 
 the great work of government — the highest earthly 
 desire of the ripened mind." And those who read 
 his letters will be startled at times by the interest 
 with which he watches the changes of administration, 
 where to many the oral difference would seem to be 
 comparatively trifling. As when he would speak of 
 a ministry advocating even good measures incon- 
 sistently with their position or principles, " as a daily 
 painfulness — a moral east wind, which made him feel 
 uncomfortable without any particular ailment" — or 
 lament the ascendancy of false political views, as 
 tending " to the sure moral degradation of the 
 whole community, and the ultimate social disor- 
 ganization of our system," " not from reading the
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 1^1 
 
 Morning Chronicle or the Edinburgh Review, but 
 from reading the Bible and Aristotle, and all his- 
 tory.*' 
 
 Such expressions as these must indeed be taken 
 with the necessary qualifications, which belong to all 
 words spoken to intimate friends in a period of great 
 excitement. But they may serve to illustrate at 
 least the occasional strength of feeling which it is 
 the object of these remarks to explain. It arose, no 
 doubt, in part from his tendency to view all things 
 in a practical and concrete form, and in part from his 
 belief of the large power possessed by the supreme 
 governors of society over the social and moral condi- 
 tion of those intrusted to them. But there were also 
 real principles present to his mind whenever lie thus 
 spoke, which seemed to him so certain, that " daily 
 experience could hardly remove his wonder at finding 
 that they did not appear so to others." (Mod. Hist. 
 Lect., j). 391.) What these principles were in detail, 
 his own letters will sufficiently show. But it must 
 be borne in mind how, whilst he certainly believed 
 that they were exemplified to a great degree in the 
 actual state of English politics, the meaning which 
 lie attached to them rose so far above their meaning as 
 commonly used, that it could hardly be thought that 
 the Bame subject was spoken of. Conservatism in his 
 mouth was not merely the watchword of an English 
 party, but the Bymbol of an evil, against which his 
 whole life public and private was one continued strug- 
 gle, which he dreaded in his own heart no less than 
 in the institutions of his country, and his abhorrence 
 of which will be found to pervade nut only the pam- 
 phlets which have been most condemned, but the ser-
 
 182 LIFE OP l>K. ARNOLD. 
 
 mons which have been most admired, namely, the spirit 
 of resistance to all change. Jacobinism, again, in his 
 
 use of the word, included not only the extreme move- 
 ment party in France or England, to which he usually 
 applied it, but all the natural tendencies of mankind, 
 whether " democratical, priestly, or chivalrous," to 
 oppose the authority of Law, divine and human, which 
 he regarded with so deep a reverence. Popular prin- 
 ciples and democracy (when he used these words in a 
 good sense) were not the opposition to an hereditary 
 monarchy or peerage, which he always valued as pre- 
 cious elements of national life, but were inseparably 
 blended with his strong belief in the injustice and 
 want of sympathy generally shown by the higher to 
 the lower orders, — a belief whichhe often declared had 
 been first brought home to him, when, after having as 
 a young man at Oxford held the opposite view, he 
 first began seriously to study the language used with 
 regard to it by St. James and the Old Testament 
 Prophets. Liberal principles were not merely the 
 expression of his adherence to a Whig ministry, but 
 of his belief in the constant necessity of applying 
 those principles of advance and reform, which, in their 
 most perfect development, he conceived to be iden- 
 tical with Christianity itself; which even in their 
 lower exemplifications he maintained to have been by 
 the very constitution of human society the represent- 
 atives of the cause of wisdom and goodness, in everv 
 age of the world except that before the Fall of man 
 from Paradise, and more especially since the Christian 
 revelation had furnished a standard of moral excel- 
 lence so far above the actual institutions of mankind, 
 with principles of moral duty, which no intermixture
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 183 
 
 of races or change of national customs could possibly 
 endanger. 
 
 That he was not, in the common sense of the word, 
 a member of any party, is best shown by the readi- 
 ness with which all parties alike, according to the 
 fashion of the time, claimed or renounced him as an 
 associate. Ecclesiastically, he neither belonged, nor 
 ielt himself to belong, to any of the existing sections 
 of the English clergy; and from the so-called High 
 Church, Low Church, and Evangelical bodies he 
 always stood, not perhaps equally, but yet decidedly 
 aloof. Politically, indeed, he held himself to be a 
 strong Whig; but as a matter. of fact, he found that 
 in cases of practical co-operation with that party, he 
 differed almost as much from them as from their op- 
 ponents ; and would often confess with sorrow, that 
 there were none among them who realized what seemed 
 to him their pure principles. And whilst in later years 
 his feelings and language on these subjects were 
 somewhat modified, he at all times, even when most 
 tenaciously holding to his opinions, maintained the 
 principle, that " political truths are not, like moral 
 truths, to be held as absolutely certain, nor ever wholly 
 identical with the professions or practice of any party 
 or individual ;" (Pref. to Hist, of Rome, vol. i. p. xi.) 
 and there were few warnings to his pupils on their en- 
 trance into life more solemn, than those against party- 
 spirit, against giving to any human party, sect, society, 
 or cause, that undivided sympathy and service, which 
 he hold to be due only to the one party and cause of 
 all good men under their Divine Head. 
 
 II. Hut no temporary interest or excitement was 
 allowed to infringe en the loftiness or the unity of
 
 1S4 LIFE OF I>K. ARNOLD. 
 
 liis ultimate ends, to wliich every particular plan that 
 lie took up, and every particular line of thought 
 which he followed, was completely subordinate. 
 
 However open to objection may have been many 
 of his practical suggestions, it must be remembered, 
 that they were never the result of accidental fancies, 
 but of fixed and ruling ideas. However fertile he 
 might be in supplying details when called for, it was 
 never on them, but on principles, that he rested his 
 claim to be heard ; often and often he declared that, if 
 these could be received and acted upon, he cared no- 
 thing for the particular applications of them, which 
 he might have proposed, and nothing for the failure of 
 particular schemes, if he could hope that his example 
 would excite others to execute them better. 
 
 Striving to fulfil in his measure the definition of man, 
 in which he took especial pleasure, " a being of large 
 discourse, looking before and after," he learned more 
 and more, whilst never losing his hold on the present, 
 to live also habitually in the past and for the future. 
 Vehement as he was in assailing evil, his whole mind 
 was essentially not destructive but constructive ; his 
 love of reform was in exact proportion to his love 
 of the institutions which he wished to reform ; his 
 hatred of shadows in exact proportion to his love of 
 realities. " He was an idoloclast," says Archdeacon 
 Hare, " at once zealous and fearless in demolishing 
 the reigning idols, and at the same time animated 
 with a reverent love for the ideas which those idols 
 carnalize and stifle." Impatient as he was, even to 
 restlessness, of evils which seemed to him capable 
 of remedy, he yet was ready, as some have thought 
 even to excess, to repose with the most undoubting
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 1 85 
 
 confidence on what he held to be a general law ; 
 and those who know his writings will understand 
 the pleasure with which he would dwell on the 
 depth of meaning which he believed to be contained 
 in the parable of the "earth, of herself, bringing 
 forth first the blade, then the ear, then the full 
 corn in the ear." "Before a confessed unconquer- 
 able difficulty," he said and felt, " the mind reposes 
 as quietly as in possession of a discovered truth." 
 
 His works were often, from the necessity of the 
 case, written in haste, and were therefore expressed 
 at times nakedly and abruptly ; but the substance of 
 every paragraph had, as he often said, been in his 
 mind for years, and sometimes actually written at 
 greater length or in another shape. Perpetually as the 
 standard of what was required of him in his writings 
 rose before him, he never shrunk from the additional 
 labour which it imposed upon him. His sense of de- 
 ficient knowledge often deterred him from publishing 
 on points of the greatest interest to him ; he always 
 made it a point to read far more than he expressed 
 in writing, and to write much which he never gave 
 to the world. Even in his latest years he was endea- 
 vouring to acquire, for philological purposes, a know- 
 ledge of the Sanscrit and Sclavonic languages ; he was 
 constantly engaged in a correspondence witli scienti- 
 fic men or scholars on minute points of history and 
 geography; and, in all subjects of interest to him, his 
 strong memory was perpetually turning to account 
 the studies of his youth and childhood, whilst his 
 quickness and (tower of combination assisted him in 
 appropriating with facility what he casually read or 
 heard.
 
 ISO LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 What lie actually achieved in his writings falls bo 
 far short of what he intended to achieve, that it seems 
 almost like an injustice to judge of his aims and 
 views by them. Yet, even in what he had already 
 published in his lifetime, he was often the first to de- 
 lineate iu outline what others may hereafter fill up ; 
 the first to give expression in England to views 
 which, on the continent, had been already attained ; 
 the first to propose, amidst obloquy or indifference, 
 measures and principles, which the rapid advance of 
 public opinion has so generally adopted, as almost to 
 obliterate the remembrance of who first gave utter- 
 ance to them. And those who know the intentions 
 which were interrupted by his premature death, will 
 form their notion of what he was as an historian, phi- 
 losopher, and theologian, not so much from the actual 
 writings which he lived to complete, as from the 
 design of the three great works, to which he looked 
 forward as the labours of his latest years, and which, 
 as belonging not more to one period of his life than 
 another, and as forming, even in his mere conception 
 of them, the centres of all that he thought or wrote 
 on whatever subject, would have furnished the key to 
 all his views — a History of Rome, a Commentary on 
 the New Testament, and, almost including both of 
 these within itself, a Treatise on Church and State, or 
 Christian Politics. 
 
 1. His early fondness for history grew constantly 
 upon him; he delighted in it, as feeling it to be "simply 
 a search after truth, where, by daily becoming more 
 familiar with it, truth seems for ever more within 
 your grasp:" the images of the past were habitually 
 in his mind, and haunted him even in sleep-, the
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 1*7 
 
 greater part of his literary labours was devoted to this 
 study. What objects he put before him, as an his- 
 torian, may best be judged from his own view of the 
 province of history. It was, indeed, altogether im- 
 perfect, in his judgment, unless it was not only apian 
 but a picture; unless it represented " what men 
 thought, what they hated, and what they loved ;" 
 unless it " pointed the way to that higher region, 
 within which she herself is not permitted to enter;"* 
 and in the details of geographical or military descrip- 
 tions he took especial pleasure, and himself remark- 
 ably excelled in them. Still it was in the dramatic 
 faculty on the one hand, and the metaphysical faculty 
 on the other hand, that he felt himself deficient ; and 
 it is accordingly in the political rather than the philo- 
 sophical or biographical department of history, — in 
 giving a combined view of different states or of dif- 
 ferent periods — in analyzing laws, parties, and insti- 
 tutions, that his chief merit consists. 
 
 What were his views of Modern History will ap- 
 pear in the mention of his Oxford Professorship. But 
 it was in ancient history that he naturally felt the 
 greatest delight. " I linger round a subject, which 
 nothing could tempt me to quit but the conscious- 
 ness of treating it too unworthily," were his expressions 
 of regret when he had finished his edition of Thucy- 
 dides ; "the subject of what is miscalled ancient 
 history, the really modern history of the civilization 
 of Greece and Koine, which has for years interested 
 me so deeply, that it is painful to feel myself, after 
 all, so unable to paint it fully." I lis earliest labours 
 had been devoted not to Unman, but to Greek liis- 
 3 History of Rome, vol. i. p. 98 ; vol. ii. p. 173.
 
 188 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 fcory; and there still remains amongst his MSS. a 
 short sketch of the rise of the Greek nation, written 
 between 1820 and 1823, and carried down to the 
 time of the Persian wars. And in later years, his 
 edition of Thucydides, undertaken originally with the 
 design of illustrating that author rather historically 
 than philologically, contains in its notes and appen- 
 dices, the most systematic remains of his studies in 
 this direction, and at one time promised to embody 
 his thoughts on the most striking periods of Athenian 
 history. Nor, after he had abandoned this design, 
 did he ever lose his interest in the subject ; his real 
 sympathies (if one may venture to say so) were 
 always with Athens rather than with Rome ; some of 
 the most characteristic points of his mind were Greek 
 lather than Roman ; from the vacancy of the early 
 Roman annals he was for ever turning to the cotem- 
 porary records of the Greek commonwealths, to pay 
 " an involuntary tribute of respect and affection to 
 old associations and immortal names on which we 
 can scarcely dwell too long or too often;" the false- 
 hood and emptiness of the Latin historians were for 
 ever suggesting the contrast of their Grecian rivals ; 
 the two opposite poles in which he seemed to realize 
 his ideals of the worst and the best qualities of an 
 historian, with feelings of personal antipathy and sym- 
 pathy, were Livy and Thucydides. 
 
 Even these scattered notices of what he had once 
 hoped to have worked out more fully,' will often 
 furnish the student of Gre^k history with the means 
 of entering upon its most remarkable epochs under 
 his guidance. Those who have carefully read his 
 works, or shared his instructions, can still enjoy the
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 189 
 
 light which he has thrown on the rise and progress 
 of the Greek commonwealths, and their analogy 
 with the States of modern Europe; and apply, in 
 their manifold relations, the principles which he 
 has laid down with regard to the peculiar ideas 
 attached in the Greek world to race, to citizenship. 
 and to law. They can still catch the glow of almost 
 passionate enthusiasm, with which he threw himself 
 into the age of Pericles, and the depth of emotion with 
 which he watched, like an eye-witness, the failure 
 of the Syracusan expedition. They can still trace the 
 almost personal sympathy with which he entered into 
 the great crisis of Greek society when, " Socrates, the 
 faithful servant of truth and virtue, fell a victim to 
 the hatred alike of the democratical and aristocrati- 
 cal vulgar;*' when, u all that audacity can dare, or 
 subtlety contrive, to make the words of "good" and 
 "evil " change their meaning, was tried in the days of 
 Plato, and by his eloquence, and wisdom, and faith 
 unshaken was put to shame." They can well imagine 
 the intense admiration, with which he would have 
 dwelt, in detail, on what he has now left only in faint 
 outline — the career " of the greatest man of the an- 
 cient world," — the scene which seems to have im- 
 pressed him as one of the most solemn in all history 
 — Alexander at Babylon ; they can conceive the me- 
 lancholy pleasure with which he would have hung 
 iiVit the last decay of Greek genius and wisdom — 
 *the worn out ahffVast-off Bkin, from which the liv- 
 ing serpent had gone fofgh to carry his youth and 
 vigour to other lands. 1 
 
 Hut, deep as was his interest in Grecian history, 
 and, though in some respects no other part of ancient
 
 1.90 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 literature derived so meat a light from Ins researches, 
 
 it was to his History of Rome that he looked as the 
 chief monument of his historical fame. Led to it partly 
 by his personal feeling of regard towards Niebuhr and 
 Chevalier Bunsen, and by the sense of their encou- 
 ragement, there was, moreover, something in the sub- 
 ject itself peculiarly attractive to him, whether in 
 the magnificence of the field which it embraced, — 
 (" the History of Rome," he said, " must be in some 
 sort the History of the World,") — or in the congenial 
 element which he naturally found in the character of 
 a people, " whose distinguishing quality was their love 
 of institutions and order, and their reverence for law." 
 Accordingly, after approaching it in various forms, 
 he at last conceived the design of the work, of which 
 the three published volumes are the result, but which 
 he had intended to carry down, in successive periods, 
 to what seemed to him its natural termination in the 
 coronation of Charlemagne. (Pref. vol. i. p. vii.) 
 
 The two earlier volumes occupy a place in the 
 History of Rome, and of the ancient world generally, 
 which in England had not and has not been other- 
 wise filled up. Yet in the subjects of which they 
 treat, his peculiar talents had hardly a fair field for 
 their exercise. The want of personal characters and 
 of distinct events, which Niebuhr was to a certain ex- 
 tent able to supply from the richness of his learning 
 and the felicity of his conjectures, was necessarily a 
 disadvantage to an historian whose strength lav in 
 combiuing what was already known, rather than in 
 deciphering what was unknown, and whose veneration 
 for his predecessor made him distrustful not only of 
 dissenting from his judgment, but even of seeing or
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 191 
 
 discovering, more, than had beeD by him seen or dis- 
 covered before. " No man," as he said, " can step 
 gracefully or boldly when he is groping his way in 
 the dark," (Hist. Rome, i. p. 133,) and it is with a 
 melancholy interest that we read his complaint of the 
 obscurity of the subject: — "I can but encourage mv- 
 self, whilst painfully feeling my way in such thick 
 darkness, with the hope of arriving at last at the light, 
 and enjoying all the freshness and fulness of a de- 
 tailed cotemporary history." (Hist. Rome, ii. p. 447.) 
 But the narrative of the second Punic Mar, which 
 occupies the third and posthumous volume, both as 
 being comparatively unbroken ground, and as all* tid- 
 ing so full a scope for his talents in military and geo- 
 graphical descriptions, may well be taken as a mea- 
 sure of his historical [towers, and has been pronounced 
 by its editor, Archdeacon Hare, to be the first his- 
 tory which " has given any thing like an adequate 
 representation of the wonderful genius and noble 
 character of Hannibal." AVith this volume the work 
 was broken off: but it is impossible not to dwell for 
 a moment on what it would have been had he lived 
 to complete it. 
 
 The outline in his early articles in the Encyclo- 
 paedia Metropolitana, of the later history of the Civil 
 Wars, -n subject so glorious," he writes in 1824, 
 '' that I groan beforehand when 1 think how certainly 
 1 shall fail in doing it justice," — provokes of itself 
 the desire to see how he would have -one over the 
 same ground again with his added knowledge and 
 experience — how the characters of the time, which 
 even in this rough -.ketch stand out more clearly than 
 in any other English work on the same period, would
 
 192 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 have been reproduced — how he would have repre- 
 sented the pure character and military genius of his 
 Favourite hero, Poinpey — or expressed his mingled 
 admiration and abhorrence of the intellectual power 
 and moral degradation of Caesar; — how he would 
 have done justice to the coarseness and cruelty of 
 Marius, " the lowest of democrats" — or, amidst all 
 his crimes, to the views of " the most sincere of 
 aristocrats," Sylla. And in advancing to the further 
 times of the Empire, his scattered hints exhibit his 
 strong desire to reach those events, to which all the 
 intervening volumes seemed to him only a prelude. 
 " I would not overstrain my eyes or my faculties," he 
 writes in 1840, " but whilst eyesight and strength 
 are yet undecayed, I want to get through the earlier 
 Roman History, to come down to the Imperial and 
 Christian times, which form a subject of such deep 
 interest." What his general admiration for Niebuhr 
 was as a practical motive in the earlier part of his 
 work, that his deep aversion to Gibbon, as a man, was 
 in the latter part. " My highest ambition," he said, 
 as early as 1826, " and, what I hope to do as far as 
 I can, is to make my history the very reverse of Gib- 
 bon in this respect, — that whereas the whole spirit of 
 his work, from its low morality, is hostile to religion, 
 without speaking directly against it ; so my greatest 
 desire would be, in my History, by its high morals and 
 its general tone, to be of use to the cause, without 
 actuallv bringing it forward." 
 
 There would have been the place for his unfolding 
 the rise of the Christian Church, not in a distinct ec- 
 clesiastical history, but as he thought it ought to be 
 written, in conjunction with the history of the world.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 193 
 
 " The period from Augustus to Aureliau," he writes, 
 as far back as 1824, " 1 will not willingly give up to 
 any one, because I have a particular object, namely, 
 to blend the civil and religious history ton-ether more 
 than has ever yet boon done." There he would, on 
 the one hand, have expressed his view of the exter- 
 nal influences, which checked the free growth of the 
 early Church — the gradual revival of Judaic princi- 
 ples under a Christian form — the gradual extinction 
 of individual responsibility, under the system of go- 
 vernment, Roman and Gentile in its origin, which 5 
 according to his latest opinion, took possession of the 
 Church rulers from the time of Cyprian — there, on 
 the other hand, he would have dwelt on the self- 
 denying zeal and devotion to truth, which peculiarly 
 endeared to him the very name of Martyr^ and on 
 the bond of Christian brotherhood, which he de- 
 lighted to feel with Athanasius and Augustine, dis- 
 cerning, even in what he thought their weaknesses, 
 a signal testimony to the triumph of Christianity, 
 unaided by other means, than its intrinsic excel- 
 lence and holiness. Lastly, with that analytical me- 
 thod, which he delighted to pursue in his historical 
 researches, he would have traced to their source, 
 " those evil currents of neglect, of uncharitableness, 
 and of ignorance, whose full streams we now find BO 
 pestilent," first, " in the social helplessness and intel- 
 lectual frivolousness" of (he close of the Roman em- 
 pire; and then, in that event which had attracted 
 his earliest interest, " the nominal conversion of the 
 northern nations to Christianity, — a vasl subject, and 
 one of the greatest importance both to the spiritual 
 and temporal advancement of the nations of Europe, 
 vol. i. o
 
 194 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 (Serm. vol. i. p. 88,) as explaining the more confirmed 
 
 separation of clergy and laity : n later times, and the 
 incomplete influence which Christianity has exercised 
 upon the institutions even of Christian countries." 
 (Serm. vol. iii. Pref. p. xiv.) 
 
 II. Strong as was his natural taste for History, it 
 was to Theology that he looked as the highest sphere 
 of his exertions, and as the province which most 
 needed them. The chief object, which he here pro- 
 posed to himself — in fact, the object which he con- 
 ceived as the proper end of Theology itself — was the 
 interpretation and application of the Scriptures. From 
 the time of his early studies at Oxford, when he 
 analyzed and commented on the Epistles of St. Paul, 
 with Chrysostom's Homilies, down to the last year of 
 his life, when he was endeavouring to set on foot a 
 Rugby edition of them, under his own superintend- 
 ence, he never lost sight of this design ; and, scat- 
 tered as are the notices of it in his Sermons, published 
 and unpublished, there is enough to enable us to com- 
 bine his principles into a distinct whole ; and to con- 
 ceive them, not in the polemical form, which in his 
 later years they sometimes presented in their external 
 aspect, but as the declaration of his positive views 
 of the Scriptures themselves, wholly independent of 
 any temporary controversy ; and as the most com- 
 plete reflex, not only of his capacities as an inter- 
 preter, but also, on the one hand, of his powers of his- 
 torical discernment, on the other, of the reality of his 
 religious feelings. 
 
 Impossible as it is to enter here into any detailed 
 exposition of his vieM 7 s, it has been felt that the live- 
 liest image of what he was in this department will be
 
 LIFE OF ]>K. ARNOLD. I 95 
 
 given by presenting their main features, as they were 
 impressed on the mind of the same earlier pupil and 
 later friend, whose name has before occurred in these 
 pages, and whose personal recollections of the sphere 
 in which he most admired him, will probably convey 
 a truer and more distinct conception than would be 
 left by a representation of the same facts in general 
 language, or from a more distant point of view. 
 
 MY DEAR STANLEY, 
 
 You ask me to describe Dr. Arnold as an Exege- 
 tical Divine : I feel myself altogether unequal to such a 
 task ; indeed, I have no other excuse for writing at all on 
 such a subject, than the fact that I early appreciated his 
 greatness as a Theologian, and for many years had the 
 happiness of discussing frequently with him his general 
 views on scientific Divinity. It was one of my earliest 
 convictions respecting him, that, distinguished as he was in 
 many departments of literature and practical philosophy, 
 he was most distinguished as an interpreter of Scripture ; 
 and the lapse of years, and an intimate knowledge of his 
 mind and character, have but confirmed this conviction. 
 As an expounder of the word of God, Arnold always has 
 seemed to me to be truly and emphatically great. I do 
 not say this on account of the extent and importance of 
 what he actually achieved in this department; for, unfor- 
 tunately, he never gave himself up full}* to it; he nev< 1 
 worked at it, as the great business of his literary life. I 
 shall ever deplore his not having done so; and I well re- 
 member how sharp was the struggle, when he had t<> choose 
 between the interpretation of Scripture and the Roman 
 History; and how the choice was determined, not bj the 
 consideration of what his peculiar talent was most calcu- 
 lated for performing successfully, bul by regard to extrinsic
 
 19G LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 matters, — the prejudice of the clergy against him, the un- 
 ripeness of England for a free and unfettered discussion 
 of scriptural Exegesis, and the injury which he might be 
 likely to do to his general usefulness. And, as I then did 
 my utmost to determine his labours to the field of Theo- 
 logy, so now I must deeply regret the heavy loss, which I 
 cannot but think that the cause of sound interpretation, — 
 and, as founded upon it, of doctrinal theology, — has sus- 
 tained in England. The amount, then, of interpretation 
 which he has published to the world, though not inconsi- 
 derable, is still small in respect of what there remained to 
 be done by him ; but Arnold has furnished a method — 
 has established principles and rules for interpreting Scrip- 
 ture, which, with God's blessing, will be the guide of many a 
 future labourer, and promise to produce fruit of inestimable 
 value. In his writings the student will find a path opened 
 before him — a manner of handling the word of God — a 
 pointing out of the end to be held in view — and a light 
 thrown on the road that leads to it, that will amply repay 
 the deepest meditation on them, and will (if I may say so 
 without presumption) furnish results full of the richest 
 truth, and destined to exercise a commanding influence on 
 the conduct and determination of religious controversy 
 hereafter. 
 
 It must be carefully borne in mind, that there are two 
 methods of reading Scripture, perfectly distinct in their 
 objects and nature ; the one is practical, the other scien- 
 tific ; the one aims at the edification of the reader, the 
 other at the enlightenment of his understanding ; the one 
 seeks the religious truth of Scripture as bearing on the in- 
 quirer's heart and personal feelings, the other the right 
 comprehension of the literary and intellectual portions of 
 the Bible. That Arnold read and meditated on the word 
 of God as a disciple of Christ for his soul's daily edifica- 
 tion ; that it was to him the word of life, the fountain of his 
 deepest feelings, the ride of his life ; that he dwelt in the 
 humblest, most reverential, most prayerful study of its
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 197 
 
 simplest truths, and under the abiding influence of their 
 power, as they were assimilated into his spiritual being by 
 faith ; that Arnold felt and did all this, the whole tenor of 
 his life and every page of your biography amply attest. 
 Those, who were most intimate with him, will readily recall 
 the mingled feelings of reverence and devotion with which 
 he would, in his lonelier hours, repeat to himself such pas- 
 sages as the raising of Lazarus, or the description of the 
 Judgment; nor will they easily forget the deep emotion, 
 with which he was agitated, when, on a comparison having 
 been made in his family circle, which sirincd to place St. 
 Paul above St. John, he burst into tears, and in his own 
 earnest and loving tone, repeated one of the verses from 
 St. John, and begged that the comparison might nevei 
 again be made. 
 
 But I am here concerned with the other, and strictly 
 intellectual, process ; the scientific exposition of the Scrip- 
 tures as a collection of ancient books, full of the mightiest 
 intellectual truths ; as the record of God's dealings with 
 man ; and the historical monument of the most wonderful 
 facts in the history of the world. For the office of such an 
 interpreter, Arnold possessed rare and eminent qualifica- 
 tions; learning, piety, judgment, historical tact, sagacity. 
 The excellence of his method may be considered under 
 two heads: — I. He had a very remarkable, I should ra- 
 ther say (if I might) wonderful discernment for the divine, 
 as incorporated in the human element of Scripture ; and 
 the recognition of these two separate and most distinct 
 elements, — the careful separation of the two, so thai each 
 shall be subject to its own laws, and determined on its own 
 principles, — was the foundation, the grand characteristic 
 
 principle of his Exegesis. Our Lord's words, that we must 
 
 "render to Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to 
 God the things which are God's,* 1 seemed to him to be of 
 universal application, and nowhere more so, than in the 
 
 interpretation of Scripture. And his object was not, ac 
 cording to the usual practice, t" establish by its means
 
 198 LIFK OP DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 certain religious truths, but to study its contents them- 
 selves — to end, in short, instead of beginning with doc- 
 trine. Indeed, doctrine, in the strict sense, doctrine as 
 pure religious theory, such as it is exhibited in scientific 
 articles and creeds, never was his object. Doctrine, in its 
 practical and religious side, as bearing on religious feeling 
 and character, not doctrine, in the sense of a direct dis- 
 closure of spiritual or material essences, as they are in 
 themselves, was all that he endeavoured to find, and all 
 that he believed could be found, in the teaching of Scripture. 
 First of all he approached the human side of the 
 Bible in the same real historical spirit, with the same me- 
 thods, rules, and principles, as he did Thucydides. He 
 recognised in the writers of the Scriptures the use of a 
 human instrument — language; and this he would ascertain 
 and fix, as in any other authors, by the same philological 
 rules. Further too, the Bible presents an assemblage of 
 historical events, it announces an historical religion; and 
 the historical element Arnold judged of historically by the 
 established rules of history, substantiating the general ve- 
 racity of Scripture even amidst occasional inaccuracies of 
 detail, and proposing to himself, for his special end here, 
 the reproduction, in the language and forms belonging to 
 our own age, and therefore familiar to us, of the exact 
 mode of thinking, feeling, and acting which prevailed in 
 the days gone by. 
 
 But was this all ? Is the Bible but a common book, 
 recording, indeed, more remarkable occurrences, but in 
 itself possessed of no higher authority than a faithful and 
 trustworthy historian like Thucydides ? Nothing could be 
 farther from Dr. Arnold's feeling. In the Bible, he found 
 and acknowledged an oracle of God — a positive and su- 
 pernatural revelation made to man, an immediate inspira- 
 tion of the Spirit. No conviction was more deeply seated 
 in his nature ; and this conviction placed an impassable 
 gulph between him and all rationalizing divines. Only it 
 is very important to observe how this fact, in respect of
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. \\)\) 
 
 scientific order, presented itself to his mind. He came 
 upon it historically; he did not start with any precon- 
 ceived theory of inspiration ; but rather, in studying the 
 writings of those who were commissioned by God to preach 
 his Gospel to the world, he met with the fact, that they 
 claimed to be sent from God, to have a message from Him, 
 to be filled with His Spirit. Any accurate, precise, and 
 sharply defined theory of inspiration, to the best of my 
 knowledge, Arnold had not ; and, if he had been asked to 
 give one, I think he would have answered that the snbjecl 
 did not admit of one. I think he would have been con- 
 tent to realize the feelings of those who heard the Apostles ; 
 h«' would have been sure, on one side, that there was a 
 voice of God in them; whilst, on the other, he would have 
 believed that probably no one in the apostolic age could 
 have defined the exact limits of that inspiration. And 
 this I am sure I may affirm with certainty, that never did 
 a student feel his positive faith, his sure confidence that 
 the Bible was the Word of God, more indestructible, than in 
 Arnold's hands, lie was conscious that, whilst Arnold in- 
 terpreted Scripture as a scholar, an antiquarian, and an 
 historian, and that in the spirit and with the development 
 of modern science, he had also placed the supernatural 
 inspiration of the sacred writers on an imperishable his- 
 torical basis, a basis that would be proof against any attack 
 which the most refined modern learning could direct 
 against it. Those only who are fully aware of the import- 
 ance of harmonizing the progress of knowledge with 
 Christianity, or rather, of asserting, amidst every possible 
 form of civilization, the objective truths of Christianity and 
 its life-giving power, can duly appreciate the value of the 
 confidence inspired by the firm faith of a man. at once 
 liberal, unprejudiced, and, in the estimation of even the 
 
 nio.st worldly men, possessed of high historical ability. 
 
 II. But I have not \<t mentioned the greatest merit 
 of Arnold's exegesis; it took a still higher range. It was 
 not confined to a mere reproduction of a faithful image of
 
 200 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 the words and deeds recorded in the Bible, such as they 
 were spoken, done, and understood at the times when they 
 severally occurred. It is a great matter to perceive what 
 Christianity was such as it was felt and understood to be 
 by the hearers of the Apostles. But the Christian prophet 
 and interpreter had in his eyes a still more exalted oiJice. 
 God's dealings with any particular generation of men are 
 but the application of the eternal truths of His Providence 
 to their particular circumstances, and the form of that ap- 
 plication has at different times greatly varied. Here it was 
 that Arnold's most characteristic eminence lay. He seemed 
 to me to possess the true x«? :aixa, the very spiritual gift, of 
 yvuaig, having an insight not only into the actual form of 
 the religion of any single age, but into the meaning and 
 substance of God's moral government generally ; a vision 
 of the eternal principles by which it is guided ; and such 
 a profound understanding of their application, as to be able 
 to set forth God's manifold wisdom, as manifested at divers 
 times, and under circumstances of the most opposite kind; 
 nay, still more, to reconcile with His unchangeable attri- 
 butes those passages in Holy Writ at which infidels had 
 scoffed, and which pious men had read in reverential si- 
 lence. Thus, he vindicated God's command to Abraham 
 to sacrifice his son, and to the Jews to exterminate the na- 
 tions of Canaan, by explaining the principles on which 
 these commands were given, and their reference to the 
 moral state of those to whom they were addressed; thereby 
 educing light out of darkness, unravelling the thread of 
 God's religious education of the human race, from its 
 earliest infancy down to the fulness of times, and holding 
 up God's marvellous counsels to the devout wonder and 
 meditation of the thoughtful believer. As I said at first, 
 Arnold has rather pointed out the path, than followed it to 
 any extent himself; the student will find in his writings 
 the principles of his method rather than its development. 
 They arc scattered, more or less, throughout all his writ- 
 ings, but more especially in the Appendix to vol. ii. of
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 201 
 
 the Sermons, the Preface to the third, the Notes to the 
 fourth, and the Two Sermons on Prophecy. These last 
 furnish to the student a very instructive instance of his 
 method; for, whilst he will recognise there the double 
 sense of Prophecy, and uracil besides that was held by the 
 old commentators, he will also perceive how different an 
 import they assume, as treated by Arnold ; and how his 
 wide and elevated view could find in Prophecy a firm 
 foundation for a Christian's hope and faith, without their 
 being coupled with that extravagance with which the study 
 of the Prophecies has been so often united, ilis Sermons, 
 also, generally exhibit very striking illustrations of his 
 faculty to discern general truth under particular circum- 
 stances, and his power to apply it in a very altered, nay, 
 often opposite form to cases of a different nature ; thus 
 making God's word an ever living oracle, furnishing to 
 every age those precise rules, principles, and laws of con- 
 duct which its actual circumstances 11133- require. 
 
 I must not forget to add, that his principles of interpret- 
 ation were of slow and matured growth ; he arrived ;it them 
 gradually, and, in some instances, even reluctantly; and 
 one of the most elaborate of his early sermons, which he 
 had intended to have preached before the University, was 
 in defence of what is culled the verbal inspiration of Scrip- 
 ture. But, since I became acquainted with him, I have 
 never known him to maintain any thing but what 1 have 
 here tried to set forth. It is very possible that much of 
 what I have here said may appear to many to be exagger- 
 ated; but 1 know not how else to express adequately my 
 firm confidence that the more the principles which guided 
 Arnold's interpretation of Scripture are studied in his writ- 
 ings, the more will their power to throw lighl on the depths 
 of God's wisdom be appreciated. Yours, ever, 
 
 B. PEN 
 
 III. Lastly, his letters v, ill have already shown - how 
 early he had conceived the idea of the work, to
 
 202 LIFE Or DE. ARNOLD. 
 
 which he chiefly looked forward, as that of his old 
 age, on Christian Politics, or Church and State. But 
 it is only a wider survey of his general views that 
 will show how completely this was the centre round 
 which were gathered not only all his writings, but all 
 his thoughts and actions on social subjects, and which 
 gave him a distinct position amongst English di- 
 vines, not only of the present, but of almost all 
 preceding generations. We must remember how the 
 Greek science, 7ro\iriKr), of which the English word 
 " politics," or even political science, is so inadequate a 
 translation — society in its connexion with the highest 
 welfare of men — exhibited to him the great problem 
 which every educated man was called upon to solve. 
 We must conceive how lofty were the aspirations 
 which he entertained of what Christianity was in- 
 tended to effect, and what, if rightly applied, it 
 might yet effect, far beyond any thing which has 
 yet been seen, or is ordinarily conceived, for the 
 moral and social restoration of the world. We must 
 enter into the keen sense of the startling difficulty 
 which he felt to be presented by its comparative 
 failure. We must understand how every thing, which 
 he thought or said on this subject, was in answer to 
 what he used to call the very question of questions ; 
 the question which occurs in the earliest of all his 
 works, and which he continued to ask of himself and 
 of others as long as he lived. " Why, amongst us in 
 this very country, is the mighty work of raising up 
 God's kingdom stopped ; the work of bringing every 
 thought and word and deed to the obedience of 
 Christ?" (Serm. vol. i. p. 115.) 
 
 The great cause of this hindrance to the triumph
 
 LIFE OF DU. ARNOLD. 203 
 
 of Christianity, he believed to lie (to adopt his own 
 distinction) in the corruption not of the Religion of 
 Christ, but of the Church of Christ. The former he 
 felt had on the whole done its work — " its truths," 
 he said, " are to be sought in the Scriptures alone, 
 and are the same at all times and in all countries." 
 But " the Church, which is not a revelation concerning 
 the eternal and unchangeable God, but an institution 
 to enable changeable man to apprehend the un- 
 changeable," had, he maintained, been virtually de- 
 stroyed : and thus, " Christianity being intended to re- 
 medy the intensity of the evil of the Fall by its Reli- 
 gion, and the universality of the evil by its Church, 
 has succeeded in the first, because its Religion has 
 been retained as God gave it, but has failed in the 
 second, because its Church has been greatly cor- 
 rupted." (Serm. vol. iv. Pref. p. xliv.) 
 
 What he meant by this corruption, and why he 
 thought it fatal to the full development of Christ- 
 ianity, will best appear by explaining his idea of the 
 Church, both with regard to its true end, and its true 
 nature. Its end he maintained "to be the putting 
 down of moral evil." "And if this idea," he asks, 
 ms strange to any one. let him consider, whether 
 he Mill not find this notion of Christianity every- 
 where prominent in the Scriptures, ami whether the 
 most peculiar ordinances of the Christian Religion are 
 QOl founded upon it; or again, if it seems natural to 
 him, let him ask himself whether he has well con- 
 sidered the legitimate consequences of such a de- 
 finition, and whether, in fact, it is m»t practically for- 
 gotten?" [ts true nature he believed to be not an 
 institution of the clergy, but a living society of all
 
 204 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 Christians. " When I hear men talk of the Church," 
 he used to say, " I cannot help recalling how Abbe 
 Sieyes replied to the question, ' What is the Tiers 
 Etat?' by saying ' La nation moins la noblesse et le 
 clerge ;' and so I, if I were asked, What are the laity? 
 would answer, The Church minus the clergy." 
 " This," lie said, " is the view taken of the Church in 
 the New Testament ; can it be said that it is the 
 view held amongst ourselves, and if not, is not the 
 difference incalculable ?" It was as frustrating the 
 union of all Christians, in accomplishing what lie 
 believed to be the true end enjoined by their com- 
 mon Master, that he felt so strongly against the 
 desire for uniformity of opinion or worship, which he 
 used to denounce under the name of sectarianism ; 
 it was as annihilating what he believed to be the 
 Apostolical idea of a Church, that he felt so strongly 
 against that principle of separation between the 
 clergy and laity, which he used to denounce under 
 the name of priestcraft. " As far as the principle on 
 which Archbishop Laud and his followers acted went 
 to reactuate the idea of the Church, as a co-ordinate 
 and living power by virtue of Christ's institution and 
 express promise, I go along with them, but I soon 
 discover that by the Church they meant the clergy, 
 the hierarchy exclusively, and there I fly off from 
 them at a tangent. For it is this very inter- 
 pretation of the Church that, according to my con- 
 viction, constituted the first and fundamental apos- 
 tacy." Such was the motto from Coleridge's Re- 
 mains, which he selected as the full expression of his 
 own views, and it was as realizing this- idea that he 
 turned eagerly to all institutions, which seemed likely
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 205 
 
 to impress on all Christians the moral, as distinct from 
 the ceremonial, character of their religion, the equal 
 responsibility and power "which they possessed, not 
 " as friends or honorary members" of the Church, 
 but as its most essential parts. 
 
 Such (to make intelligible, by a few instances, 
 what in general language must be obscure) was his 
 desire to revive the order of deacons, as a link 
 between the clergy and laity, — his defence of the 
 union of laymen with clerical synods, of clergy with 
 the civil legislature, — his belief that an authoritative 
 permission to administer the Eucharist, as well as 
 Baptism, might be beneficially granted to civil or 
 military officers, in congregations where it was im- 
 possible to procure the presence of clergy, — his wish 
 for the restoration of Church discipline, "which nevei 
 can and never ought to be restored, till the Church 
 puts an end to the usurpation of her powers by the 
 clergy; and which, though it must bo vain when 
 opposed to public opinion, yet, when it is the expres- 
 sion of that opinion, can achieve any thing." (Serm. 
 vol. iv. pp. liii. 416.) Such was his suggestion of 
 the revival of many "good practices, which belong- 
 to the true Church no less than to the corrupt 
 church, and would there be purely beneficial; daily 
 church services, frequent communions, memorials of 
 our Christian calling, presented to our notice in 
 crosses and wayside oratories; commemorations to 
 holy men of all times and countries; the doctrine of 
 the communion of saints practically taught ; religious 
 orders, especially of women, of different kinds, and 
 under different rules, delivered only from the snare 
 and sin of perpetual vows." (Serm. vol. iv. Pref. p. Ivi.)
 
 20G LIFE OF J)R. ARNOLD. 
 
 A society organized on these principles, and with 
 
 such or similar institutions, Mas, in his judgment, the 
 " true sign from heaven " meant to be " the living 
 witness of the reality of Christ's salvation, which should 
 remind us daily of God, and work upon the habits of 
 our life as insensibly as the air we breathe," (Serm. 
 vol. iv. p. 307,) which should not " rest satisfied 
 with the lesser and imperfect good, which strikes 
 thrice and stays," (ibid. Pref. p. liv.) which would be 
 "something truer and deeper than satisfied not only 
 the last century, but the last seventeen centuries." 
 (Ibid. Pref. p. liii.) 
 
 But it was almost impossible for his speculations 
 to have stopped short of the most tangible shape 
 which the theory assumed, viz., his idea not of an 
 alliance or union, but of the absolute identity of the 
 Church with the State. In other words, his belief 
 that the object of the State and the Church was 
 alike the highest welfare of man, and that, as the 
 State could not accomplish this, unless it acted with 
 the wisdom and goodness of the Church, nor the 
 Church, unless it was invested with the sovereign 
 power of the State, the State and the Church in 
 their ideal form were not two societies, but one ; and 
 that it is only in proportion as this identity is realized 
 in each particular country, that man's perfection and 
 God's glory can be established on earth. This theory 
 had, indeed, already been sanctioned by some of the 
 greatest names in English theology and philosophy, 
 by Hooker in his Ecclesiastical Polity, and in later 
 times by Burke, and in part by Coleridge. But (if 
 a negative may be universally asserted on such a 
 subject) it had never before, at least in England.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 20? 
 
 been so completely the expression of a man's whole 
 mind, or the basis of a whole system, political as well 
 as religious, positive as well as negative. 
 
 The peculiar line of his historical studies — the 
 admiration which he felt for the Greek and Roman 
 commonwealths — his intensely political and national 
 turn of mind — his abhorrence of what 1m- used to 
 consider the anarchical spirit of dissent on the one 
 hand, and the sectarianism of a clerical govern- 
 ment on the other — his reverence for the au- 
 thority of law — his detestation, on the one hand, 
 of what lie used to call the secular or Jacobinical 
 notion of a State, as providing only for physical ends, 
 — on the other hand, of what he used to call the 
 superstitious or antichristian view of the Church, 
 as claiming to be ruled not by national laws, but by 
 a divinely appointed succession of priests or go- 
 vernors, — all combined to make him look to the 
 nation or commonwealth as the fit sphere for the 
 full realization of Christianity; to the perfect identifi- 
 cation of Christian with political society, as the only 
 mode of harmonizing the truths which, in the oppo- 
 site systems of Archbishop Whately and Mr. (i lad- 
 stone, he lamented to see "each divorced from its 
 proper mate." 
 
