God's Providence seems capable within any definite time of eradicating it."

Still it was not in his nature to postpone, even in thought, the fulfilment of his desires to a remote 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. The wisdom of Hesiod's famous paradox, "He is a fool who knows not how much better the half is than the whole," was often in his mouth; in answer to the frequent allegation that because the complete fulfilment of the theory was impracticable, therefore no part of it could be made available. "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 exertions 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 desperately to throw them away." 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 latitudinarianism, to wish most devoutly that this noble, this divine theory might be fully and for ever realized." 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 remoteness only impressing him more deeply with the conviction of the enormous efforts which must be made to bring all social institutions nearer to that perfection 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 practical form, the great idea of which the several parts of his life were so many distinct exemplifications; his sermons-his teaching--his government of the school--his public acts-his own personal character; and to which all his dreams of wider usefulness instinctively turned, from the first faint outline 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 be permitted to take part in it."

1 Preface to History of Rome, vol. i. p. ix. Serm. vol. ii. Pref. p. vi.

* Church Reform, Postscript, p. 24.

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 truest 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 once to break off his occupations to answer a question, or to attend to the many interruptions to which he 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 secretries at once."

แ

Yet, almost unfailing as was this "unhasting, unresting 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 sometimes 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 they first witnessed his tenderness and 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 entered into the business of life, and the enjoyment with which he entered into its rest; whilst the common 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, observing with distinct pleasure each symptom of the burst of spring or of the richness of summer-" feeling 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 went 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 he joined the happy walks on which he would take them in the fields and hedges, hunting for flowersthe yearly excursions to look in a neighbouring clay-pit for the earliest coltsfoot, with the mock siege 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 family every morning; and the common reading of a chapter in the Bible every Sunday evening, with repetition 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 listening 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 authority 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 eyes 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 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 fortunes 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 "a 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 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 correspondence 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 men can entertain, he retained to 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 spite of his own efforts to continue it, it was so interrupted, the subject 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 England generally, and especially of the lower orders, will appear elsewhere. But the picture of his ordinary 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 railway station at half a mile from the town, procuring the sanction of the Bishop for the performance of a short service there on Sunday by himself and the assistant 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 almshouse 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 assumed 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 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 professional 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, without always seeming bent on relieving or instructing them ;" 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 accommodation 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 to me as if I was a lady." Often, no doubt, this was not appreciated by the poor, and might, at times, be embarrassing to himself, and it is said that he was liable to be imposed 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 remembrance of the good poor, whom he visited at Rugby, he often recurred when absent from thein, 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 forward 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 1832, with the view of providing 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 repulsive; there was something almost touching 'Sermons, vol. ii. p. 411.