sense of the aggravation of those evils by the insolence and want of sympathy too frequently shown by the children of the wealthier classes towards the lower orders; a corresponding desire that they should there imbibe the first principles of reverence to law and regard for the poor, which the spirit of the age seemed to him so little to encourage. When he thought of the evils of the Church, he would "turn from the thought of the general temple in ruins, and see whether they could not, within the walls of their own little particular congregation," endeavour to realize what he believed to be its true idea; "what use they could make of the vestiges of it still left amongst themselves-common reading of the Scriptures, common prayer, and the communion." (Serm. vol. iv. pp. 266, 316.) Thus, "whatever of striking good or evil happened in any part of the wide range of English dominion,"-"declared on what important scenes some of his own scholars might be called upon to enter," "whatever new and important things took place in the world of thought," suggested the hope "that they, when they went forth amidst the strifes of tongues and of minds, might be endowed with the spirit of wisdom and power." (Serm. vol. v. p. 405.) And even in the details of the school, it would be curious to trace how he recognized in the peculiar vices of boys the same evils which, when full grown, became the source of so much social mischief; how he governed the school precisely on the same principles as he would have governed a great empire; how constantly, to his own mind or to his scholars, he exemplified the highest truths of theology and philosophy in the simplest relations of the boys towards each other, or towards him.

In entering upon his office he met with difficulties, many of which have since passed away, but which must be borne in mind, if points are here dwelt upon, that have now ceased to be important, but were by no means insignificant or obvious when he came to Rugby. Nor did his system at once attain its full maturity. He was a long time feeling his way amongst the various institutions which he formed or invented:-he was constantly striving after an ideal standard of perfection which he was conscious that he had never attained; to the improvements which, in a short time, began to take place in other schools-to those at Harrow, under his friend Dr. Longley, and to those at Winchester, under Dr. Moberly, to which he alluded in one of his later sermons, (vol. v. p. 150,) he often looked as models for himself;-to suggestions from persons very much younger than himself, not unfrequently from his former pupils, with regard to the course of reading, or to alterations in his manner of preaching, or to points of discipline, he would often listen with the greatest deference. His own mind was constantly devising new measures for carrying out his several views. "The school," he said on first coming, "is quite enough to employ any man's love of reform; and it is much pleasanter to think of evils, which you may yourself hope to relieve, than those with regard to

which you can give nothing but vain wishes and opinions." "There is enough of Toryism in my nature," he said, on evils being mentioned to him in the place, "to make me very apt to sleep contentedly over things as they are, and therefore I hold it to be most true kindness when any one directs my attention to points in the school which are alleged to be going on ill."

The perpetual succession of changes which resulted from this, was by many objected to as excessive, and calculated to endanger the stability of his whole system. "He wakes every morning," it was said of him, "with the impression that every thing is an open question." But rapid as might be the alterations to which the details of his system were subjected, his 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 it would almost seem as if he invented universal rules with the express object of meeting particular cases. Still, if in smaller matters this gave an occasional impression of fancifulness or inconsistency, it was, in greater matters, one chief cause of the confidence which he inspired. Amidst all the plans that came before him, he felt, and he made others feel, that whatever might be the merits of the particular question at issue, there were principles behind which lay far more deeply seated than any mere question of school government, which he was ready to carry through at whatever cost, and from which no argument or menace could move him.

Of the mere external administration of the school, little need here be said. Many difficulties which he encountered were alike provoked and subdued by the peculiarities of his own character. The vehemence with which he threw himself into a contest against evil, and the confidence with which he assailed it, though it carried him through perplexities to which a more cautious man would have yielded, led him to disregard interests and opinions which a less earnest or a less sanguine reformer would have treated with greater consideration. His consciousness of his own integrity, and his contempt for worldly advantage, sometimes led him to require from others more than might be reasonably expected from them, and to adopt measures which the world at large was sure to misinterpret; yet these very qualities, in proportion as they became more appreciated, ultimately secured for him a confidence beyond what could have been gained by the most deliberate circumspection. But whatever were the temporary exasperations and excitements thus produced in his dealings with others, they were gradually removed by the increasing control over himself and his work which he acquired in later years. The readiness which he showed to acknowledge a fault when once convinced of it, as well as to persevere in kindness even when he thought himself injured, succeeded in healing breaches which, with a less forgiving or less honest temper, would have been irreparable. His union of firmness with tender

ness had the same effect in the settlement of some of the perplexities of his office, which in others would have resulted from art and management; and even his work as a schoolmaster cannot be properly appreciated without remembering how, in the end of his career, he rallied round him the public feeling, which in its beginning and middle, as will appear further on, had been so widely estranged from him.

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

Of his intercourse with the assistant masters it is for obvious reasons impossible to speak in any detail. Yet it would be injustice alike to them and to him not to bear in mind how earnestly he dwelt on their co-operation as an essential part of his own government of the school. It was one of his main objects to increase in all possible ways their importance. 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. It was his endeavour, partly by placing the boardinghouses 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. What he was in his department, in short, he wished every one of them to be in theirs, and nothing rejoiced him more than to hear of instances in which he thought that boys were sent to the school for the sake of his colleagues' instructions rather than of his own. It was his labour to inspire them with the views of education and of life, by which he was possessed himself; and the bond, thus gradually formed, especially when in his later time several of those who had been his pupils became his colleagues, grew deeper and stronger with each successive year that they passed in the place. Out of his own family, there was no circle of which he was so completely the animating principle, as amongst those who co-operated with him in the great practical work of his life; none in which his loss was so keenly felt to be irreparable, or his example so instinctively regarded in the light of a living spring of action, and a source of solemn responsibility, as amongst those who were called to continue their

labours in the sphere and on the scene which had been ennobled to them by his counsels and his presence.'

But whatever interest attaches to the more external circumstances of his administration, and to his relations with others, who were concerned in it, is of course centered in his own personal government of the boys. The natural effect of his concentration of interest on what he used to call "our great self," the school, was that the separate existence of the school was in return 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 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 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 beloved 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, whether in the school itself, or in its after effects, the one image that we have before us is not Rugby, but ARNOLD.

1 His views will perhaps be best explained by the two following letters:

LETTER OF INQUIRY FOR A MASTER.

What I 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 he 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 taught by a man who has a thorough knowledge of the matter. However, if one must give way, I 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 understood 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 boardinghouses may die a natural death. With this to offer, I think I have a right 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 gentleman,—that a man should enter his business not ik napipyov, 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 improvement 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 undertake them without entering into the spirit of our system heart and hand.

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 disclaim; but which it is exceedingly 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 theological instruction, or to introduce sacred words into school admonitions; there may have been some occasions 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 nature 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 subordinate to their common relation to God. "The business 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; ex actly 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 excellences from being noble and Christian virtues; whose situation did not of itself make the application of Christian principles to their daily lives an impracticable vision.

His education, in short, it was once observed 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 difficult 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, therefore, when either in direct religious teaching, or on particular occasions, Christian principles were expressly introduced by him, they had not the appearance 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 he did not mean, the power of doing what was right, and speaking