 It was then only, that he conceived the possibility 
 of a full development of the Church, or a full Chris- 
 tiauization of the State, when the Church should 
 have become not a subordinate, but a sovereign 
 society; not acting indirectly on the world, through 
 inferior instruments, but directly through it> OWE 
 
 government, the Bupreme Legislature — when all public
 
 208 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 officers of the State, feeling themselves to be neces- 
 sarily officers of the Church, should endeavour, "each 
 in his vocation and ministry," to serve its great cause 
 " not with a subject's indifference, but with a citizen's 
 zeal," — when the jealousy, with which the clergy and 
 laity at present regard each other's interference, 
 would be lost in the sense that their spheres were 
 in fact the same ; that nothing was too secular to 
 claim exemption from the enforcement of Christian 
 duty, nothing too spiritual to claim exemption from 
 the control of the government of a Christian State, — 
 when the whole nation, amidst much variety of form, 
 ceremonial, and opinion, should yet feel that the great 
 ends of Christian and national society, now for the 
 first time realized to their view, were a far stronger 
 bond of union between Christians, and a far deeper 
 division from those who were not Christians, than any 
 subordinateprinciple either of agreement or separation. 
 It was thus only, that he figured to himself the 
 perfect consummation of earthly things, — the triumph 
 of what he used emphatically to call the Kingdom of 
 God. Other good institutions, indeed, he regarded 
 as so many steps towards this end. The establish- 
 ment of a parochial clergy, even in its present state, 
 seemed to him the highest national blessing, — much 
 more the revival of the Church, as he would have 
 wished to see it revived. Still the work of Christ- 
 ianity itself was not accomplished, so long as po- 
 litical and social institutions were exempt from its 
 influence, so long as the highest power of human 
 society professed to act on other principles than 
 those declared in the Gospel. But, whenever it
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 209 
 
 should come to pass that tho strongest earthly bond 
 should be identical with the bond of Christian fellow- 
 ship, — that the highest earthly power should avowedly 
 minister to the advancement of Christian holiness — 
 that crimes should be regarded as sins — that Christ- 
 ianity should be the acknowledged basis of citizen- 
 ship — that the region of political and national ques- 
 tions, war and peace, oaths and punishments, economy 
 and education, so long considered by good and bad 
 alike as worldly and profane, should be looked upon 
 as the very sphere to which Christian principles are 
 most applicable, — then he felt that Christianity would 
 at last have gained a position, where it could cope 
 for the first time, front to front, with the power of 
 evil ; that the unfulfilled promises of the older pro- 
 phecies, so long delayed, would have received their 
 accomplishment ; that the kingdoms of this world 
 would have indeed become the kingdoms of the Lord 
 and of his Christ. 
 
 No one felt more keenly than himself how impos- 
 sible it was to apply this view directly to existing cir- 
 cumstances ; how the whole frame-work of society 
 must be reconstructed beforo it could be brought 
 into action ; how far in the remote future its accom- 
 plishment must necessarily lie. " So deeply," he 
 said, " is the distinction between the Church and 
 the State seated in our laws, our language, and our 
 very notions, that nothing less than a miraculous in- 
 terposition of God's Providence Beems capable within 
 any definite time of eradicating it." (1'ref. to Hist, 
 of Rome, vol. i. p. ix.) 
 
 Still it was not in his nature to postpone, own in 
 thought, the fulfilment of his desires to a remote 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 210 
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 Millennium or Utopia, such as in the minds of many 
 men acts rather as a reason for acquiescence in the 
 existing order of the world, than as a motive for 
 rising above it. " I cannot answer all your objections 
 fully," he writes to Archbishop Whately, " because 
 if I could, it were to suppose that the hardest of all 
 human questions contained no great difficulties ; but 
 I think on the whole, that the objections to my 
 scheme are less than to any other, and that on the 
 positive side it is in theory perfect : and though it 
 never will be wholly realized, yet if men can be 
 brought to look at it as the true theory, the practical 
 approximations to it may in the course of time be 
 indefinitely great." 
 
 It was still the thought which animated all his ex- 
 ertions in behalf of his country, where he felt that 
 " the means were still in our hands, which it seems far 
 better to use even at the eleventh hour, than desper- 
 ately to throw them away." (Serm. vol. ii. Pref. p. vi.) 
 and, convinced, as he was, that the founders of our 
 present constitution in Church and State did " truly 
 consider them to be identical, the Christian nation 
 of England to be the Church of England, the head 
 of that nation to be for that very reason the head of 
 the Church," he asked with an indignant sorrow, 
 " whether it were indeed indifference or latitudina- 
 rianism, to wish most devoutly that this noble, this 
 divine theory might be fully and for ever realized." 
 (Ch. Ref. PS. p. 24.) It was still the vision which 
 closed the vista of all his speculations ; the ideal whole, 
 which might be incorporated part by part into the 
 existing order of society ; the ideal end, which each 
 successive age might approach more closely, — its very
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 211 
 
 remoteness only impressing him more deeply witb 
 the conviction of the enormous efforts which must be 
 made to bring all social institutions nearer to that per- 
 fection which Christianity designed for them, of the 
 enormous mass of evil which lay undisturbed because 
 so few dared to acknowledge the identity of the cause 
 of reform with the cause of Christianity. It was still, 
 in its more practical form, the great idea of which the 
 several parts of his life were so many distinct exem- 
 plifications ; his sermons — his teaching — his govern- 
 ment of the school — his public acts — his own personal 
 character; and to which all his dreams of wider use- 
 fulness instinctively turned, from the first faint out- 
 line of his hopes in his earliest letters, down to the 
 last evening of his life, when the last thought which 
 he bestowed on the future, was of " that great work, 
 if I might be permitted to take part in it." 
 
 The general view of Dr. Arnold's life at Rugby 
 must not be closed, without touching, however briefly 
 and imperfectly, on that aspect of it, which naturally 
 gave the tiniest view of his mind and character, whilst 
 to those at a distance it was comparatively but little 
 known. 
 
 Perhaps the scene which, to those who knew 
 him best, would bring together the recollections of 
 his public and private life in the most lively way, 
 was his study at Rugby. There he sat at his 
 work, with no attempt at seclusion, conversation 
 going on around him — his children playing in the 
 room — his frequent guests, whether friends or former 
 pupils, coming in or out at will — ready at oner 
 
 i> '2
 
 212 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 to break off his occupations to answer a question, 
 or to attend to the many interruptions to which 
 lie was liable ; and from these interruptions, or from 
 his regular avocations, at the few odd hours or minutes 
 which he could command, would he there return and 
 recommence his writing, as if it had not been broken 
 off. "Instead of feeling my head exhausted," he would 
 sometimes say after the day's business was over, " it 
 seems to have quite an eagerness to set to work." " I 
 feel as if I could dictate to twenty secretaries at once." 
 Yet, almost unfailing as was this " unhasting, un- 
 resting diligence," to use the expression of a keen 
 observer, who thus characterized his impression of 
 one day's visit at Rugby, he would often wish for 
 something more like leisure and repose. " We some- 
 times feel," he said, "as if we should like to run our 
 heads into a hole — to be quiet for a little time from 
 the stir of so many human beings, which greets us 
 from morning to evening." And it was from amidst 
 this chaos of employments that he turned, with all 
 the delight of which his nature was capable, to what 
 he often dwelt upon as the rare, the unbroken, 
 the almost awful happiness of his domestic life. It 
 is impossible adequately to describe the union of the 
 whole family round him, who was not only the father 
 and guide, but the elder brother and playfellow of 
 his children ; the first feelings of enthusiastic love and 
 watchful care, carried through twenty-two years of 
 wedded life, — the gentleness and devotion which 
 marked his whole feeling and manner in the privacy 
 of his domestic intercourse. Those who had known him 
 only in the school, can remember the kind of surprise 
 with which thev first witnessed his tenderness and
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 213 
 
 playfulness. Those who had known him only in the 
 bosom of his family, found it difficult to conceive 
 how his pupils or the world at large should have 
 formed to themselves so stern an image of one in 
 himself so loving. Yet both were alike natural to 
 him; the severity and the playfulness, expressing 
 each in their turn the earnestness with which he en- 
 tered into the business of life, and the enjoyment 
 with which he entered into its rest ; whilst the com- 
 mon principle, which linked both together, made every 
 closer approach to him in his private life a means for 
 better understanding him in his public relations. 
 
 Enough, however, may perhaps be said to recall 
 something at least of its outward aspect. There were 
 his hours of thorough relaxation, when he would 
 throw off all thoughts of the school and of public 
 matters — his quiet walks by the side of his wife's 
 pony, when he would enter into the full enjoyment of 
 air and exercise, and the outward face of nature, ob- 
 serving with distinct pleasure each symptom of the 
 burst of spring or of the richness of summer — " feel- 
 ing like a horse pawing the ground, impatient to be 
 off," — " as if the very act of existence was an hourly 
 pleasure to him." There was the cheerful voice that 
 used to go sounding through the house in the early 
 morning, as he Avcnt round to call his children ; the 
 new spirits which he seemed to gather from the mere 
 glimpses of them in the midst of his occupations — 
 the increased merriment of all in any game in which 
 hr joined — the happy walks on which lie would take 
 them in the fields and hedges, hunting for tlowers — 
 the yearly excursion to look in a neighbouring clay- 
 pit for the earliest coltsfoot, with the mock siege
 
 214 LIFE or DR. A.RNOLD. 
 
 that followed. Nor, again, was the sense of his 
 authority as a father, ever lost in his playfulness as a 
 companion. His personal superintendence of their 
 ordinary instructions was necessarily limited by his 
 other engagements, but it was never wholly laid aside ; 
 in the later years of his life it was his custom to 
 read the Psalms and Lessons of the day with his fa- 
 mily every morning ; and the common reading of a 
 chapter in the Bible every Sunday evening, with re- 
 petition of hymns or parts of Scripture, by every 
 member of the family — the devotion with which he 
 would himself repeat his favourite poems from the 
 Christian Year, or his favourite passages from the 
 Gospels — the same attitude of deep attention in lis- 
 tening to the questions of his youngest children, the 
 same reverence in answering their difficulties, that he 
 would have shown to the most advanced of his friends 
 or his scholars — form a picture not soon to pass away 
 from the mind of any one who was ever present. But 
 his teaching in his family was naturally not confined 
 to any particular occasions ; they looked to him for 
 information and advice at all times ; and a word of au- 
 thority from him was a law not to be questioned for a 
 moment. And with the tenderness which seemed to 
 be alive to all their wants and wishes, there was united 
 that peculiar sense of solemnity, with which in his 
 eves the very idea of a family life was invested. " I do 
 not wonder," he said, " that it was thought a great 
 misfortune to die childless in old times, when they 
 had not fuller light — it seems so completely wiping a 
 man out of existence." The anniversaries of domestic 
 events — the passing away of successive generations — 
 the entrance of his sons on the several stages of their
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 215 
 
 education, — struck on the deepest chords of his nature, 
 and made him blend with every prospect of the 
 future, the keen sense of the continuance (so to 
 speak) of his own existence in the good and evil for- 
 tunes of his children, and to unite the thought of 
 them with the yet more solemn feeling, with which 
 he was at all times wont to regard " the blessing" of 
 " ;i whole house transplanted entire from earth to 
 heaven, without one failure." 
 
 In his own domestic happiness he never lost sight 
 of his early friends. " He was attached to his 
 family," it was truly said of him by Archbishop 
 Whately, " as if he had no friends ; to his friends, as 
 if he had no family ; and," he adds, " to his country, as 
 if he had had no friends or relations." Debarred as 
 he was from frequent intercourse with most of them 
 by his and their occupations, he made it part of the 
 regular business of his life to keep up a correspond- 
 ence with them. " I never do," he said, " and I trust 
 I never shall, excuse myself for not writing to old 
 and dear friends, for it is really a duty which it is 
 mere indolence and thoughtlessness to neglect." The 
 very aspect of their several homes lived as distinct 
 images in his mind, and seemed to have an equal 
 claim on his interest ; to men of such variety of 
 opinion and character, that the very names of some 
 of them are identified with measures and views the 
 most opposite that good nun can entertain, he re- 
 tained t<> the end a strong and almost equal affection ; 
 the absence of greater mutual sympathy was to him 
 almost the only shadow thrown over his happy life; 
 no difference of opinion ever destroyed his desire for 
 intercourse with them; and where, in Bpite of his own
 
 216 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 (■Hurts to continue it, it was so interrupted, the sub- 
 ject was so painful to him, that even with those most 
 intimate with him, he could hardly bear to allude 
 to it. 
 
 How lively was his interest in the state of Eng- 
 land generally, and especially of the lower orders, 
 will appear elsewhere. But the picture of his ordi- 
 nary life would be incomplete without mention of his 
 intercourse with the poor. He purposely abstained, 
 as will be seen, from mixing much in the affairs of the 
 town and neighbourhood of Rugby. But he was 
 always ready to assist in matters of local charity or 
 usefulness, giving lectures, for example, before the 
 Mechanics' Institutes at Rugby and Lutterworth, 
 writing tracts on the appearance of the cholera in 
 the vicinity, and, after the establishment of the rail- 
 way station at half a mile from the town, procuring the 
 sanction of the Bishop for the performance of a short 
 service there on Sundays by himself and the assist- 
 ant-masters in turn. And with the poor generally, 
 though his acquaintance was naturally much more 
 limited than it had been in the village of Laleham, 
 yet with some few, chiefly aged persons in the alms- 
 house of the place, he made a point of keeping up a 
 frequent and familiar intercourse. 
 
 In this intercourse, sometimes in conversations 
 with them as he met or overtook them alone on 
 the road, usually in such visits as he could pay to 
 them in his spare moments of relaxation, he as- 
 sumed less of the character of a teacher than most 
 clergymen would have thought right, reading to them 
 occasionally, but generally talking to them with the 
 manner of a friend and an equal. This resulted
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 2 ) 7 
 
 partly from the natural reserve and shyness which 
 made him shrink from entering on sacred subjects 
 with comparative strangers, and which, though he 
 latterly somewhat overcame it, almost disqualified 
 him, in his own judgment, from taking charge of a 
 parish. But it was also the effect of his reluctance 
 to address them in a more authoritative or profes- 
 sional tone than he would have used towards persons 
 of his own rank. Feeling keenly what seemed to 
 him at once the wrong and the mischief done by the 
 too wide separation between the higher and lower 
 orders, he wished to visit them " as neighbours, with- 
 out always seeming bent on relieving or instructing 
 them ;" a and could not bear to use language which 
 to any one in a higher station would have been thought 
 an interference. With the servants of his household," 
 for the same reasons, he was in the habit, whether in 
 travelling or in his own house, of consulting their ac- 
 commodation and speaking to them familiarly, as to so 
 many members of the domestic circle. And in all this, 
 writes one who knew well his manner to the poor, 
 " there was no affectation of condescension, it was a 
 manly address to his fellow men, as man addressing 
 man." " I never knew such a humble man as the 
 Doctor," said the parish clerk at Laleham, after he 
 had revisited it from Rugby; " he comes and shakes 
 us by the hand as if he was one of us." " He used 
 to come into my house," said an old woman near his 
 place in Westmoreland, " and talk t<> me as it I was 
 a lady." Often, no doubt, this Mas not appreciated 
 by the poor, and might, at times, be embarrassing to 
 .himself, and it is said that he was liable to he ini- 
 ■ Sermons, vol. ii. p. 41 1.
 
 218 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 posed upon by them, and greatly to overrate their 
 proficiency in moral and religious excellence. But 
 he felt this intercourse to be peculiarly needful for 
 one engaged in occupations such as his ; to the re- 
 membrance of the good poor, whom he visited at 
 Rugby, he often recurred when absent from them ; 
 and nothing can exceed the regret, which they testify 
 at his loss, and the grateful affection, with which they 
 still speak of him, pointing with delight to the seat 
 which he used to occupy by their firesides : one of 
 them especially, an old almswoman, who died a few 
 months after his own decease, up to the last moment 
 of consciousness never ceasing to think of his visits 
 to her, and of the hope with which she looked for- 
 ward now to seeing his face once more again. 
 
 Closely as he was bound to Rugby by these and 
 similar bonds of social and familiar life, and yet more 
 closely by the charm, with which its mere outward 
 aspect and localities were invested by his interest in 
 the school, both as an independent institution and as 
 his own sphere of duty, yet the place in itself never 
 had the same strong hold on his affections as Oxford 
 or Laleham, and his holidays were almost always 
 spent away from Rugby, either in short tours, or in 
 later years at his Westmoreland home, Fox How, a 
 small estate between Rydal and Ambleside, which 
 he purchased in 1831, Avith the view of provid- 
 ing for himself a retreat, in case of his retirement 
 from the school, or for his family in case of his 
 death. The monotonous character of the midland 
 scenery of Warwickshire was to him, with his strong 
 love of natural beauty and variety, absolutely repul- 
 sive ; there was something almost touching in the
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 219 
 
 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 Hol- 
 land, the north of Germany, and the centre of Rus- 
 sia." 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 employ- 
 ment 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 tendering," 
 he said, " that I regard our mountain nest, whose 
 surpassing sweetness, I think I may sifrly Bay, adds a 
 positive happiness to every one of niv waking hours
 
 220 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 passed in it." When absent from it, it still, lie 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 ob- 
 jects, connected with all the enjoyments of home, 
 one's family, one's books, and one's friends," — " asso- 
 ciated 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 fa- 
 vourite 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 
 foils, and helping forward those who were tired, him- 
 self always keeping with the laggers, that none 
 might strain their strength by trying to be in front
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 221 
 
 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 cadi 
 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 some- 
 thing 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 at- 
 tractive 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 West- 
 moreland, " 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 peace- 
 fulness 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
 
 222 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 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 pro- 
 spects 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 theRotha 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 re- 
 markably exhibit the natural sanguineness of his cha- 
 racter, 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 his- 
 torical 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 formula*, 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 differ- 
 ent periods of national existence appended to this first 
 volume, but, in fact, belonging more to his genera] 
 views of history and politics than to any particular 
 illustration of Thucydides, is brought out more forci-
 
 224 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 bly than in any other of his writings, his belief in the 
 progress and inherent excellence of popular principles; 
 in the distinct stages of civilization through which 
 nations have to pass ; and in the philosophical di- 
 visions of ancient and modern history, of which he 
 made so much use in treating of either of them. But 
 the work which naturally excited most public atten- 
 tion, was a pamphlet on " the Christian Duty of con- 
 ceding the claims of the Roman Catholics," published 
 in February, 1829. To those who knew him in 
 later life, it may appear strange that he should have 
 treated at length of the question of Ireland, which 
 he was accustomed to shun as a problem of inextri- 
 cable difficulty, and on which nothing but a sense of 
 justice could ever prevail upon him to enter. But 
 this sense of justice was, at this time, quickened by 
 the deep conviction which, for some years past, he 
 had entertained of the alarming state of the Irish na- 
 tion. " There is more to be done there," he writes 
 in 1828, from Laleham, " than in any corner of the 
 world. I had, at one time, a notion of going over 
 there and taking Irish pupils, to try what one man 
 could do towards civilizing the people, by trying to 
 civilize and Christianise their gentry." And the par- 
 ticular crisis of the Roman Catholic Relief Act was 
 exactly one of those occasions which brought him 
 into direct collision, both with the tone of the Liberal 
 party, who assumed that, as being a political measure, 
 it could not be argued on religious grounds ; and of 
 the Tory party, who assumed that, as being a religious 
 question, it was one on which the almost united au- 
 thority of the English clergy ought to have decisive 
 weight ; whereas, his own views of course led him to
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 2'2o 
 
 maintain that, being a great national question of 
 right and wrong, it must, on the one hand, be ar- 
 gued on Christian grounds, and yet, on the other 
 hand, that the clergy would not be the best judges 
 of it, because " the origin, rights, and successive re- 
 volutions of society, Mere subjects which they avow- 
 edly neglected to study." The pamphlet was pub- 
 lished at so late a stage of the controversy, that it 
 had not time to reach a second edition before the 
 act was passed. But the grounds of solemn duty on 
 which his vindication of the Relief Act was based, as 
 the best mode of repairing the sin and mischief, never 
 yet effaced, of the original conquest of Ireland, and 
 as a right, which, as being still a distinct national 
 society, the Irish people justly claimed, — attracted 
 considerable attention, whilst parts, such as that in 
 which he denied the competence of the clergy to 
 pronounce upon historical questions, created an im- 
 pression against him in the great body of his profes- 
 sion, which, perhaps, was never wholly removed. Its 
 intrinsic interest, independent of the particular con- 
 troversy, consists in its being his first and most 
 emphatic protest against the divorce of religion and 
 politics, and the most complete statement of his 
 abstract views of political science, as his Appendix 
 to Thucydides furnished his statement of their his- 
 torical development. 
 
 I. TO J. ]'. COLERIDGE, BSQ. 
 
 Ru R liy, Angnat 29th, I 
 
 Here we .arc actually at Rugby, and the 
 
 school will open to-morrow. I cannot tell you with what 
 
 VOL. I. n
 
 220 LIFE OF I'll. ARNOLD. 
 
 deep regret we left Lalehara, where we had been so peace- 
 ful and so happy, and left my mother, aunt, and sisters for 
 the first time in my life, except during my school and 
 college absences. It was quite " feror exul in altum," &c, 
 but then we both looked upon Rugby as on our Italy, and 
 entered it, I think, with hope and with thankfulness. . . . 
 But the things which I have had to settle, and the people 
 whom I have had to see on business, have been almost 
 endless j to me, unused as I was to business, it seemed 
 quite a chaos ; but, thank God, being in high health and 
 spirits, and, gaining daily more knowledge of the state of 
 affairs, I get on tolerably well. Next week, however, will 
 be the grand experiment ; and I look to it naturally with 
 great anxiety. I trust, I feel how great and solemn a duty 
 I have to fulfil, and that I shall be enabled to fulfil it by 
 • that help which can alone give the " Spirit of power and 
 love, and of a sound mind ;" the three great requisites, I 
 imagine, in a schoolmaster. 
 
 You need not fear my reforming furiously ; there, I 
 think, I can assure you ; but, of my success in introducing 
 a religious principle into education, I must be doubtful ; 
 it is my most earnest wish, and I pray God that it maybe 
 my constant labour and prayer ; but to do this would be to 
 succeed beyond all my hopes ; it would be a happiness so 
 great, that, I think, the world could yield me nothing com- 
 parable to it. To do it, however imperfectly, would far 
 more than repay twenty years of labour and anxiety. 
 
 Saturday, August 30th. I have been receiving, this 
 morning, a constant succession of visitors, and now, before 
 I go out to return . August 31st. I was again inter- 
 rupted, and now, I think, that I had better at once finish 
 my letter. I have entered twenty-nine new boys, and 
 have got four more to enter ; and I have to-day commenced 
 my business by calling over names and going into chapel, 
 where I was glad to see that the boys behaved very well. 
 I cannot tell you how odd it seems to me, recalling, at once,
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 227 
 
 my school-days more vividly than I could have thought 
 possihle 
 
 II. TO REV. P. C. BLACK8T0NB. 
 
 , September 28, I82i 
 It is, indeed, a long time since I wrote to you, and there 
 has been much of intense interest in the period which has 
 elapsed since I did write. But it has been quite an en- 
 grossing occupation ; and Thucydides and every thing else 
 has gone to sleep while I have been attending to it. Now 
 it is becoming more familiar to me, but still the actual em- 
 ployment of time is very great, and the matters for thought 
 which it affords arc almost endless. Still I get my daily 
 exercise and bathing very happily, so that I have been, 
 and am, perfectly well, and equal in strength and spirits to 
 
 the work For myself, 1 like it hitherto beyond 
 
 my expectation, but, of course, a month is a very short 
 time to judge from. [After speaking of the details of the 
 school, and expressing his generally favourable impression 
 of it.] I am trying to establish something of a friendly in- 
 tercourse with the Sixth Form, by asking them, in succes- 
 sion, in parties of four, to dinner with us, and I have them 
 each separately up into my room to look over their exer- 
 cises I mean to bring in something like " ga- 
 therings " before it is long, for they understand that 1 have 
 not done with my alterations, nor probably ever shall 
 have ; and I am going to have an Examination for every 
 form in the school, at the end of the short hall-year, in all 
 the business of the half-year, Divinity, Greek ami Latin, 
 Arithmetic, History, geography, and chronology, with first 
 and second classes, and prize books for those who do well. 
 I find that my power is perfectly absolute, so that I have- 
 no excuse if I do not try to make the school something 
 like my beau ideal — it is sure to fall far enough short in 
 reality. There has been no flogging y< t, and 1 hope that 
 there will be none,) and surprising] v few irregularities. 1 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 LIFE OF PR. ARNOLD. 
 
 chastise, at first, by very gentle impositions, which arc 
 raised for a repetition of offences — flogging will be only my 
 ratio ultima — and talking I shall try to the utmost. I be- 
 lieve that boys may be governed a great deal by gentle 
 methods and kindness, and appealing to their betteT feel- 
 ings, if you show that you are not afraid of them ; I have 
 seen great boys, six feet high, shed tears when I have sent 
 for them up into my room and spoken to them quietly, in 
 private, for not knowing their lesson, and T have found 
 that this treatment produced its effects afterwards, in mak- 
 ing them do better. But, of course, deeds must second 
 words when needful, or words will soon be laughed at 
 
 III. TO THE SAME. 
 
 Laleham, Dec. 19, 1828. 
 
 I should have greatly enjoyed seeing you again, 
 
 and seeing you with your wife, and at your own home, to 
 say nothing of resuming some of the matters we discussed 
 a little in the summer. The constitutional tone of dif- 
 ferent minds naturally gives a different complexion to their 
 view of things, even when they may agree in the main ; and 
 in discussing matters besides, one, or at least /, am apt to 
 dwell on my points of difference with a man rather than 
 on my points of agreement with him, because, in one case, 
 I may get my own opinions modified and modify his — in 
 the other, we only end where we began. I confess that it 
 does pain me when I find my friends shocked at the ex- 
 pression of my sentiments, because, if a man had entered 
 on the same particular inquiry himself, although he should 
 have come to a wholly different conclusion at last, still if 
 he gave me credit for sincerity, he ought not to be shocked 
 at my not having as yet come to the same conclusion with 
 himself, and would rather quietly try to bring me there — 
 and if he had not inquired into the subject, then he cer- 
 tainly ought not to be shocked; as giving me credit for the 
 same fundamental principles with himself, he ought not to
 
 LIFE OP DB. ARNOLD. '2i>9 
 
 think that non-inquiry would lead to truth, and inquiry to 
 error. In your case, I know that your mind is entirely 
 candid ; and that no man will conduct an inquiry with 
 more perfect fairness: you have, therefore, the less reason 
 for abstaining from inquiry altogether. I can assure you, 
 that I never remember to have held a conversation such 
 as those which we had last summer, without deriving benefit 
 in some way or other from the remarks urged in opposition 
 to my own views ; very often they have modified my opi- 
 nions, sometimes entirely changed them — and when they 
 have done neither, they have yet led me to consider myself 
 and my own state of mind ; lest even whilst holding the 
 truth, I might have bought the possession of it too dearly 
 (I mean, of course, in lesser matters) by exercising the 
 understanding too much, and the affections too little 
 
 IV. TO THE REV. JULIUS HAKE. 
 
 Rugby, March 30, 1829. 
 
 I am much obliged to you for sending me your 
 
 Defence of Niebuhr; and still more for the most kind and 
 gratifying manner in which you have mentioned me in it: 
 there are few tilings more delightful than to be so spoken 
 of by those whom we entirely respect, and whose good 
 opinion and regard we have wished to gain. 
 
 I should not have troubled you with my pamphlet on 
 the Catholic question, had it not involved points beyond 
 the mere question now at issue, and on which 1 was de- 
 sirous to offer you some explanation, as I think our opi- 
 nions respecting them are widely different. From what 
 you say in the Guesses at Truth, {End again in your De- 
 fence of Niebuhr, you appear to me to look upon the past 
 with feelings of reverence, in which I cannot participate. 
 
 It is not that I think we arc better than our lathers iu pro- 
 portion to our lights, or that our powers are at all greater; 
 on the contrary, they deserve more admiration, consider- 
 ing the difficulties they had to struggle with ; yet still I
 
 230 LIFE OF DB. ARNOLD. 
 
 cannot but think, that the habit of looking back upon them 
 as models, and more especially in all political institutions, 
 
 is the surest way to fetter our own progress, and to de- 
 prive us of the advantages of our own superior experience, 
 which, it is no boast to say, that we possess, but rather, a 
 most disgraceful reproach, since we use them so little. The 
 error of the last century appears to me to have been this, 
 that they undervalued their ancestors without duly study- 
 ing antiquity ; thus they naturally did not gain the expe- 
 rience which they ought to have done, and were confident, 
 even whilst digging from under their feet the ground on 
 which their confidence might have rested justly. Yet still, 
 even in this respect, the 16th and 17th centuries have 
 little cause, I think, to insult the 18th. The great writers 
 of those times read, indeed, enormously, but surely their 
 critical spirit was in no proportion to their reading — and 
 thus the true experience to be gained from the study of 
 antiquity was not gained, because antiquity was not fully 
 understood. It is not, I believe, that I estimate our actual 
 doings more highly than you do ; but, I believe, I esti- 
 mate those of our fathers less highly ; and instead of look- 
 ing upon them as in any degree a standard, I turn in- 
 stinctively to that picture of entire perfection which the 
 Gospel holds out, and from which I cannot but think that 
 the state of things in times past was further removed even 
 than ours is now, although our little may be more inex- 
 cusable than their less was in them. And, in particular, I 
 confess, that if I were called upon to name what spirit of 
 evil predominantly deserved the name of Antichrist, I 
 should name the spirit of chivalry — the more detestable 
 for the very guise of the " Archangel ruined," which has 
 made it so seductive to the most generous spirits — but to 
 me so hateful, because it is in direct opposition to the im- 
 partial justice of the Gospel, and its comprehensive feeling 
 of equal brotherhood, and because it so fostered a sense 
 of honour rather than a sense of dutv
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. ~ol 
 
 V. TO THE REV. DR. HAWKINS. 
 
 May 2\>. I • 
 
 [After refusing to reprint the pamphlet on the Roman 
 Catholic claims, and expressing his belief that the school 
 has not and will not sustain any injury from what he 
 
 has done.] I claim a full right to use my 
 
 own discretion in writing upon any subject I choose, 
 provided I do not neglect my duties as master in order 
 to find time for it. But those who know me will be 
 aware that, to say nothing of duty, my interest in the 
 school far exceeds what I feel in any sort of composition 
 of my own ; and that, neither here nor at Laleham, have I 
 ever allowed my own writings to encroach upon the time, 
 or on the spirits and vigour of mind and body, which I 
 hold that my pupils have a paramount claim upon. 
 
 As to the principles in the pamphlet, it is a matter of 
 unfeigned astonishment to me, than any man calling him- 
 self a Christian should think them bad, or should not re- 
 cognise in them the very principles of Christianity itself. 
 If my principles are bad, I only wish that those who think 
 them so would state their own in opposition to them. It is all 
 very well to call certain principles mischievous and demo- 
 cratical ; but I believe very few of those, who do so call them, 
 would be able to bear the monstrous nature of their own, 
 if they were obliged fully to develope them. I mean, that 
 they would then be seen to involve what in their daily lan- 
 guage about things of common life their very holders 
 laugh at as absurdity and mischief. For instance, about 
 continual reforms, or the wisdom of our ancestors — I have 
 heard Tories laugh at the fanners in their parish, for op- 
 posing the mending of the roads, because, as they said, 
 what had been good enough for their fathers was good 
 enough for them ; and yet these farmers wire not an atom 
 more silly than the people who laughed at them, but only 
 more consistent. And as to the arrogance of tone in the 
 pamphlet, I do not consider it to be arrogance to assume
 
 232 LIFK OF DK. ARNOLD. 
 
 that I know more of ;i particular subject, which I have 
 studied eagerly from a child, than those do who noto- 
 riously do not study it at all. The very men who think it 
 hard to be taxed with ignorance of modem history, and of 
 the laws and literature of foreign nations, are men who, till 
 this question came on, never pretended to know anything 
 about them ; and, in the case of the Evangelicals, pro- 
 fessed to shun such studies as profane. I should con- 
 sider no man arrogant, who, if I were to talk about some 
 mathematical or scientific question which he had studied 
 habitually, and on which all scientific men were agreed, 
 should tell me that I did not and could not understand 
 the subject, because I had never liked mathematics, and 
 had never pretended to work at them. Those only who 
 have studied history with that fondness that I have done 
 all my life, can fully appreciate the pain which it gives me 
 to see the most mischievous principles supported, as they 
 have been on this question, with an ignorance truly auda- 
 cious. I will only instance Mr. C.'s appeal to English 
 History in proof that God's judgments will visit us if we 
 
 grant any favour to the Catholics On the point 
 
 of Episcopacy, I can only say, that my notions, whether 
 right or wrong, have been drawn solely from the New 
 Testament itself, according to what appears to me its true 
 meaning and spirit. I do not know that I ever read 
 any Low Church or No Church argument in my life. 
 But I should like to develope my notions on this point 
 more fully hereafter. I have some thoughts of publishing 
 a volume of essays on various points connected with 
 Christian doctrine and practice : I do not mean now — but 
 if I live, and can work out some points, on which 1 have 
 not yet got far enough to authorize me to address others, 
 yet I think I see my way to some useful truths. Meantime 
 I trust I shall not give just cause of offence to any good 
 and wise man — or of personal offence to any man.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 233 
 
 VI. TO A PARENT HOLDING UNITARIAN OPINIONS. 
 
 Rugby, June 15, 1829. 
 I had occasion to speak to your son this evening on the 
 subject of the approaching confirmation ; and, as I had 
 understood that his friends were not members of the 
 Established Church, my object was not so much to per- 
 suade him to be confirmed, as to avail myself of the 
 opportunity thus afforded me to speak with him generally 
 on the subject of his state as a Christian, and the peculiar 
 temptations to which he was now peculiarly exposed, 
 and the nature of that hope and faith which he would 
 require as his best defence. But, on enquiring to what 
 persuasion his friends belonged, I found that they were 
 Unitarians. I felt myself therefore unable to proceed, 
 because, as nothing would be more repugnant to my no- 
 tions of fair dealings, than to avail myself indirectly of 
 my opportunities of influencing a boy's mind contrary to the 
 religious belief of his parents, without giving them the fullest 
 notice, so, on the other hand, when the differences of 
 belief are so great and so many, I feel that 1 could not 
 enter at all into the subject, without enforcing principles 
 wholly contrary to those in which your son has been brought 
 up. This difficulty will increase with every half year that 
 he remains at the school, as he will be gradually coming 
 more and more under my immediate care ; and 1 can 
 neither suffer any of those boys with whom 1 am more im- 
 mediately connected, to be left without religious instruc- 
 tion, nor can 1 give it in his case, without unavoidably 
 imparting views, wholly different from those entertained 
 by the persons whom he is naturally most disposed to 
 love and honour. Under these circumstances, I think ii 
 
 fair to state to you, what line I shall feel bound to follow, 
 after the knowledge, which I have gained ofyour Bon's re- 
 ligious belid". In every tiling I should s.i\ to him on the 
 subject, I should USe e\er\ possible pains and d< lieaey to 
 
 avoid hinting his feelings with regard to his relations: but
 
 !>34 LIFE OP Ml. ARNOLD. 
 
 at the same time, I cannot avoid labouring to im] tress 
 on him, what is my belief on the most valuable truths in 
 Christianity, and which, I fear, must be sadly at variance 
 with the tenets in which he has been brought up. I should 
 not do this controversially, and in the case of any other 
 form of dissent from the Establishment, I would avoid dwell- 
 ing on the differences between us, because I could teach 
 all that I conceive to be essential in Christianity, without 
 at all touching upon them. But in this instance, it is im- 
 possible to avoid interfering with the very points most at 
 issue. I have a very good opinion of your son, both as to 
 his conduct and abilities, and I should be very sorry to 
 lose him from the school. I think, also, that any one who 
 knows me, would give you ample assurance that I have 
 not the slightest feeling against Dissenters as such, or any 
 desire, but rather very much the contrary, to make this 
 school exclusive. My difficulty with your son is not one 
 which I feel as a Churchman, but as a Christian : and 
 goes only on this simple principle, that I feel bound to 
 teach the essentials of Christianity to all those committed 
 to my care — and with these the tenets of the Unitarians 
 alone, among all the Dissenters in the kingdom, are in my 
 judgment irreconcileable. I trust that you will forgive me 
 for having troubled you thus at length on this subject. 
 
 VII. TO REV. G. CORNISH. 
 
 Rugby, September 2, 1829. 
 
 When I dwell on the entire happiness that 
 
 we are tasting day after day and year after year, it really 
 seems startling; and the sense of so much and such 
 continued temporal mercy, is even more than humbling, 
 — it is at times even fearful to me when I look within, 
 and know how little truly grateful I am for it. All the 
 children are well, and all, I trust, improving in character 
 — thanks to their dear mother's care for them, who, under
 
 LIFE OF DE. ARNOLD. 235 
 
 (iod, has been their constant corrector and guide. As 
 for myself, I think of Wordsworth's lines, 
 
 " Yes ! they can make who fail to find 
 Brief leisure e'en in busiest days," &c. 
 
 and I know how much need I have to make such mo- 
 ments of leisure: for else one goes on still employed, 
 till all makes progress, except our spiritual life, and that, 
 I fear, goes backward. The very dealing, as I do, with 
 beings in the highest state of bodily health and spirits, 
 is apt to give a corresponding carelessness to my own 
 mind. I must be all alive and vigorous to manage them, 
 and to do my work; very different from the contemplations 
 of sickness and sorrow, which so often present themselves 
 to a man who has the care of a parish. And, indeed, my 
 spirits in themselves are a great blessing, for without them, 
 the work would weigh me down, whereas now I seem to 
 throw it off like the fleas from a dog's back when he shakes 
 himself. May I only learn daily and hourly o-uxpfoveTv. 
 
 1 am very much delighted with what you say of my 
 pamphlet [on the Roman Catholic claims]. I know it 
 
 gave pain, and I fear it has , and others of my 
 
 friends. Yet, I know that I did not write it with one atom 
 of unkindness or violence of feeling — nor do I think that 
 the language or tone is violent; and what 1 said of the 
 clergy I said in the very simplicity of my heart, no more 
 imagining that it would give offence, than if I had said 
 that they were unacquainted generally with military tactics 
 or fortification. The part which yon object to, was not 
 put in unthinkingly — but I wished very much to bring the 
 matter of schism to an issue ; and if any respectable man 
 were to notice that part of the pamphlet, 1 should like u> 
 enter more fully into the subject. My own notions upon 
 it have grown up wholly out of the New Testament, and 
 because I never have thought, that what people call the 
 Primitive Church, and much less the A.nte-Nicene Church 
 more generally, was any better authority per se, than the 
 Church ofRome, or the ( ireek ( 'hurch. But 1 do not know
 
 230 LIFE OP DE. ARNOLD. 
 
 that what I have said in the pamphlet goes at all beyond 
 the fair conclusions to be drawn from our own Article, 
 which gives to any national Church an authority to manage 
 its own concerns, where God has not laid down any iixed 
 rule ; and, besides, what resemblance is there between the 
 government of the most ancient Episcopal Churches, and 
 that of the Church of England, to those who regard re- 
 semblances or differences of government to consist in 
 things more than in names ? I think, that what I have said 
 in my pamphlet merely goes so far as to assert, that there 
 is no schism in the Church of England, having nothing to 
 do with the Bishop of Rome, or in the Kirk of Scotland, 
 having nothing to do with any Archbishops and Bishops at 
 all, but that I have not at all treated of the question of dif- 
 ferent ecclesiastical societies existing in one and the same 
 civil society like our English Dissenters, whatever my own 
 opinions may be about the matter. I find people conti- 
 nually misunderstanding the strong distinction which I 
 draw between individuals and societies, insomuch, that 
 Faber charges me with saying, that every individual has a 
 right to govern himself, which I have specially disclaimed 
 in divers places ; being, in fact, a firm believer in the duty 
 of absolute passive obedience in all cases between an in- 
 dividual and the government — but not when the individual 
 is acting as a member of the society, and their concur- 
 rence with him tells him that obedience is now a mis- 
 placed term — because there is no authority in a rebellious 
 government — rebellious against society — to claim obe- 
 dience. I am sure that my views in this matter are 
 neither seditious nor turbulent — and I think I stated them 
 clearly, but it seems they were not clear to every body. 
 
 VIII. TO THE REV. F. C. BLACKSTONE. 
 
 Rugby, October 14, 1S29. 
 
 I am very anxious to express my repentance of 
 
 that passage in my pamphlet, which you allude to, " raving
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 237 
 
 about idolatry," &c. I mean my repentance of its tone 
 and language, for the substance of it I think correct, and 
 that men, whose most ignorant, and worse than ignorant, 
 application of English history had, to say the truth, made 
 me angry, are likely to do a great deal of mischief in Ire- 
 land, lint the expression was unkind, and too sweeping, 
 and I certainly ought not, nor would I, speak of all those 
 as " raving about idolatry," whose opinions as to the guilt 
 of the Romish Church differ from my own. With regard 
 to the apparent inconsistency between the sermons and 
 the pamphlet, you will find the term " practically idolatry " 
 applied to the Roman Catholic system in some countries, 
 even in the pamphlet. I never wished to mince the mat- 
 ter with their practices, but still, in principle, 1 cannot call 
 the Romish Church an idolatrous Church in that strong 
 sense as to warrant Faber's conclusions, even putting aside 
 the difference of Christian times from Jewish. I should 
 compare their superstitions to the worship of the brazen 
 serpent, which Hezekiah did away with, which appears to 
 have been long in existence, and which, in many of its 
 worshippers, at any rate, was practically idolatry ; but 1 
 should not have called the Jewish Church idolatrous so 
 long as this worship was encouraged, nor applied to it the 
 
 language of" Come out of her my people," &c 
 
 Of the moral state of the boys, for which of course I care 
 infinitely the most, I can judge the least; our advantages 
 in that respect are great, at least in the absence of many 
 temptations to gross vice; but to cultivate a good spirit 
 in the highest sense is a far different thing from shutting 
 out one or two gross evils from want of opportunity 
 
 in RBV. .1. TUCKER. 
 
 Rugby, October 26, I 
 
 [f we are alive fifteen years hence, I think I 
 
 would ko with vim gladly to Swan River, if they "ill make
 
 238 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 mc schoolmaster there, and lay my bones in the land of 
 kangaroos and opossums. I laugh about it ; yet, if my 
 wife were alive, and able to go, I should think it a very 
 great benefit to the good cause to go out with all my 
 family, and become a Swan River man ; and I should try 
 to get others of our friends to go out with us. My notion 
 is, that no missionaryzing is half so beneficial, as to try to 
 pour sound and healthy blood into a young civilized so- 
 ciety ; to make one colony, if possible, like the ancient 
 eolonies, or like New England — a living sucker from the 
 mother country, bearing the same blossoms and the same 
 fruits, not a reproduction of its vilest excrescences, its ig- 
 norance, and its wickedness, while all its good elements 
 are left behind in the process. No words can tell the evil 
 of such colonies as we have hitherto planted, where the 
 best parts of the new society have been men too poor to 
 cany with them or to gain much of the higher branches of 
 knowledge ; or else mere official functionaries from Eng- 
 land, whose hearts and minds have been always half at 
 home, and who have never identified themselves with the 
 land in which they were working. But if you and your 
 sisters were to go out, with half Southborough after you, — 
 apothecary, lawyers, butchers, bakers, tailors, carpenters, 
 and labourers, — and if we were to join with a similar draught 
 from Rugby and Laleham, I think we should deserve to be 
 avaypa7TToi zviqyirai both here and in Swan River. Such 
 are my notions about it ; and I am not clear that I shall 
 not devote my first £ 1000 that I make here to the pur- 
 chase of land in Swan River, that I may have my estate 
 and the school buildings got into due order, before I shut 
 up shop at Rugby. Mean time, I hope you will not think 
 I ought to shut up shop forthwith, and adjourn to the next 
 asylum for daft people, because I am thus wildly dreaming 
 about Swan River, instead of talking soberly about Rugby. 
 But Rugby is a very nice place all the same, and I wish 
 you would come and form your own judgment of it, or that 
 some of vour sisters would, if you cannot or will not
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 239 
 
 X. TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. 
 ( After tlie Death of his Father-in-Law.) 
 
 Rugby, November 4, 1829. 
 
 What a time it is since I wrote to you ! And how 
 much has occurred and is continually occurring, on 
 which I should like to write to you. You have heard 
 perhaps of Mr. Penrose's death in September last, when, 
 from the enjoyment of full health and vigour of mind and 
 body, he was called away in three days with no interme- 
 diate pain or struggle, but by a gentle lethargic sleep, 
 which lasted uninterrupted to his very last moment. 
 Coupled with his holy and Christian life, which made him 
 require no long time to go and renew his exhausted oil, 
 his end was a most complete Eudctvxtna, so rare a blessing, 
 that one dares not hope or pray for a similar mercy in 
 one's own case 
 
 We are going on comfortably, and I trust, thrivingly, 
 with the school. We ar - e above 200, and still looking 
 upwards ; but T neither expect, and much less desire, any 
 great addition to our numbers. The school cannot, I 
 think, regularly expect more than *200 or -250 ; it may as- 
 cend higher with a strong flood, but there will be surely 
 a corresponding ebb after it. You may imagine that 1 
 ponder over, often enough, the various discussions that 1 
 have had with you about education, and verse making, and 
 reading the Poets. I find the natural leaning of a school- 
 master is so much to your view of the question, that my 
 reason is more than ever led to think my own notions 
 strongly required in the present state of classical educa- 
 tion, if it were only on the principle of the bent stick. 
 There is something so beautiful in good Latin verses, and 
 in hearing fine poetry well construed, and something so 
 attractive altogether in good scholarship, that 1 do nut 
 wonder at masters directing an undue portion of their 
 attention to a crop so brilliant. I feel it growing in myself 
 daily ; and, if I feel it, with prejudices all on the other 
 side, 1 do not wonder at its being felt generally. Inn my
 
 240 LIFK OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 deliberate conviction is stronger and stronger, that all 
 this system is wholly wrong for the greater number of 
 boys. Those who have talents and natural taste, and 
 fondness for poetry, find the poetry lessons very useful ; 
 the mass do not feel one tittle about the matter, and, I 
 speak advisedly, do not, in my belief, benefit from them 
 one grain. I am not sure that other things would answer 
 better, though I have very little doubt of it ; but at any 
 rate, the present plan is so entire a failure, that nothing 
 
 can be risked by changing it More than half 
 
 my boys never saw the sea, and never were in London, 
 and it is surprising how the first of these disadvantages 
 interferes with their understanding much of the ancient 
 poetry, while the other keeps the range of their ideas in 
 an exceedingly narrow compass. Brought up myself in 
 the Isle of Wight, amidst the bustle of soldiers and sailors, 
 and familiar from a child with boats and ships, and the 
 flags of half Europe, which gave me an instinctive ac- 
 quaintance with geography, I quite marvel to find in 
 what a state of ignorance boys are at seventeen or eigh- 
 teen, who have lived all their days in inland country 
 
 parishes, or small country towns For your 
 
 comfort, I think I am succeeding in making them write 
 very fair Latin prose, and to observe and understand 
 some of the differences between the Latin and English 
 idioms. On the other hand, what our boys want in one 
 way they get in another ; from the very circumstance of 
 their being the sons of quieter parents, they have far less 
 vjgfis and more swOtta, than the boys of any other school 
 I ever knew. Thus, to say the least, they have less of a 
 most odious and unchristian quality, and are thus more 
 open to instruction, and have less repugnance to be 
 
 good, because their master wishes them to be so 
 
 I have almost filled my paper, and can only add that 
 Thucydides is getting on slowly, but I think that it will be 
 a much less defective book than it was likely to have been 
 had 1 remained at Laleham ; for though I have still an 
 enormous deal to learn, yet my scholarship has mended
 
 LIFE OF DK. ARNOLD. Ii4 I 
 
 considerably within the last year at Rugby. 1 suppose 
 you will think at any rate that it will be better to publish 
 Thucydides, however imperfectly, than to write another 
 pamphlet. Poor dear pamphlet ! T seem to feel the greater 
 
 tenderness for it, because it has excited so much odium; 
 and now I hear that it is reported at Oxford that 1 wish to 
 suppress it; which is wholly untrue. I would not print a 
 second edition, because the question was settled, and con- 
 troversy about it was become absurd ; but I never have 
 repented of it in any degree, or wished it unwritten, " pace 
 tua dixerim," and I only regret that I did not print a larger 
 impression 
 
 XI. TO REV. II. JENKYNS. 
 
 Rugby, Novembi i 11. l 529. 
 1 thank you heartily for two very kind letters, and am 
 very anxious to be favoured with some more of your 
 
 friend's comments [on Thucydides] I hope 1 
 
 am not too old or too lazy or too obstinate to be taught 
 
 better I do thank you very much for your 
 
 kindness in taking^ so much trouble in my behalf; and I 
 
 earnestly beg of you to send me more And 
 
 can you tell me — or, if not, will you ask Amicus Doct., — 
 where is to be found a summary of the opinions of Eng- 
 lish Scholars about onus and oV&jj /a*, and the moods which 
 they require: and further, do you or he hold their doc- 
 trine good for any thing ? Dawes, and all men whoendea 
 vour to establish general rules, are of great use in direct- 
 ing one's attention to points, which one might otherwise 
 have neglected; and labour and acuteness often discovei 
 
 a rule, where indolence and carelessness fancied it was all 
 hap-ha/ard. But larger induction and sounder judgmenl 
 
 (which I think exist in Hermann in an infinite degree be- 
 yond any of our English scholars teach us tit distinguish 
 again between a principle and an usage : the latter imiv be 
 general, but if it be merely usage, grounded on no intel- 
 ViiL I. K
 
 '242 LIFE OF Ml. ARNOLD. 
 
 ligible principle, it scorns to me foolish to insist on its be- 
 ing universal, and to alter texts right and left, to make 
 them all conformable to the Canon. Equidem, — both in 
 Greek and in other matters, — think liberty a far better 
 thing than uniformity of form merely, where no principle 
 is concerned. Voila the cloven foot. 
 
 XII. TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. 
 (In allusion to a libel in the John, Bull.) 
 
 Rugby, May 11, 1830. 
 I thank you for another very kind letter. In a matter 
 of this sort, I willingly resign my own opinion to that of 
 a man like yourself, at once my friend and legal adviser. 
 I think, too, that I am almost bound to attend to the 
 opinion of the Bishop of London; for his judgment of the 
 inexpediency of prosecuting must rest on the scandal 
 which he thinks it will bring upon religion and the Church, 
 and of this he is a far better judge than I am ; nor, to say 
 the truth, should I much like to act in a doubtful matter in 
 opposition to the decided advice of a Bishop in a case that 
 concerned the Church. I say this in sober earnest, in 
 spite of what you call my Whiggery and Radicalism. . . . 
 
 XIII. TO F. HARTWELL, ESQ. 
 
 Rugby, June 28, 1830. 
 
 I have just published one volume of Thucy- 
 
 dides ; when the others will follow, it is hard to say, for 
 the work here is more and more engrossing continually ; 
 but I like it better and better ; it has all the interest of a 
 great game of chess, with living creatures for pawns and 
 pieces, and your adversary, in plain English, the Devil : 
 truly he plays a very tough game, and is very hard to beat, 
 if I ever do beat him. It is quite surprising to see the 
 wickedness of young boys; or would be surprising, if I had 
 not had my own school experience and a good deal since 
 tn enlighten me
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 243 
 
 XIV. TO THE REV. GEORGE CORNISH. 
 
 Rugby, August 24, U 
 
 Your letter was a most welcome sight to me the firsl 
 
 morning of my arrival at home, amidst the host of strange 
 handwritings and letters of business which now greet me 
 every morning. It rejoices me to think that we are going 
 to have a cousin of yours at Rugby, and I suppose we 
 shall see him here on Saturday, when the great coach 
 starts. You know that it is licensed to carry not exceeding 
 2G0 passengers, besides the foundationers. I agreed with 
 the Pythagoreans that to aoqunov was one of the number 
 of xaxa, and so I applied to the Trustees, and got the limit 
 set. We are not near it yet, being not quite 260, including 
 foundationers, and perhaps may never reach it ; but that I 
 shall not at all regret, and all I wanted was never to go 
 beyond it. We have got a Cambridge man, a Fellow of 
 Trinity, who was most highly recommended to me, as a new 
 master; and I hope we shall pull hard and all togethei 
 during the next half year: there is plenty to be done, I can 
 assure you ; but, thank God, I continue to enjoy the work, 
 and am now in excellent condition for setting to it. Ybfl 
 ma \ see M — 's name and mine amongst the subscribers 
 for the sufferers at Paris. It seems to me a most blessed 
 revolution, spotless beyond all example in history, and the 
 most glorious instance of a royal rebellion against society, 
 promptly and energetically repressed, that the world has 
 yet seen. It magnificently vindicates the cause of know- 
 ledge and liberty, showing how humanizing to all classes 
 of society are the spread of thought and information, and 
 improved political institutions; and it lays the crimes of 
 the last revolution just in the right place, the wicked aris- 
 tocracy, that had so brutalized the people bj its long ini- 
 quities that they were like slaves broken loose when thej 
 
 first bestirred thenist 1\ . -. 
 
 Before all these events took place, on my way out 
 through Prance, 1 was reading Guizot's History of the 
 Progress of Civilization in France from the earliest times. 
 
 R 2
 
 244 LIFE OF DB. ARNOLD. 
 
 You know lie is now Minister of the Interior, and one of 
 the ablest writers in France. Tn his book he gives a his- 
 tory of the Pelagian controversy, a most marvellous con- 
 trast with the Liberals of a former day, or with our West- 
 minster Reviewers now. Guizot sides with St. Augustine ; 
 but the whole chapter is most worthy of notice : the free- 
 dom of the will, so far as to leave a consciousness of guilt 
 when we have not done our duty, — the corruption of our 
 nature, which never lets us in fact come up to what we 
 know we ought to do, and the help derived from prayers 
 to God, — are stated as incontrovertible philosophical facts, 
 of which every man's experience may convince him ; and 
 Guizot blames Pelagius for so exaggerating the notion of 
 human freedom as to lose sight of our need of external 
 assistance. And there is another chapter on the unity of 
 the Church no less remarkable. Now Guizot is Professor 
 of History in the University of Paris, and a most eminent 
 Liberal ; and it seems to me worthy of all notice to observe 
 his language with regard to religion . And I saw Niebuhr at 
 Bonn, on my way home, and talked with him for three hours ; 
 and I am satisfied from my own ears, if I had had any 
 doubts before, of the grossness of the slander which called 
 him an unbeliever. I was every way delighted with him, 
 and liked very much what I saw of his wife and children. 
 Trevenen and his wife enjoyed the journey exceedingly, 
 and are all the better for it. Amongst other things, I 
 visited the Grand Chartreuse, which is certainly enough to 
 make a man romantic, and the Church of Madonna del 
 Monte ; from whence, or rather from a mountain above it, 
 I counted twelve mountain outlines between me and the 
 horizon, — the last, the ridge of the highest Alps — upon a 
 sky so glowing with the sunset, that instead of looking 
 white from their snow, they were like the teeth of a saw 
 upon a plate of red hot iron, all deep and black. I was de- 
 lighted also with Venice ; most of all delighted to see the 
 secret prisons of the old aristocracy converted into lumber 
 rooms, and to see German soldiers exercising authority in
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 24 5 
 
 that place, which was once the very focus of the moral de- 
 gradation of the Italian race, the seat of falsehood and ig- 
 norance and cruelty. They talk of building a bridge to 
 Venice over the Lagune ; if so, I am glad that I have seen 
 it first. I liked Padua also, more than I thought I could 
 have liked the birth-place of Titus Livius. The influence 
 of the clergy must be great there, and most beneficially 
 exercised ; for a large institution lor the poor of Padua, 
 providing for those who are out of work, as well as for the 
 old and infirm, derives its main support from legacies; 
 the clergy never failing to urge every man, who can at all 
 afford it, to leave something at his death for this object. We 
 came home through the Tyrol, and through Wurtemberg 
 and Baden, countries apparently as peaceful and prosperous 
 and simple-mannered as I ever saw ; it is quite economical 
 travelling there. And now, when shall I travel to Kcnwyn ? 
 I hope one of these days ; but whether in the next winter 
 or not, is hard to say; I only know that there are few things 
 which I should enjoy better. I was so sorry to miss old 
 Tucker, who came here for one day when I was abroad; 
 he was at Leamington with his sister, to consult our great 
 oracle, Jephson. diaries, 1 suppose, is only coming home 
 upon leave, and will go out again; I should be very glad 
 to see him, and to show him his marks on my Hederic's 
 Lexicon when he was at Wyatt's. I wish 1 may be able to 
 do any thing for you as to a curate, but 1 am very much 
 out of the world in those matters, and 1 have no regular 
 correspondence with Oxford. I am afraid I am sadl\ in 
 disgrace with all parties, between m\ Pamphlet and Ser- 
 mons, and I am afraid that Thucydides will not mend the 
 matter. As tbr the Pamphlet, that is all natural enough, 
 but 1 really did not think then- was any cloven foot in the 
 Sermons, nor did I wish to show any ; not, I hope, from 
 time-serving, but because, what you said about the schism 
 
 question, 1 wished to do with that and di\ e is other points, — 
 
 L e., reserve them for a separate volume, which I hope l 
 may be able to publish befon I die Then art som<
 
 24(1 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 points on which I feci almost as if 1 had a testimony to 
 deliver, which I ought not to withhold. And Milman's 
 History of the Jews made me more and more eager to de- 
 liver myself of my conceptions. But how to do it without 
 interfering with other and even more pressing duties, 1 
 cannot tell. Last half year, I preached every Sunday in 
 Lent, and for the last five Sundays of the half year also, 
 besides other times ; and I had to write new sermons for 
 all these, for I cannot bear to preach to the boys any 
 thing but what is quite fresh, and suggested by their par- 
 ticular condition. I never like preaching anywhere else 
 so well ; for one's boys are even more than a parish, inas- 
 much as one knows more of them all individually, than 
 can easily be the case in a parish, and has a double 
 
 authority over them, temporal as well as spiritual 
 
 Though, to speak seriously, it is quite awful to watch the 
 strength of evil in such young minds, and how powerless 
 is every effort against it. It would give the vainest man 
 alive a very fair notion of his own insufficiency, to see how 
 little he can do, and how his most earnest addresses are 
 as a cannon ball on a bolster : thorough careless unim- 
 pressibleness beats one all to pieces. And so it is, and 
 so it will be ; and as far as I am concerned, I can quite 
 say that it is much better that it should be so ; for it would 
 be too kindling, could one perceive these young minds 
 really led from evil by one's own efforts; one would be 
 sorely tempted to bow down to one's own net. As it is, the 
 net is so palpably ragged, that one sees perforce how sorry 
 an idol it would make. But I must go to bed, and spare 
 your eyes and your patience. 
 
 XV. TO HEV. DH. HAWKINS. 
 
 Rugby, November, 1830. 
 
 I am always glad to write to you, but I have now two 
 especial causes for doing so ; one to thank you for your 
 Visitation sermon, and another to explain n> you whv 1 do
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 247 
 
 not think it right to comply with your wishes touching the 
 tricolor work-bag. For your sermon, 1 thank you for it : 
 I believe I agree with it almost entirely, waiving some ex- 
 pressions, which 1 hold one never should cavil about, 
 where one agrees in substance. But have you ever clearly 
 defined to yourself what you mean by " one society," as 
 applied to the whole Christian Church upon earth ? It 
 seems to me that most of what I consider the errors about 
 " the Church," turn upon an imperfect understanding of 
 this point. In one sense, and that a very important one, 
 all Christians belong to one society ; but then it is more 
 like Cicero's sense of " societas," than what we mean by 
 a society. There is a " societas generis humani," and a 
 " societas hominum Christianorum ;" but there is not one 
 " respublica" or " civitas" of cither, but a great many. 
 The Roman Catholics say there is but one " respublica," 
 and therefore, with perfect consistency, they say that there 
 must be one central government : our Article, if I mistake 
 not its sense, says, and with great truth, that the Christian 
 Respublica depends on the political Respublica ; that is, that 
 (here may be at least as many Christian societies as there 
 are political societies, and that there may be, and in our 
 own kingdom are, even more. If there be one Christian 
 society, in the common sense of the word, there must be 
 one government; whereas, in point of fact, the Scotch 
 Church, the English Church, and the French Church, have 
 all separate and perfectly independent governments; and 
 consequently can only be in an unusual and peculiar sense 
 " one society :" that is, spiritually one, as having the same 
 objects and the same principles, and the same supports, 
 and the same enemies. You therefore seem to me right, in 
 saying thai a Roman Catholic should be addressed in Eng- 
 land as a I >issenter; but all this appears to me to had neces- 
 sarily to this conclusion,— thai the constitution and govern- 
 menl of every Church is a political institution, and that con- 
 formity and nonconformity are so tar matters <>i civil law, 
 that, where nonconformity, as in England, is strictly legal
 
 248 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 there it is no offence, except in so far as it may be accom- 
 panied with heretical opinions, which is merely nark a-up- 
 (3e@hhos. For the State says that there may be any given 
 number of religious societies within its jurisdiction — socie- 
 ties, that is, in the common sense of the term, as bodies 
 governing themselves ; and it is clear that the State may 
 lawfully say this, for, if the Church were one society, in 
 this sense, by Christ's institution, then the Romanist doc- 
 trine would be true, and, I do not say the Pope, but, cer- 
 tainly a General Council would possess an authority par- 
 amount, in ecclesiastical matters, payment of tithes, &c, 
 to any local and human authority of Kings or Parliaments 
 of this or that political division of the human race. I have 
 thought not a little upon all this matter in my time, and I 
 fancy that I see my own way straight ; whether other people 
 will think so, is a different question. 
 
 (After explaining a false report about a tricolored 
 cockade and work-bag.) It is worse than obnoxious to 
 apply this to English politics, and if any man seriously 
 considers me to wish for a revolution here, with my 
 seven children and good house to lose, to put it on 
 no other ground, why he must even continue to think 
 so. But I do admire the Revolution in France — admire 
 it as heartily and entirely, as any event recorded in 
 history ; and I think that it becomes every individual, still 
 more every clergyman, and most of all, every clergyman 
 in a public situation, to express this opinion publicly and 
 decidedly. I have not forgotten the twenty years' war, 
 into which the English aristocracy and clergy drove Mr. 
 Pitt in 1793, and which the Quarterly Review and other 
 such writers are now seeking to repeat. I hold it to be of 
 incalculable importance, that, while the conduct of France 
 has been beyond all example pure and heroic, there should 
 be so manifest a display of sympathy on the part of Eng- 
 land, as to lead to a real mutual confidence and friendship 
 between the two countries. Our government, I believe, is 
 heartily disposed to do this, and 1 will not, for one, shrink
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 241) 
 
 from avowing a noble cause and a noble nation, because 
 a party in England, joined through timidity by a number 
 of men who have really no sympathy with it, choose to try 
 to excommunicate all who will not join them. I have my- 
 self heard them expressing hearty approbation of the 
 French Revolution, and yet shrink from avowing it, lest 
 they should appear to join the Radicals. And thus they 
 leave the Radicals in exclusive possession of sentiments, 
 which they themselves join in, just as they would leave the 
 Useful Knowledge Society to the Benthamites. I quarrel 
 with no man for disapproving of the revolution, except he 
 does it in such a manner as to excite national animosities, 
 and so tend to provoke a war; but in a case so flagrant — 
 a case of as clear right, as the abolition of the slave trade — 
 it is clearly not for the friends of France to suppress or 
 conceal their sentiments. About Belgium the case is 
 wholly different: there, the merits of the quarrel are far 
 more doubtful, and the conduct of the popular party far 
 less pure ; and there I have no sympathy with the Bel- 
 gians. But France, if it were only for the contrast to the 
 first revolution, deserves, I think, the warmest admiration, 
 and the most cordial expression of it. I have written now 
 more upon this subject than 1 have either written oi 
 spoken upon it before to any one ; for indeed I have very 
 little time, and no inclination for disputes on such matters. 
 But, if I am questioned about my opinions, and required 
 to conceal them, as if I were ashamed of them, I think it 
 right then to avow them plainly, and to explain my reasons 
 for them. There is not a man in England who is less a 
 party man than I am, for in fact no party would own me ; 
 
 and, when Ewasal S "s in the summer, he looked 
 
 upon me to be quite an illiberal. But those who hold 
 their own opinions in a string, will suppose thai their 
 neighbours do the same.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE SEPTEMBER 1830 TO 
 
 DECEMBER 1832. 
 
 Perhaps no more striking instance of his deep 
 interest in the state of the country could be found, 
 than in the gloom, with which his correspondence is 
 suddenly overcast in the autumn of 1830. The 
 alarming aspect of English society brought to view 
 in the rural disturbances in the winter of 1830, and 
 additionally darkened in 1831-32, by the visitation 
 of the Cholera, and the political agitations of the 
 Reform Bill, little as it came within his own expe- 
 rience, gave a colour to his whole mind. Of his state 
 of feeling at this time, no better example can be 
 given than the five sermons appended to the open- 
 ing course of his practical school sermons, in his 
 second volume, especially the last of them, which 
 was preached in the chapel on the Sunday when 
 the news of the arrival of the Cholera in Eng- 
 land first reached Rugby. There are those amongst 
 his pupils who can never forget the moment when, 
 on that dark November afternoon, after the simple 
 preface, stating in what sense worldly thoughts were 
 or were not to be brought into that place, he at 
 once began with that solemnity which marked his
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 25] 
 
 voice and manner when speaking of what deeply 
 moved him : — " I need not tell you that this is a 
 marked time — a time such as neither we, nor our 
 fathers for many generations before us, have expe- 
 rienced ; and to those who know what the past has 
 been, it is no doubt awful to think of the change 
 which we are now about to encounter." (Serm. vol. 
 ii. p. 413.) But in him the sight of evil, and the 
 endeavour to remove it, were hardly ever disjoined; 
 and whilst every thing which he felt partook of the 
 despondency with which that sermon opens, every 
 thing which he did partakes of that cheerful activity 
 with which the same sermon closes in urging the 
 example of the Apostle's " wise and manly conduct 
 amidst the dangers of storm and shipwreck." 
 
 The alarm which he felt, was shared by many of 
 the most opposite opinions to his own ; but there 
 could have been few, whom it touched at once on so 
 many points. The disturbances of the time were to 
 him the very evils which he had anticipated even as 
 far back as 1819 ; they struck on some of the mosl 
 sensitive of his natural feelings, — his sense of justice, 
 and his impatience of the sight of suffering : they 
 seemed to him symptoms of a deep-seated disease in 
 all the relations of English society — the results of a 
 long series of evils of the neglect of the eighteenth 
 century, (Church Ref. p. 24) — of the lawlessness of 
 the feudal system, (Hist. Rome, vol. i. p. 266) — of the 
 oppressions of the Norman conquest, (Shell'. Letters) — 
 of the dissoluteness of tlio Unman empire, (ib.) — of 
 the growth of those social and national sins which 
 the Hebrew Prophets had denounced, and which
 
 252 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 Christianity in its full practical development was de- 
 signed to check. 
 
 Hence arose his anxiety to see the clergy take it 
 up, as he had himself endeavoured to do in the ser- 
 mons already noticed. 
 
 " I almost despair," he said, " of any thing that any pri- 
 vate or local efforts can do. I think that the clergy as a 
 body might do much, if they were steadily to observe the 
 evils of the times, and preach fearlessly against them. I 
 cannot understand what is the good of a national Church 
 if it be not to Christianize the nation, and introduce 
 the principles of Christianity into men's social and civil 
 relations, and expose the wickedness of that spirit which 
 maintains the game laws, and in agriculture and trade 
 seems to think that there is no such sin as covetousness, 
 and that if a man is not dishonest, he has nothing to do 
 but to make all the profit of his capital that he can." 
 
 Hence, again, his anxiety to impart or see imparted 
 to the publications of the Society for the Diffusion of 
 Useful Knowledge, then in the first burst of their re- 
 putation, and promising to exercise a really extensive 
 influence on the country at large, something of the 
 religious spirit, in which they seemed to him to be 
 deficient. " There was a show of reason," he said, 
 " in excluding Christianity from the plan of the so- 
 ciety's works, so long as they avowedly confined 
 themselves to science or to intellectual instruction ; 
 but in a paper intended to improve its readers morally, 
 to make men better and happier, as well as better 
 informed, surely neutrality with regard to Christianity 
 is, virtually, hostility." His communications with 
 the Society, made, however, from the nature of the
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 253 
 
 case, rather through individuals than officially, were 
 at one time frequent ; and though, from the different 
 view which it took of its proper province, he was 
 finally induced to discontinue them, he felt great 
 reluctance in abandoning his hope of being able to 
 cooperate with a body which he " believed might, 
 with God's blessing, do more good of all kinds, po- 
 litical, intellectual, and spiritual, than any other so- 
 ciety in existence." 
 
 " For myself," he says, " I am well aware of my own 
 insignificance , but if there were no other objection to tin 
 Penny Magazine assuming a decidedly Christian tone, than 
 mere difficulties of execution, I would most readily offer 
 my best services, such as they are, to the Society, and 
 would endeavour to furnish them regularly with articles of 
 the kind that I desire. My occupations here are so en- 
 grossing, that it would be personally very inconvenient to 
 me to do so ; and I am not so absurd as to think my offer 
 of any value, except in the single case ofapractical difficulty 
 existing as to finding a writer, should the principle itself 
 be approved of. I am fully convinced that if the Penny 
 Magazine were decidedly and avowedly Christian, many 
 of the clergy throughout the kingdom would be most de- 
 lighted to assist its circulation by every means in their 
 power. For myself, I should think that I could not do 
 too much to contribute to the support of what would then 
 be so great a national blessing: and I should beg to be 
 allowed to offer X'oO annually towards it, so long as my 
 remaining in my present situation enabled me t<> gratify 
 my inclinations to that extent." 
 
 The most practical attempt at the realization of 
 these views, was hia own endeavour to set up a 
 weekly newspaper, the Englishman's Register, which 
 he undertook in 1831, "more to relieve bis own eon-
 
 254 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 science than with any sanguine hope of doing good," 
 but " earnestly desiring to speak to the people the 
 words of truth and soberness — to tell them plainly 
 the evils that exist, and lead them, if I can, to their 
 causes and their remedies." He was the proprietor, 
 though not the sole editor, and he contributed the 
 chief articles in it (signed A.), consisting chiefly of 
 explanations of Scripture, and of comments on the 
 political events of the day. It died a natural death 
 in a few weeks, partly from his want of leisure to 
 control it properly, and from the great expenses 
 which it entailed upon him — partly from the want of 
 cordial sympathy in any of the existing parties of the 
 country. Finding, however, that some of his articles 
 had been copied into the Sheffield Courant by its 
 editor, Mr. Piatt, he opened a communication witli 
 him in July, 1831, which he maintained ever after- 
 wards, and commenced writing a series of Letters in 
 that paper, which, to the number of thirteen, were 
 afterwards published separately, and constitute the 
 best exposition of his views on the main causes of 
 social distress in England. 
 
 It w 7 as now that, with " the thirst for a lodfje in 
 some vast wilderness, which, in these times of excite- 
 ment," he writes to a friend, " is almost irresistible," 
 he began to turn his thoughts to what ultimately be- 
 came his home in Westmoreland. It was now, also, 
 that as he came more into contact with public affairs, 
 he began to feel the want of sympathy and opposition 
 which he subsequently experienced on a larger scale. 
 " I have no man like-minded with me," he writes to 
 Archbishop Whately, — " none with whom I can cor- 
 dially sympathize ; there are many good men to be
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 255 
 
 found, and many clever men, some too, who are both 
 good and clever ; but yet there is a want of some 
 greatness of mind, or singleness of purpose, or deli- 
 cacy of feeling, which makes them grate against the 
 edge of one's inner man." This was the period when 
 he felt most keenly his differences with the so-called 
 Evangelical party, to which, on the one hand, he na- 
 turally looked for co-operation, as the body which at 
 that time was placed at the head of the religious 
 convictions of the country, but from which, on the 
 other hand, he was constantly repelled by his strong- 
 sense of the obstacles which (as he thought,) their 
 narrow views and technical phraseology, were for ever 
 opposing to the real and practical application of the 
 Old and New Testament, as the remedy of the great 
 wants of the age, social, moral, and intellectual. 
 
 It was his own conviction of these wants which 
 now more than ever awakened his desire for a com- 
 mentary on the Scriptures, which should explain their 
 true reference to the present state of England and of 
 the world, as well as remove some of the intellectual 
 difficulties, especially in the Old Testament, to which 
 men's minds seemed to be growing more and more 
 awake. And this, for the time, he endeavoured to 
 accomplish by the statement of some of his general 
 principles of interpretation in the Essay on that sub- 
 ject, which he affixed to his second volume of ser- 
 mons published in December, 1831. The objections 
 which this Essay excited at the time iii various 
 quarters were very great, and according to liis own 
 belief it exposed him to more misunderstanding than 
 any other of his writings. Bui lie never wavered in 
 the conviction that its publication had been an ini-
 
 250 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 perative duty — it was written, us lie said, "profes- 
 sionally, from his having had so much to do with 
 young men, and from knowing what they wanted;" 
 even in the last year of his life, he said that he 
 looked upon it as the most important thing he had 
 ever written ; and at the time he thought it " likely, 
 with God's blessing, to be so beneficial, that I pub- 
 lished it at the end of this volume, rather than wait 
 for another opportunity, because, under that sense of 
 the great uncertainty of human life which the pre- 
 sent state of things brings especially home to my 
 mind, I should be sorry to die without having circu- 
 lated what I believe will be to many most useful 
 and most satisfactory;" and the objections which it 
 had roused only made him more and more anxious to 
 go on with the subject, feeling " that the more it 
 was considered, men would find that they had been 
 afraid of a groundless danger," and that " the further 
 I follow up my own views, the more they appear to 
 me to harmonize with the whole system of God's re- 
 velations, and not only absolutely to do away with all 
 the difficulties of the Scriptures, but to turn many of 
 them into valuable instructions." 
 
 XVI. TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. 
 
 Rugby, November 1, 1830. 
 It is quite high time that I should write to you, for 
 weeks and months go by, and it is quite startling to think 
 how little communication I hold with many of those whom 
 I love most dearly. And yet these are times, when I am 
 least of all disposed to loosen the links which bind me to 
 my oldest and dearest friends, for I imagine we shall all 
 want the union of all the good men we can get together;
 
 LIFE OF Dll. ARNOLD. 
 
 and the want of sympathy which I cannot but feel towards 
 so many of those whom I meet with, makes me think how 
 delightful it would be to hare daily intercourse with those 
 with whom I ever feel it thoroughly. What men do in 
 
 middle lite, without a wife and children to turn to, I can- 
 not imagine; for I think the affections must be sadly 
 checked and chilled, even in the best men, by their inter- 
 course with people, such as one usually finds them in the 
 world. I do not mean that one does not meet with good 
 and sensible people ; but then their minds an- set, and our 
 minds are set, and they will not, in mature age, grow into 
 each other. But with a home Idled with those whom we 
 entirely love and sympathize with, and with some old 
 friends, to whom one can open one's heart fully from time 
 to time, the world's society has rather a bracing influence 
 to make one shake off mere dreams of delight. You must 
 not think me bilious or low-spirited;—] never felt better 
 or move inclined to work ; — but one gets pathetic with 
 thinking of the present and the past, and of the days 
 and the people that you and I have seen together, and of 
 the progress which we ha\e all made towards eternitj . 
 for I, who am nearly the youngest of our old sit, have 
 completed half my threescore and tin years. Besidi s, 
 the aspect of the times is really to my mind awful: — 
 on one side a party profaning the holiest names by the 
 lowest principles, and the grossest selfishness and ignor- 
 ance, — on the other, a party who seem likely *o*oi 
 laaOoci, who disclaim and renounce even the very name 
 of that, whose spirit their adversaries have long renounced 
 equally. If I had two necks I should think, that 1 had a 
 
 very good chance of bring hanged bj both sides, as I 
 think 1 shall now by whichever gets the better, if it really 
 
 does come to a fight. I lead DOW, with the (let pest s\ m 
 pathy, those magnificent lines of your Uncle's, on the 
 departed year, and am myself, in fact, experiencing some 
 portion of the abuse which he met with from the same 
 parts ; while, like him, I feel utterly unable t<> lit lt« i 
 
 VOL. I. ii
 
 258 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 myself in the opposite party, whose hopes and principles 
 are such as T shrink from with abhorrence. So what 
 Thucydides says of t« ix\aa tm 7toxItuv often rises upon 
 my mind as a promising augury of my future exaltation, 
 ri 7rou 7Tfo Nea7TLihris aiufYiQsvTos, v e/xooye Trgo PouySuag. 
 
 November 3rd. — I wrote these two sides in school on 
 Monday, and I hope to finish the rest of my letter this 
 evening, while my boys are translating into Latin from my 
 English that magnificent part in the De Oratore, about 
 the death of Crassus. I see I have given you enough of 
 discourse on things in general — I will only add one thing 
 more ; that I know there are reports in Oxford of my 
 teaching the boys my politics, and setting revolutionary 
 themes. If you hear these reports, will you contradict 
 them flatly ? I never disguise or suppress my opinions, 
 but I have been and am most religiously careful not to 
 influence my boys with them ; and I have just now made 
 them begin Russell's Modem Europe again, because we 
 were come to the period of the French Revolution, and I 
 did not choose to enter upon that subject with them. As 
 to the revolutionary themes, I cannot even imagine the 
 origin of so absurd a falsehood, except it be that one of 
 my subjects last half year was "the particular evils which 
 civilized society is exposed to, as opposed to savage life," 
 which I gave for the purpose of clearing their notions 
 about luxury, and the old declamations about Scythian 
 simplicity, &c. ; but I suppose that I am thought to have 
 a longing for the woods, and an impatience of the 
 restraint of breeches. It is really too great a folly to 
 be talked of as a revolutionist, with a family of seven 
 young children, and a house and income that I should be 
 rather puzzled to match in America, if I were obliged to 
 change my quarters. My quarrel with the anti-liberal 
 party is, that they are going the way to force my children 
 to America, and to deprive me and every one else of pro- 
 perty, station, and all the inestimable benefits of society 
 in England. There is nothing so revolutionary, because
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 there is nothing so unnatural and so convulsive i«» society 
 as the strain to keep things fixed, when all the world is by 
 the very law of its creation in eternal progress ; and the 
 cause of all the evils of the world may be traced to that 
 natural but most deadly error of human indolence and 
 corruption, that our business is to preserve and not to 
 improve. It is the ruin of us all alike, individuals, schools, 
 and nations 
 
 XVII. TO HIS SISTER, SDSANNAH AltNOLD. 
 
 Rugby, November, 1 830 
 
 The paramount interest of public affairs outweighs with 
 me even the school itself; and I think not unreasonably. 
 for school and all would go to the dogs if the convulsion 
 which I dread really comes to pass. 1 must write a pam- 
 phlet in the holidays, or I shall burst. 
 
 No one seems to me to understand our dangers, or at 
 least to speak them out manfully. One good man, who 
 sent a letter to the Times the other day, recommends that 
 the clergy should preach subordination and obedience. 1 
 seriously say, God forbid they should; for, if any earthly 
 thing could ruin Christianity in England, it would be 
 this. If they read Isaiah and Jeremiah and Amos and 
 Habakkuk, they will find that the Prophets, in a similar 
 state of society in Judea, did not preach subordination only 
 or chiefly, but they denounced oppression, and amassing 
 overgrown properties, and grinding the labourers to the 
 smallest possible pittance ; and they denounced the Jewish 
 high-church party for countenancing all these iniquities, 
 and prophesying smooth things to please the aristocracy. 
 If the clergy would come forward as one man from Cumber- 
 land to Cornwall, exhorting peaceableness on the one side, 
 
 and justice on the other, denouncing the high nuts and the 
 game laws, and the carelessness which keeps the poor 
 ignorant, and then wonders that the] are brutal, 1 verilj 
 believe they might yet Bave themselves and the stair, lint 
 
 S 'J
 
 260 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 the truth is, that we are living amongst a population whom 
 we treat with all the haughtiness and indifference that we 
 could treat slaves, whom we allow to be slaves in ignorance, 
 without having them chained and watched to prevent them 
 from hurting us. 1 only wish you could read Arthur 
 Young's Travels in France in 1789 and 1790, and see 
 what he says of the general outbreak then of the peasantry, 
 when they burnt the chateaux all over France, and ill used 
 the families of the proprietors, and then compare the order- 
 liness of the French populace now. It speaks volumes for 
 small subdivided properties, general intelligence, and an 
 absence of aristocratical manners and distinctions. We 
 know that, in the first revolution, to be seen in decent 
 clothes was at one time a sure road to the guillotine ; so 
 bitter was the hatred engendered in a brute population 
 against those, who had gone on in luxury and refinement, 
 leaving their poorer neighbours to remain in the ignor- 
 ance and wretchedness of savages, and therefore with 
 the ferocity of savages also. The dissolution of the mi- 
 nistry may do something ; but the evil exists in every 
 parish in England ; and there should be a reform in the 
 ways and manners of every parish to cure it. We have 
 got up a dispensary here, and I am thinking of circu- 
 lating small tracts a la Cobbett, in point of style, to 
 show the people the real state of things and their causes. 
 Half the truth might be of little use, but ignorance of all 
 the truth is something fearful, and a knowledge of the 
 whole truth would, 1 am convinced, do nothing but pacify, 
 because the fault of the rich has been a sin of ignorance 
 and thoughtlessness ; they have only done what the poor 
 would have done in their places, because few men's moral- 
 ity rises higher than to take care of themselves, abstaining 
 from actual wrong to others. So you have got a long ser- 
 mon. showed me a copy of the Record news- 
 paper, a true specimen of the party, with their infinitely 
 little minds, disputing about anise and cummin, when hea- 
 ven and earth are coming together around them ; with
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 261 
 
 much of Christian harmlessness, I do not deny, but with 
 nothing of Christian wisdom ; and these are times when 
 the dove can ill spare the addition of the serpent. The 
 state of affairs, therefore, keeps me doubtful about going 
 from home in the holidays, because, if there is likely to be 
 any opening for organizing any attempts at general reform, 
 I should not like to be away from my post. But the in- 
 terest is too intense, and makes me live ten lives in one 
 every day. However, I am very well, and perfectly com- 
 fortable as far as regards family and school. 
 
 XVII I. TO REV. AUGUSTUS" HARE. 
 
 December 24, 1830. 
 
 1 have longed very much to see you, over and 
 
 above my general wish that we could meet oftener, ever 
 since this fearful state of our poor has announced itself 
 even to the blindest. My dread is, that when the special 
 Commissions shall have done their work, (necessary and 
 just I most cordially agree with you that it is,) the richer 
 classes will again relapse into their old callousness, and 
 the seeds be sown of a far more deadly and irremediable 
 quarrel hereafter. If you can get Arthur Young's Tra- 
 vels in France, I think you will be greatly struck with their 
 applicability to our own times and country. He shows 
 how deadly was the hatred of the peasantry towards the 
 lords, and how in 1789 the chateaux were destroyed, and 
 the families of the gentry insulted, from a common feeling 
 of hatred to all who had made themselves and the poor 
 two orders, and who were now to pay the penalty of- having 
 put asunder what God had joined. At this moment Car- 
 tile tells the poor that they and the rich are enemies, and 
 that to destroy the property of an enemy, whether 1>\ fire 
 or otherwise, is always lawful in war a Devil's doctrine, 
 certainly, and devilishly applied ; but unquestionably our 
 aristocratical manners and habits have made us and the 
 poor two distiu< t and unsympathizing bodies; and from
 
 262 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD- 
 
 want of sympathy, I fear the transition to enmity is but too 
 easy when distress embitters the feelings and the sight of 
 others in luxury makes that distress still more intolerable. 
 This is the plague spot to my mind in our whole state of 
 society, which must be removed or the whole must perish. 
 And under God it is for the clergy to come forward boldly 
 and begin to combat it. If you read Isaiah, chap. v. iii. 
 xxxii. ; Jeremiah, chap. v. xxii. xxx.; Amos, iv. : Habak- 
 kuk, ii. ; and the Epistle of St. James, written to the same 
 people a little before the second destruction of Jerusalem, 
 you will be struck, I think, with the close resemblance of 
 our own state to that of the Jews ; while the state of the 
 Greek Churches to whom St. Paul wrote is wholly different, 
 because from their thin population and better political cir- 
 cumstances, poverty among them is hardly noticed, and our 
 duties to the poor are consequently much less prominently 
 brought forward. And unluckily our Evangelicals read St. 
 Paul more than any other part of the Scriptures, and think 
 very little of consulting most those parts of Scripture 
 which are addressed to persons circumstanced most like 
 ourselves. I want to get up a real Poor Man's Magazine, 
 which should not bolster up abuses and veil iniquities, nor 
 prose to the poor as to children ; but should address them 
 in the style of Cobbett, plainly, boldly, and in sincerity, 
 excusing nothing — concealing nothing — and misrepresent- 
 ing nothing — but speaking the very whole truth in love — 
 Cobbett-like in style — but Christian in spirit. Now you 
 are the man I think to join with me in such a work, and 
 
 most earnestly do I wish that you would think of it 
 
 I should be for putting my name to whatever I wrote of 
 this nature, for 1 think it is of great importance that our 
 addresses should be those of substantive and tangible per- 
 sons, not of anonymous shadows
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 263 
 
 XIX. TO THE ABCHBI8H0P OF DUBLIN'. 
 
 Rugby, March 7. L831 
 
 1 am most truly obliged to you for all your advice and 
 collected opinions about tin Register. Now, certainly, I 
 never should embark in such a scheme for my own amuse- 
 ment. I have enough to do in all reason. I am not so 
 craving alter the honour of appearing in print, as to wish 
 to turn newspaper writer on that account. I should most 
 wish that the thing were not needed at all; next, that it 
 might be done by somebody else, without my taking part 
 in it. But all seem to agree that it is needed, grievously 
 needed, and will any body else undertake it? That is to 
 my mind the real question. For if not, I think there is a 
 great call for much to be risked, and much to be braved, 
 and the thing done imperfectly is better than not done at 
 
 all. So much for the principle The aid of 
 
 liberal Tories I should be most thankful for, and I ear- 
 nestly crave it ; but never will I join with the High Church 
 
 party It would be exposing myself to the fate 
 
 of Amphiareus with a vengeance, for such cooperation 
 would sink any thing into the earth, or else render it such, 
 
 that it had better be sunk Most earnestly would 
 
 ! be Conservative ; but defend me from the Conservative 
 party — i. e. from those who call themselves so par excel- 
 lence. Above all, I cannot understand why a failure 
 should be injurious to future efforts. A had history of any 
 one particular period, may doubtless hinder sensible men 
 from writing upon the same period; but I cannot see how 
 a foolish newspaper, dying in 1831, should affect a wise 
 one in 1832 ; and if the thing is impracticable rei natura, 
 then, neither mine, nor any other with the same views, will 
 
 ever answer. Certainly our failure is \eiy conceivable — 
 
 verj probable if von will ; but something must be risk* d, 
 and 1 think the experimentum will be made " in corpora 
 
 \ili ;" fol all the damage will be the expense which it will 
 cost me, and that of course I shall not stand beyond a
 
 li<!4 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 certain ])oint. Ergo, I shall try a first number 
 
 In the opinions I have already received, I have been 
 enough reminded of Gaffer Grist, Gaffer's son and a little 
 jackass, &c, but I have learned this good from it, i. e. to 
 follow my own judgment, adopting from the opinions of 
 others just what I approve of, and no more. One thing 
 you may depend on, that nothing shall ever interfere with 
 my attention to the school. Thucydides, Register and all, 
 should soon go to the dogs if they were likely to do that. 
 I have got a gallows at last, and am quite happy ; it is like 
 getting a new twenty horse-power in my capacities for work. 
 I could laugh like Democritus himself at the notion of my 
 being thought a dangerous person, when I hang happily 
 on my gallows, or make it serve as a target to spear at. 
 
 XX. TO CHEVALIEB BUNSEN. 
 
 Rugby, March 20, 1831. 
 
 I was reminded of you when I heard of the 
 
 great loss that all Europe has sustained in the sudden 
 death of Niebuhr. I knew your personal admiration and 
 regard for him, and that you would feel his loss privately 
 as well as publicly. Besides all this, the exceedingly an- 
 xious state of public affairs has naturally made me think of 
 you, whose views on those matters I had found to be so en- 
 tirely in agreement with my own. Our accounts of Italy 
 are very imperfect, but there have been reports of disturb- 
 ances in Home itself, which made me wish that you and 
 your family were in a more tranquil country, or at least, 
 in one, where, if there were any commotions, you might 
 be able to be of more service than you could be amongst 
 foreigners and Italians. 
 
 I was again in Italy this last summer We were 
 
 at Venice during the Revolution at Paris, and the first in- 
 telligence I heard of it was from the post-master at the 
 little town of Bludcnz in the Vorarlberg. The circum- 
 stances under which I first heard of it, will never, I think.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 205 
 
 depart from my memory. We had been enjoying the most 
 delightful summer weather throughout our tour, and par- 
 ticularly in all the early part of that very day ; when, just 
 as we arrived at Bludenz, about four or five in the after- 
 noon, the whole sky was suddenly overcast, the wind arose 
 violently, and every thing announced the approach of a 
 complete Alpine storm. We were in the very act of put- 
 ting up the head of the carriage and preparing for the com- 
 ing rain, when the post-master, in answer to au observa- 
 tion of mine about the weather when 1 had passed through 
 France a few weeks before, seemed to relieve himself by 
 telling me of all the troubles that were then raging. His 
 expression was, " Alles ist ubel in Frankreich," the mere 
 tumult and violence of political quarrels seeming to the 
 inhabitant of a Tyrolese valley, as something shocking, 
 because it was so unpeaceful. Hearing only indistinct 
 accounts of what was going on, we resolved not to enter 
 France immediately, but to go round by the Rhine through 
 Wirtemberg and Baden; a plan which I shall now ever 
 think of with pleasure, as otherwise I never should have 
 seen Xiebuhr. I was very glad, too, to see something 
 more of Germany, only it was rather vexatious to be 
 obliged to pass on so quickly, for I could not wait al 1 1 < i - 
 delberg long enough to see Creuzer, and my stay even al 
 Bonn was only one afternoon. 1 had the happiness of 
 sitting three hours with Xiebuhr, and he introduced me to 
 his poor wife and children. His conversation completely 
 verified the impression which you had given me of his 
 character, and has left me with no recollections but BUch 
 as are satisfactory to think of note. The news ■ of the 
 Duke of Orleans' accession to the French throne reached 
 Bonn while I was with Xiebuhr, and 1 was struck with the 
 enthusiastic joy which he displayed on hearing it. I I'ulK 
 
 expected that the Revolution in Prance would lead to one 
 in Belgium; and, indeed, we passed through Brussels 
 scarcely ten days before the insurrection broke out. You 
 
 ■ Sec Extracts from Journals in 1830, in the Appendix.
 
 2G6 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 are so well acquainted with English politics, that you will 
 take a deep interest in the fate of the Reform Bill now be- 
 fore Parliament. I believe that, if it passes now, " Felix 
 saecloriun nascitur ordo ;" that the aristocracy still retain a 
 strong hold on the respect and regard of England, and if 
 their excessive influence is curtailed, they will be driven 
 to try to gain a more legitimate influence, to be obtained 
 by the exercise of those great and good qualities which so 
 many of them possess. At present this may be done ; but 
 five years hence the democratical spirit may have gained 
 such a height, that the utmost virtue on the part of the 
 aristocracy will be unable to save it. And 1 think nearly 
 the same with regard to the Church. Reform would now, 
 I fully believe, prevent destruction ; but every year of 
 delayed reform strengthens those who wish not to amend, 
 but to destroy. Meanwhile, the moral state of France is 
 to me most awful ; I sympathised fully with the Revolu- 
 tion in July, but, if this detestable warlike spirit gets head 
 amongst the French people, I hope, and earnestly believe, 
 that we shall see another and more effectual coalition of 
 1815 to put it down. Nothing can be more opposite than 
 Liberalism and Bonapartism ; and, I fear, the mass of the 
 French people are more thirsting to renew the old career 
 of spoliation and conquest than to establish or promote 
 true liberty ; " for who loves that, must first be wise and 
 good." My hope is that, whatever domestic abuses may 
 exist, Germany will never forget the glorious struggle of 
 1813, and will know that the tread of a Frenchman on the 
 right bank of the Rhine is the worst of all pollutions to her 
 soil. And I trust and think, that the general feeling in 
 England is strong on this point, and that the whole power 
 of the nation would be heartily put forth to strangle in the 
 birth the first symptoms of Xapoleonism. I was at a party 
 
 at , in the summer, at Geneva, where I met Thierry, 
 
 the historian of " Les Gaulois," and the warlike spirit 
 which I perceived, even then, in the French liberals, made 
 a deep impression on me.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. '2'i7 
 
 XXI. TO JOHN WARD, ESQ., 
 [Co-Editor with him of the Englishman's Register.] 
 
 Rugby, April 27, 1831. 
 Your own articles J have carefully read over; and, in 
 style, they more than answer all my expectations. Still. 
 as we are beginning a work which must take its character 
 chiefly from us two, I will fairly say that, considering for 
 whom we are principally writing, 1 think the spirit too 
 polemical. When I speak of the aristocracy of England 
 bearing hard upon the poor, I always mean the whole elas- 
 of gentlemen, and not the nobility or great landed and 
 commercial proprietors. I cannot think that you or I suf- 
 fer from any aristocracy above us, but we ourselves belong 
 to a part of society which has not clone its duty to the 
 poor, although, with no intention to the contrary, but 
 much the reverse. Again, I regard the Ministerial Re- 
 form Bill as a safe and a necessary measure, and I 
 should, above all things, dread its rejection, but I can- 
 not be so sanguine as you are about its good effects; 
 because I think that the people are quite as likely to 
 choose men who will commit blunders and injustice as the 
 boroughmongers arc though not exactly of the same sort. 
 Above all, in writing to the lower people, my object is 
 much more to improve them morally than politically ; and 
 I would, therefore, carefully avoid exciting political vio- 
 lent e in them Now so far as the Register is con- 
 cerned, I care comparatively little about the Reform Bill, 
 but I should wish to explain, as you have done most ex- 
 cellently, the baseness of corruption on one hand, and as 
 I think yon might do, the mischief of part} and popular 
 excitement on the other. 1 should urge the dut\ of try- 
 ing to learn the merits of the case, and that an ignorant 
 vote is little better than a corrupt one, where the ignorance 
 could in am degree be helped. Hut in such an addtf 
 would not assume tli.it the Reform Bill would do .ill sorts 
 of good, and that every honest man must be in favour of
 
 2C8 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 it: because such assertions, addressed to ignorant men, are 
 doing the very thing I deprecate, i. e. trying rather to get 
 their vote, than to make that vote, whether it be given for 
 us or against us, really independent and respectable. 
 Again, with the Debt. It is surely a matter of importance 
 to shew that the greatest part of our burthens is owing to 
 this, and not to present extravagance. It affords a me- 
 morable lesson against foolish and unjust wars, and the 
 selfish carelessness with which they were waged. This 
 you have put very well, and have properly put down the 
 nonsense of the " Debt being no harm." Urge all this as 
 strongly as you will, to prevent any repetition of the loan 
 system for the time to come. But the fundholders are not 
 to blame for the Debt ; they lent their money, and if the 
 money was wasted, that was no fault of theirs. Pay the 
 debt off, if you will and can, or make a fair adjustment of 
 the advantages and disadvantages of different sorts of pro- 
 perty, with a view of putting them all on equal terms ; but 
 surely the fundholder's dividends are as much his lawful 
 property as a landholder's estate, or a merchant's or ma- 
 nufacturer's capital, liable justly, like all other property, 
 to the claims of severe national distress ; but only together 
 with other property, and by no means as if it were more 
 just in the nation to lay hands on the fundholder's divi- 
 dends than on the profits of your law or of my school. 
 Nor can the fundholders be fairly said to be living in idle- 
 ness at the expense of the nation in any invidious sense, 
 any more than your clients who borrowed my money could 
 say it of me, if they had borrowed i?10,000 of me instead 
 of o^300, and then chose to go and fool it away in fire- 
 works and illuminations. If they had spent the principal, 
 no doubt they would find it a nuisance to pay the interest, 
 but still, am I to be the loser, or can I fairly be said, if I 
 get my interest duly paid, to be living at their expense ? 
 Besides, as a mere matter of policy, we should be ejected 
 at once from most of the quarters where we might other-
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 269 
 
 wise circulate, if we are thought to countenance in any 
 
 degree the notion of a " sponge." 
 
 The " tea monopoly," as you call it, involves the whole 
 question of the Indian charter, and in fact of the Indian 
 empire. The " timber monopoly " involves far more 
 questions than I can answer, about Canada, and the 
 shipping interest, and whether the economical principle of 
 buying where you can buy cheapest, is always to be acted 
 upon by a nation, merely because it is economically ex- 
 pedient. Even about the Corn Laws, there are difficulties 
 connected with the question, that are not to lie despised, 
 
 and I would rather not cut the knot so abruptly 1 wish 
 
 to distinguish the Register from all other papers by two 
 things: that politics should hold in it just that place which 
 they should do in a well regulated mind ; that is, as one 
 field of duty, but by no means the most important one ; 
 and that with respect to this field, our duty should rather 
 be to soothe than to excite, rather to furnish facts, and to 
 point out the difficulties of political questions, than to 
 press forward our own conclusions. There are publica- 
 tions enough to excite the people to political reform; my 
 object is moral and intellectual reform, which will be sure 
 enough to work out political reform in the best way, and 
 my writing on politics would have for its end, not the for- 
 warding any political measure, but the so purifying, en- 
 lightening, sobering, and, in one word, Christianizing 
 men's notions and feelings on political matters, that from 
 the improved tree may come hereafter a better fruit. With 
 any lower views, or for the sake of furthering any political 
 measures, or advocating a political party, I should think it 
 wrong to engage in the Register at all. and certainty would 
 not risk my monej in the attempt to set it afloat 
 
 XXII. TO THE ARCHBISHOP OP DUBLIN. 
 
 .. June 11, 1881. 
 
 I confess that your last letter a g I deal grieved me. 
 
 not at all personally, but as it seemed to me to give the
 
 270 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 death blow to my hopes of finding co-operators for the 
 Register. That very article upon the Tories has been ob- 
 jected to as being too favourable to them, so what is a man 
 to do ? You will see by No. 5, that I do not think the 
 Bill perfect, but still 1 like it as far as it goes, and espe- 
 cially in its disfranchisement clauses. But my great ob- 
 ject in the Register was to enlighten the poor generally in 
 the best sense of the term ; as it is, no one joins me, and 
 of course my nephew and I cannot do it alone. " What 
 is everybody's business is nobody's," is true from the 
 days of the Peloponnesian confederacy downwards. Un- 
 less a great change in our prospects takes place, Register 
 will therefore undergo transmigration when the holidays 
 begin ; whether into a set of penny papers, or into a 
 monthly magazine I cannot tell. But I cannot sit still 
 without trying to do something for a state of things which 
 often and often, far oftener I believe than any one knows 
 of, comes with a real pang of sorrow to trouble my own 
 private happiness. I know it is good to have these sober- 
 ing reminders, and it may be my impatience that I do not 
 take them merely as awakeners and reminders to myself. 
 Still ought we not to fight against evil, and is not moral 
 ignorance, such as now so sadly prevails, one of the worst 
 kinds of evil ? 
 
 XXIII. TO W. T00KE, ESQ. 
 
 Rugby, June 18, 1831. 
 I must take the eai'liest opportunity of thanking you 
 most heartily for your active kindness towards me, to 
 which 1 am indebted for the most gratifying offer a an- 
 nounced to me in your letter of yesterday. I feel doubly 
 obliged to you, both for your good opinion of me, and for 
 
 your kind recollection of me I trust that you will 
 
 not think me the less grateful to you, because I felt that I 
 
 a Viz., of a stall in Bristol Cathedral, with a living attached 
 to it — offered to him bv Lord Brougham.
 
 LIFE OF DU. ARNOLD. 'J71 
 
 ought not to avail myself of the Chancellor's offer. En- 
 gaged as I am here, I could not reside upon a living, and 
 I would not be satisfied to hold one without residence. I 
 have always strenuously maintained that the clergy en- 
 gaged in education should have nothing to do with church 
 benefices, and I should be very unwilling to le1 my own 
 practice contradict what 1 really believe to be a very 
 wholesome doctrine. But I am sure that I value the offer 
 quite as much, and feel as heartily obliged both to the 
 Chancellor and you for it, as if I had accepted it 
 
 In this day's number of the Register there is a letter on 
 the "Cottage Evenings," condemning very decidedly their 
 unchristian tone. It is not written by me, but I confess 
 that I heartily agree with it. You know of old how ear- 
 nestly I have wished to join your Useful Knowledge So- 
 ciety; and how heartily on many points 1 sympathize with 
 them. This very work, the " Cottage Evenings," might be 
 made every thing that I wish, if it were but decidedly 
 Christian. I delight in its plain and sensible tone, and it 
 might be made the channel of all sorts of information, 
 useful and entertaining ; but, as it is, so fax from coope- 
 rating with it, I must feel utterly adverse to it. To enter 
 into the deeper matters of con duel and principle, to talk 
 of our main hopes and fears, and yet not to speak of 
 Christ, is absolutely, to my mind, to circulate poison. In 
 such points as this, " He that is nol with as is against us." 
 
 It has occurred to me that the circumstances of some 
 of the principal members of the Useful Knowledge Society 
 being now in the government, is in itself a strong reason 
 why the Society should take a more decided tone on matters 
 of religion. Undoubtedly their support of thai Society, 
 as it now stands, is a matter of deep grief ami disappro- 
 bation to a large proportion of the best men in this 
 kingdom, while it encourages the hopes of some of the 
 verj worst, tad it would be, 1 do verily think, one of the 
 greatest possible public blessings, if, as tiny are honest, 
 fearless, and enlightened against political corruption, and,
 
 272 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 as I hope they will prove, against ecclesiastical abuses 
 also, so they would be no less honest and fearless and 
 truly wise iu labouring to Christianize the people, in 
 spite of the sneers and opposition of those who under- 
 stand full well that, if men do not worship God, they at 
 once by that very omission worship most surely the power 
 of evil. 
 
 You will smile at my earnestness or simplicity ; but it 
 does strongly excite me to see so great an engine as your 
 Society, and one whose efforts I would so gladly coope- 
 rate with, and which could effect so easily what I alone 
 am vainly struggling at, to see this engine at the very least 
 neutralizing its power of doing good, and, I fear, doing in 
 some respects absolute evil. On the other side, the Tories 
 would not have my assistance in religious matters, because 
 they so disapprove of my politics ; and in the mean time 
 the people, in this hour of their utmost need, get either 
 the cold deism of the Cottage Evenings, or the folly of the 
 Cottager's Monthly Visitor. Would the Committee accept 
 my assistance for those " Cottage Evenings ? " I would 
 give a larger sum than I should be thought sane to men- 
 tion, if I might but once see this great point effected 3 . 
 
 a From a later letter to the same. — " I cannot tell you how much 
 I was delighted by the conclusion of the article on Mirabeau, in 
 the Penny Magazine of May 12. That article is exactly a spe- 
 cimen of what I wished to see, but done far better than I could 
 do it. I never wanted articles on religious subjects half so much 
 as articles on common subjects written with a decidedly Christian 
 tone. History and Biography arc far better vehicles of good, I 
 think, than any direct comments on Scripture, or essays on Evi- 
 dences."
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. L'7o 
 
 XXIV. TO MRS. FLETCHER. 
 
 ( After the death of her Son.) 
 
 Rugby, August, : 
 
 I know that you are rich in friends, and it seems 
 
 like presumption in me to say it ; but I intreat you earnestly 
 
 to remember, that M and myself regard you and yours 
 
 with such cordial respect and affection, thai it would give 
 us real pleasure, if either now or hereafter we can be of 
 any use whatever in any arrangements to be made for 
 your grandchildren. 1 feel that it would be a delight to 
 me to be of any service to fatherless children, contem- 
 plating, as I often do, the possibility of myself or their 
 dear mother being taken away from our own little ones. 
 And I feci it the more, because I confess that I think evil 
 days are threatening, insomuch that, whenever 1 hear of 
 the death of any one that is dear to me, there mixes with 
 my sense of my own loss a sort of joy that he is safe from 
 the evil to come. Still more strong is my desire that all 
 Christ's servants who are left should draw nearer every 
 day to him, and to one another, in every feeling and every 
 work of love 
 
 XXV. TO REV. !■'. C. HI \< KSTONE. 
 (hi answer to ;i qnestion about Irvingism ;it Port Glasgow.) 
 
 Rugby, Oct. 25, 1831. 
 .... If the thing be real, I should take it merely as a sign 
 of the coming of the day of the Lord,— the only use, as far as 
 I can make- out, that ever was derived from the gift of tongues. 
 1 do not see that it was ever made a vehicle of instruction, 
 or ever superseded the stud\ of tongues, but thai it was 
 merely a sign of the power of God, a man being for die time 
 transformed into a mere instrument to niter sounds which 
 
 he himself understood not However, whether this 
 
 be a real sign or no. I believe that " the daj of the Lord" 
 is coming, i. e. tin' termination of one of the great amnt 
 
 of the human race ; whether the final one of all or not, 
 
 that I believe no created being knows or can Know. The 
 VOL. I. I
 
 274 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 termination of the Jewish aim in the first century, and 
 of the Roman atav in the fifth and sixth, were each 
 marked by the same concurrence of calamities, wars, 
 tumults, pestilences, earthquakes, &c, all marking the time 
 of one of God's peculiar seasons of visitation a . And so- 
 ciety in Europe seems going on fast for a similar revolu- 
 tion, out of which Christ's Church will emerge in a new 
 position, purified, 1 trust, and strengthened by the de- 
 struction of various earthly and evil mixtures that have 
 corrupted it. But I have not the slightest expectation of 
 what is commonly meant by the Millennium, and I wonder 
 more and more that any one can so understand Scripture 
 as to look for it. As for the signs of the times in 
 England, I look nowhere with confidence : politically 
 speaking, I respect and admire the present government. 
 The ministry, I sincerely believe, would preserve all our 
 institutions by reforming them ; but still I cannot pretend 
 to say that they would do this on the highest principles, 
 or that they keep their eye on the true polar star, how 
 skilfully soever they may observe their charts, and 
 work their vessel. But even in this I think them far 
 
 better than the Tories We talk, as much as we 
 
 dare talk of any thing two months distant, of going to the 
 Lakes in the winter, that I may get on in peace with Thu- 
 cydides, and enjoy the mountains besides 
 
 XXVI. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ. 
 
 Rugby, October 26, 1831. 
 
 I spear daily, as the Lydians used to play in 
 
 the famine, that I may at least steal some portion of the 
 
 a For the same belief in the connexion of physical with moral 
 convulsions, see Niebuhr, Life, ii. p. 167. It may be as well to 
 add, that the view above expressed of the apostolical gift of 
 tongues, was founded on a deliberate study of the passages which 
 relate to it, especially 1 Cor. xiv. 14. 13. 28. 21.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 275 
 
 day from thought. My family, the school, and, thank 
 God, the town also, arc all full of restful and delightful 
 thoughts and images. All there is but the scene of whole- 
 some and happy labour, and has much to refresh the 
 inward man, with as little to disturb him as this earth, 
 since Paradise, could, I believe, ever present to any one 
 individual. But my sense of the evils of the times, and 
 to what prospects I am bringing up my children, is over- 
 whelmingly bitter. All in the moral and physical world 
 appears so exactly to announce the coming of the " great 
 day of the Lord," i.e. a period of fearful visitation to 
 terminate the existing state of things, — whether to ter- 
 minate the whole existence of the human race, neither 
 man nor angel knows, — that no entirencss of private hap- 
 piness can possibly close my mind against the sense of it. 
 Mean time it makes me very anxious to do what work I 
 can, more especially as I think the prospect of the cholera 
 makes life even more than ordinarily uncertain ; and L 
 am inclined to think, from my own peculiar constitution, 
 
 that I should be very likely to be attacked by it 
 
 I believe I told you that I am preparing for the press a 
 new volume of Sermons, and 1 wish a small book on the 
 Evidences 11 to accompany them ; not a book to get up like 
 Paley, but taking the real way in which the difficulties 
 present themselves, half moral, half intellectual, to the 
 mind of an intelligent and well educated young man ; a 
 book which, by God's blessing, may be a real stay in that 
 state of mind when neither an address to the intellect 
 alone, nor one to the moral feelings, is alone most likely 
 to answer. And I wish to make the main point not the 
 truth of Christianity per se, as a theorem to be proved, 
 but the wisdom of our abiding by it, and whether there is 
 any thing else for it but the life of beast or of devil. I 
 should like to do this it I could before I die ; for 1 think 
 
 a This he partially accomplished in the l?th Sermon in the 
 second volume, and the I Nth and L9th in the third. The work 
 
 itself was begun, hut never finished. 
 
 T 2
 
 276 LIFE OK DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 that times are coming when the Devil will fight his best 
 in good earnest. I must not write any more, for work 
 rises on every side open mouthed upon me. 
 
 XXVII. TO RKV. JULIUS HARE. 
 
 Nov. <J, 1831. 
 
 (After thanking him for the first number of the Philo- 
 logical Museum, and wishing him success.) For myself, 
 I am afraid Thucydides will have shown you that I am 
 a very poor philologist, and my knowledge is too super- 
 ficial on almost every point to enable me to produce any 
 thing worth your having; and to say the truth, every 
 moment of spare time I wish to devote to writing on Re- 
 ligion or woMTiHri. I use the Greek word, because "poli- 
 tics" is commonly taken in a much baser sense. I know 
 1 can do but little, perhaps nothing, but the " Liberavi 
 animam meam " is a consolation ; and I would fain not 
 see every thing good and beautiful sink in ruin, without 
 making a single effort to lessen the mischief. Since the 
 death of the Register, I am writing constantly in one of 
 the Sheffield papers, the proprietor of which I earnestly 
 believe sincerely wishes to do good. 
 
 I heartily sympathize with the feeling of your con- 
 cluding paragraph — in your note I mean — but who dare 
 look forward now to any thing ? 
 
 XXVIII. TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF l'UBLIX. 
 
 Rugby, November 8, 1831. 
 
 You must not go to Ireland without a few lines from 
 me. I cannot yet be reconciled to your being on the 
 other side of St. George's Channel, or to thinking of 
 Oxford as being without you. I do not know where to 
 look for the Mezentius who should " succedat pugnae," 
 when Tumus is gone away. My great ignorance about 
 Ireland is also very inconvenient to me in thinking about
 
 LITE OF DR. ARNOLD. 277 
 
 your future operations, as I do not know what most wants 
 mending there, or what is likely to be the disposition to 
 mend it in those with whom you will be surrounded. But 
 you must not go out with words of evil omen ; and, in- 
 deed, I do anticipate much happiness for you, seeing that 
 happiness consists, according to our dear old friend, & 
 
 hepyeia, and of that you arc likely to have enough 
 
 I am a coward about schools, and yet 1 have not the 
 satisfaction of being a coward y.ara vrpootife<rti ; for I am 
 inclined to think that the trials of a school arc useful to 
 a boy's after character, and thus I dread not to expose 
 my boys to it ; while, on the other hand, the immediate 
 effect of it is so ugly, that, like washing one's hands with 
 earth, one shrinks from dirting them so grievously in the 
 
 first stage of the process I cannot get 
 
 over my sense of the fearful state of public affairs : — is it 
 clean hopeless that the Church will come forward and 
 
 crave to be allowed to reform itself? I can have 
 
 no confidence in what would be in men like — , but a 
 deathbed repentance. It can only be done effectually by 
 those who have not, through man} a year of fair weather, 
 turned a deaf ear to the voice of reform, and will now be 
 thought only to obey it. because they cannot help it. If] 
 were indeed a Radical, and hated the Church, and longed 
 for a democracy, I should be jolly enough, and think that 
 all was plain sailing ; but as it is. 1 verily think that neither 
 my spirits nor my occupation, nor even spearing itself, 
 will enable me to be cheerful under such an awful pro- 
 spect of public evils 
 
 XXIX. TO W. W. MCI. I., KSiJ. 
 
 Kn 
 
 I want to write an I'.ssax on the true use of Scrip- 
 ture ; i. e. that it is a direct guide so far forth as we are 
 circumstanced exactly like the persons to whom it was
 
 278 LIFE OF DB. ARNOLD. 
 
 originally addressed ; that where the differences are great, 
 there it is a guide by analogy ; i. e. if so and so was the 
 duty of men so circumstanced, ergo, so and so is the duty 
 of men circumstanced thus otherwise ; and that thus we 
 shall keep the spirit of God's revelation even whilst utterly 
 disregarding the letter, when the circumstances are totally 
 different. E. g. the Second Commandment is in the letter 
 utterly done away with by the fact of the Incarnation. To 
 refuse then the benefit which we might derive from the 
 frequent use of the crucifix under pretence of the Second 
 Commandment is a folly, because God has sanctioned one 
 conceivable similitude of himself, when He declared Him- 
 self in the person of Christ. The spirit of the command- 
 ment not to think unworthily of the Divine nature, nor to 
 lower it after our own devices, is violated by all unscrip- 
 tural notions of God's attributes and dealings with men, 
 such as we see and hear broached daily, and, though in a 
 less important degree, by those representations of God the 
 Father which one sees in Catholic pictures, and by what 
 Whately calls peristerolatry, the foolish way in which 
 people allow themselves to talk about God the Holy 
 Ghost, as of a dove. The applications of this principle 
 are very numerous, and embrace, I think, all the principal 
 errors both of the High Church and of the Evangelical 
 party 
 
 XXX. TO REV. G. CORNISH. 
 
 Rydal, December 31, 1831. 
 
 We are actually here and going up Nabb's Scar pre- 
 sently, if the morning holds clear Nowhere on 
 
 earth have I ever seen a spot of more perfect and enjoy- 
 able beauty, with not a single object out of tune with it, 
 look which way I will 
 
 It is indeed a long time since I have written to you, and 
 these are times to furnish ample matter to write or to talk
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 279 
 
 about. How earnestly do I wish that I could gee you; 
 it is the only unratified wish as to earthly happiness of 
 my most happy life, that I am so parted from so mam of 
 
 my dearest friends [Alter speaking of objections 
 
 which he had heard made to the appointment of Dr. 
 Whately to the Archbishopric of Dublin.] Now I am 
 sure that in point of real essential holiness, so far as man 
 can judge of man, there docs not live a truer Christian 
 than Whately ; and it does grieve me most deeply to hear 
 people speak of him as of a dangerous and latitudinaiian 
 character, because in him the intellectual part of his nature 
 keeps pace with the spiritual — instead of being left, as the 
 Evangelicals leave it, a fallow field for all unsightly creeds 
 to flourish in. He is a truly great man — in the highest 
 sense of the word, — and if the safety and welfare of the Pro- 
 testant church in Ireland depend in any degree on human 
 instruments, none could be found, I verily believe, in the 
 
 whole empire so likely to maintain it I am again 
 
 publishing Sermons, with an essay at the tail, on the Inter- 
 pretation of Scripture, embodying things that 1 have been 
 thinking over for the last six or seven years ; and which I 
 hope will be useful to a class whose spiritual wants I am 
 apt to think are sadly provided for— young men bringing 
 up lor other professions than the church, who share 
 deeply in the intellectual activity of the day, and require 
 belter satisfaction to the working of their minds than 1 
 think is commonly given them 
 
 XXXI. Tii THE LADY FRANCI8 BOBRTON. 
 (On the subject of die conversion of a person with atheistical opinions.) 
 
 Rugby, February 15, 1832. 
 The subject of the letter whieh I lia\e had the honour 
 
 of receiving from you has so high a claim upon the best 
 
 exertions of every Christian, that I can only regret my in- 
 ability to do it justice. Bui in cases of moral or unci
 
 2b>() LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 lcctual disorder, no less tlian of bodily, it is difficult to 
 prescribe at a distance ; so much must always depend on 
 the particular constitution of the individual, and the pecu- 
 liarly weak points in his character. Nor am I quite sure 
 whether the case you mention is one of absolute Atheism, 
 or of Epicurism ; that is to say, whether it be a denial of 
 God's existence altogether, or only of his moral govern- 
 ment, the latter doctrine being, I believe, a favourite re- 
 source with those who cannot evade the force of the evi- 
 dences of design in the works of Creation, and yet cannot 
 bear to entertain that strong and constant sense of per- 
 sonal responsibility, which follows from the notion of God 
 as a moral governor. At any rate, the great thing to ascer- 
 tain is, what led to his present state of opinions; for the 
 actual arguments, by which he would now justify them, are 
 of much less consequence. The proofs of an intelligent 
 and benevolent Creator are given in my opinion more 
 clearly in Paley's Natural Theology, than in any other book- 
 that I know, and the necessity of faith arising from the 
 absurdity of scepticism on the one hand, and of dogmatism 
 on the other, is shown with great power and eloquence in 
 the first article of the second part of Pascal's " Pensees," 
 a book, of which there is an English translation by no 
 means difficult to meet with. In many cases the real 
 origin of a man's irreligion is, I believe, political. He 
 dislikes the actual state of society, hates the Church as 
 connected with it and, in his notions, supporting its abuses, 
 and then hates Christianity because it is taught by the 
 Church. Another case is, when a man's religious practice 
 has degenerated, when he has been less watchful of him- 
 self, and less constant and earnest in his devotions. The 
 consequence is, that his impression of God's real existence, 
 which is kept up by practical experience, becomes fainter 
 and fainter ; and in this state of things it is merely an acci- 
 dent that he remains nominally a Christian ; if he happens 
 to fall in with an antichristian book, he will have nothing 
 in his own experience to set against the difficulties there
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 281 
 
 presented to him, and so he will be apt to yield to them. 
 For it must be always understood that there are difficulties 
 in the way of all religion, such, for instance, as the exist- 
 ence of evil, which can never be fairly solved by human 
 powers; all that can be done intellectually is to point out 
 the equal or greater difficulties of Atheism or scepticism ; 
 and this is enough to justify a good man's understanding 
 in being a believer. 15ut the real proof is the practical one ; 
 that is, let a man live on the hypothesis of its falsehood, 
 the practical result will be bad; that is, a man's besetting 
 and constitutional faults will not be checked; and some of 
 his noblest feelings will be unexercised, so that if he be 
 right in his opinions, truth and goodness are at variance 
 with one another, and falsehood is more favourable to our 
 moral perfection than truth ; which seems the most mon- 
 strous conclusion, which the human mind can possibly 
 arrive at. It follows from this, that if I were talking with 
 an Atheist, I should lay a great deal of stress on faith as a 
 necessary condition of our nature, and as a lift of God to 
 be earnestly sought for in the way which God has ap- 
 pointed, that, is by striving to do his will. For faith does 
 no violence to our understanding; but the intellectual 
 difficulties being balanced, and it being necessary to act 
 on tin- one side or the other, faith determines a man to 
 embrace that side which leads to moral and practical per- 
 fection; and unbelief leads him to embrace the opposite, 
 or, what I may call the Devil's religion, which is, after all, 
 quite as much beset with intellectual difficulties as God's 
 religion is, and morally is nothing but one mass of difficul- 
 ties and monstrosities. You may say that the individual 
 in question is a moral man, and you think not unwilling to 
 be convinced of his errors; that is, lie sees the moral 
 
 truth of Christianity, but cannot lie persuaded of it intel- 
 lectually. 1 should say that Buch a state of mind is one 
 of very painful trial, and should be treated as such; that 
 it is a state of mental diseast . which like many others is 
 aggravated by talking about it, and that he is in great
 
 282 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 danger of losing his perception of moral truth as well as 
 of intellectual, of wishing Christianity to he false as well 
 as of being unable to be convinced that it is true. There 
 are thousands of Christians who see the difficulties which 
 he sees quite as clearly as he does, and who long as 
 eagerly as he can do for that time when they shall know, 
 even as they are known. But then they see clearly the 
 difficulties of unbelief, and know that even intellectually 
 they are far greater. And in the meanwhile they are con- 
 tented to live by faith, and find that in so doing, their 
 course practically is one of perfect light ; the moral result 
 of the experiment is so abundantly satisfactory, that they 
 are sure that they have truth on their side. 
 
 I have written a sermon rather than a letter, and per- 
 haps hardly made myself intelligible after all. But the 
 main point is, that we cannot, and do not pretend to re- 
 move all the intellectual difficulties of religion ; we only 
 contend that even intellectually unbelief is the more un- 
 reasonable of the two, and that practically unbelief is 
 folly, and faith is wisdom. 
 
 If I can be of any further assistance to you in your cha- 
 ritable labour, I shall be most happy to do my best. 
 
 XXXII. TO THE SAME. 
 
 Rugby, March 7. 1832. 
 
 I thank you for your last letter, and beg to assure you 
 very sincerely, that I shall have great pleasure in placing 
 myself under your directions with regard to this unhappy 
 man ; and as he would probably regard me with suspicion, 
 on account of my profession, I think that you would act 
 with the best judgment in alluding to me only in general 
 terms, as you propose to do, without mentioning my name. 
 But I say this merely with a view to the man's own feelings 
 towards the clergy, and not from the slightest wish to have 
 my name kept back from him, if you think that it would 
 be better for him to be made acquainted with it. With
 
 LIFE OP DR. ARNOLD. 283 
 
 respect to your concluding question, I confess that 1 be- 
 lieve conscientious atheism not to exist. Weakness of 
 faith is partly constitutional, and partly the result of edu- 
 cation and other circumstances; and this may go intel- 
 lectually almost as far as scepticism ; that is to say, a man 
 may he perfectly unable to acquire a firm and undoubting 
 belief of the great truths of religion, whether natural or 
 revealed. He may be perplexed with doubts all his days, 
 nay, his fears lest the Gospel should not be true, may be 
 stronger than his hopes that it will. And this is a state of 
 great pain, and of most severe trial, to be pitied heartily, 
 but not to be condemned. I am satisfied that a good man 
 can never get further than this; for his goodness will save him 
 from unbelief, though not from the misery of scanty faith. 
 I call it unbelief, when a man deliberately renounces his 
 obedience to God, and his sense of responsibility to Him: 
 and this never can be without something of an evil heart re- 
 belling against a yoke, which it does not like to bear. The 
 man you have been trying to convert, stands in this predica- 
 ment: — he says that he cannot find out God, and that he 
 does not believe in Him; therefore he renounces His ser- 
 vice, and chooses to make a god of himself. Now, the 
 idea of God being no other than a combination of all the 
 highest excellences that we can conn ive, it is so delight- 
 ful to a good and sound mind, that it is misery to part with 
 it ; and such a mind, if it cannot discern God clearly, con- 
 cludes that the fault is in itself — that it cannot yet reach to 
 God, not that God does not exist. You sec thrre must be 
 an assumption in either case, tor the thing docs not admit 
 of demonstration, and the assumption that God is, or is not, 
 
 depends on the degree of moral pain, which a man lids iu 
 
 relinquishing the idea of God. And here, 1 think, is the 
 moral fault of unbelief: — that a man can bear to make 
 so great a moral sacrifice, a^ is implied in renouncing 
 God. He makes the greatest moral sacrifice n> obtain 
 parti. il satisfaction to his intellect: a believer ensures the 
 greatest moral perfection, wiih partial satisfaction to his
 
 2y4 urn of dr. Arnold. 
 
 intellect also; entire satisfaction to the intellect is, and can 
 
 be, attained by neither. Thus, then, I believe, generally, 
 that he who has rejected God, must be morally faulty, and 
 therefore justly liable to punishment. But, of course, no 
 man can dare to apply this to any particular case, because 
 our moral faults themselves are so lessened or aggravated 
 by circumstances to be known only by Him who sees the 
 heart, that the judgment of those who see the outward 
 conduct only, must ever be given in ignorance. 
 
 XXXIII. TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. 
 
 Rugby, April 5, 1832. 
 
 I could still rave about Rydal — it was a period 
 
 of five weeks of almost awful happiness, absolutely with- 
 out a cloud; and we all enjoyed it I think equally —mother, 
 father, and fry. We are thinking of buying or renting a 
 place at Grasmere or Rydal, to spend our holidays at con- 
 stantly ; for not only are theWordsworths and the scenery 
 a very great attraction, but, as I had the chapel at Rydal 
 all the time of our last visit, I got acquainted with the 
 poorer people besides, and you cannot tell what a home- 
 like feeling all of us entertain towards the valley of the 
 Rotha. I found that the newspapers so disturbed me, that 
 we have given them up, and only take one once a week ; 
 it only vexes me to read, especially when I cannot do any 
 thing in the way of writing. But I cannot understand how 
 you, appreciating so fully the dangers of the times, can 
 blame me for doing the little which I can to counteract the 
 evil. No one feels more than I do the little fruit, which 1 
 am likely to produce ; still I know that the letters have 
 been read and liked by some of the class of men whom I 
 most wish to influence; and, besides, what do I sacrifice, 
 or what do I risk ? If things go as we fear, it will make 
 very little difference whether I wrote in the Sheffield Cou- 
 rant or no, whereas, if God yet saves us, I may be abused, 
 as J have been long since, by a certain party ; but it is a
 
 LIFE OF Dl£. ARNOLD. 285 
 
 mistake to suppose that either I or the school Buffer bj 
 
 that I quite think that a great deal will depend 
 
 on the next three or four years, as to the permanent suc- 
 cess of Rugby : we are still living on credit, but of course 
 credit will not last for ever, unless there is something to 
 warrant it. Our general style of composition is .still had, 
 and where the fault is, 1 cannot say ; some of our boys, 
 however, do beautifully; and one copy of Greek verses 
 (Iambics) on Clitumnus, which was sent in to me about a 
 month ago, was one of the most beautiful school copies 1 
 ever saw. I should like to show it to you, or even to your 
 brother Edward ; for I do not think any of his pupils could 
 write better — tovto ds, u>$ such;, <r7rxviov 
 
 XXXIV. TO A MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY FOB THE PROMOTION OF 
 
 CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Rugby, June 1". I 
 
 Your letter interested me exceedingly, [have had some 
 
 correspondence with the Useful Knowledge people about 
 their Penny Magazine, and have sent them some things 
 which I am waiting to see whether they will publish. 1 
 want to give their .Magazine a decidedly Christian cha- 
 racter, and then I think it would suit my notions better 
 than any other; but of course what 1 have been doing, or 
 may do for them, does not hinder me from doing what 1 
 can for you. 1 only suspect I should wish to liberalize 
 your Magazine, as I wish to Christianize theirs; and pro- 
 bably your Committee would recalcitrate against any such 
 operation, as theirs may do. The Christian Knowledge So- 
 ciety has a bad name for the dulness ofits publications; and 
 their contributions to the cause of general knowledge, and 
 enlightening the people in earnest, maj seem a little tar.lv 
 and reluctant. This, however, touches \ mi. as an individual 
 member of the Society, no more than it does myself; only 
 
 the name of the Society is not in good odour. \s for the 
 thing itself, it is one on which I am half wild, and am not
 
 28G LIFE OF 1>I<. ARNOLD. 
 
 sure, that I shall not start one at my own expense down 
 here, and call it the Warwickshire Magazine; and I be- 
 lieve that it would answer in the long run, if there were 
 funds to keep it up for a time ; but " experto crede," it is 
 an expensive work to push an infant journal up hill. The 
 objection to a magazine is its desultoriness and vagueness — 
 it is all scraps ; whereas a newspaper has a regular subject, 
 and follows it up continuously. I would try to do this as 
 much as I could in a magazine. I would have in every 
 number one portion of the paper for miscellanies, but I 
 think that in another portion there should be some sub- 
 jects followed up regularly : e. g. the history of our present 
 state of societ}' traced backwards ; the history of agricul- 
 ture, including that of inclosures ; the statistics of different 
 countries, &c, &c. I suppose the object is to instruct 
 those who have few books and little education ; but all in- 
 struction must be systematic, and it is this which the 
 people want: they want to have a^ai set before them, and 
 comprehensive outlines of what follows from those af%«i ; 
 not a parcel of detached stories about natural history, or 
 this place, or that man, — all entertaining enough, but not 
 instructive to minds wholly destitute of any thing like a 
 frame, in which to arrange miscellaneous information. And 
 I believe, if done spiritedly, that systematic informa- 
 tion would be even more attractive than the present hodge- 
 podge of odds and ends. Above all, be afraid of teaching 
 nothing: it is vain now to say that questions of religion 
 and politics are above the understanding of the poorer 
 classes: so they may be, but they are not above their mis- 
 understanding, and they will think and talk about them, 
 so that they had best be taught to think and talk rightly. 
 It is worth while to look at Owen's paper, " The Crisis," 
 or at the " Midland Representative," the great paper of 
 the Birmingham operatives. The most abstract points are 
 discussed in them, and the very foundations of all things 
 are daily being probed, as much as by the sophists, whom 
 it was the labour of Socrates 1 life to combat. Phrases
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 287 
 
 which did well enough formerly, now only excite a sneer; 
 it does not do to talk to the Operatives about our "pure and 
 apostolical church," and "our glorious constitution," they 
 have no respect for either; but one must take higher 
 ground, and show that our object is not to preserve parti- 
 cular institutions, so much as to uphold eternal principles, 
 which are in great danger of falling into disrepute, because 
 of the vices of the institutions which profess to exemplify 
 them. The Church, as it now stands, no human power 
 can save; my fear is, that, if we do not mind, we shall come 
 to the American fashion, and have no provision made for 
 the teaching Christianity at all. But it is late, and I must 
 go to bed; and 1 have prosed to you enough ; but I am 
 as bad about these things as Don Quixote with Ins 
 knight-errantry, and when once I begin, I do not readily 
 stop. 
 
 XXXV. TO Ills NEPHEW, J. WARD, ESQ., ON MIS MARRIAGE. 
 
 Brothay Hall, July 7. 1832. 
 
 A man's life in London, while he is single, in;i\ be 
 
 very stirring, and very intellectual, but 1 imagine that it 
 must have a hardening effect, and that this effect will be more 
 felt every year as the counter tendencies of youth become 
 less powerful. The most certain softeners of a man's 
 moral skin, and sweeteners of his blood, are, 1 am sure, 
 domestic intercourse in a happy marriage, and intercourse 
 with the poor. It is very hard, 1 imagine, in our present 
 state of society, to keep up intercourse with God without 
 one or both of these aids to foster it. Romantic and fan- 
 tastic indolence was the fault of other times and other 
 countries; here I crave more and more every dai to find 
 men unfevered by the constant excitement of tin- world, 
 whether literary, political, commercial, or fashionable ; 
 men who, while tin \ are alive to all that is around them, 
 feel also who is above them. I would give more than I can 
 say, if your Useful Knowledge Society Committee hadthis
 
 2yh< LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 last feeling, as strongly as they have the other purely and be- 
 neficently I care not for one party or the other, but I 
 
 do care for the country, and for interests even more precious 
 than that of the country, which the present disordered state 
 of the human mind seems threatening. But this mixes 
 strangely with your present prospects, and I hope we may 
 both manage to live in peace with our families in the land 
 of our fathers, without crossing the Atlantic. 
 
 XXXVI. TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN. 
 
 Bnithay Hall, July 8, 1832. 
 
 This place is complete rest, such as I wish you could en- 
 joy after your far more anxious occupations As to 
 
 the state of the country, I find my great concern about it 
 comes by accesses, sometimes weighing upon me heavily, 
 
 and then again laid aside as if it were nothing I 
 
 wish that your old notion of editing a family Bible could 
 be revived. I do not know any thing which more needs 
 to be done, and it would be a very delightful thing if it 
 could be accompanied with really good maps and engrav- 
 ings, which might be done if a large sale could be reckoned 
 upon. It might be published in penny numbers, not be- 
 ginning with Genesis, but with some of the most import- 
 ant parts of the New Testament, e. g. St. John's Gospel or 
 the Epistle to the Romans. Some of the historical books 
 of the Old Testament, I should be inclined to publish last 
 of all, as being the least important, whilst the Psalms and 
 some of the Prophets should appear very early. I am 
 even grand enough to aspire after a new, or rather a cor- 
 rected translation, for I would only alter manifest faults or 
 obscurities, and even then preserving as closely as pos- 
 sible the style of the old translation. Many could do 
 this for the New Testament, but where is the man, in Eng- 
 land at least, who could do it for the Old? But 
 
 alas ! for your being at Dublin, instead of at Canterbury.
 
 LIFE OF DR. A KNOLL). 289 
 
 TO TIIK SAME. 
 
 Rugby, September 6, I 
 
 Have you heard that the Useful Knowledge So 
 
 eiety have resolved to publish a Bible, and asked to be 
 
 editor? Hac tamen lege, that, where doctrine is introduced, 
 the opinions of the different sects of Christians should 1" 
 
 fairly stated. Now Evans's Dictionary of all Religions is a 
 useful book, but I do not want exactly to see it made a rider 
 upon the Scriptures. We want something better than this 
 
 plan. ... I told that I must write to you before I gave 
 
 him any promise of assistance. O ! for your Bible plan, or, 
 at least, for the sanction of your name: I think I see the 
 possibility of a true comprehensive Christian Commentary, 
 keeping back none of the counsel of God, lowering no 
 truth, chilling no lofty or spiritual sentiment, yet neither 
 silly, fanatical, nor sectarian. Your book on Romanism 
 shows how this may be done, and it applies to all sects 
 alike. They are not all error, nor we all truth ; e. g. the 
 Quakers reject the communion of the Lord's Supper, there- 
 by losing a great means of grace ; but are they not tempted 
 to do so by the superstitions, which other Christians have 
 heaped upon the institution, and is there not some taint of 
 these in the Exhortation even in our own Communion Ser- 
 vice ? And, with regard to the greatest truths of all, you 
 know how Pelagianism and Calvinism have encouraged 
 each other, and how the Athanasian Creed, at this day, 
 confirms and aggravates the evils of [Jnitarianism. I heard 
 sometime since, as a matter of fact, that, in the United 
 States, where the Episcopal Church has expelled this 
 creed, the character of [Jnitarianism is very different from 
 what it is in England, and is returning towards high A nan- 
 ism, just as here it has gone a downward course to the very 
 verge of utter unbelief. I know how much you have on 
 your hands and on your mind; 1, too, have my hobbies, 
 but I know of nothing more urgent than to circulate such 
 an edition of the Scriptures, as might labour, with God's 
 VOL. I. '
 
 290 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 help, to give their very express image without human ad- 
 dition or omission, striving to state clearly what is God's 
 will with regard to us now ; for this seems to me to be one 
 great use of a commentary, to make people understand 
 where God spoke to their fathers, and where lie speaks to 
 them ; or rather, — since in all He speaks to them, though 
 not after the same manner, — to teach them to distinguish 
 where they are to follow the letter, and where the spirit. 
 
 I have promised to send some sermons for his Ma- 
 gazine, though the abstract idea of a sermon is rather a 
 puzzle to my faculties, accustomed as they are to cling to 
 things in the concrete. But I am vexed to find how much 
 of hopeless bigotry lingers in minds, big wio-tcc 6%f«. I am 
 
 sure old is personally cooled towards me, by the Essay 
 
 attached to the Sermons, and the Sheffield Courant Let- 
 ters. And another very old and dear friend wrote to me 
 about my grievous errors and yours, praying " that I may 
 be delivered from such false doctrines, and restrained from 
 promulgating them." These men have the advantage over 
 us, *sy« ««t' av9^u7rov, which the Catholics had over the 
 Protestants ; they taxed them with damnable heresy, and 
 pronounced their salvation impossible ; the Protestants in 
 return only charged them with error and superstition, till 
 some of the hotter sort, impatient of such an unequal re- 
 joinder, bethought themselves of retorting with the charge of 
 damnable idolatry. But still I think that we have the best 
 of it, in not letting what we firmly believe to be error and 
 ignorance shake our sense of that mightier bond of union, 
 which exists between all those who love the Lord Jesus 
 Christ in sincerity ; perhaps I should say, in not letting 
 our sense of the magnitude of the error lead us to ques- 
 tion the sincerity of the love. 
 
 I must conclude with a more delightful subject — my 
 most dear and blessed sister a . I never saw a more per- 
 fect instance of the spirit of power and of love, and of a 
 
 a Susanna Arnold died at Laleham, April 4, 1832, after a com- 
 plaint in the spine of twenty years' duration.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 291 
 
 sound mind ; intense love, almost to the annihilation of 
 selfishness — a daily martyrdom for twenty years, during 
 which she adhered to her early formed resolution of never 
 talking about herself; thoughtful about the very pins and 
 ribands of my wife's dress, about the making of a doll's 
 cap for a child, — but of herself, save only as regarded her 
 ripening in all goodness, wholly thoughtless, enjoying every 
 thing lovely, graceful, beautiful, high-minded, whether 
 in God's works or man's, with the keenest relish ; inheriting 
 the earth to the very fulness of the promise, though never 
 leaving her crib, nor changing her posture ; and presen ed 
 through the very valley of the shadow of death, from all fear 
 or impatience, or from every cloud of impaired reason, 
 which might mar the beauty of Christ's Spirit's glorious 
 work. May God grant that I might come but within one 
 hundred degrees of her place in glory. God bless 
 j-ou all. 
 
 r 2
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE JANUARY 1833 
 
 SEPTEMBER 1835. 
 
 His alarm about the state of the poor naturally sub- 
 sided with the tranquillization of the disturbances 
 amongst the rural population, but was succeeded by 
 an alarm almost as great, lest the political agitation 
 which, in 1832, took the form of the cry for Church 
 Reform, should end in destroying what, with all its 
 defects, seemed to him the greatest instrument of 
 social and moral good existing in the country. It 
 was this strong conviction which, in 1833, originated 
 his pamphlet on " the Principles of Church Reform." 
 " I hung back," he said, " as long as I could, till the 
 want was so urgent, that I sat down to write, be- 
 cause I could not help it." But with him preserva- 
 tion was only another word for reform ; and here the 
 reform proposed was great in proportion as he thought 
 the stake at issue was dear, and the danger formid- 
 able. " Most earnestly do I wish to see the Esta- 
 blishment reformed," was the closing sentence of his 
 Postscript, "at once, for the sake of its greater securitv, 
 and its greater perfection : but, whether reformed or 
 not, may God in his mercy save us from the calamity 
 of seeing it destroyed !" As much of the misunder-
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 293 
 
 standing of his character arose from a partial know- 
 ledge of this pamphlet, and of his object in writing it, 
 it may be as well to give, in his own words, the answer 
 which he made to a friend, in 1840, to a general 
 charge of indiscretion brought against him. 
 
 "It seems tome that the charge of e indiscretion,' apart 
 of course from the truth or error of the opinions expressed, 
 belongs only to my Church Reform pamphlet. Now, I 
 am quite ready to allow, that to publish such a pamphlet 
 in 1840, or indeed at any period since 1834, would have 
 been the height of indiscretion. But I wrote that pam- 
 phlet in 1833, when most men — myself among the number — 
 had an exaggerated impression of the strength of the move- 
 ment party, and of the changes which it was likely to effect. 
 My pamphlet was written on the supposition — not im- 
 plied, but expressed repeatedly — that the Church Esta- 
 blishment was in extreme danger; and therefore I proposed 
 remedies, which, although I do still sincerely believe them 
 to be in themselves right and good, yet would be mani- 
 festly chimerical, and to advise them might well be called 
 indiscreet, had not the danger and alarm, as I supposed, 
 been imminent. I mistook, undoubtedly, both the strength 
 and intenseness of the movement, and the weakness of the 
 party opposed to it ; but I do not think that I was singular 
 in my error — many persisted in it; Lord Stanley, for ex- 
 ample, even in 1834 and the subsequent years — many even 
 hold it still, when experience has proved its t'allac\ . I'.nt 
 tin' startling nature of my proposals, which 1 suppose con- 
 stitutes what is called their indiscretion, i- to be judged 
 by the state of things in 1832-3, and not by thai of times 
 present. Jephson finds that his patients will adopt a \ e re- 
 strict diet, when they believe themselve8 to be in danger; 
 
 but he would be \cry indiscreet if he prescribed it to a 
 man who felt no Bymptoms of indisposition, for the man 
 would certainly laugh at him, although perhaps the diet 
 
 would do him gnat good, if he could be induced to adopt it."
 
 294 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 The plan of the pamphlet itself is threefold ; a 
 defence of the national Establishment, a statement 
 of the extreme danger to which it was exposed, and 
 a proposal of what seemed to him the only means of 
 averting this danger : — first, by a design for compre- 
 hending the Dissenters within the pale of the Esta- 
 blishment, without compromise of principle on either 
 side ; secondly, by various details intended to increase 
 its actual efficiency. The sensation created by 
 the appearance of this pamphlet was considerable. 
 Within six months of its publication it passed 
 through four editions. It was quoted with appro- 
 bation and condemnation by men of the most oppo- 
 site parties, though with far more of condemnation 
 than of approbation. Dissenters objected to its 
 attacks on what he conceived to be their sectarian 
 narrowness, — the Clergy of the Establishment to its 
 supposed latitudinarianism : — its advocacy of large 
 reforms repelled the sympathy of many Conserva- 
 tives — its advocacy of the importance of religious in- 
 stitutions repelled the sympathy of many Liberals. 
 
 Yet still it was impossible not to see, that it stood 
 apart from all the rest of the publications for and 
 against Church Reform, then issuing in such numbers 
 from the press. There were many, both at the time 
 and since, who, whilst they objected to its details, 
 yet believed its statement of general principles to 
 be true, and only to be deprecated because the time 
 was not yet come for their application. There were 
 many again, who, whilst they objected to its general 
 principles, yet admired the beauty of particular pas- 
 sages, or the wisdom of some of the details. Such 
 were the statement of the advantages of a national
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 295 
 
 and of a Christian Establishment, — his defence of 
 the Bishops' seats in Parliament, and of the high 
 duties of the Legislature. Such, again, were the 
 suggestion of a multiplication of Bishoprics, the crea- 
 tion of suffragan or subordinate Bishops — the revival 
 of an inferior order of ministers or deacons in the 
 Establishment — the use of churches on week days — 
 the want of greater variety in our forms of worship 
 than is afforded by the ordinary course of morning 
 and evening prayer — all of them points which, being 
 then proposed nearly for the first time, have since 
 received the sanction of a large part of public opi- 
 nion, if not of public practice. 
 
 One point of detail, so little connected with his 
 general views as not to be worth mentioning on its 
 own account, yet deserves to be recorded, as a curious 
 instance of the disproportionate attention, which may 
 sometimes be attracted to one unimportant passage; 
 namely, the suggestion that if Dissenters were compre- 
 hended within the Establishment, the use of different 
 forms of worship at different hours of the Sunday 
 in the parish church, might tend to unite the wor- 
 shippers more closely to the Church of their fathers 
 and to one another. This suggestion, torn from the 
 context and represented in language which it is not 
 necessary here to specify, is the one sole idea, which 
 many have conceived of the whole pamphlet, which 
 many also have conceived of his whole theological 
 teaching, which not a few have conceived even of his 
 whole character. Vet this BUggestion i- a mere de- 
 tail, only recommended conditionally, a detail occu- 
 pying tw r o pages in a pamphlet of eighty-eight ; 
 a detail, indeed, which in other countries has been
 
 '2\)i) LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 adopted without difficulty amongst Protestants, 
 Greeks, and Roman Catholics, and which, in principle 
 
 at least, has since been sanctioned, in the alternate 
 use in one instance of the Prussian and English Li- 
 turgies, by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the 
 Bishop of London ; — but a detail, on which he himself 
 laid no stress either then or afterwards, of which no 
 mention occurs again in any one of his writings, and 
 of which, in common with all the other details in the 
 pamphlet, he expressly declared that he was far from 
 proposing any thing with " equal confidence to that 
 with which he maintained the principles themselves ;" 
 and that he " was not anxious about any particular 
 measure which he may have ventured to recommend, 
 if any thing could be suggested by others, which would 
 effect the same great object of comprehension more 
 completely." (Preface to Principles of Church Re- 
 form, p. iv.) 
 
 But, independently of the actual matter of the 
 Pamphlet, its publication was the signal for the ge- 
 neral explosion of the large amount of apprehension 
 or suspicion, which had been in so many minds con- 
 tracted against him since he became known to the 
 public — amongst ordinary men from his Pamphlet on 
 the Roman Catholic claims — amongst more thinking 
 men, from his Essay on the Interpretation of Scripture 
 — amongst men in general, from the union of undefined 
 fear and dislike, which is almost sure to be inspired 
 by the unwelcome presence of a man who has reso- 
 lution to propose, earnestness to attempt, and energy 
 to effect, any great change either in public opinion or 
 in existing institutions. The storm, which had thus 
 been gathering for some time past, now burst upon
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 297 
 
 him, — beginning- in theological and political oppo- 
 sition, but gradually including within its sweep every 
 topic, personal or professional, which could expose 
 him to obloquy, — and continued to rage for the next 
 four years of his life. The neighbouring county 
 paper maintained an almost weekly attack apon him; 
 the more extreme of the London Conservative news- 
 papers echoed these attacks with additions of their 
 own; the great dinner which usually accompanied the 
 Easter speeches at Rugby was, on one occasion, 
 turned into a scene of uproar by the endeavour to in- 
 troduce into it political toasts; in the University 
 pulpit at Oxford, he was denounced almost by name; 
 every incautious act or word in the management of 
 the school, almost every sickness amongst the boys, 
 was eagerly used as a handle against him. Charges 
 which, in ordinary cases, would have passed by un- 
 noticed, fell with double force on a man already 
 marked out for public odium ; persons, who naturally 
 would have been the last to suspect him, took up 
 and repeated almost involuntarily the invectives, which 
 they heard reverberated around them in all direc- 
 tions; the opponents of any new system of education 
 were ready to assail every change which he had in- 
 troduced ; the opponents of the old discipline of pub- 
 lic schools were ready to assail ('\i-vy support which 
 he gave to it; the general sale of his Sermons was 
 almost stopped ; even his personal acquaintance began 
 to look upon him with alarm, some dropped their inter- 
 course with him altogether, hardly any were able fullj 
 to sympathize with him, and almost all remonstrated. 
 He was himself startled, but not moved by this 
 continued outcry. It was indeed "nearly the worsl
 
 298 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 pain which ho had ever felt, to see the impression 
 which either his writings, or his supposed opinions, 
 produced on those whom he most dearly valued ;" it 
 was " a trying thing to one who held his own opinions 
 as strongly as he did, to be taxed continually with 
 indifference to truth ;" and at times even his vigor- 
 ous health and spirits seemed to fail under the sense 
 of the estrangement of friends, or, yet more, under his 
 aversion to the approbation of some who were in- 
 duced by the clamour against him to claim him as 
 their own ally. But the public attacks upon himself 
 he treated with indifference. Those which related 
 to the school he was in one or two instances at their 
 outset induced to notice ; but he early formed a de- 
 termination, which he maintained till they died away 
 altogether, never to offer any reply, or even explana- 
 tion, except to his own personal friends. " My 
 resolution is fixed," he said, " to let them alone, 
 and on no account to condescend to answer them 
 in the newspapers. All that is wanted is to inspire 
 firmness into the minds of those engaged in the con- 
 duct of the school, lest their own confidence should 
 be impaired by a succession of attacks, which I sup- 
 pose is unparalleled in the experience of schools." 
 Nor was he turned in the slightest degree from his 
 principles. Knowing, from the example of other 
 schools, that, had he been on the opposite side of 
 the questions at issue, he might have taken a far 
 more active part in public matters without provoking 
 any censure, and conscious that his exertions in the 
 school were as efficient as ever, he felt it due alike to 
 himself, his principles, and his position, never to con- 
 cede that he had acted inconsistentlv with the duties
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 299 
 
 of his situation ; and therefore in the critical election 
 of the winter of 1834, when the outcry against him 
 was at its height, he did not shrink from coming up 
 from Westmoreland to Warwickshire to vote for the 
 Liberal candidate, foreseeing, as he must have done, 
 the burst of indignation which followed. 
 
 And, whilst the clamour against his pamphlet may 
 have increased his original diffidence in the practicabi- 
 lity of its details, it only drove him to a more determi- 
 nate examination and development of its principles, 
 which from this time forward assumed that coherent 
 form which was the basis of all his future writings. 
 What he now conceived and expressed in a sys- 
 tematic shape, had indeed always floated before him 
 in a ruder and more practical form, and in his later 
 ife it received various enlargements and modifica- 
 tions. But in substance, his opinions, which up to this 
 time had been forming, were after it formed ; he had 
 now reached that period of life, after which any change 
 of view is proverbially difficult ; he had now arrived 
 at that stage in the progress of his mind, to which all 
 his previous inquiries had contributed, ami from 
 which all his subsequent inquiries naturally resulted. 
 His views of national education became fixed in the 
 principles, which he expressed in his favourite watch- 
 words at this time, " Christianity without Secta- 
 rianism," and " Comprehension without Compro- 
 mise;" and which he developed at some length in 
 an (unpublished) "Letter on the Admission of I>i— 
 senters to the Universities," written in 1834. Hi- 
 long cherished views of the identity of Church and 
 State, he now firet unfolded in lii- Postscript t<» the 
 pamphlet on "Church Reform," and in the first of
 
 300 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 his fragments on that subject, written in 1834-35. 
 Against what lie conceived to be the profane and 
 secular view of the State, he protested in the Preface 
 to his Third Volume of Thueydides, and against the 
 practical measure of admitting Jews to a share in the 
 supreme legislature, he was at this time more than 
 once on the point of petitioning, in his own sole name. 
 Against what he conceived to be the ceremonial view 
 of the Church, and the technical and formal view of 
 Christian Theology, he protested in the Preface and 
 First Appendix to his Third Volume of Sermons ; 
 whilst against the then incipient school of Oxford 
 Divinity, he was anxious to circulate tracts vindi- 
 cating the King's Supremacy, and tracing in its opi- 
 nions the Judaizing principles which prevailed in the 
 apostolical age. And he still " dreamt of something 
 like a Magazine for the poor ; feeling sure from the 
 abuse lavished upon him, that a man of no party, as 
 he has no chance of being listened to by the half-in- 
 formed, is the very person who is wanted to speak to 
 the honest uninformed." 
 
 From the fermentation against him, of which the 
 Midland counties were the focus, he turned with a 
 new and increasing delight to his place in West- 
 moreland, now doubly endeared to him as his na- 
 tural home, by its contrast with the atmosphere of 
 excitement, with which he was surrounded in the 
 neighbourhood of Rugby. His more strictly pro- 
 fessional pursuits also went on undisturbed ; the last 
 and best volume of his edition of Thueydides ap- 
 peared in 1835, and in 1833 he resumed his Ro- 
 man History, which he had long laid aside. It might 
 seem strange that he should undertake a work of
 
 LIFE OF DH. ARNOLD. :;<'| 
 
 such magnitude, at a time when his chief interest 
 was more than ever fixed on the great questions of 
 political and theological philosophy. Hi* love for 
 ancient history was doubtless in itself a great induce- 
 ment to continue his connexion with it after his 
 completion of the edition of Thucydides. But be- 
 sides, and perhaps even more than this, was the 
 strong impression that on those subjects, which lie 
 himself had most at heart, it was impossible for 
 him to bear up against the tide of misunderstand- 
 ing and prejudice with which he was met, ami that 
 all hope, for the present, of direct influence over his 
 countrymen Mas cut off. His only choice, therefore, 
 lay in devoting himself to some work, which, whilst 
 it was more or less connected with his professional 
 pursuits, would afford him in the past a refuge from 
 the excitement and confusion of the present. What 
 Fox How was to Rugby, that the Etonian History 
 was to the painful and conflicting thought* roused by 
 his writings on political and theological subjects. 
 
 But besides the refreshment of Westmoreland 
 scenery and of ancient greatness, he must have de- 
 rived a yet deeper comfort from his increasing in- 
 fluence on the school. Greater as it probably was 
 at a later period over the school generally, yet over 
 individual boys it never was so great as at the period 
 when the clamour, to which he was exposed from 
 without, had reached its highest pitch. Then, when 
 the institution seemed most likely t<> Buffer from the 
 unexampled vehemence with which it was availed 
 
 through him, began a series of the greatest successes 
 
 at both Universities which it had ever known ; then. 
 when he was most accused of misgovernment of the
 
 302 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 place, he laid that firm hold on the esteem and af- 
 fections of the elder boys, which he never after- 
 wards lost; and then, more than at any other time, 
 when his old friends and acquaintance were falling 
 back from him in alarm, he saw those growing up 
 under his charge of whom it may be truly said, that 
 they would have been willing to die for his sake. 
 
 Here, again, the course of his sermons in the third 
 volume gives us a faithful transcript of his feelings ; 
 whilst his increased confidence in the school appears 
 throughout in the increased affection of their tone, 
 the general subjects which he then chose for pub- 
 lication, indicate no less the points forced upon him 
 by the controversy of the last two years, — the evils of 
 sectarianism, — the necessity of asserting the authority 
 of " Law, which Jacobinism and Fanaticism are alike 
 combining to destroy" — Christianity, as being the 
 sovereign science of life in all its branches, and espe- 
 cially in its aspect of presenting emphatically the 
 Revelation of God in Christ. And in other parts, 
 it is impossible to mistake the. deep personal expe- 
 rience, with which he spoke of the pain of sever- 
 ance from sympathy and of the evil of party spirit ; 
 of " the reproach and suspicion and cold friendship 
 and zealous enmity," which is the portion of those 
 who strive to follow no party but Christ's — of the 
 prospect that if " we oppose any prevailing opinion 
 or habit of the day, the fruits of a life's labour, as 
 far as earth is concerned, are presently sacrificed," 
 and " we are reviled instead of respected," and " every 
 word and action of our lives misrepresented and con- 
 demned," — of the manner in which " the blessed 
 Apostle St. Paul, whose name is now loved and rever-
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 303 
 
 enccd from one end of the Church of Christ to the 
 other, was treated by his fellow Christians at Rome, 
 as no better than a latitudinarian and a heretic." 1 
 
 XXXVIII. TO THE REV. J. HEABN. 
 
 Ilvdal, January 1, 1S33. 
 
 New Year's day is in this part of the country 
 
 regarded as a great festival, and we hare had prayers this 
 morning, even in our village chapel at Rydal. May God 
 bless us in all our doings in the year that is now begun, 
 and make us increase more and more in the knowledge and 
 love of Himself and of His Son ; that it may be blessed to 
 us, whether we live to see the end of it on earth or no. 
 
 I owe you very much for the great kindness of your 
 letters, and thank you earnestly for your prayers. Mine 
 is a busy life, so busy that I have great need of not losing 
 my intervals of sacred rest ; so taken up in teaching others, 
 that I have need of especial prayer and labour, lest I live 
 
 with my own spirit untaught in the wisdom of God 
 
 It grieves me more than I can say, to find so much into- 
 lerance ; by which I mean over-estimating our points of dif- 
 ference, and under-estimating our points of agreement. I 
 am by no means indifferent to truth and error, and hold 
 my own opinions as decidedly as any man ; which of course 
 implies a conviction that the opposite opinions are erro- 
 neous. In many cases, I think them not only erroneous 
 but mischievous; still they exist in men, whom I know to 
 be thoroughly in earnest, fearing God and loving Christ, 
 and it seems to me to he a waste of time, whieh we can ill 
 afford, and a sort of quarrel "by the way,* which our 
 Christian vow of enmity against moral evil makes utterly 
 unseasonable, when Christians suspend their great business 
 and loosen the bond of their union with each other b) 
 
 a Sermons, vol. iii. pp. 2<»3. .If.'.'i.
 
 •*5<>4 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 venting fruitless regret and complaints against «>ne another's 
 errors, instead of labouring to lessen one another's sins. 
 For coldness of spirit, and negligence of our duty, and 
 growing worldliness, arc things which we should thank our 
 friends for warning us against ; but when they quarrel with 
 our opinions, which we conscientiously hold, it merely 
 provokes us to justify ourselves, and to insist that we are 
 right and they wrong. 
 
 We arrived here on Saturday, and on Sunday night 
 there fell a deep snow, which is now however melting; 
 otherwise it would do more than any thing else to spoil this 
 unspoilable country. We are living in a little nook under 
 one of the mountains, as snug and sheltered as can be, and 
 I have got plenty of work to do within doors, let the snow 
 last as long as it will. 
 
 XXXIX. TO W. K. HAMILTON, ESQ. 
 
 Rydal, January 15, 1S33. 
 
 [After speaking of his going to Rome.] It stirs up 
 many thoughts to fancy you at Rome. T never saw any 
 place which so interested me, and next to it, but, longissimo 
 intervallo, Venice — then of the towns of Italy, Genoa — and 
 then Pisa and Verona. I cannot care for Florence or for 
 
 MOan or for Turin For me this country contains 
 
 all that I wish or want, and no travelling, even in Italy, 
 could give me the delight of thus living amidst the moun- 
 tains, and seeing and loving them in all their moods and in 
 all mine. [After speaking of Church Reform.] But God 
 knows what will come to pass, and none besides, for we all 
 seem groping about in the dark together. I trust, how- 
 ever, that we shall be spared the worst evil of all, war. 
 
 XL. TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBL1X. 
 
 Rydal, January 17, 1S33. 
 
 As my Pamphlet will probably reach you next 
 
 week, [ wished you to hear something from me on the subject
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 3<>5 
 
 beforehand. My reasons for writing it were chiefly becaus 
 the refonn proposed by Lord Henley and others seemed 
 to me not only insuflicient, but of a wrong kind; and be- 
 cause I have heard the American doctrine of every man 
 paying his minister as he would his lawyer, advanced and 
 supported in high quarters, where it Bounded alarming. I 
 was also struck by the great vehemence displayed by the 
 Dissenters at the late elections, and by the refusal to pay 
 Church-rates at Birmingham. Nothing, as it seems to me, 
 can save the Church, but an union with the Dissenters; 
 now they are leagued with tin; antichristian party, and no 
 merely internal reforms in the administration of the actual 
 system will, I think, or can satisfy them. Further, Lord 
 Henley's notion about a convocation, and Bishops not 
 sitting in Parliament, and laymen not meddling with Church 
 doctrine, seemed to me so dangerous a compound of the 
 worst errors of Popery and Evangelicalism combined, 
 and one so suited to the interest of the Devil and his 
 numerous party, that I was very desirous of protesting 
 against it. However, the pamphlet will tell its own story, 
 and I think it can do no harm, even if it does no good. 
 
 XLI. TO THE SAME. 
 
 February 1, 1833. 
 
 As for my coming down into Westmoreland, I may 
 
 almost say that it is to satisfy a physical want in my nature 
 which craves after the enjoyment of nature, and for nine 
 months in the year can find nothing to satisfy it. I agree 
 with old Keble», that one does not need mountains and 
 lakes for this ; the Thames at Laleham— Bagfe) Wood, and 
 Shotover at Oxford were quite enough forit. I only Know 
 of five counties in England, which cannol Bupplj it; and 
 I am unluckily perched down in one of them. These five 
 are Warwick, Northampton, Huntingdon, Cambridge and 
 
 * Christian Year, First Sunday after Epiphany. 
 VOL. I. x
 
 30G LIFE OF DTC. ARNOLD. 
 
 Bedford. I should add, perhaps, Rutland, and you cannot 
 name a seventh ; for Suffolk, which is otherwise just as bad, 
 has its bit of sea coast. But Ilalesworth, so far as I re- 
 member it, would be just as bad as Rugby. We have no 
 hills — no plains — not a single wood, and but on; single 
 copse : no heath — no down — no rock — no river — no clear 
 stream — scarcely any flowers, for the lias is particularly 
 poor in them — nothing but one endless monotony of in- 
 closed fields and hedge-row trees. This is to me a daily 
 privation ; it robs me of what is naturally my anti-attri- 
 tion ; and, as I grow older, I begin to feel it. My consti- 
 tution is sound, but not strong ; and I feel any little pres- 
 sure or annoyance more than I used to do ; and the posi- 
 tive dulness of the country about Rugby makes it to me a 
 mere working place ; I cannot expatiate there even in my 
 walks. So, in the holidays, I have an absolute craving for 
 the enjoyment of nature, and this country suits me better 
 than any thing else, because we can be all together, be- 
 cause we can enjoy the society, and because I can do 
 
 something in the way of work besides 
 
 Two things press upon me unabatedly — my wish for a 
 Bible, such as I have spoken of before ; and my wish for 
 something systematic for the instruction of the poor. In 
 my particular - case, undoubtedly, the Stamp duties are an 
 evil ; for I still think, that a newspaper alone can help to 
 cure the evil which newspapers have done and are doing ; 
 the events of the day are a definite subject, to which in- 
 struction can be attached in the best possible manner ; the 
 Penny and Saturday Magazines are all ramble-scramble. 
 I think often of a Warwickshire Magazine, to appear 
 monthly, and so escape the Stamp Duties, whilst events at 
 a month's end are still fresh enough to interest. We 
 ought to have, in Birmingham and Coventry, good and 
 able men enough, and with sufficient variety of knowledge 
 for such a work. But between the want of Mill and the 
 want of power, the ten who were vainly sought to save 
 Sodom, will be as vainly sought for now.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 307 
 
 XLII. TO REV. F. TUCKER. 
 [On his leaving England for India, as a Missionary.] 
 
 February, 1833. 
 
 [After speaking of the differences of tastes and habits 
 which had interfered with their having common sub- 
 jects of interest.] It is ray joy to think that there 
 
 will be a day when these things will all vanish in the 
 intense consciousness of what we both have in common. 
 I owe you much more than I can well pay, indeed, for 
 your influence on my mind and character in early life. 
 The freshness of our Oxford life is continually present 
 with me, and especially of the latter part of it. How well 
 I recollect when you and Cornish did duty for your first 
 time at Begbrooke and Yarnton, and when we had one of 
 our last skirmishes together in a walk to Garsington in 
 March, 1819. All that period was working for me con- 
 stant good, and how delightful is it to have our University 
 recollections so free from the fever of intellectual com- 
 petition or parties or jealousies of any kind whatever. 
 I love also to think of our happy meeting in later life, 
 when Cornish and I, with our wives and children, were 
 with you at Mailing, in 18-23. 
 
 Mean time, even in a temporal point of view, 
 
 you are going from what bids fair, I fear, to deserve 
 the name of a City of Destruction. The state of Europe 
 is indeed fearful; and that of England, I verily think, 
 worst of all. What is coming, none can foresee, but 
 every symptom is alarming; above all, the extraordinary 
 dearth <>f men professing to act in the fear of God, and 
 not being fanatics; as parties, the ffigh Churchmen, the 
 Evangelicals, and the Dissenters seem tome almost equally 
 
 bad, and how many good men can be found who do not 
 belong to one of them ? 
 
 Your godson is now turned often yean old, aitd I think 
 of keeping him at home some time to familiarize him with 
 
 home feelings I am sure that we shall have your 
 
 X 2
 
 308 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 prayers for his bringing forth fmit nnto life eternal 
 
 And now farewell, my dear friend ; may God be with you 
 always through Jesus Christ, and may He bless all your 
 works to His glory and your own salvation. You will 
 carry with you, as long as you live, my most affectionate 
 and grateful remembrances, and my earnest wishes for all 
 good to you, temporal and spiritual. 
 
 XLIIL TO AN OLD PUPIL AT OXFORD. (a.) 
 
 February 25, 1833. 
 
 It always grieves me to hear that a man does not like 
 Oxford. I was so happy there myself, and above all so 
 happy in my friends, that its associations to my mind are 
 purely delightful. But, of course, in this respect, every thing 
 depends upon the society you fall into. If this be un- 
 congenial, the place can have no other attractions than 
 those of a town full of good libraries 
 
 The more we are destitute of opportunities for indulging 
 our feelings, as is the case when we live in uncongenial 
 society, the more we are apt to crisp and harden our out- 
 ward manner to save our real feelings from exposure. Thus 
 I believe that some of the most delicate-minded men get 
 to appear actually coarse from their unsuccessful efforts to 
 mask their real nature. And I have known men disagree- 
 ably forward from their shyness. But I doubt whether a 
 man does not suffer from a habit of self-constraint, and 
 whether his feelings do not become really, as well as appa- 
 rently, chilled. It is an immense blessing to be perfectly 
 callous to ridicule ; or, which comes to the same thing, to 
 be conscious thoroughly that what we have in us of noble 
 and delicate is not ridiculous to any but fools, and that, if 
 fools will laugh, wise men will do well to let them. 
 
 I shall really be very glad to hear from you at any time, 
 and I will write to the best of my power on any subject on 
 which you want to know my opinion. As for any thing 
 more, I believe that the one great lesson for us all is, that
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 309 
 
 we should daily pray for an "increase- of faith.'" Their is 
 enough of iniquity abounding to make our love in danger of 
 waxing cold ; it is well said therefore, " Let not your heart 
 be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me." By 
 which I understand that it is not so much general notions 
 of Providence which are our best support, but a sense of 
 the personal interest, if 1 may so speak, taken in our wel- 
 fare by Him who died for us and rose again. May His 
 Spirit strengthen us to do His will, and to bear it, in 
 power, in love, and in wisdom. God bless you. 
 
 XLIV. TO THE REV. DU. HAWKINS. 
 
 Rugby, March 5, 1833. 
 
 [After speaking of a parcel sent to him.] I will not con- 
 ceal, however, that my motive in writing to you immediately 
 is to notice what you say of my pamphlet on Church Re- 
 form. I did not send it you for two reasons ; first, be- 
 cause I feared that you would not like it ; secondly, be- 
 cause a pamphlet in general is not worth the carriage. 
 And I should be ashamed of myself if 1 were annoyed by - 
 your expressing your total disagreement with its principles 
 or with its conclusions. But I do protest most strongly 
 against your charge of writing " with haste and without con- 
 sideration ; " of writing " on subjects which I have not stu- 
 died and do not understand," and " which are not within my 
 proper province." You cannot possibly know that 1 wrote 
 in haste, or that I have not studied the question ; and J 
 think, however much I might differ from any opinion ofj ours, 
 I should scarcely venture to sa\ that you had written on 
 what you did not understand. I regret exceedingly the 
 
 use of this kind of language in Oxford; because 
 
 it seems to me to indicate a temper, not the best suited 
 either to the state of knowledge <>r of feeling in other 
 parts of the kingdom. It so happens that the subject of 
 conformity, of communion, of the relations of Church and 
 State, of Church Government, &C., is one which I have 

 
 310 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 studied more than any other which I could name. I have 
 read very largely about it, and thought about it habitually 
 for several years, and I must say, that, sixteen or seven- 
 teen years ago, I had read enough of what were called 
 orthodox books upon such matters, to be satisfied of their 
 shallowness and confusion. I do not quarrel with you for 
 coming to a different conclusion, but I do utterly deny that 
 you are entitled to tax me with not being just as qualified 
 as yourself to form a conclusion. I do not know that it 
 gives me much pain, when my friends write what I do not 
 like ; for so long as I believe them to be honest, I do not 
 think that they will be the worse for it ; but assuredly my 
 convictions of the utter falsehood and mischievous ten- 
 dency of their opinions are quite as strong as theirs can be 
 of mine ; though I do not expect to convert them to my 
 own views for many reasons. As to the pamphlet, I am 
 now writing a Postscript for the fourth edition of it, with 
 some quotations in justification of some of my positions. 
 
 If any respectable man of my own age chooses to 
 
 attack my principles, I am perfectly ready to meet him, 
 and he shall see at any rate whether I have studied the 
 ' question or no. I wish that I knew as much about Thucy- 
 dides, which you think that I do understand. 
 
 I hope that I have expressed myself clearly. I complain 
 merely of the charge of writing hastily on a subject which 
 I have not studied. As a matter of fact, it is most oppo- 
 site to the truth. But if you say that you tliink I have 
 studied it to very bad purpose, and am all wrong about it, 
 I have only to say, that I think differently ; but I should 
 not in the least complain of your giving me your own 
 opinion in the plainest terms that you chose. 
 
 XLV. TO THE SAME. 
 
 Rugby, March 10, 1833. 
 I thank you entirely for your last letter ; it is at once 
 kind and manly, and I much value your notice of parti-
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. .Til 
 
 cular points in the Pamphlet which you think wrong. It 
 is very true that it was written hastily, i.e. penned, for 
 the time was short; but it is no less true that the matter 
 of it, as far as its general principles arc concerned, had 
 been thought over in my mind again and again. In fact, 
 my difficulty was how to write sufficiently briefly, for 1 
 have matter enough to fill a volume ; and some of the 
 propositions, which 1 have heard objected to, as thrown 
 out at random, are to my own mind the results of a very 
 full consideration of the case ; although I have contented 
 myself with putting down the conclusion, and omitting the 
 premises. [Alter answering a question of history.] 1 fear, 
 indeed, that our differences of opinion on many points of 
 which 1 have written must be exceedingly wide. I am 
 conscious that I have a great deal to learn ; and, if] live 
 ten years more, I hope I shall be wiser than I am now. 
 Still I am not a boy, nor do I believe that any one of my 
 friends has arrived at his opinions with more deliberation 
 and deeper thought than I have at mine. And you should 
 remember, that if many of my notions indicate in your 
 judgment an imperfect acquaintance with the subj< ct, this 
 is exactly the impression which the opposite notions leave 
 on my mind; and, as I know it to be quite possible that a 
 conclusion, which seems to me mere folly and ignorance, 
 may reallyreston some proof, of which I am wholly ignor- 
 ant, and which to the writer's mind may have been so 
 familiar from long habit as to seem quite superfluous to 
 be stated— so it is equally possible, that what appears folly 
 or ignorance to you, may also be justified by a view of the 
 question which has escaped TOUT notice, and which I 
 
 may happen to have hit upon. 
 
 Undoubtedly I should think it wrong to write on any 
 subject, and much more such a subject as the Church, 
 without having considered it. It can hardh be an hotU si 
 opinion, if it be expressed confidently, without a con- 
 sciousness of having sufficient reason for it. And though 
 
 on subjects within the reach of our faculties, sufficient
 
 312 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 consideration, in the strict sense, must preclude error, 
 (for nil error must arise either from some premises 
 being unknown, or from some faulty conclusion being 
 derived from those which we do know,) yet of course for 
 our moral justification, it is sufficient that we have con- 
 sidered it as well as we could, and so, that we seem to 
 have a competent understanding of it compared with other 
 men — to be able to communicate some truth to others, 
 while we receive truths from them in return. 
 
 But my main object in writing was to thank you for 
 your letter, and to assure you that my feeling of anger is 
 quite subsided, if anger it could be called. Yet I think I 
 had a right to complain of the tone of decided condemn- 
 ation which ran through your first letter, assuming that 
 I had written without reflection and without study, be- 
 cause my notions were different from yours ; and I think 
 that, had I applied similar expressions to any work of 
 yours, you would have been annoyed as much as I was, 
 and have thought that I had judged you rather unfairly. 
 But enough of this : and I will only hope that my next 
 work, if ever I live to write another, may please you 
 better. 
 
 XLVI. TO WILLIAM SMITH, ESQ., FORMERLY M.P. FOR NORWICH. 
 
 [In answer to a letter on the subject of his pamphlet, particularly objecting to 
 his making it essential to those included in his scheme of comprehension, that 
 they should address Christ as an object of worship.] 
 
 Rugby, March 9, 1833. 
 
 I trust you will not ascribe it to neglect, that I have not 
 returned an earlier answer to your letter. My time has 
 been very much occupied, and I did not wish to write, till 
 I could command leisure to write as fully as the purport 
 and tone of your letter required. 
 
 I cannot be mistaken, I think, in concluding that I have 
 the honour of addressing Mr. Smith, who was so long the 
 Member for Norwich, and whose name must be perfectly
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 313 
 
 familiar to any one who has been accustomed to follow the 
 proceedings of Parliament. 
 
 The passage in my Pamphlet to which you allude is ex- 
 pressly limited to the case of "the Unitarians preserving 
 exactly their present character;" that is, as appears by a 
 comparison with what follows, (p. 3b',) their including 
 many who "call themselves Unitarians, because the name 
 of unbeliever is not yet thought creditable." And these 
 persons are expressly distinguished from those other Uni- 
 tarians whom I speak of " as really Christians." In giving 
 or withholding the title of Christian, I was much more 
 influenced by the spirit and temper of the parties alluded 
 to than by their doctrinal opinions. For instance, my 
 dislike to the works of the late Mr. Belsham arises more 
 from what appears to me their totally unchristian tone, 
 meaning particularly their want of that devotion, rever- 
 ence, love of holiness, and dread of sin, which breathes 
 through the Apostolical writings, than from the mere 
 opinions contained in them, utterly erroneous as 1 believe 
 them to be. And this was my reason for laving particular 
 stress on the worship of Christ; because it appears to me 
 that the feelings with which we regard Him art- of much 
 greater importance, than such metaphysical questions 
 as those between Homoousians and Homoiousians, or 
 even than the question of His humanity or proper divinity. 
 
 My great objection to Unitarianism in its present form 
 in England, where it is professed sincerely, is that it 
 makes Christ virtually dead. Our relation to Him is past 
 instead of present ; and the result is notorious, that in- 
 stead of doing every thing in the name of the Lord .lesus, 
 the lan guage of Unitarians loses this peculiarly Christian 
 character, and assimilates to that of mere I Vise-: ' k Pro- 
 vidence," "the Supreme Being," and other Buch expres- 
 sions taking the place of "God, the Father of our Lord 
 .Jesus Christ," "the Lord," &C, which other Christians, 
 like the Apostles, have found at once most natural to 
 them, and most delightful. for my own part, consider-
 
 314 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 ing one great object of God's revealing Himself in the 
 Person of Christ to be the furnishing us with an object 
 of worship which we could at once love and understand ; 
 or, in other words, the supplying safely and wholesomely 
 that want in human nature, which has shown itself in false 
 religions, in " making gods after our own devices," it does 
 seem to me to be forfeiting the peculiar benefits thus 
 offered, if we persist in attempting to approach to God 
 in His own incomprehensible essence, which as no man 
 hath seen or can see, so no man can conceive it. And, 
 while I am most ready to allow the provoking and most 
 ill-judged language in which the truth, as I hold it to be, 
 respecting God has been expressed by Trinitarians, so, on 
 the other hand, I am inclined to think that Unitarians 
 have deceived themselves by fancying that they could 
 understand the notion of one God any better than that of 
 God in Christ : whereas, it seems to me, that it is only of 
 God in Christ that I can in my present state of being 
 conceive any thing at all. To know God the Father, that 
 is, God as He is in Himself, in His to us incomprehensible 
 essence, seems the great and most blessed promise re- 
 served for us when this mortal shall have put on immor- 
 tality. 
 
 You will forgive me for writing in this language ; but I 
 could not otherwise well express what it was, which I con- 
 sidered such a departure from the spirit of Christianity in 
 modern Unitarianism. Will you forgive me also for ex- 
 pressing my belief and fervent hope, that if we could get 
 rid of the Athanasian Creed, and of some other instances 
 of what I would call the technical language of Trinita- 
 rianism, many good Unitarians would have a stumbling- 
 block removed out of their path, and would join their 
 fellow Christians in bowing the knee to Him who is Lord 
 both of the dead and the living. 
 
 But, whatever they may think of His nature, I never 
 meant to deny the name of Christian to those who truly 
 love and fear Him ; and though I think it is the tendency
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 315 
 
 of Unitarianism to lessen this love and fear, yet I doubt 
 not that many Unitarians feel it notwithstanding, and thus 
 He is their Saviour, and they are His people. 
 
 XLVII. TO THE CHEVAUEH BUN8BN. 
 
 Rugby, May <). l.^ii. 
 
 I thank you most heartily for two most delightful letters. 
 They both make me feel more ardently the wish that 1 
 eould see you onec again, and talk over instead of write 
 the many important subjects which interest us both, and 
 not us only, but all the world 
 
 First, as to our politics. I detest as cordially as you can 
 do the party of the " Movement," both in France and Eng- 
 land. I detest Jacobinism in its root and in its branches, 
 with all that godless Utilitarianism, which is its favourite 
 aspect at this moment in England. Nothing within m\ 
 knowledge is more utterly wicked than the party of . . . . 
 men who, fairly and literally, as I fear, blaspheme not 
 the Son of Man, but the Spirit of God ; they hate Christ, 
 because He is of heaven and they arc of evil. 
 
 For the more vulgar form of our popular party, the total 
 ignorance of, and indifference to, all principle; the mere 
 money-getting and money-saving selfishness which cries 
 aloud for cited}) government, making, as it wore, auio rayaOov 
 to consist in cheapness — my feeling is one of extreme con- 
 tempt and disgust. My only difference from you, so far 
 as I see, regards our anti-reformers, or rather the Tory 
 party in general in England. Now, undoubtedly, some of 
 the very best and wisest men in the countrj have on the 
 Reform question joined this party, but they are as Falk- 
 land was at Oxford — had their party triumphed, they 
 would have been the first to lament the \iet<>r\ ; for, not 
 
 they would ha\c influenced the measures carried into 
 
 effect — but the worst and most selfish part of OUT aristo- 
 cracy, with the coarsest and most profligate of' their de-
 
 310 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 pendents, men like the Hortensii, and Lentuli, and Claudii 
 of the Roman Civil wars, who thwarted Pompey, insulted 
 Cicero, and ground down the provinces with their inso- 
 lence and tyranny ; men so hateful and so contemptible, 
 that I verily believe that the victory of Caesar, nay, even 
 of Augustus, was a less evil to the human race than would 
 have resulted from the triumph of the aristocracy. 
 
 And, as I feel that, of the two besetting sins of human 
 nature, selfish neglect and selfish agitation, the former is the 
 more common, and has in the long run done far more harm 
 than the latter, although the outbreaks of the latter, while 
 they last, are of a far more atrocious character ; so I have 
 in a manner vowed to myself, and prayed that, with God's 
 blessing,no excesses of popidarwickedness, though I should 
 be myself, as I expect, the victim of them, no temporary 
 evils produced by revolution, shall ever make me forget 
 the wickedness of Toryism, — of that spirit which has 
 throughout the long experience of all history continually 
 
 thwarted the cause of God and goodness and 
 
 has gone on abusing its opportunities, and heaping up 
 wrath by a long series of selfish neglect against the day of 
 wrath and judgment. 
 
 Again, I feel that while I agree with you wholly and 
 most heartily in my abhorrence of the spirit of 1789, of the 
 American war, of the French Economistes, and of the 
 English Whigs of the latter part of the seventeenth century 
 and beginning of the eighteenth, yet I have always been 
 imable to sympathize with what you call " the historical 
 liberty " which grew out of the system of the middle ages. 
 For, not to speak of the unhappy extinction of that liberty 
 in many countries of Europe, even in England it showed 
 itself to have been more the child of accident than of prin- 
 ciple ; and, throughout the momentous period of the 
 eighteenth century, this character of it was fatally deve- 
 loped. For, not ascending to general principles, it fore- 
 saw not the evil, till it became too mature to be remedied, 
 and the state of the poor and that of the Church are me-
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 317 
 
 lancholy proofs of the folly of what is called " letting well 
 alone;" which, not watching for symptoms, nor endeavour- 
 ing to meet the coming danger, allows the fuel of disease to 
 accumulate in the unhealthy body, till, at last, the sickn< sa 
 strikes it with the suddenness and malignity of an incura- 
 ble pestilence. But, when the cup is nearly full and revo- 
 lutions are abroad, it is a sign infallible that the old state 
 of things is ready to vanish away. Its race is run, and do 
 human power can preserve it. But, by attempting to pre- 
 serve it, you derange the process of the new birth which 
 must succeed it ; and whilst the old perishes in spite of 
 your efforts, you get a monstrous and misshapen creature 
 in its place; when, had the birth been quieth effected, its 
 proportions might have been better, and its inward consti- 
 tution soimder and less irritable. 
 
 What our birth in England is likely to end in, is indeed 
 a hard question. I believe that our only chance is in the 
 stability of the present ministers. I am well aware of their 
 faults ; but still they keep out the Tories and the Radicals, 
 the Red Jacobins of 1704 and the White Jacobins of 17!>">, 
 or of Naples in 1799, — alike detestable. I do not think that 
 you can fully judge of what the ascendancy of the Tories 
 is; it is not the Duke of "Wellington or Sir R. Peel who 
 would do harm, but the base party that they would bring 
 
 in in their train, and all the tribe of selfish and 
 
 ignorant lords and country squires and clergymen, who 
 would irritate the feelings of the people to madness. 
 
 If you see my Pamphlet and Postscript, you will 
 
 see that I have kept clear of the mere secular questions of 
 tithes and pluralities, and have argued for a comprehension 
 on higher grounds. I dislike Articles because they re p res ent 
 truth untruly, that is, in an unedifying manner, and thus 
 robbed of its living truth, whilst it retains its mere literal 
 form ; whereas the same truth, embodied in | >r;i\ em, or con- 
 fessions, or even in catechisms, becomes more Christian, just 
 in proportion as it is less theological. Hut I tear that our 
 reforms, instead of labouring to unite the Dissenters with
 
 318 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 the Church, will confirm their separate existence by re- 
 lieving them from all which they now complain of as a 
 burden. And continuing distinct from the Church, will 
 they not labour to effect its overthrow, till they bring us 
 quite to the American platform ? 
 
 XLVIII. TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN. 
 
 Rugby, May 21, 1833. 
 It is painful to think that these exagger- 
 ations, in too many instances, cannot be innocent ; in Ox- 
 ford there is an absolute spyaarypiov -^ev^uv, whose activity 
 
 is surprising I do hope, that we shall see you 
 
 all next month. When I am not so strong as usual, I feel 
 the vexation of the school more than I could wish to do. 
 And I have also been annoyed at the feeling ex- 
 cited in some of my old friends by my Pamphlet, and by 
 the constant and persevering falsehoods which are circu- 
 lated concerning my opinions and my practice 
 
 Thucydides creeps on slowly, and nothing else, save my 
 school work, gets on at all. I do confess, that I feel now 
 more anxious than I used to do to get time to write, and 
 especially to write history. But this will not be. 
 
 XLIX. TO REV. J. HEARN. 
 
 Rugby, May 29, 1833. 
 
 I do not know whether you have ever felt the 
 
 intense difficulty of expressing in any other language the 
 impression, which the Scripture statement of any great 
 doctrine has left on your own mind. It has grieved me 
 much to find that some of my own friends, whilst they ac- 
 quit me of any such intention, consider the tendency of 
 my Church Reform plan as latitudinarian in point of doc- 
 trine. Now my belief is, that it would have precisely the 
 contrary effect, and would tend ultimately to a much 
 greater unity and strictness in true doctrine ; that is to say,
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 319 
 
 in those views of God's dealings and dispositions towards 
 ns, and of our consequent duties towards him, which con- 
 stitute, I imagine, the essence of the Gospel Revelation. 
 Now, what I want is, to abstract from what is commonly 
 called doctrine every thing which is not of this kind; and 
 secondly, for what is of this kind, to present it only so far 
 forth as it is so, dropping all deductions which we conceive 
 may be drawn from it, regarded as a naked truth, hut 
 which cannot be drawn from it, when regarded as a Divine 
 practical lesson. 
 
 For instance, it is common to derive from our Lord's 
 words to Nicodemus, "Except a man be born of water," &C, 
 an universal proposition, "No being can be saved ordinarily 
 without baptism ;" and then to prove the fitness of baptizing 
 infants, for this reason, as necessary out of charity t<> them ; 
 wdiereas our Lord's words are surely only for those who 
 can understand them. Take any person with the use of his 
 faculties, and therefore the consciousness of sin in his own 
 heart, and say to him, that " Except he lie born again," 
 &c, and then you apply Christ's word in its true meaning, 
 to arouse men's consciences, and make them see that their 
 evil and corrupt nature can of itself end only in evil, lint 
 when we apply it universally as an abstract truth, and form 
 conclusions from it, those conclusions are frequently either 
 uncharitable or superstitious, or both. It was uncharitable 
 when men argued, though correctly enough as to logic, 
 that, if no man could be saved without baptism, all the 
 heathen must have perished ; and it was uncharitable and 
 superstitious too, to argue, as Cranmer, that unbaptized 
 infants must perish ; but that, if baptized, they were in- 
 stantly safe. Now, 1 hold it to be a most certain rule of 
 
 interpreting Scripture, that it never Bpeaks ©/"persons, when 
 
 there is a physical impossibility of its speaking /<> tin in ; 
 but, so soon as the mind opens and understands the word, 
 then the word belongs to it, and then the truth is his in ; M ] 
 its fulness; that "except he he born again, he cannot see 
 the kingdom of God." So the heathen who died before the
 
 320 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 word was spoken, and in whose land it lias never been 
 preached, are dead to the word, — it concerns not them at 
 all ; but the moment it can reach them, then it is theirs 
 and for them : and we are bound to spread it, not from 
 general considerations of their fate without it, but because 
 Christ has commanded us to spread it, and because we 
 see that Christianity has the promise of both worlds, rais- 
 ing men's nature, and fitting them for communion with 
 God hereafter, — revealing Him in His Son. Now, apply 
 this rule to all the Scriptures, and ask at every passage, 
 not " What follows from this as a general truth ? " — but 
 " What is the exact lesson or impression which it was in- 
 tended to convey ? — what faults was it designed to cor- 
 rect ? — what good feelings to encourage ? " Our Lord saj s, 
 " God is a Spirit : " now if we make conclusions from this 
 metaphysically, we may, for aught I know, run into all 
 kinds of extravagance, because we neither know what God 
 is, nor what Spirit is ; but if we take our Lord's conclusion, 
 " Therefore we should worship Him in spirit and in truth ;" 
 i. e., not with outward forms, and still less, with evil pas- 
 sions and practices, — then it is full of truth, and wisdom, 
 and goodness. I have filled my paper, and yet perhaps 
 have not fully developed my meaning ; but you will con- 
 nect it perhaps with my dislike of Articles, because their 
 truth is always expressed abstractedly and theoretically, 
 and my preference of a Liturgy as a bond of union, be- 
 cause there it assumes a practical shape, as it is meant in 
 Scripture to be taken. 
 
 L. TO HIS SISTER, LADY CAVAN, 
 (In answer to a question on Dr. VThately's "Thoughts on the Sabbath.") 
 
 Rugby, June 11, 1833. 
 
 My own notions about the matter would take 
 
 up rather too much room, 1 fear, to come in at the end of 
 my paper. But my conclusion is, that, whilst St. Paul on 
 the one hand would have been utterly shocked, could he
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 321 
 
 have foreseen that eighteen hundred years after Christianity 
 
 had been in the world, such an institution as the Sabbath 
 would have been still needed; yet, seeing that it is still 
 needed, the obligation of the old commandment is still 
 binding in the spirit of it : that is, that we should use one 
 day in seven, as a sort of especial reminder of our duties, 
 and a relieving ourselves from the overpressure of worldly 
 things, which daily life brings with it. lint our Sunday is 
 the beginning of the week, not the end — a day of prepara- 
 tion and strengthening for the week to come, and not of 
 rest for the past; and in this sense the old Christians kept 
 it, because it was the day on which God began his work of 
 creation; so little did they think that they had any tiling 
 to do with the old Jewish Sabbath. You will see, also, by 
 our common Catechism, that " the duty towards God," 
 which is expressly given as a summary of the four first 
 commandments to us, as Christians, says not one word 
 about the Sabbath, but simply about loving God, wor- 
 shipping him, and serving him truly all the days of our 
 life. It is not that we may pick and choose what com- 
 mandments we like to obey, but, as all the commandments 
 have no force upon us as such, — that ix, as positive and 
 literal commands addressed to ourselves, — it is onlj a qm s- 
 tion how far each commandment is applicable to us, — 
 that is, how far we are in the same circumstances with 
 those to whom it was given. Xow, in respect to the great 
 moral commands of worshipping and honouring God, 
 honouring parents, abstaining from murder, &c.,- as these 
 are equally applicable to all times and all states of society, 
 they are equally binding upon all men, not as ha\ bag 1m en 
 some of the commandments given to the. lews, but as being 
 part of God's eternal and universal law, lor all His reason- 
 able creatures to obey. And here, no doubt, there h .< 
 serious responsibility for every one to determine how tar 
 what he reads in the Bible concerns hiins.lt'; and no 
 doubt, also, that, if a man chooses to cheat his conscience 
 in such a matter, he might do it easily ; but the responsi- 
 VOL. I. Y
 
 3*22 LIFE OF I)R. ARNOLD. 
 
 bility is one which he cannot get rid of, because we see 
 that parts of the Bible are not addressed directly to us ; 
 and thus we must decide what is addressed to us and what 
 is not ; and if we decide dishonestly, for the sake of in- 
 indulging any evil inclination, we do but double our 
 guilt. 3 
 
 LI. TO MR. SERGEANT COLERIDGE. 
 
 Rugby, June 12, 1833. 
 
 Our Westmoreland house is rising from its 
 
 foundations, and I hope rearing itself tolerably " in auras 
 aethereas." It looks right into the bosom of Fairfield, — a 
 noble mountain, which sends down two long arms into the 
 valley, and keeps the clouds reposing between them, while 
 he looks down on them composedly with hi* quiet brow ; 
 and the Rotha, " purior electro," winds round our fields, 
 just under the house. Behind, we run up to the top of 
 Loughrigg, and we have a mountain pasture, in a basin on 
 the summit of the ridge, the very image of those " Saltus" 
 on Cithseron, where CEdipus was found by the Corinthian 
 shepherd. The Wordsworths' friendship, for so I may 
 call it, is certainly one of the greatest delights of Fox 
 How, — the name of my x®p l0V -> — ana * their kindness in ar- 
 ranging every thing in our absence has been very great. 
 Mean time, till our own house is ready, which cannot be 
 till next siunmer, we have taken a furnished house, at the 
 head of Grasmere, on a little shoulder of the mountain of 
 Silver How, between the lake on one side, and Easedale, 
 the most delicious of vales, on the other 
 
 a The principle here laid down, is given more at length in the 
 Essay on the Right Interpretation of Scripture, at the end of 
 the second volume of his Sermons ; and also in the Sermon on the 
 Lord's Dav, in the third volume.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 323 
 
 LII. TO A PUPIL, 
 
 (Who had written, with much anxiety, to know whether he had offended hiui, 
 a9 he had thought his mannei changed towards him.) 
 
 Grasinere, July 15, 1833. 
 
 The other part of jour letter at once gratified 
 
 and pained me. I was not aware of any thing in my man- 
 ner to you that could imply disapprobation ; and certainly 
 it was not intended to do bo. Yet it is true that I had 
 observed, with some pain, what Beemed to me indications of 
 
 a want of enthusiasm, in the good sense of the word, of a 
 moral sense and feeling corresponding to what 1 knew was 
 your intellectual activity. I did not observe any tiling 
 amounting to a sneering spirit ; but there seemed to 
 me a coldness on religious matters, which made me fear 
 lest it should change to sneering, as your understanding 
 became more vigorous : for this is the natural fault of the 
 undue predominance of the mere intellect, unaccompanied 
 by a corresponding growth and liveliness of the moral 
 affections, particularly that of admiration and love of moral 
 excellence, just as superstition arises, where it is honest, 
 from the undue predominance of the affections, without 
 the strengthening power of the intellect advancing in pro- 
 portion. This was the whole amount of my feeling with 
 respect to you, and which has nothing to do with your 
 conduct in school matters. I should have taken an op- 
 portunity of speaking to you about the state of your mind, 
 had you not led me now to mention it. Possibly my im- 
 pression may be wrong, and indeed it has been created by 
 very trifling circumstances; but 1 am always keenly alive, 
 on this point, to the slightest indications, because it is the 
 besetting danger of an active mind — a much more Berious 
 one, I think, than the temptation to mere personal vanity. 
 
 1 must again say, most expressly, that I observed nothing 
 more, than an apparent want of lively moral susceptibility. 
 Your answers on religious subjects were always serious and 
 sensible, and seemed to me quite sincere; F onlj feared 
 that thev proceeded, perhaps too exclusively, from an in- 
 
 v 2
 
 324 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 tcllcctual perception of truth, without a sufficient love and 
 admiration for goodness. I hold the lines, " nil admirari," 
 &c, to be as utterly false as any moral sentiment ever 
 uttered. Intense admiration is necessary to our highest 
 pci lection, and we have an object in the Gospel, for which 
 it may be felt to the utmost, without any fear lest the most 
 critical intellect should tax us justly with unworthy idol- 
 atry. But I am as little inclined as any one to make an 
 idol out of any human virtue, or human wisdom. 
 
 LHI. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ. 
 
 Rugby, June 24, 1833. 
 An ordinary letter written to me when yours was, would 
 have been answered some time since, but I do not like to 
 write to you when I have no leisure to write at length. 
 Most truly do I thank you both for your affectionate re- 
 collection of my birthday, and for coupling it in your 
 mind with the 4th of April a . May my second birthday 
 be as blessed to me, as the 20th of August, I doubt not, 
 
 has been to her All writings which state the truth, 
 
 must contain things winch, taken nakedly and without their 
 balancing truths, may serve the purposes of either party, 
 because no party is altogether wrong. But I have no 
 reason to think that my Church Reform Pamphlet has 
 served the purposes of the antichristian party in any 
 way, it being hardly possible to extract a passage which 
 they would like. The High Church party are offended 
 enough, and so are the Unitarians, but I do not see that 
 either make a cat's paw of me The Bishop con- 
 firms here on Saturday, and I have had and have still a 
 great deal to do in examining the boys for it. Indeed, the 
 work is full heavy just now, but the fry are learning 
 cricket, and we play nice matches sometimes, to my great 
 refreshment God bless you and yours 
 
 ■ Alluding to liis sister's death.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 325 
 
 LIV. TO REV. AUGUSTUS HAKE. 
 (In answer to objections to his Pamphlet.) 
 
 Orasmeie, August 3, 1833. 
 
 And now I feel that to reply to your letter as I 
 
 could wish, would require a volume. You will say, win- 
 was not the volume published before, or with the pam- 
 phlet? To which 1 answer that, first, it would probably 
 not have been read, and secondly, 1 was not prepared to 
 find men so startled at principles, which have long ap- 
 peared to me to follow necessarily from a careful study of 
 the New Testament. Be assured, however, that, whether 
 mistakenly or not, 1 fully believe that such a plan as 1 
 have proposed, taken altogether, would lead to a nunc 
 complete representation of Scripture truth in our forms of 
 worship and preaching than we have ever yet attained to ; 
 not, certainly, if we were only to cut away Articles, and 
 alter the Liturgy — then the effect might be latitiidinarian — 
 but if, whilst relaxing the theoretical bond, we were to 
 tighten the practical one by amending the government and 
 constitution of the Church, then 1 do believe that the fruit 
 would be Christian union, by which I certainly do not 
 mean an agreement in believing nothing, or as little as we 
 can. Mean time, I wish to remind yon that one of St. 
 Paul's favourite notions of heresy is "a doting about 
 strifes of words." One side may he right in such a strife, 
 and the other wrong, but both are heretical as to Christ- 
 ianity, because they lead men's minds away from the love 
 of God and of Christ, to questions essentially tempting to 
 the intellect, and which tend to no profit towards godli- 
 ness. And again, I think you will find that all the "false 
 doctrines" spoken of by the Apostles, are doctrines of 
 sheer wickedness ; that their counterpart in modem tunes 
 is to be found in the Anabaptists of Minister, (.r the Fifth 
 monarchy men, or in mere secular High Churchmen, or 
 hypocritical Evangelicals, — in those who make Christianity 
 minister to lust, or to covetousness, or to ambition ; not in
 
 32G LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 those who Interpret Seripture to the best of their con- 
 science and ability, be their interpretation ever so erro- 
 neous. 
 
 LV. TO REV. G. CORNISH. 
 
 Allan Bank, Grasmcre, August 18, 1833. 
 
 I have had a good deal of worry from 
 
 the party spirit of the neighbourhood, who in the first 
 place have no notion of what my opinions are, and in the 
 next place cannot believe that I do not teach the boys 
 Junius and the Edinburgh Review, at the least, if not 
 Cobbett and the Examiner. But this is an evil which 
 flesh is heir to, if flesh, at least, will write as I have done. 
 I am sony that you do not like the Pamphlet, for I am 
 myself daily more and more convinced of its truth. I 
 will not answer for its practicability ; when the patient is at 
 his last gasp, the dose may come too late, but still it is his 
 only chance ; he may die of the doctor ; he must die of 
 the disease. I fear that nothing can save us from falling 
 into the American system, which will well show us the in- 
 herent evil of our Protestantism, each man quarrelling 
 with his neighbour for a word, and all discarding so much 
 of the beauty and solemnity, and visible power of the 
 Gospel, that in common minds, where its spiritual power is 
 not very great, the result is like the savourless salt, the 
 vilest thing in the world. I would join with all those who 
 love Christ and pray to Him ; who regard him not as dead, 
 but as living. [Tins part of the letter has been accidentally 
 torn away : the substance of it seems to have been the same 
 
 as that of Letters XLVI. and LIV.] Make the 
 
 [Church a] living and active society, like that of the first 
 Christians, [and then] differences of opinion will either cease 
 or will signify nothing. [Look] through the Epistles, and 
 you will find nothing there condemned as [heresy] but what 
 was mere wickedness ; if you consider the real nature and 
 connexion of the tenets condemned. For such differ-
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 327 
 
 ences of opinion as exist amongst Christians now, the 
 14th chapter of the Romans is the applicable lesson — not 
 such passages as Titus iii. 10, or 2 John 10, 11, or Jude 3, 
 (that much abused verse !) or 1!) or 2$. There is one ana- 
 thema, which is indeed holy and just, and most profitable 
 for ourselves as well as for others, ;1 Corinth. \\i. 2-2,) but 
 
 this is not the anathema of a fond theology Lo ! 1 
 
 have written you almost another Pamphlet, instead of telling 
 you of my wife and the fry, who for more than five weeks 
 have been revelling amongst the mountains. But as far 
 as scenery goes, I would rather have heath and blue hills 
 all the year, than mountains for three months, and War- 
 wickshire for nine, with no hills, either blue or brown, no 
 heath, no woods, no clear streams, no wide plains for 
 lights and shades to play over, nay, no banks for flowers 
 to grow upon, but one monotonous undulation of green 
 fields and hedges, and very fat cattle, lint we have each 
 our own work, and our own enjoyments, and I am sure 
 that I have more than I can ever be sufficiently thank- 
 ful for. 
 
 l.VI. TO RKV. JULIUS HARK. 
 
 ftngby, October 7, 1833. 
 
 In Italy you met Bunsen, and can now sym- 
 pathize with the all but idolatry with which 1 regard him. 
 So beautifully good, so wise, and so noble-minded ! I do 
 not believe thai any man can have a deeper interest in 
 Rome than I have, yet I envy you nothing so much in 
 your last winter's slay there, as your continued intercourse 
 with Bunsen. It is since I saw you that 1 have been de- 
 vouring with the most intense admiration the third \ olume 
 of Niebuhr. The clearness and comprehensiveness of all 
 his military details is a new feature in that wonderful mind, 
 and how inimitably beautiful is that brief account of Terni. 
 You will not, I trust, misinterpret me, when I say that 
 this third volume set me at work again in earnest, on the 
 Roman History, last summer. Is to any man's being a fit
 
 328 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 contimuitor of Niebuhr, that is absurd ; but I have at least 
 the qualification of an unbounded veneration for what he 
 has done, and, as my name is mentioned in his book, I 
 should like to try to embody, in a continuation of the Ro- 
 man History, the thoughts and notions which 1 have learnt 
 from him. Perhaps I may trouble you with a letter on 
 this subject, asking, as I have often done before, for in- 
 formation a . 
 
 LVII. TO MR. SERGEANT COLERIDGE. 
 
 Rugby, October 23, 1833. 
 I love your letters dearly, and thank you for them 
 greatly ; your last was a great treat, though I may seem not 
 to have shewn my sense of it, by answering it so leisurely. 
 First of all, you will be glad to hear of the birth of my 
 eighth living child, a little girl, to whom we mean to give 
 an unreasonable number of names, Frances Bunsen Tre- 
 venen Whately ; the second after my valued friend, the 
 Prussian minister at Rome, of whom, as I know not whe- 
 ther I shall ever see him again, I wished to have a daily 
 present recollection in the. person of one of my children. 
 I wish I could show you his two letters, one to me on the 
 political state of Europe, and one to Dr. Nott on the per- 
 fect notion of a Christian Liturgy. I am sure that you 
 would love and admire, with me, the extraordinary com- 
 bination of piety and wisdom and profound knowledge and 
 large experience, which breathes through every line of 
 
 both 
 
 I go all lengths with you in deprecating any increase 
 of political excitement, any thing that shall tend to 
 make politics enter into a man's daily thoughts and daily 
 practice. When I first projected the Englishman's Re- 
 gister, I wrote to my nephew my sentiments about it in 
 full ; a letter which I keep, and may one day find it con- 
 
 a This alludes to a plan he at Hist entertained of beginning his 
 own Roman History with the Punic war.-.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 venient to publish as my confession of faith ; in tin-* Letter 
 I protested strongly against making the Register exclu- 
 sively political, and entered at large into my reasons for 
 doing so. Undoubtedly 1 fear that the government lend 
 an ear too readily to the Utilitarians and others of that 
 coarse and hard stamp, whose influence can be nothing 
 but evil. In church matters they have got Whately, and 
 a signal blessing it is that they have him and listen to him ; 
 a man so good and so great that no folly or wickedness of 
 the most vile of factions will move him from his own pur- 
 poses, nor provoke him in disgust to forsake the defence 
 
 of the Temple 
 
 I cannot say how I am annoyed, both on public and 
 private grounds, by these extravagances, [of the Oxford 
 party;] on private grounds, from the gross breaches of 
 charity to which they lead good men; and on public, be- 
 cause if these things do produce any effect on the clergy, 
 the evil consequences to the nation are not to be calcu- 
 lated ; for what is to become of the Church, if the clergy 
 begin to exhibit an aggravation of the worst superstitions 
 of the Roman Catholics, only stripped of that consistency, 
 which stamps even the errors of the Romish system with 
 something of a character of greatness. It seems p re- 
 sumption in me to press any point upon your consider- 
 ation, seeing in how many tilings I have learnt to think 
 from you. But it has always seemed to me that an ex- 
 treme fondness for our "dear mother the panther,"' is a 
 snare, to which the noblest minds are most liable. It 
 seems to me that all, absolutely all, of our religious affec- 
 tions and veneration should go to Chris! Himself, and that 
 Protestantism, Catholicism, and every other name, which 
 expresses Christianity and some differentia or proprium 
 besides, is so far an evil, and, when made an object «»!' at- 
 tachment, leads to superstition and error. Then, descend- 
 ing from religious grounds to human, I think that oik's 
 
 a Drvden'a " Hind ami Panther."
 
 330 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 natural and patriotic sympathies can hardly be too strong; 
 but, historically, the Church of England is surely of a mot- 
 ley complexion, with much of good about it, ami much of 
 evil, no more a lit subject for enthusiastic admiration than 
 for violent obloquy. I honour and sympathize entirely with 
 the feelings entertained ; I only think that they might all 
 of them select a worthier object ; that, whether they be 
 pious and devout, or patriotic, or romantic, or of what- 
 ever class soever, there is for each and all of these a true 
 object, on which they may fasten without danger and with 
 infinite benefit ; for surely the feeling of entire love and 
 admiration is one, which we cannot safely part with, and 
 there are provided, by God's goodness, worthy and perfect 
 objects of it ; but these can never be human institutions, 
 which, being necessarily full of imperfection, require to be 
 viewed with an impartial judgement, not idolized by an 
 uncritical affection. And that common metaphor about 
 our " Mother the Church," is unscriptural and mischievous, 
 because the feelings of entire filial reverence and love 
 which we owe to a parent, we do not owe to our fellow 
 Christians ; we owe them brotherly love, meekness, readi- 
 ness to bear, &c, but not filial reverence, " to them I 
 gave place by subjection, no not for an hour." Now, if I 
 were a Utilitarian, I should not care for what I think a 
 misapplication of the noblest feelings ; for then I should 
 not care for the danger to which this misapplication ex- 
 poses the feelings themselves ; but, as it is, I dread to see 
 the evils of the Reformation of the 16th century repeated 
 over again ; superstition provoking profaneness, and ignor- 
 ance and violence on one side leading to equal ignorance 
 and violence on the other, to the equal injury of both 
 truth and love. I should feel greatly obliged to you, if you 
 could tell me any tiling that seems to you a flaw in the 
 reasoning of those pages of the Postscript to my pamphlet 
 which speak of Episcopacy, and of what is commonly 
 called the " alliance between Church and State." In the 
 last point I am far more orthodox, according to the
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 33 1 
 
 standard of our reformers, than either the Toleration men 
 
 or the High Church men, but those notions are now out 
 of fashion, and, what between religious bigotry and civil 
 licentiousness, all, I suppose, will go. But I will have 
 compassion on your patience. 
 
 It was delightful to hear of you and yours in Devon- 
 shire. I wish they would put yon on a commission of 
 some sort or other that might take you into Westmoreland 
 some summer or winter. "When our house is quite finished, 
 do you not think that the temptation will be great to me 
 to go and live there, and return to my old Laleham v- 
 life on the Rotha, instead of on the Thames? But inde- 
 pendent of more worldly considerations, my great experi- 
 ment here is in much too interesting a situation to abandon 
 lightly. You will be amused when 1 tell you tint I am 
 becoming more and more a convert to the advantag 
 Latin and Greek verse, and more suspicious of tin- mere 
 fact system, that would cram with knowledge of particular 
 things, and call it information. My own lessons with the 
 Sixth Form are directed now to the best of my power to 
 the furnishing rules or formula' for them to work with, e. g. 
 rules to be observed in translation, principles of taste as 
 to the choice of English words, as to the keeping or vary- 
 ing idioms and metaphors, &c., or in history, nil.-, of 
 evidence or general forms for the dissection of campaigns, 
 or the estimating the importance of wars, resolutions, 8tC. 
 This, together with opening as it were the some. - of 
 knowledge, by telling them where they can find such and 
 such things, and giving them a notion of criticism, not to 
 swallow things whole, as the scholars of an curlier period 
 too often did, — is what I am labouring at, much more than 
 
 at giving information. And the composition is mending 
 decidedly; though speaking to an Etonian, 1 am well aware 
 that our amended state would be with you a very degene- 
 rate one. Rut we are looking up, certainly, and pains are 
 taking in the lower Forms, of which we shall I think booh 
 see the fruit
 
 332 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 I am getting on with Thucydides myself, and am nearly 
 in the middle of the seventh book ; at Allan Bank in the 
 summer I worked on the Roman History, and hope to do 
 so again in the winter. It is very inspiring to write with 
 sueh a view before one's eyes, as that from our drawing- 
 room at Allan Bank, where the trees of the shrubbery 
 gradually run up into the trees of the cliff", and the moun- 
 tain side, with its infinite variety of rocky peaks and points 
 on which the cattle expatiate, rises over the tops of the 
 
 trees Your little God-daughter is my pupil twice a 
 
 week in Delectus Her elder sister is my pupil 
 
 three times a week in Virgil, and once in the Greek Tes- 
 tament, and promises to do very well in both. 1 have yet 
 a great many things to say, but I will not keep my letter ; 
 how glad I should be if you could ever come down to us 
 for even a single Sunday, but I suppose I must not ask it. 
 
 LVIII. TO JACOB ABBOTT, 
 (Author of the "Young Christian," &c.) 
 
 Rughy, Nov. 1, 1833. 
 Although I have not the honour of being personally 
 known to you, yet my great admiration of your little book, 
 " The Young Christian," and the circumstance of my 
 being engaged, like yourself, in the work of education, 
 induce me to hope, that you will forgive the liberty I am 
 taking in now addressing you. A third consideration 
 weighs with me, and in this I feel sure that you will sym- 
 pathize ; that it is desirable on every occasion to enlarge 
 the friendly communication of our country with yours. 
 The publication of a work like yours in America was far 
 more delightful to me than its publication in England 
 could have been. Nothing can be more important to the 
 future welfare of mankind, as that God's people, serving Him 
 in power and in love, and in a sound mind, should deeply 
 influence the national character of the United States, 
 which in many parts of the Union is undoubtedly exposed
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 333 
 
 to influences of a very different description, owing to 
 circumstances apparently beyond the control of human 
 power and wisdom. 
 
 I request your acceptance of a volume of Sermons, 
 most of which, as you will see, were addressed to boys or 
 very young men, and which therefore coincide in inten- 
 tion with your own admirable book *. And at the same 
 time I venture to send you a little work of mine on a 
 different subject, for no other reason, 1 believe, than the 
 pleasure of submitting my views upon a great question to 
 the judgment of a mind furnished morally and intellec- 
 tually as yours must be. 
 
 I have been for five years head of this school. [He 
 then describes the manner of its foundation ami growth, 
 and proceeds.] You may imagine, then, that 1 am en- 
 gaged in a great and anxious labour, and must have con- 
 siderable experience of the difficulty of tinning the young 
 mind to know and love God in Christ. 
 
 I have understood that Unitarianism is becoming very 
 prevalent in Boston, and 1 am anxious to know wliat the 
 complexion of Unitarianism amongst you is. I mean 
 whether it is Arian or Socinian, and whether its disciples 
 are for the most part men of hard minds and Indifferent 
 to religion, or whether the v are zealous in the service of 
 Christ, according to their own notions of His claims upon 
 their gratitude and love. It has been long m\ linn belief 
 that a great proportion of Unitarianism might be cured by 
 a wiser and more charitable treatment on the part of their 
 adversaries, if these would but consider what is the main 
 thing in the Gospel, and that even truth is not always to 
 be insisted upon, if by forcing it upon the reception of 
 those who are not prepared for it, they are thereby tempted 
 to renounce what is not only true, but essential, B cha- 
 racter which assuredly docs not belong to all true pro- 
 positions, whether about things human or things divine. 
 
 a His opinion of the Corner-stone is given in a note to tin* 
 second Appendix of his third volume of Sermons, p. 1 1".
 
 334 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 I. IX. TO TIIK ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN. 
 
 Rugby, Nov. 8, 1833. 
 
 Would any good be likely to come of it, if 
 
 I were one day to send you a specimen of such corrections 
 in our authorized version of the Scriptures, such as seem 
 to me desirable, and such as could shock no one. I have 
 had, and am having daily, so much practice in translation, 
 and am taking so much pains to make the boys vary their 
 language and their phraseology, according to the age and 
 style of the writer whom they are translating, that I think I 
 may be trusted for introducing no words or idiom unsuited 
 to the general style of the present translation, nothing to 
 lessen the purity of its Saxon, or to betray a modern inter- 
 polation. My object would be to alter in the very lan- 
 guage, as far as I could guess it, which the translators 
 themselves would have used, had they only had our pre- 
 sent knowledge of Greek. I think also that the results of 
 modern criticism should so far be noticed, as that some 
 little clauses, omitted in all the best MSS., should be 
 printed in italics, and important various readings of equal 
 or better authority than the received text, should be 
 noticed in the margin. Above all, it is most important 
 that the division into chapters should be mended, espe- 
 cially as regards the public reading in the Church, and that 
 the choice of lessons from the Old Testament should be 
 improved 
 
 It is almost inconceivable to me that you should mis- 
 understand any book that you read ; and, if such a thing 
 does happen, I am afraid that it must be the writer's 
 fault. But I cannot remember that I have altered my 
 opinions since my Pamphlet (on the Catholic claims), nor 
 do I see any thing there inconsistent with my doctrine (of 
 Church and State) in the Postscript to the Pamphlet on 
 Church Reform. I always grounded the right to Eman- 
 cipation on the principle that Ireland was a distinct 
 nation, entitled to govern itself. I know full well that my
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLI'. 335 
 
 principles would lead to the establishment of the Roman 
 Catholic religion in three-fourths of Ireland; but this 
 conclusion was not wanted then, and the right to eman- 
 cipation followed a fortiori from the right to govern them- 
 selves as a nation, without entering upon the question of 
 the establishment. Those who think that Catholicism is 
 idolatry, ought, on their own principles, to move heaven 
 and earth for the Repeal of the Union, and to let O'Connell 
 rule his Kelts their own way. 1 think that a ( atholk i*- a 
 member of Christ's Church just a-- much as I am; and I 
 could well endure one form of that Church in Ireland, and 
 another in England. And if you look (it is to be found 
 in the second volume of Voltaire's Siecle de Louis XIV.) 
 for the four Articles resolved on by the Galilean Church 
 in the middle of the seventeenth century, you will see a 
 precedent and a means pointed out, whereby every Roman 
 Catholic national Church may be lid to reform its. If; and 
 I only hope that when they do they will reform themselves 
 so far as to be thorough Christians, and avoid, a^ they 
 would a dog or a viper, the errors which marred the Pro- 
 testant Reformation of the sixteenth century, destroying 
 things most noble and most purifying, as well as tilings 
 superstitious and hurtful 
 
 1 will trust no man when he turns fanatic ; and really 
 these high churchmen are far more fanatical and much 
 more foolish than Irving himself living appealed to the 
 gifts of tongues and of healing, which he alleged to exist 
 in Iris congregation, as proofs that the Holy Spirit was 
 with them; but the high churchmen abandon reason, and 
 impute motives, and claim to be Christ's only Church, 
 — and where are the "signs of an apostle 11 to In- seen 
 among them, or where do they pretend to Blum tin in : 
 
 May God grant to my sons, if they live i" 
 
 manhood, an unshaken love of truth, and a firm resolution 
 
 to follow it for themselves, with an intense abhorrence of 
 all party ties, save that one tie, which binds tin in to the 
 partv of Christ against wickedness. It the Chinch of
 
 330 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 England were, indeed, that pure and stainless Church 
 
 which fancies it, I should still regard it as a curse 
 
 upon me and mine, if we were ever to worship it with 
 so fierce and idolatrous a zeal as that which it seems 
 to enkindle in some of its members. 
 
 LX. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ. 
 
 Rugby, February 24, 1834. 
 
 I have, as usual, many things on hand, or ra- 
 ther in meditation ; but time fails me sadly, and my phy- 
 sical constitution seems to require more sleep than it did, 
 which abridges my time still more. Yet I was never bet- 
 ter or stronger, than I was in Westmoreland during the 
 winter, or indeed than I am now. But I feel, more and 
 more, that, though my constitution is perfectly sound, yet 
 it is not strong ; and my nervous system would soon wear 
 me out if I lived in a state of much excitement. Body 
 and mind alike seem to repose greedily in delicious quiet 
 without dulness, which we enjoy in Westmoreland. 
 
 It is easier to speak of body and mind than of that which 
 is more worth than either. I doubt whether we have 
 enough of Christian Confession amongst us a ; the super- 
 stition of Popeiy in this, as in other matters, doubly injured 
 the good which it corrupted ; first by corrupting it, and 
 then, " traitor like, by betraying it to the axe " of too hasty 
 reformation. Yet surely one object of the Christian Church 
 was to enable us to aid in bearing one another's burthens ; 
 not to enable a minister to pretend to bear those of all his 
 neighbours. One is so hindered from speaking of one's 
 spiritual state, that one is led even to think of it less fre- 
 quently than is wholesome. I am learning to think more 
 and more how unbelief is at the bottom of all our evil ; 
 how our one prayer shoidd be " Increase our faith." And 
 we do fearfully live, as it were, out of God's atmosphere ; 
 we do not keep that continual consciousness of His reality 
 ■ See Sermons, vol. iii. p. 313.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 337 
 
 which I conceive we ought to have, and which shoul<l make 
 Him more manifest to our souls, than the Shechinah was to 
 the eyes of the Israelites. I have many fresh sermons ; 
 and my wife wants another volume printed ; but 1 do n<>t 
 think there would be enough of systematic matter t<> make 
 a volume, and mere specimens of my general preaching I 
 have given already. 1 trust you will come next week ; 
 life is too uncertain to admit of passing over opportunities. 
 You have heard, probably, that Augustus Hare is likely 
 soon to follow poor Lowe, and to lay his bones in Rome ; he 
 is far gone, they saj , in a consumption. .May God bli ss j ou, 
 my diar Hull, in Jesus Christ, both you and yours for ever. 
 
 I XI . TO BBV. I-'. C. BLACKSTONK. 
 
 Rugby, February 26, I i 
 
 .... I often think what may be your views of the various 
 
 aspects of things in general — to what notions you are more 
 and more becoming wedded: for, though I think that men, 
 who are lovers of truth, become less and less attached to any 
 mere party as they advance in life, and certainly become, in 
 the best sense of the word, more tolerant, yet their \ iews also 
 acquire greater range and consistency, and what they once 
 saw as scattered truths, they learn to combine with one an- 
 other, so as to make each throw light on the other; so thai 
 their principles become more fixed, while their likings or 
 dislikings of particular persons or parties become more 
 moderate 
 
 Our residence in Westmoreland attaches us all to it 
 more and more; the refreshment which it affords me i-* 
 wonderful; and it is especially so in the winter, when the 
 country is quieter, ami actually, as I think, more beautiful 
 than in summer. I was often reminded, as I used to come 
 home to (irasmere of an evening, and seemed to be quite 
 shut in by the surrounding mountains, of the comparison 
 of the hills standing about Jerusalem, with God standing 
 about His people. The impression, which the mountains 
 gave me, was never one of bleakness or wildness, but of a 
 
 VOL. I. Z
 
 338 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 sort of paternal shelter and protection to the valley ; and 
 in those violent storms, which were' so frequent this winter, 
 our house lay snug beneath its cliff, and felt comparatively 
 nothing of the wind. We had no snow in the valleys, but 
 frequently a thick powdering on the higher mountains 
 while all below was green and warm. The School goes on 
 very fairly ; with its natural proportion of interest and of an- 
 noyance. I am daily more and more struck with the very 
 low average of intellectual power, and of the difficulty of 
 meeting those various temptations, both intellectual and 
 moral, which stand in boys' way ; a school shows as undis- 
 guisedly as any place the corruption of human nature, and 
 the monstrous advantage with which evil starts, if I maj so 
 speak, in its contest with good 
 
 LXII. TO REV. JULIUS HARE. 
 (On the death of his brother, Augustus Hare.) 
 
 Rugby, March 10, 1S34. 
 
 I will not trouble you with many words ; but it seemed 
 unnatural to me not to write, after the account from Rome, 
 which Arthur Stanley this morning communicated to me. 
 T do not attempt to condole, or to say any thing further, 
 than that, having known your brother for more than twenty- 
 five years, and having experienced unvaried kindness from 
 him since I first knew him, I hope that I can in some de- 
 gree appreciate what you have lost. Of all men whom 1 
 ever knew, he was the one of whom Bunsen most strongly 
 reminded me, so that he seemed like Bunsen in England, 
 as Bunsen had seemed like him in Italy. God grant that 
 1 may try to resemble them both in all the nobleness and 
 beauty of their goodness. 
 
 LXIII. TO REV. DR. HAWKINS. 
 
 (With regard to Tracts which he had intended to circulate in opposition to the 
 
 early Numbers of the " Tracts for the Times.") 
 
 Rugby, April 14, 1834. 
 The concluding part of your letter is a very good reason 
 for my not asking you to trouble yourself anv further about
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. H3!) 
 
 my papers If the Tracts in question are not 
 
 much circulated, then, of course, it would be a pity t<> 
 make thein known by answering them ; bul this is a matt r 
 of fact, which I know not how to ascertain. They are 
 strenuously pulled by the British Magazine, and strenu- 
 ously circulated amongst the clergy; of course I do nol 
 suppose that any living man out of the clergy is in the 
 slightest danger of being influenced by them, excepl so far 
 as they may lead him to despise the clergy for countenanc- 
 ing them. 
 
 You do not seem to me to apprehend the drift of these 
 Tracts, nor the point of comparison between these and St. 
 Paul's adversaries. If they merely broached one opinion 
 and I combated it, it might be doubted which of us most 
 disturbed the peace of the Church. But they are not de- 
 fending the lawfulness or expediency of Episcopacy, which 
 certainly I am very far from doubting, but its necessity ; a 
 doctrine in ordinary times gratuitous, and at the same time 
 harmless, save as a folly. But now the- object is to pro- 
 voke the clergy to resist the Government Church Reforms, 
 and, if for so resisting, they get turned out oi* their livings, 
 to maintain that they are the true clergy, and their succes- 
 sors schismatics; above all, if the Bishops were deprived, 
 as in King William's time, to deny the authority of tin- 
 Bishops who may succeed them, though appointed accord- 
 ing to the law of the land. All this is essentially Bchisma- 
 tical and anarchical: in Elizabeth's time it would have been 
 reckoned treasonable; and in answering it, I am not .it- 
 tacking Episcopacy, or the present constitution of tin- 
 English Church, but simply defending the common ) 
 and order of the Church against ;i new outbreak <>f Puri- 
 tanism, which will endure nothing but its own platform. 
 
 Now, to insist on the necessity of Episcopacy, is exactly 
 like insisting on the necessity of circumcision ; both are 
 and wen- lawful, but to insist on either as necessary t is un- 
 christian, and binding the Church with a yoke of carnal 
 ordinances; and the reason whj circumcision, although 
 
 / 2
 
 340 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 expressly commanded once, was declared not binding upon 
 
 Christians, is niurli stronger against the binding nature of 
 Episcopacy, which never was commanded at all ; the reason 
 being, that all forms of government and ritual are in the 
 Christian Church indifferent, and to be decided by the 
 Church itself, pro temporum et locorum ratione, " the 
 Church" not being the clergy, but the congregation of 
 Christians. 
 
 If you will refer me to any book which contains 
 
 what you think the truth, put sensibly, on the subject of the 
 Apostolical Succession, I shall really be greatly obliged to 
 you to mention it. I went over the matter again in the 
 holidays with Warburton and Hooker ; and the result was 
 a complete confirmation of the views, which I have enter- 
 tained for years, and a more complete appreciation of the 
 confusions on which the High Church doctrine rests, and 
 of the causes which have led to its growth at different times. 
 
 By the way, I never accused K — or N — of saying, that 
 to belong to a true Church would save a bad man ; but of 
 what is equally unchristian, that a good man was not safe 
 unless he belonged to an Episcopal Church ; which is 
 exactly not allowing God's seal without it be countersigned 
 by one of their own forging. Nor did I say, they were bad 
 men, but much the contrary ; though I think that their doc- 
 trine, which they believe, I doubt not, to be true, is in itself 
 schismatical, profane, and unchristian. And I think it 
 highly important that the evils of the doctrine should be 
 shown in the strongest terms ; but no word of mine has 
 impeached the sincerity or general character of the men ; 
 and, in this respect, I will carefully avoid every expression 
 that may be thought uncharitable. 
 
 LXIV. TO REV. JULIUS HARE. 
 
 Rugby, May 12, 1834. 
 
 I would admit Unitarians, like all other Chris- 
 tians, if the University system were restored, and they might
 
 LIFE OF Pit. ARNOLD. ',\\ 
 
 have halls of their own. Nay I would admit them at the Col- 
 leges if they would attend chape] and the Divinitj Lectures, 
 
 which some of them, I think, would do. But every thing 
 seems to me falling into confusion between two parties, 
 whose ignorance and badness 1 believe I shrink from with 
 the most perfect impartiality of dislike. 1 must petition 
 against the Jew Bill, and wish that you or some man like 
 you would expose that low Jacobinical notion of citizen- 
 ship, that a man acquires a right to it b) the accident of 
 his being littered inter quatuor maria, or because he pays 
 taxes 3 . 1 wish I had the knowledge and the time to stale 
 folly the ancient system of Trafojxoi, /ketoixoi, &c, and the 
 principle, on which it rested ; that different races have 
 different vo/tipa, and that an indiscriminate mixture breeds 
 a perfect " colluvio omnium reruni." Now Christianity 
 gives us that bond perfectly, which race in the ancient 
 world gave illiberally and narrowly, for it gives a common 
 standard of v6fj,i/xa, without observing distinctions, which 
 are, in fact, better blended. 
 
 [This letter, as well as the following, alludes to the Bub- 
 joined Declaration, circulated by him for signature.] 
 
 " The undersigned members of the Universities ofOxford 
 and Cambridge, many of them being engaged in educa- 
 tion, entertaining a strong sense of the peculiar benefits to 
 be derived from studying at the Universities, cannot bul 
 consider it as a national evil, thai these benefits sin add be 
 inaccessible to a large proportion of their countrymen. 
 
 a Extract from a letter to Mr. Sergeant " The i 
 
 lativc to taxation, in my opinion, is not citizenship l>nt protection. 
 Taxation niav imply representation quoad hoc, and I Bhould have 
 no objection to let the Jews tax themselves in a Jewish House of 
 Assembly, like a colony or like the clergy of old ; but to confound 
 the right of taxing oneself with the right of genera] legislation, i^ 
 one of the Jacobinical confusions of later days, arising from those 
 low Warburtonian notions of the ends of political society.' 
 also Preface to bis Bditipn of Thucydides, vol. iii. p. \*.
 
 342 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 " While they feel most strongly that the foundation of all 
 education must be laid in the great truths of Christianity, 
 and would on no account consent to omit these, or to teach 
 them imperfectly, yet they cannot but acknowledge, that 
 these truths are believed and valued by the great majority 
 of Dissenters, no less than by the Church of England ; 
 and that every essential point of Christian instruction may 
 be communicated without touching on those particular 
 questions on which the Church and the mass of Dissenters 
 are at issue. 
 
 " And, while they are not prepared to admit such Dis- 
 senters as differ from the Church of England on the most 
 essential points of Christian truth, such as the modern 
 Unitarians of Great Britain, they are of opinion, that all 
 other Dissenters may be admitted into the Universities, and 
 allowed to take degrees there with great benefit to the 
 country, and to the probable advancement of Christian 
 truth and Christian charity amongst members of all persua- 
 sions." 
 
 LXV. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ. 
 
 Rugby, April 30, 1834. 
 
 I have indeed written a large part of a volume 
 
 on Church and State, but it had better be broken up into 
 smaller portions to be published at first separately, though 
 afterwards it may be altogether. My outline of the whole 
 question is this : — I. That the State, being the only power 
 sovereign over human life, has for its legitimate object the 
 happiness of its people, — their highest happiness, not physi- 
 cal only, but intellectual and moral ; in short, the highest 
 happiness of which it has a conception. This was held, I 
 believe, nearly unanimously till the eighteenth century. 
 Warburton, the Utilitarians, and I fear Whately, maintain, 
 on the contrary, that the State's only object is " the conserva- 
 tion of body and goods." They thus play, though unin- 
 tentionally, into the hands of the upholders of ecclesias-
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 343 
 
 Ideal power, by destroying the highest duty and prerogative 
 of ilic Commonwealth. II. Ecclesiastical officers maj be 
 regarded m two lights only, as sovereign or independent ; 
 ii' they are priests, or if they are rulers. A. Priests are 
 independent, as deriving either from supposed holiness of 
 race or person, or from their exclusive knowledge of tin- 
 Divine Will, a title to execute certain functions, which none 
 but themselves can perform ; and therefore these functions, 
 being of prime necessity, enable them to treat with tin- 
 State not as members or subjects of it, but as foreigners 
 conferring on it a benefit, and selling this on their own 
 terms. B. Rulers,'of course, are independent and sove- 
 reign, ipsa vi termini. III. But tin ecclesiastical officers 
 of Christianity are by Cod's appointment neither pri< 'Sts 
 nor rulers. A. Not Priests,ioi there is one onlj Priest, 
 and all the rest are brethren; none has any holiness "I 
 person or race more than another, none has any exclusive 
 possession of divine knowledge. 15. Not Rulers, for, 
 Christianity not being a $?ricniEia or ritual service, but ex- 
 tending to every part of human life, the rulers of Chris- 
 tians, qua Christians, must rule them in all matters of prin- 
 ciple and practice ; and, if this power be given to Bishops, 
 Priests and Deacons by divine appointment, Innocent the 
 Third was right, and every Christian country should be 
 like Paraguay. You shall have the rest 1>\ and l>\ ; 
 meantime I send you up a paper about the Universities, 
 [f you like it, sign it, and try to get others to do so; if you 
 do not, burn it. 
 
 I. XVI. TO W. BMP80N, ESQ. 
 
 Rugby, .'un. ll. 
 
 The political matters, on which \ OH touch, are to 
 
 me of such intense interest, that I think they would kill me 
 if I lived more in the midst of them ; mile--, a-, was Said to he 
 the case with the Cholera, they would be }, BS disturbing 
 w hen near, than when at a distance. I grieve most deeplj at
 
 344 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 this ill-timed schism in tlie Ministry, and, as men, who have 
 no familiarity with the practice of polities, may yet fancy 
 that they understand their principles, so it seems to me 
 that both Lord Grey and the seceders are wrong. We are 
 suffering here, as in a thousand other instances, from that 
 accursed division between Christians, of which I think the 
 very Arch-fiend must be *af £%oxw the author. The good 
 Protestants and bad Christians have talked nonsense, and 
 worse than nonsense so long about Popery, and the Beast and 
 Antichrist, that the simple, just and Christian mea- 
 sure of establishing the Roman Catholic Church in three- 
 fifths of Ireland seems renounced by common consent. The 
 Protestant clergy ought not to have their present revenues 
 in Ireland — so far I agree with Lord Grey — but not on a 
 low economical view of their pay being over-proportioned 
 to their work ; but because Church property is one of the 
 most sacred trusts, of which the sovereign power in the 
 Chinch (i. e. the King and Parliament, not the Bishops and 
 Clergy,) is appointed byGod trustee. It is a property set 
 apart for the advancement of direct Christian purposes, 
 first by furnishing religious instruction and comfort to the 
 grown up part of the population ; next by furnishing the 
 same to the young in the shape of religious education. 
 Now the Christian people of Ireland, i. e. in my sense of 
 the word the Chinch of Ireland, have a right to have the 
 full benefit of their Church property, which now they cannot 
 have, because Protestant clergymen they will not listen to. 
 I think, then, that it ought to furnish them with Catholic 
 clergymen, and the general local separation of the Catholic 
 and Protestant districts would render this as easy to effect 
 in Ireland as it was in Switzerland, where, after their bloody 
 religious wars of the sixteenth century, certain parishes 
 in some of the Cantons, where the religions were inter- 
 mixed, were declared Protestant and others Catholic ; 
 and, if a man tinned Catholic in a Protestant parish, he 
 was to migrate to a Catholic parish, and vice versa. If 
 this cannot be done yet, then religious grammar schools,
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 345 
 
 Catholic and Protestant, such as were founded in England 
 so numerously after the Reformation, would be the n< \t 
 best thing; but, whilst Ireland continues in its present low 
 
 state of knowledge and religion, I cannot think thai one 
 penny of its Church property oughl to be applied to the 
 merely physical or ordinary objects of government I 
 have one great principle, which 1 never lose sight of; to 
 insist strongly on the difference between Christian and 
 nonchristian, and to sink into nothing the differences be- 
 tween Christian and Christian. I am sure that this is in 
 the spirit of the Scriptures: I think it is also most philo- 
 sophical and liberal ; but all the world quarrels either with 
 one half of my principle or with the other, whereas I think 
 they stand and fill together. I know not whether Mr. 
 Spring Rice takes a strong interest in questions concerning 
 education, but I am ver\ anxious- — the more so from the 
 confusions prevailing about the nature of the Qniversiti 
 that the Universities should be restored, that is. that the 
 usurpations of the Heads of the colleges should be put 
 down, according to those excellent articles of Sir W. 
 Hamilton's which appeared in the Edinburgh Review some 
 time since. I think that this is even more important than 
 the admission of the Dissenters. And also, if ever the 
 question of National education comes definitely before the 
 government, I am very desirous of their not "centralizing" 
 too much, but availing themselves of the existing machin- 
 ery, which might be done to a great extent, with very little 
 expense, and none of that interference with private institu- 
 tions, or even with foundations, of which there is so great, 
 and 1 think in some respects, a reasonable fear. Hut I 
 will conclude and release you. 
 
 I. XVII. 10 BBV. DR. LONG] E ^ 
 
 Though sorry thai you did not concur with m\ iriews, 
 yet I was not much surprised, being long Bince used to
 
 340 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 find myself in a minority on those matters. Yet I do nol 
 see how any man can avoid the impression that Dissent 
 cannot exist much longer in this country as it does now ; 
 either it must be comprehended within the Church, or it 
 will cease in another way, by there being no Establishment 
 left to dissent from. And, as I think that men will never 
 be wise and good enough for the first, so I see every thing 
 tending towards the second ; and this fancied reaction in 
 favour of the High Church party seems to me the merest 
 illusion in the world ; it is like that phantom, which Minerva 
 sent to Hector to tempt him to his fate, by making him 
 believe that Deiphobus was at hand to help him. 
 
 Meantime, our little commonwealth here goes on very 
 quietly, and I think satisfactorily. I have happily more 
 power than Lord Grey's government, and neither Radicals 
 to call for more, nor Tories to call for less, and so I can 
 
 reform or forbear at my own discretion 1 
 
 find Westmoreland very convenient in giving me an op- 
 portunity of having some of the Sixth Form with me in 
 the holidays ; not to read, of course, but to refresh their 
 health when they get knocked up by the work, and to show 
 them mountains and dales ; a great point in education, and 
 a great desideratum to those, who only know the central or 
 southern counties of England. I must ask your congratu- 
 lations on having finished Thucydides, of which the last 
 volume will appear, I hope, in October. I have just com- 
 pleted the Eighth Book, and hope now to set vigorously 
 to work about the Roman History. 
 
 LXVIII. TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN. 
 
 Rugby, July 2, 1834. 
 I must write to thank you for your Charge, which de- 
 lighted me It is delightful to read a Charge, 
 
 without any folly in it, and written so heartily in the 
 spirit of a Christian Episcopacy, for which I have always 
 had a great respect, though not exactly after the fashion
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. '.\\7 
 
 of K and N . I trust, if it please God, that ire 
 
 shall meet this summer ; and it is truly kind in you to 
 
 try to make your arrangements suit ours I shall 
 
 bring over to you my beginning of >k the State and the 
 
 Chureh," which I shall like to talk over with you 
 
 The other day, slept at our house, and fairly asked 
 
 me for my opinion about the connexion of Chureh and 
 State, which I gave him at some length ; and 1 found, as 
 indeed he confessed, that the subject was one on which 
 his ideas were all at sea; and he expressed a great ear- 
 nestness that Something should be written on the Bubjecl 
 before the next Session of Parliament. He did not know, 
 and 1 think it is a common complaint, the Statutes p 
 about the Church in Henry the Eighth's and Edward the 
 Sixth's reigns, and whieh are still the «px ai of its consti- 
 tution, if that may be said to have a constitution which 
 never was constituted, but was hit as avowedly unfinished 
 as Cologne Cathedral, where they left a crane Btanding on 
 one of the half-built towers, three hundred years ago, and 
 have renewed the crane from time to time, as it wore out, 
 as a sign not only that the building was incomplete, but 
 that the friends of the Church hoped to finish the work 
 whenever they could. Had it been in England, the crane 
 would have been speedily destroyed, and the friends of the 
 Church would have said that the Church was finished per- 
 fectly already, and that none but its enemies would due 
 to suggest that it wanted any thing to complete its sym- 
 metry and usefulness. 
 
 I have been writing two sermons on the Evidences, — 
 1st, of Natural Religion, — and -2nd, of Christianity, in- 
 tended for the use of those of my hoys who are now leaving 
 us for college. I mean, if I live, to preach a third next 
 Sunday, on the differences between Christians and Chris- 
 tians, which, as our two Examinerswill hear it, both of whom 
 have published pamphlets against the Diss* nters, will not, 
 I suspect, be very agreeable to them We are all very 
 well, and rather desire our mountains, though all things
 
 348 LIFE OF DE. ARNOLD. 
 
 have gone on very pleasantly so far; but the half year is 
 a long one certainly. Do you know that we have gol a 
 sort of Mechanics' or Tradesmen's Institution in Rugby, 
 where I have been lecturing twice upon History, and 
 drawing two great charts, and colouring them, to illustrate 
 my lecture. I drew one chart of the History of England 
 and France for the last 350 years, colouring red the periods 
 of the wars of each country, black the periods of civil war, 
 and a bright yellow line at the side, to shew the periods of 
 constitutional government, with patches of brown, to indi- 
 cate seasons of great distress, &c. I have some thoughts 
 of having them lithographed for general use 
 
 LXIX. TO A TERSON WHO HAD ONCE BEEN HIS LANDLORD, 
 
 And was ill of a painful disorder, but refused to see the clergyman of the parish, 
 or allow his friends to address him on religious subjects. 
 
 1 was very sorry to see you in such a state of suffering, 
 and to hear from your friends that you were so generally. 
 1 do not know that I have any title to write to you ; but 
 you once let me speak to you, when I was your tenant, 
 about a subject, on which I took it very kind that you 
 heard me patiently, and trusting to that, I am venturing to 
 write to you again. 
 
 I have myself been blessed with very constant health ; 
 yet I have been led to think from time to time, what would 
 be my greatest support and comfort, if it should please 
 God to visit me either with a very painful or a very dan- 
 gerous illness : and I have always thought, that in both, 
 nothing would do me so much good, as to read, over and 
 over again, the account of the sufferings and death of 
 Christ, as given in the different Gospels. For, if it be a 
 painful complaint, we shall find that in mere pain He suf- 
 fered most severely, and in a great variety of ways ; and, 
 if it be a dangerous complaint, then we shall see that 
 Christ suffered very greatly from the fear of death, and 
 was very sorely troubled in His mind up to the very time
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 349 
 
 almost of His actually dying. And one great reason, whj 
 He bore all this, was that we might be supported and com- 
 forted when we have to bear the same. 
 
 But when I have thought how this would comfort me, it 
 is very true that one cannot help thinking of the gnat dif- 
 ference between Christ and oneself, — that He \\ . 
 good, and that we are so lull of faults and had passions <>t 
 one kind or another. So that if He feared death, we must 
 have much greater reason to fear it: and bo indeed we 
 have, were it not for Hint. But He boreal] His sufferings, 
 that God might receive us after OUT death, as surelj as He 
 received Christ Himself. And surely it is a comfort above 
 all comfort, that we are not only suffering no move than 
 Christ suffered, but that we shall he happy after our suf- 
 ferings are over, as truly as He is happy. 
 
 Dear Mr. , there is nothing in the world, which hin- 
 ders you or me from having this comfort, hut the badness 
 and hardness of our hearts, which will not let us open our- 
 selves heartily to God's love towards us. He desires to 
 love us, and to keep us, hut we shut up ourselves from 
 Him, and keep ourselves in fear and misery, because we 
 
 will not receive his goodness. Oh ! how heartily we should 
 pray for one another, and for ourselves, that God would 
 teach us to love Him, and he thankful to Him, as He lov< a 
 us. We cannot, indeed, love God, if we keep am evil or 
 angry passion within us. If we do not forgive all who 
 may have wronged or affronted us, God has declared most 
 solemnly that He will not forgive us. There is no con- 
 cealing this, or getting away from it. If we cannot forgive, 
 we cannot be forgiven. But when I think of God's will- 
 ingness to forgive me everj day, -though everj daj I 
 offend Him many times over- it make- memoredis] 
 than anything else in the world, to forgive those who 
 have offended me : and this, I think, is natural ; unless 
 our hearts are more hard, than with all our faults they 
 commonlv are. If you think me taking a liberty in writ-
 
 350 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 ing this, I can only beg yon to remember, that as I 
 hope Christ will save me, so He bids mc tiy to bring my 
 neighbours to Him also ; and especially those whom I 
 have known, and from whom I have received kindness. 
 May Christ save us both, and turn our hearts to love Him 
 and our neighbours, even as He has loved us, and has died 
 for us. 
 
 LXX. TO HIS AUNT MRS. DELAFIELlJ, 
 (On her 77th birthday.) 
 
 Rugby, September 10, 1834. 
 This is your birthday, on which I have thought of you, 
 and loved you, for as many years past as I can remember. 
 No 10th of September will ever pass without my thinking 
 of you and loving you. I pray that God will keep you, 
 through Jesus Christ, with all blessing, under every trial, 
 which your age may bring upon you ; and if, through 
 Christ, we meet together after the Resurrection, there will 
 then be nothing of old or young — of healthy or sickly — of 
 clear memory, or of confused — but we shall be all one in 
 Christ Jesus. 
 
 LXXI. TO CHEVALIER BUNSEN. 
 
 Rugby, September 29, 1S34. 
 
 Your encouragement of my Roman History 
 
 is the most cheering thing I have ever had to excite me to 
 work upon it. I am working a little on the materials, and 
 have got Orelli's " Inscriptiones," and Haubold's " Mouu- 
 menta Legalia," which seem both very useful works. But 1 
 am stopped at every turn by my ignorance ; for instance, 
 what is known of the Illyrians, the great people that were 
 spread from the borders of Greece to the Danube ? — what 
 were their race and language ? — and what is known of all 
 their country at this moment ? I imagine that even the 
 Austrian provinces of Dalmatia are imperfectly known ;
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 351 
 
 and who has explored the details of Moesia? It seems t.» 
 me that a Roman History should embrace the history of 
 every people, with whom the Romans wire successively 
 concerned; not so as to go into all the details, which are 
 generally worthless, hut yet so as to give something of a 
 notion of the great changes, both physical and moral, 
 which the different parts of the world have undergone. 
 How earnestly one desires to present to one's mind a 
 peopled landscape of Gaul, or Germany, or Britain, before 
 Rome encountered them ; to picture the freshness of the 
 scenery, when all the earth's resources were as yet un- 
 touched, as well as the peculiar form of the human species 
 in that particular country, its language, its habits, its in- 
 stitutions. And yet, these indulgences of our intellectual 
 faculties match strangely with the fever of our times, and 
 the pressure for life and death, which is going on all round 
 us. The disorders in our social state appear to me to con- 
 tinue unabated ; and you know what trifles mere political 
 grievances are, when compared with these. Education is 
 wanted to improve the physical condition of the people, 
 and yet their physical condition must he unproved before 
 the\ can he susceptible of education. I hear that the Roman 
 Catholics are increasing fast amongst us : Lord Shrewsbury 
 and other wealthy Catholics are devotingtheir whole inconu a 
 to the cause, while the tremendous influx of Irish labourers 
 into Lancashire and the west of Scotland i> tainting tin- 
 whole population with a worse than barbarian element. You 
 have heard also, I doubt not, of the Trades 1 Unions, a fear- 
 ful engine of mischief, ready to riot or to assassinate, with 
 all the wickedness, that has in all ages and in all countries 
 characterized associations not recognised by the law, — the 
 sTaifiai of Athens, the clubs of Paris ;— and I see no coun- 
 teracting power 
 
 I shall look forward with the greatest interest to youi 
 " Kirchen-und-Haus Buch;" I never cease to feel the be 
 nelit, which I have derived from your letter to Dr. Notl ; 
 the view there contained of Christian Worship and oi
 
 352 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 Christian Sacrifice as the consummation of that worship is 
 
 to my mind quite perfect. What would I give to see our 
 Liturgy amended on that model ! But our Bishops cry, 
 " Touch not, meddle not," till indeed it will be too late to 
 do either. I have been much delighted with two American 
 works which have had a large circulation in England ; the 
 " Young Christian," and the " Corner Stone," by a new 
 Englander, Jacob Abbott. They are very original and 
 powerful, and the American illustrations, whether borrowed 
 from the scenery or the manners of the people, are very 
 striking. And I hear both from India and the Mediter- 
 ranean, the most delightful accounts of the zeal and resources 
 of the American Missionaries, that none are doing so much 
 in the cause of Christ as they are. They will take our 
 place in the world, I think not unworthily, though with 
 far less advantages in many respects, than those which we 
 have so fatally wasted. It is a contrast most deeply 
 humiliating to compare what we might have been with 
 what we are, with almost Israel's privileges, and with all 
 Israel's abuse of them. I could write on without limit, if 
 my time were as unlimited as my inclinations ; it is vain 
 to say what I would give to talk with you on a great many 
 points, though your letters have done more than I should 
 have thought possible towards enabling me in a manner to 
 talk with you. I feel no doubt of our agreement, indeed 
 it would make me very unhappy to doubt it, for I am sure 
 our principles are the same, and they ought to lead to the 
 same conclusions. And so I think they do. God bless you, 
 my dear friend ; I do trust to see you again ere very long. 
 
 LXXII. TO AN OLD PUPIL. (a.) 
 
 Bugby, October 29, 1834. 
 I thank you very much for your letter ; I need not tell 
 vou that it greatly interested me, at the same time that 
 it also in some respects has pained me. I do grieve that 
 you do not enjoy Oxford ; it is not, as you well know, that I 
 admire the present tone of the majority of its members,
 
 LIFE OF DK. ABNOLD. 
 
 or greatly respect their judgment, still there is much thai 
 
 is noble and good about the place, and you, I should have 
 hoped, might have benefited bj the good, and escaped the 
 folly. If you have got your view- for your course' of life 
 into a definite shape, so as to see your way clear before 
 you, and this course is wholly at variance with the studies 
 of a University, then there is nothing to be said, except 
 that I am sorry and surprised, and should be very anxious 
 to learn what your views arc But if you look forward to 
 any of what are called the learned professions, and wish 
 still to cany on the studies of a well educated man. depend 
 upon it that you are in the right place where you are, and 
 have greater means within your reach there, than you can 
 readily obtain elsewhere. University distinctions are a 
 great starting point in life ; they introduce a man well, 
 nay, they even add to his influence afterwards. At this 
 moment, when I write what is against the common opinion 
 of people at Oxford, they would be too happ\ to > ;( \ . that 
 I objected to their system, because' I had not tried it, or 
 had not succeeded in it. Consider that a young man has no 
 means of becoming independent of the society about him. 
 If you wish to exercise influence hereafter, begin by distin- 
 guishing yourself in the regular waj . not bj seeming to prefer 
 a separate way of your own. It is not the natural order of 
 things, nor, I think, the sound one. I knew a man at Oxford 
 sixteen years ago, very clever, but one who railed against 
 the place and its institutions, and would not read for a 
 class. And this man, I am told, is now a zealous Con- 
 servative, and writes in the British Magazine 
 
 As to your disappointment in society, I really am afraid 
 to touch on the subject without clearer knowledge. But j on 
 should, I am sine, make an effort to speak mil, a^ 1 am really 
 grateful for your having written out to me. Reserve and 
 fear of committing oneself arc beyond a certain point, posi- 
 tive evils; a man had better expose himself half a dozen 
 times, than be shut up always ; and, after all. it 1- not . x- 
 
 posing yourself, for no one can help valuing and loving 
 
 VOL. I. \ \
 
 354 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 what seems an abandonment to feelings of sympathy, 
 
 especially when, from the eharaeter of him who thus opens 
 his heart, the effort is known to be considerable. I am 
 afraid that I may be writing at random ; only believe me 
 that I feel very deeply interested about you, and perhaps 
 have more sympathy with your case, than many a younger 
 man ; for the circumstances of my life have kept me young 
 in feelings, and the period of twenty years ago is as vividly 
 present to my mind, as though it were a thing of yes- 
 terday. 
 
 LXXIII. TO T. F. ELLIS, ESQ. 
 
 Rugby, November 21, 1834. 
 
 I was veiy glad to see your handwriting once again, 
 and shall be very ready to answer your question to the 
 best of my power, although I am well aware of its diffi- 
 culty. It so happens that 1 have said something on this 
 very subject in the Introduction to the new volume of my 
 Sermons, which is just published, so that it has been much 
 in my thoughts lately, though I am afraid it is easier here, 
 as in other things, to point out what is of no use, than to 
 recommend what is. 
 
 The preparation for ordination, so far as passing the 
 Bishop's examination is concerned, must vary according 
 to the notions of the different Bishops, some requiring one 
 thing, and some another. I like no book on the Articles 
 altogether, but Hey's Divinity Lectures at Cambridge seem 
 to me the best and fairest of any that I know of. 
 
 But with regard to the much higher question, " What 
 line of study is to be recommended for a clergyman r" 
 my own notions are very decided, though I am afraid they 
 are somewhat singular. A clergyman's profession is the 
 knowledge and practice of Christianity, with no more par- 
 ticular profession to distract his attention from it. While 
 all men, therefore, should study the Scriptures, he should 
 study them thoroughly ; because from them only is the 
 knowledge of Christianity to be obtained. And they are
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 355 
 
 to be studied with the help of philological wtuks and an- 
 tiquarian, not of dogmatical theology. But then for the 
 application of the Scriptures, for preaching, &c., a man 
 requires, first, the general cultivation of his mind, by con- 
 stantly reading the works of the very greatest inkers, phi- 
 losophers, orators, and poets; and, next, an understanding 
 of the actual state of society — of our own and of" general 
 history, as affecting and explaining the existing differences 
 amongst us, both social and religious, — and of political 
 economy, as teaching him how to deal with the poor, and 
 how to remove many of the natural delusions which em- 
 bitter their minds against the actual frame of society. 
 Further, I should advise a constant use of the biography 
 of good men ; their inward feelings, prayers, «.vc, and of 
 devotional and practical works, like Taylor's Holy Living, 
 Doddridge's llise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, 
 &c, &c. About Ecclesiastical History, there is a great 
 difficulty. I do not know Waddington's boots well, but 
 the common histories, Mosheim, Milner, Dupin, &<•., are 
 all bad; so is Fleury, except the Dissertations prefixed 
 to several of his volumes, and which ought to be published 
 separately. For our own Church again, the truth lies in i 
 well; Strype, with all his accuracy, is so weak and so tou lly 
 destitute of all sound views of government, thai it is posi- 
 tively injurious to a man's understanding to be long en- 
 gaged in so bad an atmosphere. Burnet is much better in 
 every way, yet he is not a great man ; and 1 BUppose that 
 the Catholic and Puritan writers are as bad or worse. As 
 commentators on the Scriptures, I should recommend 
 Lightfoot and Grotius: the former, from his gnat Rabbin- 
 ical learning, is often a most admirable illustrator of 
 allusions and obscure passages in both the Old and \. w 
 Testament; the latter, alike learned and able and honest, 
 is always worth reading. But 1 like Pole's Synopsis Cri- 
 ticorum altogether, and the fairness <>f the collection is 
 admirable. For Hebrew, Gesenius'8 Lexicon and Sin. ni's 
 Grammar arc recommended to me, but I cannot jud 
 
 a a 2
 
 IJ56 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 them myself. Schleusner's well known Lexicons for the 
 
 Septuagint and New Testament are exceedingly valuable 
 as an index verborum, but his interpretations are not to be 
 relied on, and he did not belong to the really great school 
 of German Philology 
 
 LXXIV. * TO H. HIGHTON 8 , ESQ. 
 
 Rugby, November 26, 1834. 
 I have not time to send you a regular letter in answer, 
 but you wish to hear my opinion about the Rugby Maga- 
 zine before Lake leaves Oxford. I told him that what I 
 wanted to know, was, in whose hands the conduct of the 
 work would be placed. Every thing depends on this ; and 
 as, on the one hand, if the editors are discreet and inex- 
 orable in rejecting trash, I should be delighted to have 
 such a work established, so, on the other hand, if they do 
 admit trash, or worse still, any thing like local or personal 
 scandal or gossip, the Magazine would be a serious dis- 
 grace to us all. And I think men owe it to the name of a 
 school not to risk it lightly, as of course a Magazine called 
 by the name of " Rugby " would risk it. Again, I should 
 most deprecate it, if it were political, for many reasons 
 which you can easily conceive yourself. I do not wish to 
 encourage the false notion of my making or trying to 
 make the school political. This would be done, were the 
 Magazine liberal ; if otherwise, I should regret it on other 
 grounds. If the editors are good, and the plan well laid 
 down and steadily kept to, I shall think the Magazine a 
 most excellent thing, both for the credit of the school, and 
 for its real benefit. Only remember that the result of 
 such an attempt cannot be neutral ; it must either do us 
 great good, or great harm 
 
 a For the sake of convenience, an asterisk has been prefixed to 
 the names of those correspondents who had been his pupils at 
 Rugby.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 357 
 
 J.XXV. TO BBV. .!. HKARN. 
 
 Fox How, December SI, 18! 
 
 It delights me to find that so good a man as Mr. IJ. 
 thinks very well of the New Poor Law, and anticipates 
 very favourable results from it, but 1 cannot think thai this 
 or any other single measure can do much towards the cure 
 of evils so complicated. I groan over the divisions of the 
 Church, of all our evils I think the greatest, — of Christ's 
 Church I mean, — that men should call themselves Roman 
 Catholics, Church of England nun, Baptists, Quakers, all 
 sorts of various appellations, forgetting that only glorious 
 name of CHRISTIAN, which is common to all, and a true 
 bond of union. I begin now to think that things must be 
 worse before they are better, and that nothing but some 
 great pressure from without wdl make Christians cast 
 away their idols of Sectarianism; the worst and most 
 mischievous by which Christ's Church has ever been 
 plagued. 
 
 I. XXVI. lo MR. JUSTICE COLBRIDGE. 
 
 Fox How, January J I. 
 
 I do not know when 1 have been so much delighted as 
 by a paragraph in the Globe of this morning, which an- 
 nounced your elevation to the Bench. Your late Letters, 
 
 while they in some measure prepared me for it, have made 
 me still more rejoice in it, because they told me how ac- 
 ceptable it would be to yourself 1 do heartih and en- 
 tirely rejoice at it, on public grounds no less than on pri 
 vate ; as an appointment honourable to the Government, 
 beneficial to the public service, and honourable and desir- 
 able for yourself ; and I have some sdlish pleasure about 
 it also, inasmuch as I hope that I shall have some better 
 chance of seeing you now than I have had hitherto, either 
 in Warwickshire or in Westmoreland. For myself, when 
 I am here in this perfection of beauty, with the place just 
 coming into shape, and the young plantations naturally
 
 358 LIFE Or DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 leading one to anticipate the future, I am inclined to feel 
 nothing but joy that the late change of Government has 
 destroyed all chance of my being ever called away from 
 Westmoreland. At least, I can say this, that I should 
 only have valued a Bishopric as giving me some prospect 
 of effecting that Church Reform which I so earnestly long 
 for, — the commencements of an union with all Christians, 
 and of a true Church government as distinguished from 
 a Clergy government, or from none at all. For this I 
 would sacrifice any thing ; but as for a Bishopric on the 
 actual system, and with no chance of mending it, it would 
 only make me feel more strongly than I do at present the 
 epC&VTijv odvvwV) Ttd'KKa tppovtovTa, juyioevq; Kparetiv. 
 
 Wordsworth is very well ; postponing his new volume of 
 poems till the political ferment is somewhat abated. " At 
 ille labitur et labetur," so far as I can foresee, notwithstand- 
 ing what the Tories have gained at the late elections. 
 
 Have you seen your Uncle's " Letters on Inspiration," 
 which I believe are to be published ? They are well fitted 
 to break ground in the approaches to that momentous 
 question which involves in it so great a shock to existing 
 notions ; the greatest probably, that has ever been given, 
 since the discovery of the falsehood of the doctrine of the 
 Pope's infallibility. Yet it must come, and will end, in 
 spite of the fears and clamours of the weak and bigoted, 
 in the higher exalting and more sure establishing of Christ- 
 ian truth. 
 
 LXXVII. TO REV. JULIUS HARE. 
 
 Fox How, January 26, 1835. 
 I cordially enter into your views about a Theological 
 Review, and I think the only difficulty would be to find an 
 Editor ; I do not tliink that Whately would have time to 
 write, but I can ask him ; and undoubtedly he would ap- 
 prove of the scheme. Hampden occurs to me as a more 
 likely man to join such a thing than Pusey, and I tlunk 1
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. ^o'J 
 
 know one or two of the younger masters who would be 
 very useful. My notion of the main objects of the work 
 would be this; 1st. To give really fair accounts and ana- 
 lyses of the works of the early Christian Writers, giving 
 also, so far as possible, a correct vim of the critical ques- 
 tions relating to them; as to their genuineness, and the 
 more or less corrupted state of the text. 2d. To make 
 some beginnings of Biblical Criticism, which, as far as re- 
 lates to the Old Testament, is in England almost non-ex- 
 istent. 3d. To illustrate in a really impartial spirit, with 
 no object but the advancement of the Church of Christ, 
 and the welfare of the Commonwealth of England, the rise 
 and progress of Dissent ; to shew what Christ's Church and 
 this nation have owed to the Establishment and to the 
 Dissenters ; and, on the other hand, what injury they have 
 received from each; with a view of promoting a real union 
 between them. These are matters particular, but all bear- 
 ing upon the great philosophical and Christian truth, which 
 seems to me the very truth of truths, that Christian unity 
 and the perfection of Christ's Church are independent of 
 theological Articles of opinion ; consisting in a certain 
 moral state and moral and religious affections, which have 
 existed in good Christians of all ages and all conununions, 
 along with an infinitely varying proportion of truth and 
 error; that thus Christ's Church has stood ou a rock and 
 never failed; yet has always been marred. with much of 
 intellectual error, and also of practical resulting from the 
 intellectual; that to talk of Popery, as the great Apostacy, 
 and to look for Christ's Church only amongst the remnant 
 Of the Vaudois, is as absurd as to look to what is (ailed 
 the Primitive Church or the Fathers for pure models of 
 faith in the sense of opinion or of government ; that Igna- 
 tius and Innocent 111. are to be held as men of the same 
 stamp, — zealous and earnest Christians both of them, but 
 both of them overbearing and fond of power j the one ad- 
 vancing the power of Bishops, the other that of the Pope 
 with equal honesty, — it may be, for their respective tim< i,
 
 300 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 with equal benefit, — but with as little claim the one as the 
 other to be an authority for Christians, and with equally 
 little impartial perception of universal truth. But then 
 for the Editor ; if he must live in London or in the Uni- 
 versities, I cannot think of the man 
 
 LXXVIII. TO REV F. C. BLACKSTONE. 
 
 Fox How, January 29, 1835. 
 We have now been here nearly six weeks, enjoying this 
 country to the full, in spite of the snow, of which we have 
 had more than our usual portion. Now, however, it is all 
 gone, and the spring lights and gentle airs of the last few 
 days have made the beauty of the scenery at its very 
 highest. We have so large a party in the house, that we 
 are very independent of any other society ; my wife's two 
 sisters and one of my nieces, besides one of our Sixth 
 Form at Rugby, in addition to our own children. I was 
 much annoyed at being called away into Warwickshire to 
 vote at the election, — a long and hurried and expensive 
 journey, with no very great interest in the contest, only as 
 having a vote, I thought it right to go, and deliver my tes- 
 timony. We were at one time likely to have a contest in 
 Westmoreland, but that blew over. I wish that in thinking 
 of you with a pupil, I could think of you as enjoying the 
 employment, whereas I am afraid you will feel it to be a 
 burden. It is, perhaps, too exclusively my business at 
 Rugby ; at least I fancy that I should be glad to have a little 
 more time for other things ; but I have not yet learnt to 
 alter my feelings of intense interest in the occupation. I 
 feel, perhaps, the more interest in it, because I seem to 
 find it more and more hopeless to get men to think and in- 
 quire freely and fairly, after they have once taken their side 
 in life. The only hope is with the young, if by any means 
 they can be led to think for themselves without following a 
 party, and to love what is good and true, let them find it 
 where they will
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. .'{(Jl 
 
 The Church question remains more uncertain than ever ; 
 we have got a respite, I trust, from the Jew Bill for 
 some time ; but in other matters, I liar, Reform according 
 to my views, is as far off as ever; I care ool in the least 
 about the pluralities and equalizing revenues; lei us have 
 a real Church Government and not a pretended one ; and 
 this government vested in the Church, and not in the clergy, 
 and we may have hopes yet. But 1 dread above all things 
 the notion either of the convocation <>r of any convocation, 
 in which the Laity had not at least an equal voice. A- for 
 the Irish Church, that I think will baffle any man's wits to 
 settle as it should be settled. 
 
 LXXIX. TO REV. DR. LOXGLEY. 
 
 Fox Bow, Kendal, January 25, 1835. 
 
 I have tried the experiment, which I mentioned to you 
 about the Fifth Form, with some modifications. I have not 
 given the Fifth the power of fagging, but by reducing their 
 number to about three or lour and twenty, we have made 
 them much moi respectable both in conducl and scholar- 
 ship, and more like boys at the head of the school. I donol 
 think that we have at present a large proportion of clever 
 boys at Rugby, and there are many great evils which I have 
 to contend with, more than are generally Known. I think, 
 also, that we are now beginning to outlive thai desire of 
 novelty which made so many people send their sons to 
 Rugby, when 1 first went there. I knew that that feeling 
 
 would ebb, and therefore got the Bel 1 limited; or else 
 
 as the Hood would have risen higher, so its ebb would have 
 been more marked; but, as it was, the limit was Bd tOO 
 high, and I do not think that we shall keep up to it, espe- 
 cially as other foundation schools are everj da\ becoming 
 reformed, and therefore entering into competition with us. 
 But I say this without the hast uneasiness, for the school 
 is really mending in itself; and its cndu al the Univ< rei 
 ties increasing rather than falling ofl ; and, so long as tln^
 
 3G2 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 is the case, I shall be perfectly satisfied ; if we were really 
 to go clown in efficiency, either from my fault, or from 
 faults which I could not remedy, I should soon establish 
 myself at Fox How. 
 
 I wrote to Hawtrey to congratulate him on his appoint- 
 ment, and I took that opportunity to ask him what he 
 thought of the expediency of getting up good grammars, 
 both Latin and Greek, which, being used in all or most of 
 the great public schools, would so become, in fact, the na- 
 tional grammars. I should propose to adopt something of 
 the plan followed by our Translators of the Bible ; i. e. 
 that a certain portion of each grammar should be assigned 
 to the master or masters of each of the great schools ; e. g. 
 the accidence to one, syntax to another, prosody to a 
 third ; or probably with greater subdivisions ; that then the 
 parts so drawn up should be submitted to the revision of 
 the other schools, and the whole thus brought into shape. 
 Hawtrey exclaims strongly against the faults of the Eton 
 grammars, and I am not satisfied with Matthia?, which 
 seems to me too difficult, and almost impossible to be 
 learnt by heart. Hawtrey said he would write to me again, 
 when he found himself more settled, and I have not heard 
 from him since. I should like to know what your sentiments 
 are about it ; it woidd be fjuthia-ra holt kvxw to have a common 
 grammar jointly concocted; but if I cannot get other men 
 to join me, I think we must try our hands on one for our 
 own use at Rugby ; I shall not, however, think of this till 
 all hope of something better a is out of the question. 
 
 It seems to me that we have not enough of cooperation 
 in our system of public education, including both the 
 great schools and Universities. I do not like the central- 
 izing plan of compulsory uniformity under the government; 
 but I do not see why we should all be acting without the 
 least reference to one another. Something of this kind is 
 wanted, particularly I think with regard to expulsion. 
 
 a The necessity for such a plan was eventually obviated by his 
 adoption of the Rev. C. Wordsworth's Greek Grammar.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 363 
 
 Under actual circumstances it is often no penalty .u all in 
 reality, while it is considered ignorantly to be the excess 
 of severity, and the ruin of a boy's prospects. And until 
 the Universities have an examination upon admission, as a 
 University, not a college regulation, the standard of tin- 
 college lecture rooms will be so low, that a young man 
 going from the top of a public school will be nearly Losing 
 his time, and tempted to go back in his scholarship bj 
 attending them. This is an old grievance at Oxford, as I 
 can bear witness, when I myself was an undergraduate 
 just come from Winchester. 
 
 LXXX. TO CHEVALIEIl BUNSEN. 
 
 Rugby, February 10, 1 - 
 I know not how adequately to answer your last delight- 
 ful and most kind letter, so interesting to me in all its 
 parts, so full of matter for the expression »>l so many 
 thoughts and so many feelings. 1 think you can hardly 
 tell, how I prize such true sympathy of heart and mind as 
 I am sure to find in your letters; because I hope and be- 
 lieve that it is not so rare to you as it is to me 
 
 I find in you that exact combination of tastes, which 1 hat 6 
 in myself, for philological, historical, and philosophical 
 pursuits, centering in moral and spiritual truths; the exact 
 Greek 7roAiTix«, if we understand, with St. Paul, where the 
 arris of OUT 7roXnsia is to be sought for. YoUI Hymn 
 Book reached me before the holidays, and 1 led upon it 
 with unceasing delight in Westmoreland, it is, indeed, a 
 treasure; and how I delighted in recognising the prin- 
 ciples of the Letter to Dr. Nott in the hist Appendix to 
 the volume. As to the Hymns, I have not \et read a sin- 
 gle one, which 1 have not thought good. I should like to 
 know some of your favourites; for mys< If, I am especial)} 
 fond of the Hymn 24, "Seele, <lu muss! munter u< idem" 
 &c. ; of 697, " Der Mond ist aufgegau^en ;" of 824, u 
 liebe Seele, konntst du werdcn j" of 822, M l-'.rln >bl em h
 
 364 LIFE OF 1>K. ARNOLD. 
 
 frohe Jubellieder;" of 839, " O Ewigheit ! O Ewigheit;" 
 and of 933 and 934. I have tried to translate some of 
 them, but have been sadly disappointed with my own at- 
 tempts. But I must give you one or two stanzas of the 
 Morning Hymn, as a token of my love to it, and to show 
 you also, for your satisfaction, how much our language is 
 inferior to yours in flexibility and power, by having lost 
 so much of its native character, and become such a jumble 
 of French and Latin exotics with the original Saxon. . . . 
 I shall send you, almost immediately, the third volume of 
 Thucydides, and the third volume of Sermons. The Ap- 
 pendix to the latter is directed against an error, which is 
 deeply mischievous in our Church, by presenting so great 
 an obstacle to Christian union, as well as to Christian 
 Church Reform. Still, as in Catholic countries, " the 
 Church," with us, means, in many persons' mouths, and 
 constantly in Parliament, only " the clergy ;" and this feel- 
 ing operates, of course, both to produce superstition and pro- 
 faneness, in both respects exactly opposed to Christianity. 
 Church Reform, in any high sense of the word, we shall not 
 have ; the High church party idolize things as they are ; 
 the Evangelicals idolize the early Reformers ; their notion at 
 the best would be to carry into full effect the intentions of 
 Cranmer and Ridley ; neither party are prepared to ac- 
 knowledge that there is much more to be done than this ; 
 and that Popery and narrow dogmatical intolerance tainted 
 the Church as early as the days of Ignatius ; while, on the 
 other hand, Christ's true Church lived through the worst 
 of times, and is not to be confined to the small congrega- 
 tions of the Vaudois. The state of parties in England, 
 and that ignorance of and indifference to general princi- 
 ples, which is so characteristic of Englishmen, is enough to 
 break one's heart. I do not think that you do justice to the 
 late government; you must compare them not with the 
 government of a perfect Commonwealth, but with that 
 worse than " Faex Romuli," the Tory system that pre- 
 ceded them, and which is now threatening us again under
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 3t>5 
 
 a new aspect It strikes me that a noble work might 
 
 be written on the Philosophy of Parties and Revolutions, 
 showing what are the essential points of division in all civil 
 contests, and what are but accidents. For the want of this, 
 history as a collection of facts is of no use at all to many 
 persons; they mistake essential resemblances, and dwell 
 upon accidental differences, especially when those acci- 
 dental differences are in themselves matters of great im- 
 portance, such as differences in religion, or, more or less, 
 of civil liberty and equality. Whereas it seems to me that 
 the real parties in human nature are the Conservatives and 
 the Advancers; those who look to the past or present. 
 and those who look to the future, whether knowingly and 
 deliberately, or by an instinct of their nature, indolent in 
 one case and restless in the other, which they themselves 
 do not analyze. Thus Conservatism may sometimes be 
 ultra democracy, (see Cleon's speech in Thucydides, III.,) 
 sometimes aristocracy, as in the civil wars of Rome, or in 
 the English constitution now ; and the Advance may be 
 sometimes despotism, sometimes aristocracy, but always 
 keeping its essential character of advance, of taking off 
 bonds, removing prejudices, altering what is existing. The 
 Advance in its perfect form is Christianity, and in a corrupted 
 world must always be the true principle, although it has in 
 many instances been so clogged with ei il of various kinds, 
 that the conservative principle, although essentially false 
 since man fell into sin, has yet commended itself to good 
 men while they looked on the history of mankind only 
 
 partially, and did not consider it as a whole 
 
 How you astonish and shame me by what you are yourself 
 continually effecting and proposing to effect amidst all your 
 official and domestic engagements. 1 do not know how j on 
 can contrive it, or how your strength and spirits can sup- 
 port it. how heartily do I sympathize in your feeling 
 as to the union of philological, historical, and philosophical 
 research, all to minister to divine truth ; and how gladly 
 would I devote my time and powers t<» Buch pursuits, did
 
 3()G LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 I not feel as much another thing in your letter, that we 
 should abide in that calling which God has set before us. 
 And it is delightful, if at any time 1 may hope to send out 
 into the world any young man willing and trained to do 
 Christ's work, rich in the combined and indivisible love of 
 truth and of goodness a 
 
 LXXXI. * TO C. J. VAUGHAN, ESQ. 
 
 Rugby, February 25, 1835. 
 
 You must not think that I had forgotten you, though 
 your kind letter has remained so long unanswered. I was 
 always conscious of my debt to you, and resolved to pay 
 it ; but though I can write letters of business at any time, 
 yet it is not so with letters to friends, which I neither like 
 to leave unfinished in the middle, nor, to say the truth, do 
 I always feel equal to writing them ; for they require a 
 greater freshness and abstractedness of mind from other 
 matters than I am always able to command. I have been 
 
 a " Cobbett is an anti-advance man to the back bone, he is some- 
 times Jacobin, sometimes Conservative, but never liberal ; and the 
 same may be said of most of the party writers on both sides, of 
 which there is a good proof in their joint abuse of the French go- 
 vernment, which is, I think, the most truly liberal and ' advanc- 
 ing' that exists in Europe, next perhaps to the Prussian, which is 
 one of the most advancing ever known." — Extract from a Letter 
 to Mr. Justice Coleridge in the same year. 
 
 The doctrine alluded to in these Letters was one to which he 
 often recurred, and which he believed to be peculiarly applicable 
 to modern Europe. " A volume," he said, " might be written on 
 those words of Harrington, ' that we are living in the dregs of the 
 Gothic empire.' It is that the beginnings of things are bad — and 
 when they have not been altered, you may safely say that they 
 want altering. But then comes the question whether our fate is 
 not fixed, and whether you could not as well make the muscles and 
 sinews of a full grown man perform the feats of an Indian juggler ; 
 great changes require great docility, and you can only expect that 
 from perfect knowledge or perfect ignorance."
 
 LIFE OF DB. ARNOLD. \)\')7 
 
 greatly delighted with all 1 have heard of you since you 
 hare been at Cambridge; it is vexatious to me, however, 
 that from want of familiarity with the system, I cannot 
 bring your life and pursuits there so vividly before my 
 mind, as I can those of an undergraduate in Oxford ; other- 
 wise, to say nothing of my personal interest for indivi- 
 duals, I think that I am as much concerned about one 
 university as the other. Lake will have told you, 1 dare 
 say, all our vacation news, and probably all that lias hap- 
 pened worth relating since our return to Rugby. In fact, 
 news of all sorts you will be sui'e to hear from your other 
 correspondents earlier and more fully than from me. 
 
 I was obliged to you for a hint in your letter to Price, 
 about our reading more Greek poetry, and accordingly we 
 have begun the Harrow " Musa Graeca," and are doing 
 some Pindar. You may be sure that I wish to consult the 
 line of reading at both Universities, so far as this can be 
 done without a system of direct cramming, or without 
 sacrificing something, which I may believe to be of para- 
 mount importance. Aristophanes, however, I had pur- 
 posely left for Lee to do with the Fifth Form, as it is a 
 book which he had studied well, and can do much bitter than 
 I can 
 
 I am doing nothing, but thinking of many things. 1 
 forget whether you learnt any German here, but I think 
 it would be well worth your while to learn it with- 
 out loss of time. Every additional language gained is 
 like an additional power, none more so than German. I 
 have been revelling in my friend Bunsen's collection of 
 hymns, and have lately gol a periodical work on Divinity, 
 published by some of the best German divines, " Thcolo- 
 
 gische Studien and Krrtiken." I mention these, because 
 they are both so utterly unlike what is called Rationalism, 
 and at the same time so unlike our High Church or l'.\an 
 gelical writings: they seem to me to be a most pure tran- 
 script of the New Testament, combining in a most extra- 
 ordinary degree the spirit of love with the spirit of wisdom.
 
 3G8 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 It is a very hard thing, I suppose, to read at once pas- 
 sionately and critically, by no means to be cold, captious, 
 sneering, or scoffing ; to admire greatness and goodness 
 with an intense love and veneration, yet to judge all 
 things ; to be the slave neither of names nor of parties, 
 and to sacrifice even the most beautiful associations for 
 the sake of truth. T would say, as a good general rule, 
 never read the works of any ordinary man, except on sci- 
 entific matters, or when they contain simple matters of 
 fact. Even on matters of fact, silly and ignorant men, 
 however honest and industrious in their particular subject, 
 require to be read with constant watchfulness and sus- 
 picion ; whereas great men are always instructive, even 
 amidst much of error on particular points. In general, 
 however, I hold it to be certain, that the truth is to be 
 found in the great men, and the error in the little ones. 
 
 LXXXII. * TO A. P. STANLEY, ESQ. 
 
 Rugby, March 1, 1835. 
 
 I am delighted that you like Oxford, nor am I 
 
 the least afraid of your liking it too much. It does not 
 follow because one admires and loves the surpassing beauty 
 of the place and its associations, or because one forms in 
 it the most valuable and most delightful friendships, that 
 therefore one is to uphold its foolishnesses, and try to per- 
 petuate its faults. My love for any place or person, or in- 
 stitution, is exactly the measure of my desire to reform 
 them ; a doctrine which seems to me as natural now, as it 
 seemed strange when I was a child, when I coidd not make 
 out, how, if my mother loved me more than strange 
 children, she should find fault with me and not with them. 
 But I do not think this ought to be a difficulty to any one 
 who is more than six years old. I suppose that the read- 
 ing necessary for the schools is now so great, that you can 
 scarcely have time for any thing else. Your German will 
 be kept up naturally enough in your mere classical read-
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. '.MJ 
 
 ing, and ancient history and philosophy will be constantly 
 
 recalling modern events and parties to your mind, and im- 
 proving in fact, in the host way, your familiarity with and 
 understanding of them. But I hope that you will be at 
 Oxford long enough to have one year at least of reading 
 directly on the middle ages or modern times, and of re- 
 velling in the stores of the Oxford libraries. 1 have never 
 lost the benefit of what 1 enjoyed in this respect, though 
 I have often cause to regret that it is no longer within my 
 reach. 
 
 1 do not know why ray Thucydides is not out ; I sent 
 off the last corrected sheet three weeks a,L, r o. 1 am 
 amused with thinking of what will he said of the latter 
 part of the Preface, which is very conservative, insomuch 
 that I am rather afraid of being suspected of ratting; a 
 suspicion which, notwithstanding, would be quite un- 
 founded, as you will probably believe without any more 
 solemn assurance on my part. Nor do 1 feel that I am in 
 any greater danger of becoming a Radical, if by that term 
 be meant one who follows popular principles, as opposed 
 to or distinct from liberal ones, lint liberal principles are 
 more or less popular, and more or less aristocratical, ac- 
 cording to circumstances, and thus in the application of 
 precisely the same principles which I held two years ago, 
 and ten years ago, I should write and act as to particular 
 
 persons and parties somewhat differently In other 
 
 words, the late extraordinary revolution has shown the enor- 
 mous strength of the aristocracy and of the corrupt and low 
 Tory party ; one sees clearly what hard blows they will 
 not only stand, but require, and that the fear of depressing 
 them too much is chimerical. A deeper fear is behind ; 
 
 that, like the vermin on the jacket in Sylla's apologue, 
 they will stick so tight to the form of the constitution, that 
 the constitution itself will at last he thrown into the lire, 
 
 and a military monarchy succeed But of one thing ] 
 
 am clear, that if ever this constitution be destroyed, it will 
 be only when it ought to be destroyed; when evils long 
 
 VOL. I. !'• B
 
 870 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 neglected, and good long omitted, will have brought things 
 to such a state, that the Constitution must fall to save the 
 Commonwealth, and the Church of England perish for the 
 sake of the Church of Christ. Search and look whether 
 you can find that any constitution was ever destroyed from 
 within by factions or discontent, without its destruction 
 having been, either just penally, or necessary, because it 
 could not any longer answer its proper purposes. And 
 this ripeness for destruction is the sure consequence of 
 Toryism and Conservatism, or of that base system which 
 joins the hand of a Reformer to the heart of a Tory, re- 
 forms not upon principle, but upon clamour ; and therefore 
 both changes amiss, and preserves amiss, alike blind and 
 low principled in what it gives and what it withholds. And 
 therefore I would oppose to the utmost any government 
 predominantly Tory, much more one exclusively Ton-, 
 and most of all a government, at once exclusively Tory in 
 heart, and in word and action simulating reform. Con- 
 ceive the Duke of Ormond and Bolingbroke, and Atter- 
 bury, and Sir W. Wyndham intrusted with the adminstra- 
 tion of the Act of Settlement. So have I filled my paper ; 
 but it is idle to wnte upon things of this kind, as no letter 
 will hold all that is to be said, much less answer objections 
 on the other side. Write to me when you can, and tell 
 me about vourself fully a . 
 
 LXXXIII. TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN. 
 
 Rugby, March 22, 1835. 
 
 I have been thinking of what you say as to a book 
 
 on the origin of Civilization, and considering whether I could 
 furnish any thing towards it. But history, I think, can fur- 
 nish little to the purpose, because all history properly so 
 
 a The latter part of this letter was occasioned bv a regret ex- 
 pressed at his vote in the Warwickshire election. For the dis- 
 tinction between " Liberal and Popular principles," see his article 
 in the Quarterly Journal of Education, vol. ix. p. 281.
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. !>/ I 
 
 called belongs to an age of at least partial civilization; and 
 
 the poetical or mythical traditions, which refer to the origin 
 
 of this civilization, cannot be made use of to prove any 
 thing, till their character has undergone a more complete 
 analysis. I believe with yon that savages could never 
 civilize themselves, but barbarians 1 think might; and 
 there are some races, e. g. the Keltic, the Teutonic, and 
 the Hellenic, that we cannot trace back n> a savage state, 
 nor does it appear that they ever were savages. With re- 
 gard to such races as have been found in a savage state, if 
 it be admitted that all mankind are originally one race, 
 then I should say that they must have degenerated ; but, if 
 the physiological question be not settled yet, and there is 
 any reason to suppose that the New Hollander and the 
 Greek never had one common ancestor, then you would 
 have the races of mankind divided into those improveable 
 by themselves, and those improveable only by others; the 
 first created originally with such means in their possession, 
 that out of these they could work indefinitely their own 
 improvement, the ttqu aru being in a manner given to 
 them; the second without the ttou arco, and intended to 
 receive it in time, through the instrumentality of their fel- 
 low-creatures. And this would be sufficiently analogous 
 to the course of Providence in other known cases, e. g. 
 the communicating all religious knowledge to mankind 
 through the Jewish people, and all intellectual civilization 
 through the Greeks ; no people having ever yet possessed 
 that activity of mind, and that power of reflection and 
 questioning of things, which are the marks of intellectual 
 advancement, without having derived them mediately or 
 immediately from (J recce. I had occasion in the winter 
 to observe this in a .lew, of whom 1 took a few lessons in 
 Hebrew, and who was learned in the writings ol' the Rab- 
 bis, but totally ignorant of all the literature of the West, 
 ancient and modern. He was consequently just like a 
 child, — his mind being entirely without the habit of criticism 
 or analysis, whether as applied to words or to things ; 
 
 B B 2
 
 '.)7~ LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 wholly ignorant, for instance, of the analysis of language, 
 whether grammatical or logical ; or of the analysis of a 
 narrative of facts, according to any rules of probability 
 external or internal. I never so felt the debt which the 
 human race owes to Pythagoras, or whoever it was that 
 
 was the fust founder of Greek philosophy 
 
 The interest of present questions, involving as they do 
 great and eternal principles, hinders me from fixing con- 
 tentedly upon a work of past history ; while the hopelessness 
 of persuading men, and the inevitable odium which attends 
 any thing written on the topics of the day, hinder me on the 
 other hand from writing much about the present. How 
 great this odium is, I really could have hardly conceived, 
 even with all my former experience 
 
 LXXXIV. TO MSI OLD PUPIL. (a.) 
 
 Rugby, Mnrch 30, 1835. 
 Just as I have begun to write the clock has struck five, 
 which you know announces the end of Fourth lesson, so 
 that I fear I shall not make much progress now ; I shall 
 let the Sixth Form, however, have the pleasure of con- 
 templating a very beautiful passage out of Coleridge for a 
 few minutes longer, while I write on a few lines to you. It 
 
 gave me great pleasure to find that you enjoy 's society 
 
 so much, and I hope that it makes Oxford seem at any 
 rate more endurable to you. I was very much interested 
 
 by your story of 's comment upon a little burst of yours 
 
 about Switzerland. I suppose that Pococuranteism (ex- 
 cuse the word) is much the order of the day amongst 
 young men. I observe symptoms of it here, and am 
 always dreading its ascendancy, though we have some 
 who struggle nobly against it. I believe that " Nil ad- 
 mirari " in this sense is the Devil's favourite text ; and he 
 could not choose a better to introduce his pupils into the 
 more esoteric parts of his doctrine. And therefore I have 
 always looked upon a man infected with this disorder of
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 373 
 
 anti-romance, as on one, who lias lost the finest part of his 
 nature, and his best protection against every thing low and 
 
 foolish. Such a man may well call me mad, but his part} 
 are not yet strong enough to get me fairly shut up, — and 
 till they are, I shall take the liberty of insisting that their 
 tail is the longest, and, the more boldly 1 assume this, the 
 more readily will the world believe me. I have lived now 
 for many years, — indeed, since 1 was a very young man, — in 
 a very entire indifference as to the opinion <>1 people, un- 
 less I have reason to think them good and wise ; and 1 
 wish that some of my friends would share this indifference, 
 at least as far as I am concerned. The only thing which 
 which gives me the slightest concern in the attacks which 
 have been lately made on me, is the idea of their in any 
 
 degree disturbing my friends. I am afraid that is 
 
 not as indifferent as I could wish cither to the attacks in 
 newspapers, or to the gossip of Oxford about Rugby, of 
 which last I have now had some years 1 experience, and 1 
 should pay it a very undeserved compliment, if I were to 
 set any higher value on it than 1 do on my friend Theo- 
 dore Hook and his correspondents in John Bull. It is a 
 inert' idleness to attend to this sort of talking, and as to 
 trying to act so as to avoid its attacks, — a man would have 
 enough to do, and would lead a strange life, if he were to 
 l.e shaping his conduct to propitiate gossip. I hold it 
 also equally vain to attempt to explain or to contradict 
 any reports that may be in circulation ; in order to do bo, 
 it would be necessary to write a weekly dispatch at the 
 least; ami even then it would do little good, while it would 
 greatly encourage the utterers of' scandal, ;i> it would 
 
 show that their attacks were thought worth noticing 
 
 You will be glad to hear that the English Essays are again 
 very good, and so I think an' some of the Latin Essays j 
 the verse we have not yet received. On the other hand, 
 
 there is constantly sufficient occasion to remember our 
 humanity, without am slave to prompt us
 
 374 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 LXXXV. TO S1K THOMAS SABINIi PASLEY, BART. 
 (In answer to a question about Public and Private Schools.) 
 
 Rugby, April 15, 1835. 
 
 The difficulties of education stare me in the 
 
 face, whenever I look at my own four boys. 1 think by 
 and by that I shall put them into the school here, but 
 I shall do it with trembling. Experience seems to point 
 out no one plan of education as decidedly the best , 
 it only says, I think, that public education is the best 
 where it answers. But then the question is, will it answer 
 with one's own boy ? and if it fails, is not the failure com- 
 plete ? It becomes a question of particulars : a very good 
 private tutor would tempt me to try private education, or 
 a very good public school, with connexions amongst the 
 boys at it, might induce me to venture upon public. Still 
 there is much chance in the matter ; for a school may 
 change its character greatly, even with the same master, 
 by the prevalence of a good or bad set of boys ; and this 
 no caution can guard against. But I should certainly ad- 
 vise any thing rather than a private school of above thirty 
 boys. Large private schools, I think, are the worst pos- 
 sible system : the choice lies between public schools, and 
 an education, whose character may be strictly private and 
 domestic. This, I fear, is but an unsatisfactory opinion ; 
 but I shall be most happy to give you all the advice that 
 I can upon any particular case that you may have to pro- 
 pose, when I have the pleasure of seeing you in West- 
 moreland. We are just going to embark on our time of 
 gaiety, or rather, I may say of bustle ; for we shall not 
 dine alone again for the next fortnight. I am going south- 
 wards instead of northwards, to my old home at Laleham, 
 which I can reach in twelve hours, instead of twenty-four. 
 You may imagine that we often think of Fox How, and I 
 sighed to see the wood anemones on the rock, when on 
 Tuesday I went with all the children, except Fan, to the 
 only place within four miles of us, where there is a little 
 copse and wood flowers
 
 LIFE OF DK. ARNOLD. 375 
 
 LXXXVJ. TO II. STBJCKLAND, ESQ. 
 
 Rngby, -May 18, 1885. 
 
 I congratulate you on your prospects of exploring Asia 
 Minor, and I should be most happy to give you any as- 
 sistance in my power towards furthering your objects. 
 You know, I dare Bay, a map of Asia Minor, published a 
 few years since, by Colonel Leake, and shewing all that 
 was then known of that country. The Geographical So- 
 ciety will give you all information, which you may need as 
 to more recent journeys ; but I imagine little has been 
 done of any account. What is to be done, may be divided 
 naturally into two heads, physical research, and moral, in 
 the widest sense of the term. As to the former, you can 
 need no suggestions from me. I am curious to know about 
 the geology — whether the salt lakes of the interior be- 
 long to the red marl formation, and whether there are any 
 traces of coal. With regard to the botany, every observa- 
 tion, I suppose, will be valuable, — what trees and shrubs 
 appear to be the weeds of the soil ; and whether there is 
 any appearance or tradition that these have changed within 
 historical memory ; — whether there are any traces of de- 
 stroyed forests, and whether the sands have encroached 
 or are encroaching on the available soil, either in the 
 valleys or elsewhere. Again, all meteorological observa- 
 tions will be precious: — variations of temperature at dif- 
 ferent levels or distances from the sea ; suddenness of 
 changes of temperature ; prevailing winds, quantity of rain 
 that falls, &c. All facts that may throw any light upon the 
 phenomena of malaria are highly important ; and I think 
 it is worth while tit bear in mind the possible, if not pro- 
 bable, connexion between epidemic disorders and the out- 
 break of volcanic agency and electrical phenomena. The 
 return of crops — how mam fold the seed yields in average 
 seasons, is also, I think, a tact always worth getting at. 
 
 Now lor matters relating to man. Asia Minor has 
 little historical inter, st, i Stcept a- t.. itv coasts: you will 
 not find any places of note, but you may find inscrip
 
 37(3 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 tions, and of course coins, which may be valuable. The 
 point for inquiry, as far as it may be possible, seems to me 
 to be the languages and dialects of the country. The ex- 
 istence of the Basque language, as well as of the Breton 
 and Welsh, shows how aboriginal dialects will linger on 
 through successive conquests in remote districts. Turkish 
 can hardly be the universal language, or, if it is, it must be 
 more or less corrupted with a foreign intermixture ; and 
 then, any of these corrupting words may be very curious, 
 as relics of the original languages ; and Phrygian, we 
 know had, even amongst the Greeks, a character of high 
 antiquity. If you find any unexplored libraries, look out 
 for palimpsests ; in these lies our only chance of recover- 
 ing any thing of great value ; and though you will not have 
 time to spell them out, yet a cursory glance may give you 
 some hints as to what they are, and may enable you to di- 
 rect the inquiries of others. All old or actual lines of road 
 are worth attending to, and, of course, all statistical in- 
 formation. If possible, I would take a Strabo with me, 
 and an Herodotus ; also, if you go to Trebizond, the Ana- 
 basis. I should like to explore the valley of the Haiys, 
 which, I suppose, must be one of the finest parts of the 
 whole country ; but the greatest part of it, I imagine, will 
 be sadlv tiresome 
 
 LXXXVII. TO MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE. 
 
 Rugby, May 20, 1835. 
 I have just been setting my boys a passage out of your 
 edition of Blackstonc, to translate into Latin prose, and 
 while they are doing it, I will begin a letter to you. I have 
 had unmixed satisfaction in all I have heard said of you 
 since your elevation. So entirely do I rejoice in it, both 
 publicly and privately, that I could almost forgive Sir R. 
 Peel's ministry their five months of office for the sake of 
 that one good deed. I do hope I shall sec you ere long, 
 for I yearn sadlv alter my old friends
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 31 i 
 
 I live alone, so Car as men friends axe concerned, and am 
 obliged more and more to act and think by myself and for 
 myself. It was therefore very delightful to me to get your 
 
 little bit of counsel touching the delay of my book, and I 
 am gladly complying with it. But I have read nunc about 
 it, and for a longer period, than perhaps you are aware of; 
 and in history, after having readied a certain point of 
 knowledge, the after progress increases in a very rapid 
 ratio, because the particular facts group under their 
 general principle, and gain a clearness and instractiveness 
 from the comparison with other analogous facts, which in 
 their solitary state they could not have 
 
 Yonr Uncle said, many years ago, that " it could not be 
 wondered at if good men were slow to join Mr. Pitt's party, 
 seeing that it dealt in such atrocious personal calumnies." 
 I think I have had within the last three or lour months 
 ample reason to repeat his observation. Had you not 
 been on the Bench, I should have consulted you as to the 
 expediency of noticing some of them legally ; and now, as 
 far as you can with propriety, I should much like to hear 
 what you would say. The attacks go on weekly, charging 
 me with corrupting the boys' religions principles, and in- 
 tending, if they can, to injure me in my trade 1 
 
 think that this spirit of libel is peculiar to the Tories, from 
 [/Estrange and Swift downwards: just ask yourself, if you 
 have known any Tory not more engaged in public life 
 than 1 am, and having given as little ground for attack 1>\ 
 personalities on my part, who was abused by the Libera] 
 papers as 1 have been by the Tories. 1 often think of the 
 rancorous abuse which the same party heaped upon Bur- 
 nett, and how that Exposition of the Articles, which 
 Bishops and Divinity Professors, and Tutors now recom- 
 mend, was censured by the Lower lions,' of Convocation 
 as latitudinarian. lix ^^ T0V °?* v ° v 
 
 I hope you saw Wordsworth when he was in London, and 
 that you enjoy his new volume. I have been reading a 
 good deal of Pindar and of Aristophanes lately, Pindar
 
 378 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 after a twenty years' interval, and liow much mure interest- 
 ing lie is to the man than to the boy. As for Homer, it is 
 my weekly feast to get better and better acquainted with 
 him. In English I read scarcely any thing, and I know 
 not when 1 shall be able to do it. We go on here very 
 comfortably, and the school is in a very satisfactory state. 
 I had the pleasure of seeing some of the best of my Rugby 
 pupils here at Easter, and one of the best of my Laleham 
 ones was here a little before. It is the great happiness of 
 my profession to have these relations so clear and so en- 
 during. I had intended to go to Oxford to-day, to have 
 voted in favour of the Declaration instead of the Subscrip- 
 tion to the Articles, but I coidd not w r ell manage it, and 
 it was of little consequence, as we were sure to be beaten. 
 It makes me half daft to think of Oxford and the London 
 University, as bad as one another in their opposite ways, 
 and perpetuating their badness by remaining distinct, in- 
 stead of mixing 
 
 TO REV. DR. HAWKINS. 
 
 Rugby, May 27, 1835. 
 
 I sincerely congratulate you on being honoured 
 
 with the abuse of my friend the Northampton Herald, in 
 company with Whately, Hampden, and myself; and per- 
 haps I feel some malicious satisfaction that you shoidd be 
 thus in a manner forced into the boat with us, while you 
 perhaps are thinking us not very desirable companions. 
 It was found, I believe, at the Council of Trent, that the 
 younger clergy were far more averse to reform than the 
 older ; just as the Juniores Patrum at Rome, were the 
 hottest supporters of the abuses of the aristocracy ; and so 
 the Convocation has shown itself far more violent and ob- 
 stinate against improvement than the Heads of Houses. It 
 is a great evil — a national evil, I think, of very great mag- 
 nitude ; for the Charter must be, and ought to be, granted 
 to the London University, if you will persist in keeping
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 379 
 
 out Dissenters ; and then there will be tiro party places, 
 instead of one, to perpetuate narrow views and disunion to 
 our children's children. For it is vain to deny, that the 
 Church of England clergy have politically been a party in 
 the country, from Elizabeth's time downwards, and a party 
 opposed to the cause, which in the main has been the cause 
 of* improvement. There have been at all times noble in- 
 dividual exceptions, and, for \en considerable periods, in 
 the reign of George the Second, and in the early part of 
 George the Third's reign, Tor instance, the spirit of the 
 body has been temperate and conciliatory ; but in Charles 
 the First and Second's reigns, and in the period following 
 the Revolution, they deserved so ill of their country, that 
 the Dissenters have at no time deserved worse: and, there- 
 fore, it mil not do lor the Church party to identify them- 
 selves with the nation, which they are not, nor with the 
 constitution, which they did their best to hinder from ever 
 coming into existence. 1 grant that the Dissenters are, poli- 
 tically speaking, nearly as bad, and as narrow-minded, but 
 then they have more excuse, in belonging generally toa lower 
 class in society, and not having been taught Aristotle and 
 Thucydides. June 1st. 1 was interrupted, for which you 
 will not be sorry, and I will not return to the subject. 1 
 was much obliged to you for your letter and pamphlet , 
 but though I approve of the proposed change, yet of course 
 it does not touch the great question 
 
 i.wxix. TO A PUPIL, 
 
 Whose happiness wan much affected, ami faith endangered, by dwelling on 
 points revealed as God's vail, bat irreconcileable with his ideas "t God's 
 goodness. 
 
 Rugby, June 21, 1835. 
 
 1 have been \ery tar from forgetting you, or 
 
 m\ promise to write down something on the subject of our 
 
 conversation, though 1 have some fears of doing more harm
 
 380 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 than good, by not meeting yourca.se satisfactorily. How- 
 ever, I shall venture, hoping that God may bless the at- 
 tempt to your comfort and benefit. 
 
 The more I think of the matter the more I am satisfied 
 that all speculations of the kind in question are to be re- 
 pressed by the will, and if they haunt us, notwithstanding 
 the efforts of our will, that then they are to be prayed 
 against, and silently endured as a trial. I mean specula- 
 tions turning upon things wholly beyond our reach, and 
 where the utmost conceivable result cannot be truth, but 
 additional perplexity. Such must be the question as to 
 the origin and continued existence of moral evil ; which is 
 a question utterly out of our reach, as we know and can 
 know nothing of the system of the universe, and which can 
 never bring us to truth, because if we adopt one hypo- 
 thesis as certain, and come to a conclusion upon one 
 theory, we shall be met by difficulties quite as insuperable 
 on the other side, which would oblige us in fairness to go 
 over the process again, and to reject our new conclusion, 
 as we had done our old one ; because in our total ignorance 
 of the matter, there will always be difficulties in the way of 
 any hypothesis which we cannot answer, and which will 
 effectually preclude our ever arriving at a state of intel- 
 lectual satisfaction, such as consists in having a clear view 
 of a whole question from first to last, and seeing that the 
 premises are true, the conclusion fairly drawn, and that 
 all objections to either may be satisfactorily answered. 
 This state, which alone I suppose deserves to be called 
 knowledge, is one which, if Ave can ever attain it, is attain- 
 able only in matters merely human, and wholly within the 
 range of our understanding and experience. It is mani- 
 fest that the sole difficulty in the subject of your perplexity 
 is merely the origin of moral evil, and it is manifest also 
 that this difficulty equally affects things actually existing 
 around us. Yet if the sight of wickedness in ourselves or 
 others were to lead us to perplex ourselves as to its origin,
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 381 
 
 instead of struggling against it and attempting to put an 
 end to it, we know that we should be wrong, and that evil 
 would thrive and multiply on such a system of conduct. 
 
 This would have been the language of a heathen Stoic 
 or Academician, when an Epicurean beset him with the dif- 
 ficulty of accounting for evil without impugning the power 
 or the goodness of the gods. And 1 think that this lan- 
 gage was sound and practically convincing, quite enough 
 so to shew that the Epicurean objection sets one upon an 
 error, because it leads to practical absurdity and wicked- 
 ness. But I think that with us the authority of Christ puts 
 things on a different looting. I know nothing about the 
 origin of evil, but I believe that Christ did know; and 
 as our common sense tells us, that we can strive against 
 evil and sympathize in punishment hen-, although we 
 cannot tell how there comes to lie evil, so Christ tells us 
 that we may continue these same feelings to the state be- 
 yond this life, although the origin of evi] is still a secret to 
 us. And I know Christ to have been so wise and so loving 
 to men, that I am sure I may trust I lis word, and that 
 what was entirely agreeable to His sense of justice and 
 goodness, cannot, unless through my own defect, be other- 
 wise than agreeable to mine. 
 
 Further, when 1 find Him repelling all questions ^<i 
 curiosity, and reproving in particular such as had a ten- 
 dency to lead men away from their great business, — the 
 doing good to themselves and others,— ! am sure that if I 
 stood before Him, and said to Him, " Lord, what can I do? 
 for I cannot understand how God can allow any to be 
 wicked, or why He should not destroy them, rather than 
 let them exist to suffer;" that His mildest answer would 
 be, " What is that to thee — follow thou me." But if He, 
 
 who can read the heart, knew that there was in the doubt so 
 expressed any thing of an evil heart of unbelief- of un- 
 belief that had grown out of carelessness, and from my 
 not having walked watchfully alter Him, loving Him, and 
 doingHis will, — then I should expect that I [e would tell me.
 
 :}8 k J LIFE OF l>K. ARNOLD. 
 
 that this thought had come t<» me, because I neither knew 
 Him nor his Father, but had neglected and been indifferent 
 to both ; and then I should be sure that He would give me 
 no explanation or light at all, but would rather make the 
 darkness thicker upon me, till T came before Him not with 
 a speculative doubt, but with an earnest prayer for His 
 mercy and His help, and with a desire to walk humbly 
 before Him, and to do His will, and promote His kingdom. 
 This, I believe, is the only way to deal with those dis- 
 turbances of mind which cannot lead to truth, but only to 
 perplexity. Many persons, I am inclined to think, endure 
 some of these to their dying day, well aware of their 
 nature, and not sanctioning them by their will, but unable 
 to shake them off, and enduring them as a real thom in 
 the flesh, as they would endure the far lighter trials of 
 sickness or outward affliction. But they should be kept, 
 I think, to ourselves, and not talked of even to our nearest 
 friends, when we once understand their true nature. 
 Talking about them gives them a sort of reality which 
 otherwise they would not have ; just like talking about our 
 dreams. We should act and speak, and try to feel as if 
 they had no existence, and then in most cases they do 
 cease to exist after a time ; when they do not, they arc 
 harmless to our spiritual nature, although I fully believe 
 that they are the most grievous affliction with which human 
 nature is visited. 
 
 Of course, what I have here said relates only to such 
 questions as cannot possibly be so answered as to produce 
 even entire intellectual satisfaction, much less moral 
 advantage. I hold that Atheism and pure Scepticism 
 are both systems of absurdity ; which involves the con- 
 demnation of hypotheses leading to either of them as 
 conclusions. For Atheism separates truth from goodness, 
 and Scepticism destroys truth altogether ; both of which 
 are monstrosities, from which we should revolt as from a 
 real madness. With my earnest hopes and prayers that 
 you may be relieved from what I know to be the greatest
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 383 
 
 of earthly trials, but with a n<> l<ss earnest advice, that, it' 
 it does continue, you will treat it as a trial, and only cling 
 the closer, as it were, to that perfect Saviour, in the entire 
 love and truth of whose nature all doubt seems to melt 
 away, and who, if kept steadily before our minds, is, I 
 believe, most literally our Bread of Lite, giving strength 
 and peace to our weakness and distractions. 
 
 XC. TO ONE OF HIS SIXTH FORM, THREATENED WITH CONSUMPTION. 
 
 lux How, July 31, If 
 
 I fear that you will have found your patience much 
 
 tried by the return of pain in your side, and the lassitude 
 produced by the heat: it must also be a great trial not to 
 be able to bear reading. I can say but little of such a state 
 from my own experience, but I have seen much of it, and 
 have known how easy and even happy it has become, partly 
 by time, but more from a better support, which I believe is 
 never denied when it is honestly sought. And I have always 
 supposed that the first struggle in such a ease would be 
 the hardest; that is, the struggle in youth or middle age, 
 of reconciling ourselves to the loss of the active powers of 
 life, and to the necessity of serving God by suffering 
 rather than by doing. Afterwards, I should imagine the 
 mind would feel a great peace in such a state, in the 
 relief afforded from a great deal of temptation and re- 
 sponsibility, and the course of duty lying before it so 
 plain and so simple. 
 
 xci. TO REV. P. C. BLACKSTONB. 
 
 Pox How, July 28, l- 
 Next week we probably shall return to War- 
 wickshire, and I expect the unusual circumstance of being 
 at Rugby for a fortnight in the holidays, a thing which in 
 itself I shall be far from regretting, though I certainly am 
 not anxious to hasten awaj from Westmoreland. Hut I 
 often look at the backs of inv books with such a forlorn
 
 384 LIFE OE DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 glance during the half year, — it being difficult then to read 
 
 consecutively, — that I rather hail the prospect of being 
 able to employ a few mornings in some employment of 
 my own. The school will become more and more en- 
 grossing, and so it ought to be, for it is impossible ever 
 to do enough in it. Yet I think it essential that I should 
 not give up my own reading, as I always find any addition 
 of knowledge always to turn to account for the school in 
 some way or other. 1 fear, however, that I am growing 
 less active ; and I find myself often more inclined to read 
 to the children, or to amuse myself with some light book 
 after my day's work at Rugby, than to enter on any regular 
 employment. 
 
 My volume of Sermons connected with Prophecy is 
 still waiting, but I hope that it may come out before the 
 winter. It is a great joy to me to think that it will not 
 give offence to any one, but will at any rate, I trust, be 
 considered as safe, and, as far as it goes, useful. 1 have 
 no pleasure in writing what is unacceptable, though 1 
 confess, that, the more I study any subject, the more it 
 seems to me to require to be treated differently from the 
 way in which it has been treated. It is grievous to think 
 how much has been written about things with such im- 
 perfect knowledge, or with such narrow views, as leaves 
 the whole thing to be done again. Not that I mean that 
 it can be so done in our time, as to leave nothing for 
 posterity : — on the contrary, we know how imperfect our 
 own knowledge is, and how much requires yet to be 
 learned. Still in this generation an immense step has 
 been made, both in knowledge and in large and critical 
 views ; and this makes the writings of a former age so 
 unsatisfactory. In reading them I never can feel satisfied 
 that we have got to the bottom of a question 
 
 I was very much delighted to have staying at 
 
 Rugby for nearly a week with us in the spring. I had 
 not had any talk with him since he was my pupil at Lale- 
 ham. I was struck with the recoil of his opinions towards
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. IN."* 
 
 Toryism, or at any rate half-Toryism, — a result, which 1 
 have seen in other instances where the original anti-Ton 
 feeling was what I call "popular" rather than "liberal," 
 and took up the notion of liberty rather than of improve- 
 ment. 1 do not think that Libert} can well be the idol of 
 a good and sensible mind alter a certain age. My abhor- 
 rence of Conservatism is not because it checks liberty, — 
 in an established democracy it would favour liberty ; — but 
 because it checks the growth of mankind in wisdom, good- 
 ness and happiness, by Striving to maintain institutions 
 which are of necessity temporary, and thus never hinder- 
 ing change, but often depriving the change of half its 
 \ alue. 
 
 XCII. TO MB. JUSTICE COLERIDGE. 
 
 Rugby, July 1, 18 
 
 T thank you most heartily for both your affectionate 
 
 letters. When I suspect you of unkindness, or feel 
 offended with any thing that you say or write to me, I 
 must have east off my nature indeed very sadly. Be 
 assured that there was nothing in your first letter which 
 you could wish unwritten, nothing that was not written in 
 the true spirit of friendship. I was vexed only thus far, 
 that T could not explain many points to you, which I 
 think would have altered your judgment as to the lint-- of 
 the case. 
 
 My dear friend, I know and feel the many 
 
 greal faults of my life and practice; and grieve more than 
 
 I can say not to have more intercourse with those friends 
 
 who used to reprove me, I think, to my greal benefit — I 
 am sure without ever giving me offence. But I cannot 
 allow that those opinions, which I earnestly believe, after 
 many years' thought and study, to be entirely according to 
 
 Christ's mind, and most tending to His glory, and the 
 
 good of His Church, shall be summarily called heretical ; 
 and it is something of a trial to he taxed with perverting 
 VOL. 1. C C
 
 38C I. IKE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 my boys' religious principles, when I am labouring, though 
 most imperfectly, to lead them to Christ in true and de- 
 voted faith ; and when I hold all the scholarship that ever 
 man had, to be infinitely worthless in comparison with 
 even a very humble degree of spiritual advancement. 
 And 1 think that I have seen my work in some instances 
 blessed ;— not, 1 trust, to make me proud of it, or think 
 that I have any thing to be satisfied with, — yet so far as to 
 make it very painful to be looked upon as an enemy by 
 those whose Master I would serve as heartily, and whom, 
 if I dare say it, I love with as sincere an affection as 
 they do. 
 
 God bless yon, and thank you for all your kindness t>> 
 me always. 
 
 XCIII. TO C. J. VAUGHAN, ESQ. 
 
 Rugby, Sept. 9, 1S35. 
 It is very hard to know what to say of Hatch as to his 
 bodily health, because, though appearances are unfavour- 
 able, Dr. Jephson still speaks confidently of his recovery ; 
 but it is not hard to know what to say of his mind, which, 
 I believe, is quite what we coidd wish it to be. He always 
 seemed to me a most guileless person when in health, — 
 guileless and living in the fear of God, — in such circum- 
 stances sickness does but feed and purify the flame, which 
 was before burning strong and brightly. He will be de- 
 lighted to hear from you, and would be interested by any 
 Cambridge news that you coidd send him, for I think he 
 must find himself often in want of amusement, and of 
 something to vary the day. I am glad that you have 
 made acquaintance with some of the good poor. I quite 
 agree with you that it is most instructive to visit them, 
 and I think that you are right in what you say of their 
 more lively faith. We hold to earth and earthly things by 
 so many more links of thought, if not of affection, that it 
 is far harder to keep our view of heaven clear and strong ;
 
 LIFE OF DB. ARNOLD. 38^ 
 
 when this life is so busy, and therefore bo full of reality 
 to us, another life seems by comparison unreal. This is 
 our condition, and its peculiar temptations ; but we musl 
 endure it, and strive to overcome them, for I think we 
 
 may not try to flee from it 
 
 I have begun the Phaedo of Plato with the Sixth, which 
 will be a great delight to me. There i- an actual pleasure 
 in contemplating so perfect a management of so perfect 
 an instrument as is exhibited in Plato's language, even if 
 
 tin' matter were as woi u.less as the words of Italian music ; 
 whereas the sense is onl\ less admirable in mam plac< - 
 than the language. I am still in distress lor a Latin hook, 
 and wish that there were a cheap edition of Bacon's In- 
 stauratio Magna. I would use it, and make it useful in 
 point of Latinity, by setting the fellows to correct the 
 style where it is cumbrous or incorrect. As to Ldvy, the 
 use of reading him is almost like that of the drunken 
 Helot. It shows what history should not !><■ in a \er\ 
 striking manner; and, though the value to us of much of 
 ancient literature is greatly out of proportion to its in- 
 trinsic merit, yet the books of Ldvy, which we have, relate 
 to a time so uninteresting, that it is hard even to extract 
 a value from them by the most complete distillation; so 
 many gallons of vapid water scarcely hold in combination 
 a particle of spirit 
 
 XCIV. TO CHBVALIBB BUNSEN. 
 
 Rugby, September 21, L88S 
 
 I have been and am working at two main 
 
 things, the Roman History and the nature and inter- 
 pretation of Prophecy. For the first I have been working 
 at Hannibal's Passage of the Alps. How bad a geo- 
 grapher is PolybhlS, and how strange that he should lie 
 thoughl a good one! Compare him with anj man who is 
 really a geographer, with I [erodotus,with Napoleon, whose 
 
 sketches of Italy, Egypt and Syria, in his memoirs, are to 
 
 C f L'
 
 388 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 me unrivalled, — or with Niebuhr, and how striking is the 
 difference. The dullness of Polybius' fancy made it im- 
 possible for him to conceive or paint scenery clearly, and 
 how can a man be a geographer without lively images of 
 the formation and features of the country which he de- 
 scribes ? How different are the several Alpine valleys, 
 and how would a few simple touches of the scenery which 
 he seems actually to have visited, yet could neither under- 
 stand nor feel it, have decided for ever the question of the 
 route ! Now the account suits no valley well, and there- 
 fore it may be applied to many ; but I believe the real 
 line was by the Little St. Bernard, although I cannot trace 
 those particular spots, which De Luc and Cramer fancy 
 they could recognise. I thought so on the spot, (i. e. that 
 the spots could not be traced,) when T crossed the Little 
 St. Bernard, in 1825, with Polybius in my hand, and I 
 think so still. How much we want a physical history of 
 countries, tracing the changes which they have undergone 
 either by such violent revolutions as volcanic phenomena, 
 or by the slower but not less complete change produced 
 by ordinary causes ; such as alterations of climate, occa- 
 sioned by inclosing and draining ; alteration in the course 
 of rivers, and in the level of their beds ; alteration in the 
 animal and vegetable productions of the soil, and in the 
 supply of metals and minerals ; noticing also the advance 
 or retreat of the sea, and the origin and successive increase 
 in the number and variation in the line of roads, together 
 with the changes in the extent and character of the wood- 
 lands. How much might be done by our Society at Rome 
 if some of its attention were directed to these points : for 
 instance, drainage and an alteration in the course of the 
 waters have produced great changes in Tuscany ; and 
 there is also the interesting question as to the spread of 
 malaria in the Maremme
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 XCV. TO J. P. fiELL, I 
 
 Rugby, September SO, 1-:',.".. 
 My situation here, if it has its anxieties, lias also many 
 great pleasures, amongsl the highest of which arc such 
 letters as that which you have had the kindness to write 
 to me. I value it indeed very greatly, and Bincerely thank 
 you for it. 1 had hen often told that I should know you 
 much more after you had left Rugby, than I had ever done 
 before, and your letter encourages me to hope that it will 
 be so. You will not think that it is as a mere form of civil 
 words, when I say we shall be rery glad to Bee you lure, if 
 you can take us in your way to Cambridge, or in West- 
 moreland in the winter, if you do not start at the thoughl 
 of a Christmas among the mountains. But I can assure 
 you that you will find them most beautiful in their winto i 
 dress, and the valleys very humanized. I have just seen, 
 hut not read, the second number of the Rugbj Magazine. 
 1 have an unmixed pleasure in its going on, — perhaps, just 
 under actual circumstances, more than at some former time, 
 because I think it is more wanted. We shall soon lose 
 
 Lake and Simpkinson and the others, who go up this year 
 to the University. There is always a melancholy feeling 
 in seeing the last sheaf carried of a good harvest ; for who 
 knows what may he the crop of the next year r But this, 
 
 happily for us, is, both in the natural and in the moral 
 
 harvest, in the hands of Him who can make disappoint- 
 ment and scarcity do his work, no less than success ami 
 
 plenty. 
 
 xc\ I. TO Mil. JU8TK i COX! B1DOB. 
 
 Our visit to Westmoreland was short, for we 
 
 returned home earl} in August But I could not 
 
 have enjoyed three weeks more; lor the fust week we had
 
 390 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 so much rain that the Rotha flooded a part of our grass. 
 Afterwards we had the most brilliant weather, which brought 
 
 our flowers out in the greatest beauty ; but the preceding 
 rain kept us quite green, and the contrast was grievous in 
 that respect when we came back to the brown fields of 
 Warwickshire. But 1 cannot tell you, how I enjoyed our 
 fortnight at Rugby before the school opened. It quite 
 
 reminded me of Oxford, when M and I used to sit out 
 
 in the garden under the enormous elms of the School-field, 
 which almost overhang the house, and saw the line of our 
 battlemented roofs and the pinnacles and cross of our 
 Chapel cutting the unclouded sky. And I had divers 
 happy little matches at cricket with my own boys in the 
 school-field, — on the very cricket ground of the " eleven," 
 that is, of the best players in the school, on which, when 
 the school is assembled, no profane person may encroach. 
 Then came my wife's happy confinement, before which we 
 had had a very happy visit of a day from the whole family 
 of Hulls, and which was succeeded by a no less happy 
 visit from the whole family of Whatelys. 
 
 Have you seen our Rugby Magazine, of which the 
 second number has just made its appearance ? It is 
 written wholly either by boys actually at the school, or 
 by undergraduates within their first year. I delight in 
 the spirit of it, and think there is much ability in many of 
 the articles. I think also that it is likely to do good to 
 the school. 
 
 We have lost this year more than half of our Sixth 
 Form, so that the influx of new elements has been 
 rather disproportionately great ; and unluckily the average 
 of talent just in this part of the school is not high. We 
 have a very good promise below, but at present we shall 
 have great difficulty in maintaining our ground ; and then 1 
 always fear that, where the intellect is low, the animal part 
 will predominate ; and that moral evils will increase, as 
 well as intellectual proficiency decline, under such a state
 
 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 391 
 
 of things. At present I think that the boys seem \<tv 
 well disposed, and I trust that, in this far more important 
 
 matter, we shall work through our time of less bright sun- 
 shine without material injury. It would overpay me for 
 far greater uneasiness and labour than 1 have ever had at 
 Rugby, to see the feeling both towards the school and 
 towards myself personally, with which some of our boj b hai e 
 been lately leaving us. One staid with us in the house for 
 his last week at Rugby, dreading the approach of the day 
 which should take him to Oxford, although he was going 
 up to a most delightful society of old friends ; and, when 
 he actually came to take lease, 1 really think that the 
 parting was like that of a father and his son. And it i^ 
 delightful to me to find how glad all the better hoys are to 
 come hack here after they have left it. and how much they 
 seem to enjoy staying with me; while a sure instinct keeps 
 at a distance all whose recollections of the place are con- 
 nected with no comfortable reflections. Mean time 1 write 
 nothing, and read barely enough to keep my mind in the 
 state of a running stream, which I think it ought to he if 
 it would form or leed other minds ; for it is ill drinking 
 out of a pond, whose stock of water is merely the remains 
 of the long past rains of the winter and spring, evaporating 
 and diminishing with every successive day of drought. 
 We are reading now Plato's Phaedon, which 1 suppose 
 must be nearly the perfection of human language. The 
 
 admirable precision of the great \ttic writers is to me 
 
 very striking. When you get a thorough knowledge of 
 the language, they are clearer than I think an English 
 writer can he from the inferiority of his instrument. I 
 often think that 1 could have understood your I'm le better 
 if he had written in Platonic Greek. I lis Table Talk marks 
 him, in my judgment, .... as a very great man indeed, 
 whose equal I know not where to lind in England. It 
 
 amused me to recognise, in your contributions to the hook, 
 divers anecdotes which used to excite the open-mouthed
 
 3.92 LIFE OF DR. ARNOLD. 
 
 admiration of the C.C.C. Junior Common Room in the 
 Easter and Act Terms of 1811, after your Easter vacation 
 spent with Mr. May at Richmond. My paper is at an 
 end, but not my matter. Perhaps I may see you in the 
 winter in town. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
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